Strange stories.
Human voices.

We step a respectful distance away and turn our attention back to building six. There’s a covered walkway between six and the building with the classrooms. Zeke sizes it up and looks over at me.

“Up the tree, across the top of the walkway, and over to that window?” he offers.

“Breaking and entering and climbing? You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” I say.

Zeke bounds up the tree, moving with fluid grace. I struggle a bit more. After a few scrapes, splinters, and some creative language, I join him on top of the walkway. It sags a little in the center, so we tiptoe over to building six’s only uncovered window.

After navigating around the busted pane of glass, we crawl into some sort of lab. There’s a broken, beige monitor and a smashed keyboard on the floor, an old desk, and some equipment I can’t identify. With its lenses, triggers, dangling wires, and exposed circuits, it could come from a machine shop or a steampunk dentist.

We sneak into the hallway. The building feels no different from the others – Spartan corridors and cell-like rooms that have been left to rot for decades.

“If we get caught? No money,” I whisper.

“Coach is gonna flip his shit,” Zeke says.

With his red bag slung over his shoulder, he leads the way. It’s room after room of decay, illuminated only by cracks around plywood hammered over the windows. These rooms aren’t beds or classrooms, though. These were stripped. A few of them hold the remains of obsolete technology – an old fax machine, a smashed rotary phone – along with stray, rotted boxes. Otherwise, this was the building they chose to clean out. The dorms and classrooms were mostly abandoned as they were, but not building six.

As we go deeper, the darkness thickens around us. I can feel myself slipping backward in time, like we turned a corner and found ourselves walking through twisting corridors of smashed plaster and cat piss. There’s barely enough light to navigate, but a flashlight would give us away, so we continue on, groping our way through the shadows. My brain starts racing to craft reasons to leave.

I have to pee.

What if there’s tetanus?

Is that black mold?

I choke them all back, my fingers flexing around the Iggy the axe. A hand falls on my shoulder, and everything in my body goes loose. I’m a millisecond from wetting my pants when I realize it’s Zeke. He holds a finger to his lips, then points to his ear.

Sobbing.

Somewhere down one of these halls, someone is crying.

“Crying. Of course it’s crying,” I say to him, whispering.

“Would you prefer eerie laughter?” he asks, and motions for me to follow.

As we sneak, Zeke pulls one of his massive knives from his bag, and my heart starts to pound. I’m not scared of the knife, but of what it means. Before I realize it, I’m walking directly behind him, putting him between myself and whatever the hell is crying.

We descend a dark stairwell, using our hands to feel our way down. The crying is louder now, just down the hall. Zeke nods in that direction and continues before I can protest. Despite myself, I follow.

We pass more identical rooms, classrooms with old chalkboards and pastel-colored plastic chairs. These remains, they decided to leave. The sobbing grows louder with each step, and I’m watching Zeke’s feet, trying to mimic how he steps so that I don’t make a sound. As we get closer, another noise. The staccato scratching of someone writing on the chalkboard.

Zeke sets his bag down. We slide along the wall, inching toward the door where the sound is coming from. He readies his knife and holds up a closed fist, like we’re Rainbow Six. The sobs are wet and ragged, not the pained wails of some tortured spirit, but of a man overcome. Zeke peeks.

Slowly, he pulls his head back and looks at me with an expression that can only be Holy Shit. He presses his finger to his lips and pulls me forward so I can see. I want to dig my heels in or curl up in a ball so he can’t make me look, but I’m too scared of making noise to resist.

It’s Elder, his face streaked with tears. A thin tendril of snot reaches down to his chin as he writes on the board.

Shalem kudd Pagru. Missakka Varuk shemt.

Kuthru gagynd. Kuthru chagoll.

Xal Diabonistes ak dru.

And then it clicks. It’s WitchTongue. No one speaks WitchTongue, not in four-hundred years. I don’t speak it, but I know a little, enough to understand that what he’s writing is nothing taught in Sunday school.

I pull back so fast I nearly fall over. Zeke catches me and holds me still. We freeze. Inside, Elder has stopped writing. He’s motionless, listening. Zeke and I wait for some sound, some signal that tells us we can breathe again.

