Have you heard of the black box ritual? It made the rounds through my elementary school before the faculty cracked down on it. I suppose they didn’t want kids running around and cutting their fingers.
I haven’t thought about it in, I dunno, ten years. The paranormal and supernatural never caught my interest, but I know this forum likes that kinda shit. This isn’t my story. It comes from some documents my old roommate emailed me before he, well, you’ll see. I think he wanted me to share this.The last time we spoke, he muttered something about people knowing. I don’t got a Facebook, so here should be just fine. I don’t really buy any of it, but you might.
The first document was a picture of a diary entry. He never wrote the date but I think it’s from the past year or so.
I first heard about the black box ritual from my older brother. He often told me stories about the faceless woman in the mirror, or the madman on north street. I think he knew it really terrified me as a child. One day he slammed my bedroom door open with a mischievous grin covering his face. “Have you heard of the black box ritual?” I knew that I was going to know about it whether I wanted to or not. He explained the rules, eagerly omitting half the details in sinister juvenile excitement. “Whatever you do, don’t look inside the box, or else!”
He marched out of my room, flipping the light switch as he slammed the door shut. I felt the faceless woman gazing at me from my closet mirror. Like most middle schoolers, Kyle was kind of an asshole.
He began working as a summer camp counselor between his sophomore and junior years of high school. The experience fostered a gentle, patient and caring side of him. The brother that once delighted in tormenting me would sit down with autistic preteens and calmly ask them to describe five things they can hear right now. He left our home as a sensitive and kind young adult, with an infinite knowledge of all things sci-fi, and a meticulous understanding of music theory.
We wouldn’t call or text often, but whenever he came home on summer vacation, it felt like no time had passed. We had long conversations about the meaning behind each lightsaber color, as he taught me how to drive.
It was much better than hearing my mom gasp break break break, as she reflexively swung her arm between me and the dashboard, whenever I began braking two seconds later than she expected.
During one of our neighborhood laps, Kyle interrupted our one sided conversation about how trumpets and clarinets have similar ranges or something. He turned to me unexpectedly and whispered “hey, do you remember the black box ritual?”
“Yeah, it’s the one where nothing scary actually happens, the faceless woman is waaay better.” I was too focused on the road in front of me to meet his eyes. Maybe if I had glanced his way for just a moment, then I could have recognised the timid desperation in his voice.
A thick lump suspended in my throat during our next drive. I thought it would be our last drive until Christman break. I was anxiously debating which way to turn to enter a roundabout when I quietly uttered “it’s left.”
Kyle yelled “right!”
“Yeah that’s right” I confidently affirmed.
“No, turn right.”
“Oh shit, yeah that’s right.”
We both broke into laughter as I made three rotations to my exit. Kyle had me take an unexpected left turn at the end of north street. I excitedly blurted out “oh hell yeah, the highway ain’t ready for me son!”
Kyle retorted, “oh hell no, I ain’t ready to get locked up for abetting reckless endangerment, son. We’re making a quick stop at Walmart, I need to grab some walk-e talkies for some inter-dorm shenanigans.”
He gently nudged my arm. “I’ll let you pick out a candy bar if you promise to be on your best behavior.”
I got a Kit Kat out of the trip.
I don’t want to get into details about what happened next. When I split that Kit Kat with him, it was the last thing we’d ever share. A month later, his roommate found him hanging from the ceiling fan in their dorm room.
I haven’t told anyone about the last text he sent me. It has embedded itself deeply into my mind, like a computer virus that infected the operating system of my very consciousness, violently corrupting my thoughts. Distorting them into nothing but those last five words. DON’T OPEN THE BLACK BOX.
The second document is as follows:
The black box ritual is simple.
The required items are:
1 cardboard box
1 canister of black spray paint
1 knife
1 pen and paper
2 radio transceivers
The proceeding are:
Spray paint the cardboard box black.
Scribe on a piece of paper:
“Breathing blood come sing with me, sealed black box never free. Clothed in flesh with bones left dry. Yearning blood, a month to die.”
Cut your finger and smear the blood on the bottom center of the box in a circular motion.
Place the paper in the box, centered on the circle.
Tune the radio transceivers to 336.5 Mhz.
Place one radio in the box while powered on.
Close the box.
Store the box in an unoccupied room.
DO NOT OPEN THE BOX FOR 30 DAYS.
The third document was a hand written log.
