1408- Voice in Recordings

The minicorder itself melted around the corners, but it still works,
and the tape inside it was fine. It’s the things on it which are not fine.
After listening to it three or four times, Mike’s agent, Sam Farrell,
tossed it into his wall-safe, refusing to acknowledge the gooseflesh all
over his tanned, scrawny arms. In that wall-safe the tape has stayed
ever since. Farrell has no urge to take it out and play it again, not for
himself, not for his curious friends, some of whom would cheerfully kill
to hear it; New York publishing is a small community, and word gets
around.

He doesn’t like Mike’s voice on the tape, he doesn’t like the stuff
that voice is saying (My brother was actually eaten by wolves one winter on
the Connecticut Turnpike . . . what in God’s name is that supposed to
mean?), and most of all he doesn’t like the background sounds on the
tape, a kind of liquid smooshing that sometimes sounds like clothes
churning around in an oversudsed washer, sometimes like one of those
old electric hair-clippers . . . and sometimes weirdly like a voice.

- 1408, chapter IV