The Black Tapes S03E06 - Into the Black

Alex Reagan: Hi Nic! You look like a bag of ass dragged through an interdimensional rift covered in razor blades and gasoline!

Nic Silver: Hi Alex! You look like a mental patient that escaped psychiatric hold by using your face to break through the security glass!

Alex Reagan: Anyway, I just wanted to call and let you know that we’ve got it all figured out! Daeva Corp is a front for the Order of the Ceonophus, a Satanic religious order that is owned and operated by Thomas Warren!

Nic Silver: Wow, that’s a serious accusation! Do you have anything resembling proof?

Alex Reagan: Absolutely not! But guess what? Someone was thoughtful enough to smuggle an audio recorded twenty years back in time so that they could record Thomas Warren’s experiments at CERN! And it turns out his machinery was designed to create the Unsound!

Nic Silver: That’s amazing!

Alex Reagan: Oh and guess what? It turns out that all of this stuff about the Mysterium and Percival Black and the Un-Un-Sound and all of that was complete bullshit that doesn’t actually affect the story in any way!

Nic Silver: Holy shit! That sounds like a discovery that should have been made on-air!

Alex Reagan: And get this! Richard Strand, devout skeptic and evangelical atheist, agrees with me that Thomas Warren is using the large hadron collider to open up demonic portals all over the world!

Nic Silver: What an unexpected character development! Hey, while I’ve got you on the phone, let me show you something!

Alex Reagan: I sure hope it’s not a creepy video of me sleeping while a menacing cultist looks on and Tall Paul lurks in the corner, waiting to devour my innocence, my soul, and my flesh!

Ron Howard: It was.

Alex Reagan: I played the video. It was nannycam footage of a dark room, with dark curtains pulled tight against a dark sky. A dark figure slept darkly. Then, in the dark darkness, we see movement. The nannycam is actually a video camera, being held darkly by a dark man with dark intentions. He pans to the corner, where a dark demon darkly darks his dark dark. After a long, dark minute, the camera man pans darkly back to the darkly sleeping dark figure. He lingers over the feet. Feet that are clad in … Bombas socks.

PNWS BOOM

Alex Reagan: Hey Nic? I need you to call the police, the CIA, the FBI, Interpol, the fire department, and anyone else you can think of, because HOLY FUCKING SHIT SOMEONE BROKE INTO MY FUCKING HOUSE AND FUCKING VIDEO TAPED ME WHILE I WAS FUCKING SLEEPING AND FUCKING TALL PAUL WAS FUCKING IN THE FUCKING ROOM. ALSO: FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Nic Silver: Okay Alex, I’m hearing that you’re concerned …

Alex Reagan: You know what sucks? Going to the post office. You know what else sucks? HAVING YOUR PRIVATE SPACE INVADED BY CREEPY MURDER RAPISTS WHO FILM YOU IN YOUR MOST VULNERABLE MOMENTS WHILE A DEMON WAITS TO DESTROY YOU. But go to Stamps.com I guess, and maybe enter promo code “The Black Tapes.” You’ll probably still be alive when this all wraps up.

There’s also Hello Fresh, which is like Blue Apron without the name recognition. I guess that’s probably cool, you know, if you aren’t too afraid to eat, because JESUS GODDAMNED CHRIST I HAVE BEEN VIOLATED NOWHERE IS SAFE WHAT IN THE EVEN FUCK AM I GOING TO DO?

Alex Regan: Hi Richard! So you called me in a blind panic and demanded that I speak to you immediately, and I’m sure my listeners would like to know what’s wrong!

Richard Strand: Oh, you know, no big deal. Just got a phone call from my dead father.

Howard Strand: Hey Richie! Turns out I’m alive and in Geneva, along with your wife Coralee! Also we’ve been captured by the Order of the Ceonophus or the cult of Tiamat or the Boy Scouts of America or some shit, and they gave me one phone call, so I just wanted to let you know that you should NOT FUCKING COME TO SWITZERLAND ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING COULD THIS BE A MORE OBVIOUS TRAP JESUS CHRIST GO TO VANCOUVER AND HIDE OUT OR SOMETHING. SHIT.