Day 0
Over these past four years, Kyle, those car rides, his suspended body, that Kit Kat, the box under his left foot, all of it. I’m not going to justify my decision to you. I don’t owe you that. I made up my mind. I need to know, the world needs to know… anyway. I’ve gathered all of the materials. I picked out an old janitor’s closet close enough to my dorm room. If this ritual really is just some ghost story for middle school sleepovers, I’ll sleep easier knowing that. I need to know if that text was his last attempt to scare me, to remind me of a happier time. A time when I feared the demons behind me in the mirror, instead of the demons in my own reflection.
Day 1
I spray painted the cardboard box at Raymond Park. I neatly and methodically scribed each letter on a piece of notebook paper. Breathing blood come sing with me, sealed black box never free. Clothed in flesh with bones left dry. Yearning blood, a month to die. I held my breath as I pushed in each button on the walk-e talkies. 3 3 5 . 6. My right thumb stung as it rubbed against the dry cardboard. I think I cut too deep. Then I waited. I microwaved some ramen and called it dinner, I watched some old sitcom reruns, and called it a night.
Day 2
I’m starting to feel really stupid for obsessing over a game for kids to dare each other with. My walkie talkie occasionally emits a faint static buzz, but that’s about it. My lectures, weekend shifts at fried heaven, the toga parties, everything in my life has gone unchanged. I might just tear down that box and forget this experiment.
Day 3
The static has been growing louder. I hear the hum ringing from the walkie talkie most mornings. It subsides before noon. While it’s certainly unsettling, it’s far from inexplicable. I’m going to keep entertaining the ritual, hell I might not have that choice now anyways.
Day 4
The unease is starting to breach the protective membrane of my skepticism. The more I listen to the static, the less it sounds like static. It has a strange rhythmic quality. It sounds more like gusts of wind. No, like violent gasps of air.
Day 5
The consciousness was blissfully draining from my body when two words thrusted me back to life. Black Box. I was sitting in my compsci class, half drooling on my keyboard when I heard them. I felt a cold sting throb through my chest when my eyes met the black board. BLACK BOX. The ice in my chest melted and soothed my nerves as my professor continued her lecture.
Apparently black box is a mathematical concept often employed in data science and engineering. It describes a relationship between a system’s inputs, and its outputs. An outside observer can know what goes into the box, and what comes out of it, but they don’t know what happens inside the black box.
Walkie talkies can be thought of as a black box system. I know that my voice goes into the box, and exits the other walk-e talke. I don’t really know the exact mechanisms of how the sound becomes electrons, electrons become radio waves, and radio waves become my voice again, miles away from my body. I don’t need to know what happens inside the black box to use the system.
Day 6
The static gasps have begun to evolve. The exhaling has been followed by an “eh” sound. It’s hard to describe, but it sounds like an airy exhale, “heh… heh… heh.”
Day 7
I changed my walkie talkie’s battery yesterday. The walkie talkie in the box should be dead by now. The thought rendered me pale until I realized something obvious. My radio could receive any signal transmitted on that frequency.
Day 8
I did some digging on some old HAM radio forums. The emanating station can be located by the four bars on the top right corner of my walkie talkie screen. Organic material absorbs radio signals, so if I hold the walkie talkie to my chest and turn in a circle, I can know I’m standing between the radios when the signal strength drops. This tells me the direction.
I followed this process many times from many different positions. Every fucking time, It led to the closet door.
Day 9
I almost lost my goddamn mind last night. As I was falling asleep, the figure of a tall man walked past my bed. It was just my roommate. We only ever catch each other in passing, occasionally he’ll come in to grab some of his things. This ritual really has me on edge. I’m not eating or sleeping right. The radios breathing woke me up a little past 3:30am. The sound mutated into a harsh whisper, “hel… hel… hel.”
I need to open the closet door. I need to see the black box. If I find someone, hunched over that damn box, talking into the walkie talkie, I might actually just kill them.
Day 10
It occurred to me that I could open the door without violating the rules of the ritual. An unoccupied room can still be considered unoccupied if someone just peaks inside. The radio woke me up again, a little past 3:30. The harsh whisper made clear.
“help… help… help”
The audio ceased the moment I opened the door. It’s like the box knew I was looking at it. The cluttered room seemed untouched by human hands. The cardboard at the base of the box was collapsed and soggy. A black red fluid formed small pools at its bottom corners.
I only realized it after I shut that door. The black box concept describes a relationship between inputs, outputs, and an observer. The output was the whispers emanating from my radio. The rhyme, an algorithm. When I smeared my blood on that cardboard, I inputted the data, my own genetic code.
Something of me is inside that box.
I know, pretty creepy right? There’s more to the logs, but my dogs are yapp’n to go outside. I’ll finish copying them soon if y’all want. Any of you know if pictures work on here? Alright, y’all stay safe with your pentagrams and candles now. Don’t let the black box get yuh.