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A long rectangle, it was bigger than he’d expected, with room enough to stand. The layout felt something like a church, but the art on the walls was anything other than holy. Drawn in marker, crayon or whatever art supplies the Lost Ones could scavenge, it showed the Wolf in his ruined tuxedo.

On one box wall he stood atop a pile of corpses with crudely drawn points to their ears and x’s over their eyes, just in case the point wasn’t clear. In another, less cartoonish drawing, he held a broken crown above his head.

At the end, where the altar would be, lay the banshee, its tentacles splayed around it in a broad nimbus of limp, gray translucence.

The severed strands were bandaged, but they looked desiccated, black and rotting. The creature, in general, did not look well.

Its chest rose and fell with ragged, strained breaths.

Adam couldn’t See anything wrong with it besides the wounds he and Vic had inflicted, which weren’t much. They shouldn’t be fatal, and yet it appeared to be dying.

As they came nearer, it opened its mouth, rasping like a fish out of water.

“What’s wrong with it?” Vic asked, holding up an arm so Adam did not move nearer.

“I think it’s like the boggins. It can’t survive here. It needs to be on its own plane.”

The banshee’s eyes met his. It took another hard breath, trying to sing perhaps, to protect itself, but no sound came out. Its eyes went wide.

“It’s all right,” Adam said, holding up his hands. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

“Are you sure about that?” Vic asked.

“It’s not like I have my sword.”

“One more reason to keep our distance.”

“I don’t think it’s in any condition to hurt us.”

Still, Adam stiffened when the banshee began to sing.

The notes were high pitched, shrill.

Adam felt the words in them, though he could not understand.

“I’m going to try something,” he said.

“What?”

“I need to understand what its saying.”

Vic put up an arm, doing another soccer mom block.

“Adam . . .”

“Just be ready to pull me out of here if it tries to possess me.”

“How?”

“Bash its head with a lantern?”

Vic did not seem to like that idea, but he lowered his arm.

Adam smiled, though he felt anything but safe or calm as he reached for it, stretching out a hand.

Weakly, one of the strands wrapped around his wrist.

The banshee sang again, the notes fading in the air and in his mind.