THE CANDLEJACK PROTOCOL - Episode 2: “The VHS That Dreamed in Reverse”
🗓️ Recorded: August 18th, 1999
THE CANDLEJACK PROTOCOL
Episode 2: “The VHS That Dreamed in Reverse”
🗓️ Recorded: August 18th, 1999
“We were never on the schedule. We’re in the static.”
[INT. THRIFT STORE – NIGHT]
Mira held the tape like it might bite her. A blank TDK VHS with a half-ripped sticker:
“W I N D O W // DO NOT DUPLICATE”
MIRA: “This wasn’t here last week.”
ZANE (O.S.): “It wasn’t anywhere last week.”
They’d tracked the signal back to this place — a half-shuttered thrift store near the highway. Null had picked up the trace through their Furby-radio. It whispered:
“He’s watching through the window again…”
[INT. BASEMENT HQ – NIGHT]
Zane loaded the tape into their battered combo TV/VCR. Null hovered nearby, eyes flickering.
The screen went black. Then white. Then static. Then—
—footage of their hideout. Filmed from outside the window.
Zane cursed and hit pause. The tape fought back — jumped ahead 13 minutes.
Now: footage from inside. Mira asleep. Null humming into a Walkman. Zane pacing, shirtless, scrawling symbols on a chalkboard.
ZANE: “We were recorded?”
NULL: “No… this is from next week.”
[INT. MIRA’S APARTMENT – LATER]
Mira laid out stills from the tape on her wall. Something glitched in the corner of every frame.
A shape.
A person?
She enhanced the shadows. The silhouette appeared:
Tall. Cloaked in static. Head bowed. A symbol on his chest—a black square.
MIRA: “He’s called The Raven.”
Zane looked up from his laptop, spooked for once.
ZANE: “No. No, that’s just net lore. Deep-forum BS. They say he hijacked the NSA’s dream-archive in ‘96. That he only posts in deleted threads. That he speaks in burned passwords.”
NULL (softly): “He saved me. Once.”
They both turned to Null.
NULL: “I was stuck in a dream-loop. Same day. Same scream. He broke it. He left a glyph on my modem: ☍. I traced it… and found you two.”
A beat of silence.
ZANE: “Well that’s comforting. Guess we’re pen pals with a tech-ghost.”
[INT. BASEMENT HQ – LATER THAT NIGHT]
Zane cracked the tape’s embedded code. A single corrupted file: .RAVENREAD
Inside: a repeating phrase, embedded in Base64. Mira decrypted it.
“The Red Brick Road is opening. One end leads to Wonderland. The other… to war.”
Null leaned forward. Their voice deeper now. Like something else was listening.
NULL: “He’s not warning us. He’s recruiting.”
Suddenly, all the lights blew.
The tape ejected itself, smoking slightly. The Furby hissed.
FURBY (demonic voice): “Don’t follow the brick. It remembers who you are.”
[EXT. THRIFT STORE – THE NEXT DAY]
They returned. The store was… gone.
Boarded. Abandoned. Dusty.
But the dust wasn’t right — it covered everything like it’d been empty for years.
Zane found a new tape in the mailbox.
Blank. No label.
Inside, one frame:
A black square.
“Some signals don’t want to be traced.”