Static on the Vampire Tape

Raven Ortiz had many rules for surviving the 2 a.m. shift at The Black Candle.

Rule one: never trust a customer who ordered decaf and then whispered, “Surprise me.”

Rule two: if the espresso machine began screaming like a banshee, compliment it until it stopped.

Rule three: if a mysterious envelope from a chat-room regular asked you to bring a VHS tape, you brought the tape—but you also brought backup.

“Backup has arrived,” Jules Park announced, kicking the café door open with one black sneaker and carrying a grocery bag like it contained medical supplies instead of cereal. Their eyeliner had survived a twelve-hour ER shift through sheer spite. “I brought marshmallow moons, chocolate bat cereal, and the emotional stability of someone who has not slept since yesterday.”

“So, none?” Raven asked from behind the counter.

“Exactly. We’re all doomed, but in a crunchy way.”

Moose Bell ducked in after Jules, broad shoulders wrapped in a faded Mastodon hoodie. He held a cat carrier in one hand and a laptop bag in the other.

Raven stared at the carrier. “Is Lemmy here for moral support or legal counsel?”

From inside, Lemmy gave a single gravelly meow.

“Both,” Moose said in his gentle voice. “He has strong opinions about analog media.”

Pixie Adeyemi arrived last, which meant she arrived loudest. She swept in wearing a lavender faux-fur coat over a black slip dress layered with a mesh shirt printed in tiny bats. Her platform boots flashed with pink rhinestones, and she had a roll of bubble wrap tucked under one arm.

“Important question,” Pixie said. “If my art show has a corner called ‘The Moth Shrine,’ is that legally too culty?”

“Depends,” Jules said, opening cereal at a table. “Are there snacks?”

“Obviously.”

“Then it’s community-building.”

Raven checked the clock above the pastry case. 2:13 a.m. Dev was not there yet.

Not that she was checking.

She had simply looked at the clock seven times in eleven minutes because clocks deserved attention too.

On the counter beside the register sat the envelope from Lunar_Moth, propped against a jar of licorice straws. The handwriting on the front looked almost too neat, all sharp points and soft loops.

BRING THE TAPE. AFTER MIDNIGHT. DON’T REWIND.

Raven had brought the tape.

It was a battered copy of The Vampire’s Mirror, a 1987 horror movie she’d found at a flea market three years ago between a box of chipped gargoyles and a stack of workout tapes. The cover showed a pale vampire staring into a mirror that reflected not his face, but a field of moths.

Pixie poked it with one black-painted nail. “This is either a clue or the beginning of a very niche escape room.”

“I hate that those are my two favorite options,” Moose said.

The Hangout room was open on Jules’s phone, propped against the sugar caddy.

PixieDustToDust: WE ARE ASSEMBLED.

MooseTracks: present with cat.

NightNurseJules: present with cereal and questionable judgment.

BlackCandleRaven: I’m at work. This is technically professionalism.

A gray typing bubble appeared under Lunar_Moth’s name, then vanished.

Raven folded her arms. “Of course.”

“Maybe they’re shy,” Moose said.

“Maybe they’re dramatic,” Raven said. “My people, unfortunately.”

The door chimed again.

Dev Shah stepped in out of the cool night, wearing a black denim jacket with a small silver synth pin on the lapel. His dark hair was wind-tossed, and his headphones rested around his neck like he might need to escape into a bassline at any second.

“Hi,” he said, then glanced around at the group, the cereal, the cat carrier, the bubble wrap, and the vampire tape. “I’m not late to the séance, am I?”

“No,” Raven said too quickly. “Also, it’s not a séance. It’s a suspicious media event.”

Dev smiled, small and bright. “That’s my favorite kind.”

Jules looked between them and made a tiny, horrible slurping noise through their cereal spoon.

Raven pointed at them. “Hospital privileges can be revoked.”

“I don’t think that’s how hospitals work.”

“I know a guy,” Raven said.

“You know me,” Jules said.

“Exactly.”

Moose set his laptop on the table next to the café’s old TV/VCR combo, a bulky silver relic Raven kept in the back for slow nights and staff morale. The TV had a sticker on one side that read BE KIND, REWIND, with the word REWIND crossed out in red marker.

“Respecting the ominous instruction,” Moose said, tapping the sticker. “We do not rewind.”

Pixie gasped. “What if the clue is at the end?”

“Then Lunar_Moth understands pacing,” Dev said.