Also, since I called you “Richie” pretend I wasn’t too lazy to come up with a “you’ll float down here, too” joke, ’kay?

–

Alex Regan: So you got a call from beyond the grave inviting you into what is clearly a trap?

Richard Strand: Exactly.

Alex Regan: And you’re planning to …

Richard Strand: Depart immediately for Geneva, yes.

Nic Silver: Hey Alex! We’re getting toward the end of this thing, and I was hoping you could toss a bone to the Streagan shippers out there!

Alex Reagan: LOL nope!

Nic Silver: Okay cool! Because it just seems like your obvious affection for him, and the emotional pain you exhibited when his wife reappeared, and the fact that YOU’RE FLYING TO FUCKING SWITZERLAND TO SHARE A FUCKING HOTEL IN WHICH YOU WILL CLEARLY FUCKING FUCK HIM might be indicative of a lack of journalistic detachment.

Alex Reagan: Nic, when have we ever let journalistic integrity get in our way before?

Nic Silver: Right! Silly me! Anyway don’t get murdered by the crazy demon worshipping shadow cult who clearly wants to lure you and Strand to the Axis Mundi so that Strand can impregnate you so that you can give birth to the Anti-Christ who will throw the switch that starts the exorcism machine that plays the Unsound that ends the world!

Alex Reagan: Okay!

Alex Reagan: You know what’s great? SLEEPING IN YOUR FUCKING BEDROOM WITHOUT ANYBODY BREAKING IN TO FILM YOU. But if some creeping creep is going to creep on you creepily, you should at least wear some Bombas socks, so that their obvious foot fetish remains unfulfilled.

Christ, what even is my life these days?

Simon Reese: Hey Alex! Sorry I didn’t show up on your caller ID, this is a new phone that I stole from the still-warm corpse of a person that I murdered with the power of my mind. Anyway, you probably think that, since we’ve got like five minutes left of this podcast, that you’re pretty close to having all of the answers you’ve been seeking for all these years. So … yeah, about that. Turns out that this is not a world of blood and bone, but of shadows moving through shadows, and the key to the door at the end is Richard Strand, and blah blah blah, something cryptic and creepy blah. Later!

Alex Reagan: Hey Richard, I’ve been thinking that maybe it isn’t a good idea to walk into what is clearly a trap set by someone who is clearly a madman, and whose goal is clearly nefarious and might actually be apocalyptic!

Richard Strand: Hey Alex, you know how my entire life has been focused around the obsessive need to uncover the truth about my past, my so-called psychic experiences, my father’s occult ties, and my wife’s … everything? And you know how it looks like all of the answers are about to be handed to me on a silver platter?

Alex Reagan: But Richard! What if something happens to you?

Richard Strand: Alex, don’t be silly! I shall protect myself with the power of denial!

Alex Reagan: But Richard! What if you never come back?

Richard Strand: … Then we’ll have to make tonight count. We’ll have to make it … special. We’ll have to make a … memory … that will last. Tonight, you’ll come to my house, and I …

Alex Reagan: …yes?

Richard Strand: I’ll cook dinner! Have you heard of this awesome new service called Hello Fresh? They send you all of the ingredients you need, and super clear instructions that even a PNWS reporter could follow! It’ll be great!

Alex Reagan: Okay, that’s one plan, but let me offer you an alternative. We get takeout, slam a bottle of wine, I fuck your brains out, we quit our jobs, we cash in that million dollar prize, and we peace the fuck out of this nightmare hellscape we have wrought with our own hands, never to be seen or heard from again!

Richard Strand: Alex, I ….

Alex Reagan: Yes, Richard?

Richard Strand: You do understand that it is literally impossible to fuck someone’s brains out, right? Even if yours was the penetrative member, the sheer length you would need to reach my skull by way of the anus would just be biologically impractical, not to mention the kind of rigidity necessary to pierce through the cranial cavity by means of repeated, sweaty thrusting! Seriously, I thought you had learned better science from me by now!

PNWS BOOM BOOM BOOM.

Alex Reagan: The Black Tapes was a Pacific Northwest Stories and Minnow Beats Whale production. We … actually won’t be back, so go ahead and write up your own fan-canon on how this all ends, okay?