Black Tape S02E07 - Personal Possessions

Nic Silver: Alex! Great news! My super-clever hacker girlfriend taught me about this amazing new technology called a “web browser,” and I was able to use it to access something called a “Google,” and they helped me track down Thomas Warren!

Alex Reagan: That’s amazing, Nic! Is he hiding in a monastery in Russia? Holed up in a cave in New Mexico? Performing blasphemous rituals in a day care in Seattle?

Nic Silver: Worse! He’s giving a speech to the World Trade Organization in Vancouver! Oh, and the Googles also said that The Advocate is recruiting an army, a collection of the best and brightest minds, whose genius he will corrupt in order to bring about the end of days! And do you know who he’s targeting? Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, and … Richard Strand!

Alex Reagan: Holy shit, Nic! Strand knows Elon Musk! Do you think he’d let me test drive a Tesla?

Nic Silver: Um … there’s also this mysterious hacker in Maine that has a photograph of the General of the Armies of the Faceless Damned, but he only accepts visitors in person on Tuesdays at 11:15am.

Alex Reagan: So we’re going to Maine?

Nic Silver: Looks like!

Alex Reagan: Can we drive a Tesla?

Nic Silver: Damn it Alex, we already blew our entire budget installing hidden recording devices in Strand’s house. There’s no money for a Tesla!

Nic Silver: Both Alex and I have encountered strange, satyr-like beings, creatures with the upper bodies of a man, but the lower extremities of a goat. These creatures have emerged from a rift in the very fabric of reality and now prowl through our world, seeking to devour the innocent and unleash everlasting darkness upon the world.

Their one weakness is their inability to blend in with normal humans, since very few of the mortals born on this plane of existence have the distinct features of an ungulate mammal.

That’s why there’s Bombas Socks. Bombas Socks are carefully designed and hand-crafted to cover your cloven feet and hide your true demonic nature. When you wear Bombas Socks, you never have to worry that the child whose soul you plan to devour will look down and realize they’re in mortal peril.

Bombas Socks: the face of a man, the body of a monster, the comfortable fashion of an ascendent god.

Alex Reagan: Last time, I talked with Richard’s sister Cheryl and disclosed deep, personal secrets Strand had shared with me in confidence and made me promise to never reveal. My betrayal was of course hurtful, but like any abused spouse, Strand eventually came running back to me, because he realizes he can never do any better, and that I only hurt him because he makes me crazy sometimes.

I also followed Richard to the hotel where he honeymooned with his long-lost wife, and took a number of compromising photos. I won’t go into details, but Richard looks dashing in leather restraints.

There was also something about a “book cypher” or “secret message” or “critically important information that will change everything we thought we knew about this story,” but I’ll get to that next episode.

Alex Reagan: Hi Amalia! I just wanted to apologize for unwittingly exposing you to Satan’s favorite lullaby, and thus potentially dooming you to a terrible death at the hands of an unmerciful demon of song and shadow!

Amalia: Is being all right, Alexandra! Am understanding that you have been, as they say, “hacked,” and that murder song was sent by nefarious entity!

Nic Silver: Well, I would like to investigate the possibility that Alex sent that file while in a fugue state.

Alex Reagan: Nic, that’s insulting! Why would you even suggest that?

Nic Silver: Well, you haven’t been sleeping well lately, and you’ve been kind of irritable, and sort of forgetful, and for this entire conversation you’ve been clutching a rusty screwdriver in a white-knuckled hand, carving the words “die Amalia die” into the granite countertop of the PNWS break room.

Alex Reagan: I … totally knew I was doing that.

[PNWS Boom]

Alex Reagan: So Nic, I’ve been thinking about my conversation with Simon Reese, the deranged parricidal maniac who is also able to project his astral form into the girl’s locker room at the local Planet Fitness.

Nic Silver: He said that you’re a single note in a universal symphony, a clear reference to Alexander Scriabin’s Mysterium, a cursed composition that will crack open the gates of hell and unleash a final torrent of blood and fire upon the world!

Alex Reagan: He also asked where Amalia had been when she disappeared in Russia! And while she told you a very plausible and convincing story about hiding from Soviet businessmen whose corruption she had exposed, I think it’s more likely that Amalia is Percival Black’s secret lover, a demonically-possessed pawn in his plan to destroy all of reality, sent here to fracture our working relationship and prevent us from stopping Black’s nefarious plan!

Nic Silver: Or, I’m just spitballing here, maybe Simon listens to our podcast and was making shit up?

Alex Reagan: Nah, I’m going with the demon thing.

Jessica Weldon: Hi Alex! I just wanted to call and say “thanks” for publishing a video of me having a psychotic episode at the age of twelve, publicly claiming that I was possessed by the Devil, and using my full, real name for all of it! I love being called “Exorcism Girl” by my coworkers, I was planning to break up with my boyfriend anyway, and people keep leaving these adorable animal heads in front of my house!

Alex Reagan: No problem, Jessica! Revealing deep and troubling personal information is what we at PNWS do best!

