The Black Tapes · Pacific Northwest Stories

The Sins of the Father

January 12, 2020·39 min·3 clips

Dr. Strand finds his father's photo of a monolith in Sicily marked with the secret symbol of the Order of the Cenefis.

A stone slab changes the room. The photo is tall, thin, and a little off balance, with the Order of the Cenefis sign carved into it. Strand knows that mark. The narrator pushes toward the plain question: was his father looking into the order? Thomas Warren becomes the next person to find. Nick asks to meet him, while the narrator and Strand go back to the black tapes and another recording. The package came from Rome. There is no real return address, just chanting that sounds like Latin and a scene that will not sit still. Six figures stand in the dark. Robes cover their faces, their bare feet barely show, and lanterns sit around the edge of the circle. The place is hard to pin down. It may be a cave or a tunnel, but the oddest part is the camera angle above them. It feels like someone is watching. The movement begins with twitching bodies, arms pinned to their sides, and feet held together under passing light. The narrator knows the feeling. She cannot place the memory, but the footage feels like something she has seen before and never understood. Then the fear gets wider. A warning keeps coming back, and she wonders whether someone has been watching them the way the camera watched the robed circle. Deva Corporation comes into view. Its possible link to Howard Strand is still unanswered, which makes Thomas Warren feel less like background and more like the next door to open. Warren is hard to reach. As head of a major international conglomerate, he seems far away, until the closing call makes that distance feel much thinner.

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