Finally, Elder sniffs and takes a breath. Zeke turns me to face the other direction and gives me a quick push. He mouths Go.

We hustle, moving as fast as we dare. I round a corner into the lobby by the front doors. The daylight barely penetrates the murky glass to show us marble floors, old frames with faded pictures, and empty display cases. Where there were trophies and team photos, there’s now broken glass and rodent nests.

“Hello?” Elder says from down the hall.

The granite baritone is gone. It’s a question laced with fear and hope. A few heavy footsteps in our direction, then a pause.

Zeke points behind a reception desk, a half circle that faces the front doors. We duck behind it as Elder heads toward us. His footsteps are surer now. The boots echo with his military stride. He comes around the corner as we make ourselves small behind the desk.

Elder stops in front of it. He sniffles again and clears his throat. I can feel his presence, his gravity in the center of the lobby. I’m face to face with Zeke. He’s frowning at me and wiggling the tip of the knife, a question. I shake my head no. His shrug is almost imperceptible.

My legs begin to cramp just as Elder turns and stalks away. It’s a full minute after his footsteps have faded down the hall before we move. Zeke stretches. I put the hatchet down on the desk and take deep breaths to flush out the anxiety.

“All right. I admit,” Zeke says as he peeks around the corner, “Maybe it is Scooby Doo, ‘cause Coach is full-on crazy-pants.”

“Right?!” I say.

“You see that wackadoo shit he was writing? What was that? Some kind of Satan-talk?”

“Yeah, actually it’s WitchTongue.”

“Say what?”

“WitchTongue. Or Kammatu. It’s for summoning ancient entities, making pacts, curses. Real nasty, Lovecraft kind of shit. Most scholars don’t even think it’s real. Last time I read anything about it, there are only two known examples of…”

He’s not listening. A framed picture on the wall has his attention.

“What?” I ask. “What is it?”

He approaches like he’s not sure he wants to touch it. Finally, he plucks it from the wall and blows off the dust.

“Yo,” he says, and tosses me the photo. “Recognize anybody?”

It’s a class picture, older than most of the others. Twenty kids, all lined up and staring into the camera without a single smile among them. They stand at attention. Looming over them with the black-eyed gaze of a raven is Iris Angel. Her lips are pursed into a tight knot. The sign in front of the class reads Miss Angel’s Fourth Grade Class– 1973.

I hand it back to Zeke. “Yeah. She’s creepy.”

“Look again.”

I take another look, scanning the faces of the children. Standing closest to Miss Iris is one with a familiar stare of cold iron.

“Holy shit. Is that Baby Elder?” I ask.

Before Zeke can answer, a cacophonous screech blasts from down the hallway. The glass plate slips from the frame and shatters on the floor. I grab the hatchet, but neither of us can move. The noise echoes across through the corridors, sounding like a giant bug trying to sing a song. The melody carries the jangly uncertainty of a child learning their first song on the piano. But it’s not a piano and it’s not a bug.

“Another one,” I try to say, but it just comes out a choked wheeze.

“What the hell?” Zeke says and takes a few steps down the hall.

I reach out for Zeke, like I’m pulling him out of traffic. “No!”

“You okay?” he asks, but I can’t hear him.

I can barely hear the shrieking sound over the roar of my blood. I can feel my lips moving, but no sounds come out. I can feel my feet moving, my lizard brain trying to drag me out of this place. My vision narrows to one spot on the wall above the desk.

We missed something. A faded image is painted on the concrete. The blue and yellow paint is chipped, but there’s no mistaking the shape of the lighthouse and its giant eye.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The screaming in my brain extinguishes everything else. Sitting alone on the roof of the dorms, I can only take deep breaths. I don’t know how long I’ve been up here. After seeing the Lighthouse, I fled, away from the noise, away from everyone. I squeeze my eyes shut. Elder has his own tape. Now he’s punishing himself and the rest of us, letting loose that cacophony on the world.

Elder. The tapes. The Lazlos. The Lighthouse. Whatever happened to my team… it’s all too much. Like reading WitchTongue, I know there’s meaning there, but I can’t make sense of it. The more I try, the more it all digs in, tearing bloody ruts through my brain.

