"Here..." her voice was shaking and hollow, tinging with fear and confusion. "...I've never had anyone ASK for it before..." she placed the black blank thing in my hands as if it was laden with disease. Her light blue eyes stared at it like it was the devil in disguise.

I took the tape and turned it over in my hands. It looked so innocent, so...not threatening. It was only a video tape. In the world of DVDs, the VHS was almost extinct anyway...no one would ever expect that -this- was a one-way ticket to the inevitable...

"How did you know I had it?" she hugged herself, staring at me with accusitory eyes. I didn't expect any less, being who she is.

"I did my research...I've been following it."

"Following it...why in God's name...?"

"Don't tell me you won't be happy to be rid of it..."

"...What are you going to do with it?"

"...I'm not sure."

"...Just how much do you know?" She stared at me with those aged blue eyes. She was lin her late 30s, maybe 40. Her eyes looked so old, so spent, so...frightened...eternally frightened. Her blonde hair was a little matted from her sleeping, and faded. Behind her on the couch was a brown-haired teen, snoozing infront of the television. I looked at her again.

"...I know everything." I reached into my pocket and produced a mug-shot like picture, the kind found in medical files. The photograph held the blank listless face of an almost-8-year old with long dark hair framing her porcelain face. Her eyes were dark and malicious, like they held some kind of dark secret. At the bottom of it was the printed name, "MORGAN, SAMARA". She stared at that picture for a long time. Like trying to communicate with it mentally.

"...I saw...that it had finally cycled back around to you...Rachel...and it never left your house." She looked at me then. "I know how you avoided it before. And how she came after you again...she never stopped...you just broke her heart...and she never came back." She looked like she was going to cry.

"...I...needed to save my son...I was trying to be a good mother..."

"...I know." I tucked the tape into my bag and stepped back. "Thank you, Rachel..." I turned to go.

"You haven't watched it...have you..." Her voice called after me. It was a statement, not a question. I turned to her.

"No." It was true. I hadn't. Not yet.

"...Then...why? How?"

"...I don't know..." And then, I left. I sat in my car, driving back home, glancing every so often at the tape in the other seat. I really didn't understand why I had done what I did...months of searching, months of tracking deaths, months of research, faking IDs, borrowing books, seeing people...meeting Evelyn...and finally, Rachel.

I looked at the tape again.

Talk about comming full circle.

It had started when my cousin Brandon received the tape in the mail. It had been sent to him by a penpal, saying it was something he absolutely HAD to watch. He had shown it to me, but I paid it no mind. It was just a tape. A blank tape. But he watched it that evening. That's when the trouble began. I went to the same college as him, so we saw eachother nearly every day.
On the first day, nothing was terribly wrong. He was just a little distracted. On the second day he met me for lunch. He seemed to look a little paler, and kind of drug his feet around like he hadn't gotten any sleep. On the third day, I didn't see him at all. According to my aunt Ginger, he was sick in bed. Said he just wasn't up for his classes. On the fifth day, I stopped by to see him. He was sitting in bed, writing in a journal. We talked for awhile, and all of a sudden he got very serious. He asked me if I believed in ghosts. I said I didn't know. He asked me if I believed in curses. I said I didn't know about them either. I was starting to get a little nervous. My cousin was a God fearing person. Every hardship, every fear he had, he would turn to God for help. He never believed in ghosts, curses, boogeymen. Why was he asking all these questions. That's when I noticed the journal opened on his lap. It was fillled with these sketches and drawings of these people I had never seen before. And a drawing of a girl, but her face had been scratched out. And I saw all these rings, these circles. I asked him why he was drawing these things. He looked at me and asked if I wanted to watch the video tape his penpal sent. I said no. Then he asked me to. I said no again, and he pleaded with me still. I finally just got up and left.
On the sixth day, I saw him at school. He was handing the video tape to a friend of his. On the seventh day, he was at dinner with our family. He looked healthier than ever. After dinner, I asked him why he had been acting so strangely over the past few days. And he explained the tape to me. That's when I started following it. Everywhere I went, I picked up more and more information. I watched as it was passed to the next person, and to the next, strange accounts of dreams and visions and drawings comming with it.
Then, there was a death. Someone who didn't bother to pass it. Someone who didn't believe. It was someone I didn't know, a girl. After fighting my way into the case, I caught a glimpse of the corpse. I can safely say I've never seen anything more horrible in my life. I started to wonder if the tape really -was- a message of death...the tape started cycling again, though how it did was a mystery. I heard names dropped here and there, such as Morgan and Anna, and Moeske...I was led on a journey through supernatural murder, to mental institutions, to a shelter, to another instituion, to a horse ranch...to a barn...and finally to a well...
I heard the stories of one extraordinarily powered deranged beautiful little girl. It was almost as if her death wasn't the cause of the curse...it may have been the curse that she was born at all. I had met her mother. Strangely when I arrived, she was expecting me.

She told me, "Don't love what doesn't let go. If you must, love what is there, not what was. And listen. Listen."

That's when I lost track of the tape. It just dissapeared somehow. And I finally found one name that might be able to help me.

Rachel Keller.

It seems after the temporary posession of her son, she found my tape. And for some reason, kept it. Perhaps it was a last ditch effort in trying to stop the madness. Then again...why did she hand it over to me so easily...?

So, here I am. Sitting in the middle of my livingroom. Holding this tape in my hands.

What should I do?

Watch it?

Keep it?

Destroy it?

...Why did I do all that work...? Why had I gotten so obsessive, why did it mean so much to me? This little girl, this...poor murderess child, look at all she had done...why, when I looked at her picture, I felt anything but fear. When I heard her name, it was always beautiful to me, not ugly. When I spoke her name, it rolled off my tounge like something sweet, not bitter like she had so obviously become. I couldn't understand why I cared so much. I stared at the black plastic thing in my hands, and then the television in front of me.

"...What should I do, Samara..."

The black glass stared back at me. Like there were eyes peering out from behind it...

"...What should I do?"