Raven slid the tape into the VCR. It accepted the cassette with a clunk so dramatic everyone leaned back.

The screen turned blue.

Then black.

Static fizzed across the glass like snow in a haunted parking lot.

Lemmy meowed.

“Same,” Jules whispered.

The movie began mid-scene, exactly where the tape had been left. A woman in a velvet cape ran through a candlelit hallway, clutching a silver mirror. Thunder cracked. A vampire stepped from the shadows and pointed at the mirror with theatrical disappointment.

Pixie leaned forward. “This acting is incredible. I believe nobody.”

The tape rolled on. The group watched, half captivated and half heckling.

“Why is the vampire wearing driving gloves?” Jules asked.

“Grip,” Moose said.

“For what?”

“Vampire activities.”

Dev, who had taken the chair nearest Raven but not too near, covered a smile with his coffee cup. Raven noticed because she was, again, definitely not noticing.

Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.

Raven started to think the whole thing might be a prank. Not a cruel prank. A Lunar_Moth prank. A weird, velvet-lined nudge to get them all into the same room at the same time, laughing over bad fog machine effects.

That would have been fine.

Nice, even.

Then the screen glitched.

The vampire froze mid-snarl. Static warped the image sideways. For three seconds, another picture cut through: a real room, not part of the movie. White walls. A hanging paper moth. A canvas covered by a sheet.

Pixie grabbed Jules’s arm. “That’s my studio.”

The screen snapped back to the movie.

Nobody spoke.

Even Lemmy went quiet, which felt legally significant.

Moose reached for the VCR buttons. “Was that recorded over the tape?”

Raven’s mouth felt dry. “Pixie?”

Pixie’s eyes were huge, but her voice stayed bright in the way porch lights stayed bright during storms. “Okay. Fun. Love a personalized haunting.”

Dev leaned toward the TV. “Can you pause it?”

Moose hit pause. The vampire’s face trembled in place.

“No studio,” Jules said. “Just Count Gloveula.”

Moose rewound half a second, stopped himself, and held both hands up. “Not rewinding. Sorry. Muscle memory.”

Raven checked The Hangout.

Lunar_Moth was typing.

This time, the message came through.

Lunar_Moth: You found the first wing.

Jules dropped their spoon. It clattered into the bowl. “Absolutely not. I do not accept insect-based quest language before sunrise.”

Pixie typed so fast her acrylic nails clicked like rain.

PixieDustToDust: HI HELLO WHY IS MY STUDIO IN RAVEN’S VAMPIRE TAPE????

A pause.

Lunar_Moth: Because you left the window unlocked.

Pixie stared at the screen.

Moose’s gentle expression shifted into something firmer. “Pixie. Did you?”

“My studio window sticks,” she said. “It’s not a security flaw. It’s a vintage personality trait.”

“Pixie.”

“Yes.”

Raven reached under the counter and pulled out the heavy flashlight she used for taking trash to the alley. “We’re going to your studio.”

Dev stood so quickly his chair squeaked. “I’ll drive.”

“You don’t have to,” Raven said.

“I know.” His eyes met hers for a second, then flicked away. “I want to.”

Jules raised one hand. “I am coming too, for medical reasons.”

“What medical reasons?” Moose asked.

“If we don’t solve this, I’ll become unbearable.”

“You are already cereal-deep in unbearable,” Raven said.

“And yet you keep me.”

Moose lifted the cat carrier. “Lemmy votes yes.”

“Lemmy is not going to an art studio break-in investigation,” Raven said.

Moose looked down at the carrier.

Lemmy meowed once.

Moose sighed. “He says he’s union.”

They left The Black Candle with the TV still paused on the vampire’s rubbery snarl and a handwritten sign on the door: BACK IN 20. IF THE ESPRESSO MACHINE SCREAMS, TELL IT IT’S PRETTY.

Pixie’s studio was on the second floor of an old brick building that also housed a tattoo shop, a zine printer, and a dance studio where someone was always practicing industrial choreography badly at impossible hours. The hallway smelled like acrylic paint, dust, and somebody’s lavender incense.

Pixie unlocked the door with shaking hands and then immediately looked annoyed at her own hands.

“Rude,” she told them.

Jules put a shoulder against hers. “Bodies are haunted furniture. Ignore them.”

Inside, the studio was a joyful disaster. Canvases leaned against every wall. Pastel moths dangled from fishing line. A half-painted mannequin wore a spiked collar, a tulle skirt, and a sticky note that said NAME ME OR I CURSE YOU.