The horizon is on fire with oranges, reds, and purples. It feels final. Every few minutes, another blast of notes comes from building six. The melodies, if you can call them that, are a little different each time as he keeps trying new ones, a higher pitch or a different time signature. They’re different from the one at the original Lighthouse and different from this new cassette I’ve found, but it’s all from the same songbook. One after another, he keeps playing them. Will one of them bring back Alan and the others? But hearing Turkmenistan again might be too much. I could pitch myself off the roof or go running off into the forest to face murderous ghost children or mountain lions or whatever the hell is out there. Better than that. Better than Turkmenistan.

Zeke’s Walkman is in my hand. My finger hovers over the button. I don’t understand the allure, the siren song that makes me want to hear it again, but it’s there. It’s the same compulsion that keeps Elder playing those tapes for the last few hours. He feels like if he just digs deep enough, if he can scrape away the dissonance, that there will be meaning there. He’ll see his future in the tea leaves.

Then, as those sharp and shattered notes drift across the courtyard, I think I hear something else. In between them, amid the insectoid screams and the quasi-human jabbering is something familiar.

I take a look at the settings on Zeke’s Walkman. Play. Rewind. Fast-Forward. Stop. Fast Play. Slow Play.

I press Fast Play. The screams wriggle and spasm like maggots in my ear. It’s all I can do not to tear the headphones away. But the noises take shape as they’re sped up. The utterances congeal into something like words.

WitchTongue.

The song in the night, the broken tunes I played at the Lighthouse and on the cassette I found in the office, they’re not just noises. They’re not just ear-splitting accidents or even the baying of the damned.

They’re spells.

The words buried in tape are WitchTongue, like the words written on the chalkboard. I pull the homework papers from my jacket pocket. The phrases on the page aren’t the same as the ones I’m hearing, but they’re all from the same dialect. The crude symbols on each tape are the same as the symbols on the homework, and those are the same as the symbol on the door. Each sigil is a shorthand. It’s the mark of the spell.

Or whatever the spell calls forth.

But spells don’t work. They’re not real. Spells are just words that desperate and lonely people want to use either to try to manipulate the world around them or to call to the world beyond. It’s fantasy. It’s sad and embarrassing and ridiculous.

And I’m terrified of it.

Some real Evil Dead shit. That’s just great. I hurl the tape off the roof. It clatters against the bricks somewhere below.

Building six is another Lighthouse. I don’t know what that means. After my friends vanished at the first one, I searched online for the logo, but found nothing. I don’t know if it’s a branch office or a church or some research facility. It sure as hell isn’t a school. The Oswald Academy was just a front.

It wasn’t coincidence that I was brought here. The Lazlos hired me because I was at the first location, but I don’t know why. I can’t ask Elder about the Lighthouse icon in the lobby. He’ll know we were snooping. I’m here for a reason and it feels very sacrificial.

Below me, parked just by the gates, is the bus. I want the keys. To get them, I’d have to talk to Elder. I’d have to go back into that building. Even if the sounds were to stop, I don’t think I could set foot in there.

The door to the roof opens, and my heart jumps into my throat until I realize it’s just Zeke.

“Oh. Well ...” she looks to her computer.

“This was fifteen minutes ago, Laura. We’re on a schedule,” I say and give her an exaggerated sigh. “I can’t believe this. Is the administrator here?”

“Well, he … I can call him if you—”

“No. Just tell me where Mr. Bunson is right now. Harvey. Bunson. We’ll go get him ourselves if you people can’t be trusted to do your jobs.”

She types his name into the computer. “Well, he’s in the high-risk ward, Mr. …”

“Yeah, I know he’s in the high-risk ward, Laura. That’s why they sent two of us. You know what could happen if he doesn’t make this appointment, right? You understand that?”

“No,” she says, wilting under my barrage of bullshit. “What … what could happen?”

“Bad things. Very bad things, Laura. Now, are you going to badge us into the east wing, or are we going to have to stand here until somebody who knows what they’re doing shows up?”

