This Tape Belongs To…

The Video Vault appeared overnight.

Where once stood a shuttered butcher’s, its tiles still stained from a long-forgotten trade, now sat a glowing front of VHS promise. Neon script buzzed in the fogged windows: Be Kind, Rewind. Below that, a sandwich board proclaimed NEW RELEASES! in chalky capitals. It was the sort of place that didn’t exist one day and felt like it had always been there the next.

Martin Blake, seventeen, directionless and fresh off a string of bad GCSEs, took the job mostly out of boredom. His mum called it a “good stepping stone”, but it felt more like a waiting room. Still, he liked films, and there were worse ways to spend an evening than surrounded by plastic clamshells and posters of Predator and The Breakfast Club.

The shop’s layout was straightforward: new releases at the front, horrors by the window, kids’ films by the plastic chairs and lollipop bin. But at the very back, half-shielded by a leaning display for Goonies II, stood an unlabelled shelf of tapes that didn’t fit into any genre. No sleeves. Just black cases with white spine labels in a stark typewriter font—Room 239, The Playground, Static 3AM, Father’s Hands.

Martin assumed they were local indie projects or weird documentaries. They weren’t listed in the till. Whenever he tried scanning them, the register emitted a low whine, like a radio caught between frequencies. Craig, the manager, told him to ignore them.

“They’re not for rent,” he said one night, while peeling price stickers off a crate of Ghostbusters II. “They’re… archival. Store history, you know?”

That made no sense. But nothing about Craig did. He always wore dark glasses, even indoors, and spoke like someone imitating human speech from a script he hadn’t quite learned. Martin figured he was just a burnout or worse—an American. Either way, Martin kept his questions to himself and focused on his real job: rewinding, shelving, smiling at bored parents and restless teens.

Then came the man in the mac.

It was a Tuesday night, cold and quiet. Rain ticked against the windows like fingernails. The bell above the door jingled softly as a tall man stepped inside, soaked to the bone, with skin the colour of wax paper and fingernails too long to be ignored.

“I’d like to rent Room 239,” he said, voice low and precise.

Martin blinked. “That one’s not… it’s not part of the normal selection.”

“It’s there.” The man pointed toward the Misc section. “Bottom shelf. Second from the left.”

Martin found it easily. The case was warm in his hands, and the tape inside rattled slightly, as if something inside was loose—or alive. When he tried to scan it, the register let out a sharp, pained beep and froze entirely. The man didn’t flinch. He placed a ten-pound note on the counter with fingers that seemed too stiff, too careful.

“No return,” he said. “Keep the change.”

He left without another word, disappearing into the fog.

The next morning, the tape was back.

It sat on the counter, no envelope, no late fee, with a small note taped to it in the same clacking typewriter font as its spine: DO NOT WATCH.

Martin lasted about twelve hours before curiosity got the better of him.

At half past eleven, once the store was dark and locked and Craig had gone home—if he ever really went home—Martin loaded the tape into the staffroom’s battered JVC player. The old tube television fizzed to life, colours warped by age and magnets, sound fuzzy through the wall-mounted speaker.

The footage was grainy, filmed handheld, the camera shuddering as it moved down a long, sterile corridor. The floors were patterned linoleum, the walls a sickly beige. Fluorescents flickered above. A woman in a nurse’s uniform passed the camera without reacting. The view stopped outside a door marked 239, its numbers bolted into the wood.

The screen cut to black. For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then came a sound—not music, not speech. A high, metallic keening, the kind of noise that makes dogs howl and babies cry, that seems to resonate inside your skull like a tuning fork.

Martin ripped the plug from the wall.

But the screen remained on.

Now it showed a grainy image of the store itself—this store, the counter, the window, the staffroom door ajar. The angle was impossible, high and fixed like a CCTV feed, though Martin was certain there were no cameras in Video Vault. And in the middle of the frame, a figure—him—staring at the screen, mouth open in a silent scream.

He looked around. No one behind him. The room as still as a tomb.

Then the tape cut to static. When he rewound it to try again, the footage was gone.

In the days that followed, more customers began asking about the black tapes. A boy wanted one labelled The Playground, but returned it within the hour, pale and shaking. His mother came in the next morning and demanded to speak to Craig.

“He won’t talk to me,” she said, hands trembling. “He won’t look at me. He says he’s still on the tape.”

Martin said he didn’t understand, but he did. He was starting to.

Another tape arrived that week, not shelved but delivered through the letterbox overnight. No return address, no note. Just a label: Martin’s Shift. He didn’t dare play it.

One night, after a long silence between customers, he turned a corner and found Craig standing in front of the mirror behind the till, talking to his reflection in a language Martin couldn’t understand. He left early that night.

By the following month, the store had gained a reputation. People said it was haunted, cursed, or worse—an urban legend in the making. Teens dared each other to rent the black tapes and see how long they could watch. Some swore they heard voices behind the images. Others never returned.

Martin tried burning the tapes in a metal bin out back. He watched them melt, ooze, hiss—but in the morning, the shelf was full again. The labels were clean, unscarred. The same titles, sitting like bait in a trap that had long since been sprung.

The final straw came on Halloween. The sky was copper-orange with pollution and bonfire smoke, and Craig never arrived for the evening shift. Martin stayed alone, the phone silent, the till refusing to open.

At half past midnight, a tape slid under the front door. He picked it up with numb fingers.

ROOM 240.

The screen in the staffroom flickered on by itself.

And this time, there was no tape inside the player.

Martin’s mum filed a missing person report on 3rd November. The shop was closed when police arrived, windows dark, shelves bare. No tapes remained—not even the Disney ones.

The only clue was a note left stuck to the counter with brittle yellow tape, written in that same stark font:

BE KIND. REWIND. OR THEY WON’T GO BACK.

The shop reopened a few months later, under new management.

Same layout. Same flickering neon sign. Same back shelf with the black cassettes no one remembers stocking.

Somewhere, a new name appears on a label.
A new recording begins.
The screen flickers to life.

And the tape keeps playing.

Even when you hit stop.