Dread’s B-Side

Dayton, 1984. Harlan Ketcher runs a failing vinyl pressing plant on the city's industrial edge, cutting forgotten bootlegs and living quietly among melted wax, stale coffee, and spinning records. Then one day the plant goes dark. No blood. No body. No signs of a struggle. Only a stack of unfinished records, each scratched with one word: Listen. At first, the police call it a disappearance. Then the records begin to speak. A teenager hears his own voice from tomorrow. Harlan's sister begins waking to the sound of a turntable spinning in an empty garage. A police officer finds a record in the ashes of the burned plant, warm to the touch, waiting to be played. Each voice sounds closer. Each message feels more personal. Each spin makes the silence heavier. Dread's B-Side is a slow-burn horror novella about grief, recording, repetition, and the terrible intimacy of being preserved by something that should have been inanimate. Set against the rusted industrial stillness of 1980s Dayton, it blends uncanny-object horror with psychological dread and a creeping sense that memory itself can be pressed, replayed, and claimed. This is quiet horror with a needle drop.