“Sir, the high-risk ward is in the west wing.”

“Great. Are you a tour guide? Or are you going to open the damn door?”

Her mouth flops open and closed. There might be tears.

I rub my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. “I’m sorry. That was mean. This … this is just really stressful. You know how it is, dealing with all this. This stuff. The high-risk stuff.”

“Oh. Oh sure. I’ll badge you in. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience,” she says.

“What room?”

“Umm. 237.”

“Because of course it is. Thanks, Laura. You’re great. I’ll tell Leon how much help you’ve been,” I say as I walk away.

“Who is … Leon?” she asks.

“Take care, Laura!” I wave over my shoulder and nod for Zeke to hurry his ass up.

As we get to the door, a green light above flashes, and the lock disengages. I smile again back at Laura. She gives a feeble wave as we enter the west wing.

“What the hell is the high-risk ward?” Zeke asks, his voice nearly breaking.

The west wing is more institutional than the lobby or cafeteria. Gone are the soothing colors and AM Gold playing over the PA. This is white-on-white. Stark corridors with doctors flanked by nurses and people hooked up to quiet machines in cold rooms.

Zeke and I walk with a purpose, like we belong. Going somewhere off-limits is a lot like shoplifting. If you act like nothing’s wrong and you’re supposed to be doing what you’re doing, no one will question you. Zeke’s anxiety is rubbing off on me, however. Nervous sparks crackle up and down my spine as I try not to check the faces of the people we pass in the hall. Are they looking at us? Do they cast suspicious glances at our scrubs or at Zeke’s damned mohawk?

The worst that could happen is that we get ejected. Maybe the cops get called. It wouldn’t be the first time. Back in my ghost-hunting days, I got the cops called on me for trespassing all the time. I’d get a slap on the wrist, and they’d let me go.

This feels different, though. This feels like a Lighthouse. I keep stealing glances at lab coats, looking for the blue logo. The moment we set foot in here, I began looking for it on the walls or emblazoned on a door. A blue lighthouse with an all-seeing eye on top. I look for it everywhere now, like it’s lurking around every corner. Even when it’s not there, I see it. I dream about it. In my dreams, I’m minding my own business. I’m at the liquor store or the pharmacy, buying candy and toilet paper when the lights dim, and I find that I’m alone. Then the shrieking starts. The sounds come from over the PA system. Mixed within the cacophony are the wails of my friends. I try to run, but I can’t find my way out. And the lights keep getting dimmer until it goes dark.

Yeah. It’s a real drag.

Next to me, Zeke goes rigid. He grabs my arm, squeezing far too tightly, and pulls me aside.

“What is—?” I start to ask, but then I see it.

Coming down the hall is a group of orderlies. The four of them move slowly, like a funeral procession. Each of them holds a thick, metal chain tethered to an ancient looking woman in a wheelchair. To say that she is old is to say that the sun is warm. If her eyes weren’t fluttering, I’d think she was a corpse exhumed from some crypt. Her skin is paper-thin and mapped with infinite lines. Wispy strands of white hair cling to her head. Her spindly wrists are strapped down to the arms of the wheelchair. A fifth orderly, his face ghost-white with fear, pushes her along. Leading the way is a priest in full vestments—the long robes, the aspergillum, and the tufted biretta hat. He stares at the floor, lost in his prayers and sprinkling holy water in his path.

“Ecce Crucem Domini,” he says.

“Behold the Cross of the Lord,” the orderlies say in unison with quavering voices.

“Fugite partes adversae.”

“Be gone all evil powers.”

Zeke and I let them pass. I bow my head in prayer, repeating the litany along with them.

Bringing up the rear is a beast of a man, all dressed in purple. Muscles bulge under purple coveralls. His purple hockey mask is decorated with sigils I don’t recognize. I didn’t expect purple hockey masks, much less enchanted ones. He’s carrying a long cattle-prod-looking thing, waiting for something to go down. Zeke’s going to want to fight this dude. I just know it.

The moment they round the corner, Zeke and I follow. They inch down the corridor, doctors and nurses all stepping aside. Finally, at the bottom of a ramp, they make their way to the door we need.