Jessica Weldon: Also, just because my slight, ninety-pound frame contained the strength to overpower a dozen men, and just because I tore a chunk out of my mother’s arm with my teeth and then spat the bloody meat into my father’s face, and just because I spoke in the tongues of devils and uttered blasphemies in the languages of the damned, and just because my head rotated a full three-hundred-sixty degrees while your precious Dr. Strand recorded it, doesn’t mean I was possessed!

Alex Reagan: What do you think it was? Mental illness? Hormonal imbalance? Low blood sugar?

Jessica Weldon: Oh, no, I was totally brainwashed by a my babysitter, who would teach me songs of love and adoration to Belial the Cursed, and who worked for a group of black-clad businessmen belonging to an unnamed yet nefarious organization!

Alex Reagan: Of course! It all makes sense now!

Nic Silver: It does?

[PNWS Boom]

Alex Reagan: The Order of the Seniphus are hell-bent on ripping apart the fabric of our reality, stranding us in an unimaginable hell where suffering has no limit and time has no meaning.

But you know what’s even worse than that? The Post Office. Sure, The Pale Robes want to offer up our immortal souls as a gift to their fell lords and masters, but at least they’ll play a well-orchestrated symphony as the flesh burns from our bodies. The Post Office is an intolerable wasteland, devoid of hope and joy, and the only song to be heard is the Muzak of the damned.

Stamps.com: our world may be lost to the shadows, but at least you won’t have to wait in line for postage.

Alex Reagan: Jessica gave the the contact info for a man she claims was also brainwashed by the black-clad accountants from hell. He refused to speak to me, but after a week of endless phone calls, emails, and several personal visits to his home, office, and daughter’s kindergarten class, he agreed to go on the record. He asked that I not use his real name, so I’ll just refer to him as John Pendergast, age 42, residing at 219 4th Avenue North, Seattle, Washington. He has a small mole on his left cheek, thinning brown hair, and glasses.

John: Okay, so as you can see, there I am on Strand’s videotape, holding down Jessica while the priest performs an exorcism.

Strand: Hold on a minute. I fear that your categorical statements may be leading the listeners to conclusions unwarranted by the facts. So let’s refer to Jessica as the “supposed victim of possession,” and “possession” as “a likely mental illness exacerbated, or even caused by, religious indoctrination,” and “holding down” as “pretending to physically restrain in order to make the centerpiece of this charade appear supernaturally strong,” and “Strand’s videotape” as “the recording of a false and illusory con job, perpetrated by those ancient peddlers of lies and fear, the Church, recorded by the brave, handsome, and above all sharply intelligent Richard Strand, PhD, Doctor of Refuting Fuckery in All Its Varied Forms.”

John: …

Alex Reagan: He does that.

John: Anyway, long before I was employed by the Church as a Little Girl Restrainer, I was possessed by a demon! But these helpful Men in Black tore off my clothes, strapped my to a chair, hooked my soft and tender bits up to an arcane machine, and used technology to force the demon from my body!

Strand: coughhorsecrapcough

Alex Reagan: Richard? Do you want a glass of water?

Strand: No, but I think this guy needs a nice tall glass of quit your bullshit.

Nic Silver: Hey, on the wall behind the Men in Black!

Strand: That’s just a mass-produced painting. You can pick up identical “art” at any large commercial venue, a WalMart or a Target or similar.

Alex Reagan: I was talking about the pentagram, apparently drawn in blood, ringed with eldritch writing and profane mathematics, and bearing the visage of an upside-down face in the center.

Strand: Oh, that. Yes, that’s harder to come by.

[PNWS Boom Boom Boom]

Alex Reagan: Many of you have been asking about Charlie Strand, Richard’s daughter. We’re not going to talk about her. Instead, here’s a conversation I had with Cheryl, Richard’s sister. They’re kind of related, so it’s basically the same, right?

Cheryl: So our father was never what you would call “close” or “loving” or “ever in our house, even for a fleeting moment, even on Christmas, or our birthdays, or when our mother died,” but when Richard was twelve, our father started taking an … interest in him. Teaching him long dead languages. Giving him artifacts retrieved from the locations of ancient rituals. Forcing him to read books bound in the flesh of the dead and containing knowledge forbidden to mortal men. You know, guy stuff.

I asked him to take me fishing, because Daddy liked fishing and I was desperate for even a cursory sign of his love or affection, but he told me to go fish with my goat-faced demon friends, if I loved them so much. But then Richard murdered his wife and abandoned his daughter, and I was suddenly glad that Daddy left me alone to play with my dollies, even if he locked me in a cold, wet basement for weeks at a time, with nothing to eat but stale bread, and nobody but the rats for company.

Alex Reagan: So the Strand family dynamic is complicated, is what I’m hearing you say?

Alex Reagan: Next time, Nic and I will go to Canada, Richard will try to decipher a mysterious message left by his presumed-dead wife, and I will push the boundaries of journalism, ethics, and sanity in my quest to prove that my producer is sleeping with a demonic fiend that has stolen the body of my former friend and is about to drop a mixtape that will end the world. It’s the Black Tapes podcast, and we’ll be back in two weeks.