David found the tapes in a cardboard box at an estate sale. Seven cassette tapes. No labels. No case. Just seven black plastic rectangles sitting next to a box of old kitchen utensils for two dollars.

The seller was a woman in her seventies with cloudy eyes and shaking hands. “Take them,” she said. “Please. My husband recorded those. I don’t know what they are. I don’t want to know.”

David bought a cassette player at a thrift store for three dollars. Sat in his apartment. Pressed play on the first tape.

Static. Then a voice. Calm. Methodical. Reading addresses.

“Fourteen Elm Street. Apartment 2B. Third floor. North facing windows. Fire escape on the east wall. The lock is broken. They’ve been meaning to fix it for months.”

David recognized the address. It was in his neighborhood. He looked up the number. Apartment 2B had been the site of a home invasion three years ago.

He pressed play on the second tape.

More addresses. More details. Window sizes. Door types. Security system models. The times when residents left for work. The times when they came home. The times when they were most vulnerable.

Seven tapes. Hundreds of addresses.

David spent the evening cross-referencing them with news reports. Every single address had been the site of a crime. Break-ins. Assaults. Murders.

The tapes weren’t predictions. They were records. Someone had documented every target before they were hit.

On the seventh tape, near the end, the voice stopped reading addresses. It started doing something else. It started reading names.

“David Mercer. Two-bedroom apartment. Fourth floor. South facing. The fire escape is rusted but functional. He works from home. He stays up late. He always forgets to lock the back window.”

David stopped the tape. His hands were shaking. He checked his back window. It was open. It had been open all evening.

He closed it. Locked it. Called the police.

The police came. Took the tapes. Listened to them. Told him to lock his doors. Said there was nothing they could do with a recording from an unknown source.

David didn’t sleep that night. He sat by the door with a flashlight and waited.

Nothing happened.

The next morning, he found a note on his kitchen counter. Written in the same calm, methodical handwriting he’d heard on the tapes.

“You checked the window. Good. But you didn’t check the door. I’ve been inside for twenty minutes. I’m in the closet. I’ve been here the whole time.”

David heard the closet door creak open behind him.

Some tapes are meant to be found. Not as warnings. As invitations.

The seventh tape wasn’t a recording. It was a live broadcast. And it had been broadcasting from inside his apartment the entire time.