High-Risk Patients and Class Three Authorization Only Beyond This Point.

A doughy but armed security guard flashes his badge across the reader, opening a pair of steel doors. The old woman begins to twitch, causing the priest to splash a spray of holy water across her. She writhes in her restraints, and the chains go taut as the orderlies pull as far away from her as possible without letting go.

Zeke and I watch as long as we dare before continuing down the hall. Once we’re clear, I glance up and down the empty corridor and drag him into a storage closet.

Both of us gasp and try to catch our breaths.

“What in the actual fuck?” I ask.

“Is it weird that I feel better about this whole thing now?”

“How does that make you feel better?”

“That was something I can kick in the face. This is my wheelhouse.”

“Well now I’m a little freaked out. I thought this was a nursing home!”

Zeke shrugs. His cool returns, cascading over him. “I guess it’s a nursing home for evil old hags.”

“Yeah. Fine. But what now?” I ask, looking around.

It’s a supply closet full of toilet paper, adult diapers, and the like. Part of me was hoping for maybe some pepper spray or a holy shotgun.

“We walk out there and make security dude open the door,” Zeke says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“How?”

“I’ve got like three knives on me right now. It won’t be a problem.”

“You are not stabbing a security guard.”

“Can I kick him?”

“Maybe.”

“’Cause I kinda want to kick every damn person in here.”

“Yeah, I’m with you on that, but if we can get out of here without committing felony assault, I’d prefer that.”

“Man, I just want to know what’s up with this Bunson dude.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if they’re keeping him in the high-risk ward, what’s his deal? Are we gonna need a priest just to get him out to the car?” Zeke asks.

“Shit.”

He’s right. This just got more complicated.

“Listen, I ain’t worried about it,” Zeke says. “Bunson acts up and starts with some black magic or whatever, I pop him in the mouth. It’s cool. But how do you want to get in there?”

I look around the room and see just what we might need. “We’re gonna Chewbacca this.”

Zeke’s heavier than he looks. He’s pretty lean and all muscle, but with him strapped to a hand cart like Hannibal Lecter, it’s all I can do to keep from dumping him on the floor. We kept the straps tight to make it convincing and pulled a laundry bag over his head.

I wheel him around the corner and nearly tip him over.

“Dude!” he says with an angry whisper. “Careful.”

“I’m trying. I’m not good at this. Just be quiet. Someone will hear you.”

“This bag smells like old man ass. I think it might have been a diaper bag.”

“We’re almost there.”

When we get to the ramp, the guard raises his eyebrows.

“Here we go,” I whisper to Zeke.

He begins to fight and thrash against his restraints. I can barely steer him down the incline. The guard comes to help.

“What the hell is this?” he asks. “There’s not another scheduled transfer on my list.”

“Do I look like administration to you?” I ask him.

Zeke begins to growl. That might be a bit much, but it seems to work on the guard.

“Is he not sedated?”

“We shot him up with fifty cc’s of ephemerol!”

Zeke wrenches his body hard enough that the cart tilts onto one wheel.

“Damn it!” I say and struggle to keep him from falling to the floor. “Can you just help me out here?”

The guard moves to help me hold him in place.

“No, man. The door. Just get the damned door,” I say.

“I just need to check—”

“Fichas jahakes moon!” Zeke says in a feral growl.

The guard steps back.

“Oh no,” I say. “His gag came out.”

“Addrivat! Addrivat!” Zeke says.

The guard fumbles for his badge. “Should I call someone?”

I wrestle with the cart as Zeke continues to spout nonsense through the linen bag. “Just open the damn door before he casts a spell or some shit, okay?”

The sensor buzzes with a swipe of the badge, and we’re in. Behind us, the guard quickly closes the doors, and we’re in another hallway. More antiseptic white and blinding fluorescents. Zeke quits struggling as I wheel him past more rooms. These doors are reinforced steel with embedded windows of bulletproof glass. Many of them are scuffed and scratched from the inside, and I’m reminded of a lion exhibit I saw once at the Phoenix Zoo. I check to make sure we’re not being watched before hurriedly unlashing Zeke.