Raven swept the flashlight across the room.

“There,” Dev said softly.

The window was open two inches.

On the sill sat a small black envelope.

Raven picked it up with the tips of her fingers. On the front, in the same sharp-soft handwriting, was one word.

B-SIDE.

Pixie looked from the envelope to Raven. “If there’s a mixtape, I’m going to scream in lowercase.”

Inside was not a mixtape.

It was a flyer.

The paper was old, cream-colored, and copied slightly crooked, like it had been printed at a library in 2003. At the top, in blocky black letters, it read:

MOTHBALL: ONE NIGHT ONLY.

Below that was an address Raven recognized.

“The old roller rink,” she said.

Moose blinked. “The one by the highway? I thought it was closed.”

“It is,” Dev said. “Mostly.”

Everyone looked at him.

Dev rubbed the back of his neck. “I recorded a sample there once. The acoustics are strange. In a good way. Like the building is humming to itself.”

Raven smiled before she could stop herself. “Of course you made friends with an abandoned roller rink.”

“It was a professional relationship.”

“Did the rink text first?” Jules asked.

Moose winced. “Too soon.”

“It has been thirty-four years,” Jules said.

“I’m thirty-four,” Moose said.

“Exactly.”

Moose opened his mouth, closed it, and pointed at the flyer. “Can we focus on Mothball, please?”

At the bottom of the flyer, someone had written a date in silver marker.

Tomorrow.

No time. No explanation. Just a tiny moth drawn beside the word, its wings shaped like crescent moons.

Pixie sank onto a paint-splattered stool. “So my art show has competition from a haunted rink party.”

“No,” Raven said. “Your art show has lore now.”

Pixie perked up immediately. “Lore is good.”

“Lore sells stickers,” Jules said.

Moose examined the window latch. “No damage. Whoever came in knew how to open it, or the latch is worse than you think.”

“It’s both,” Pixie admitted.

Dev wandered toward the covered canvas Raven had seen in the VHS glitch. “Pixie, did you cover this?”

Pixie frowned. “No. That one was drying open.”

Raven’s fingers tightened on the flashlight.

Together, they lifted the sheet.

Beneath it was a painting Pixie had not made.

At least, not alone.

Her pastel moths were there, unmistakably hers—soft pinks, mint greens, lavender wings. But someone had painted over the background in deep midnight blue, adding a city skyline, a black candle in a café window, a tiny bowl of cereal, a cat with judgmental yellow eyes, a hulking figure in a metal hoodie, and a shy silhouette standing under a neon moon.

Raven stared at the silhouette.

Dev stared at the floor.

Jules whispered, “Okay, that cat is rude-accurate.”

Pixie touched the edge of the canvas, careful not to smear anything. “This is… good.”

“Creepy good,” Moose said.

“Annoyingly good,” Pixie corrected. “Which is worse.”

Raven checked her phone again.

In The Hangout, Lunar_Moth had posted one final message.

Lunar_Moth: Come to the rink if you want the other wing. Bring the tape. Bring the shy one.

Dev went very still.

Raven felt the whole room turn toward him, though nobody meant to.

Pixie, for once, spoke gently. “Dev?”

He swallowed. “I’ve been to Mothball before.”

Moose’s eyebrows lifted. “The haunted rink party is real?”

Dev nodded once.

Raven kept her voice steady. “When?”

“A long time ago,” he said. “Before I talked in The Hangout. Before I talked much anywhere.”

Jules hugged the cereal bag to their chest like a plush toy. “Buddy, I need you to understand that this is a very intense teaser trailer for your personal backstory.”

Dev gave a nervous laugh, but it faded fast.

Raven stepped closer, just enough. “You don’t have to go.”

He looked at her then, and there was something in his expression she recognized: fear, yes, but also curiosity. The dangerous kind. The kind that opened locked doors in horror movies and also, occasionally, in hearts.

“I think I do,” Dev said.

Outside, far off toward the highway, a low sound rolled through the night.

Not thunder.

Music.

A dark, pulsing synth line rose and vanished like a signal from another room.

Pixie grabbed Raven’s sleeve. “Did the abandoned roller rink just send us a bass drop?”

Raven looked at the flyer, then at Dev, then at the moths trembling from the studio ceiling.

“Apparently,” she said, “tomorrow we’re going skating.”