Helping a young elf get through a bit of growing pains—especially if that elf is a punk with more weight on her shoulders than spikes—can give you a lot to chew on, and it’s been with me for a week now.

I almost walked past the fire escape on the second floor, but the light was wrong.

Too silver. Too still.

When I leaned out, Chloe was sitting on the grating in bare feet, holding one of her jacket studs like she was trying to decide whether to put it back or throw it into the alley.

She knew I was there. She told me once, with those long Elven ears of hers she could hear a footstep 2 floors away, even with The White Stripes pushing through her speakers.

Her ear twitched a little, but she said nothing, staring at the silver stud pinched between her fingers, rolling it slowly, over and over.

I’ve seen Chloe hurting before, though she did her best to put on a “fighting front.” You get to know things better, though, if you spend even a little time with her. She’s not a bad kid... just going through a lot.

Kid. It’s such a strange way to put things for a being who is over 130 years old and has seen more than I ever have, but that’s just the awkward teens for her people.

It took me only a minute of watching her through the opened window to know she was maybe not in trouble, but maybe also didn’t really want to be alone.

So, I climbed through the window, the fire escape giving its best groan under my feet as I stepped closer to her.

She didn’t look my way, but scooted over a little. I took that as an invitation.

It was still a while before either of us spoke. I didn’t want to broach anything, because I didn’t know what things were about, and she seemed to still want to hold whatever was in her mind at arms-length for a bit longer.

When she finally opened her mouth, the words fell out like they were from a distance. You know? Almost-bored, in the way you finally spit out the cud you’ve been chewing on for weeks because you’re just so tired of chewing it.

“How do you know if you left because you wanted to, or because you just didn’t know how to stay?”

Oh.

That.

So, I think I wrote to you before, back when Chloe first came to The Wickery, about how she was doing the whole elf version of the Amish Rampashpring-a-something-or-other, right? The Amish send their teens out into the rest of the world to give them a chance to confirm that they really do want to remain Amish.

I guess the elves have something similar, but for them, it’s to go out and “be a human” for a little while so they can get a feel for how we are supposed to be “handled.” Makes sense, I guess, if you’re a species who is long-lived but short-on-population, sharing a world with another species who has more people than sense and tends to have less regard for others-not-them than a piece of gum.

The thing is, she’d been on her own particular one for, I think, longer than they usually allow, and that, maybe, was starting to weigh.

I let my hand rest on the metal bar in front of me, the peeling black paint cool to my touch. “You want me to answer that? Or did you just need to say it out loud?”

I caught the slight curl of her smile before she took a deep breath. “Yeah. Maybe a little of both.”

She spent the next few minutes telling me it wasn’t that she was homesick or something along those lines. It was in that kind of way someone is just a little too much; you know? Defensive about it. But I didn’t push her on it.

When she finally got past that, though, she said it’s more that the rebellion had lost its audience, and what was the point of being a rebel without someone to watch you do it? What’s the need for a costume when the rest of the party has stopped caring you’re wearing one and has moved on to the next piece of cake?

The jacket. The buttons. The boots she had kicked off and set aside when she came out to sit. Were those her? Or were those just the “her” she thought others needed to see?

She came here to be something she never had been before, and, at first, back home, that felt like it was exactly what she needed most.

Now?

Now, to her, it only felt like another day.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Chloe speak so many words in one sitting in the entire year I’ve known her, and I wasn’t really sure how to answer.

In ways, it made me think of my own time at The Wickery.

I couldn’t really tell you then, or even now, whether I really chose to be here. Was it a door that opened and I stepped through? Or had the door been waiting all along, and I never really had any other option?

You remember what things were like when we were kids. Neither of us had a choice about getting stuck in Meadowbrook Academy. My mother getting...

Well.

My mother passing away was not a choice.

But The Wickery? I’ve always told myself this place was my choosing.

But...

Sitting on a fire escape at three in the morning with a 130-year-old punk elf whose existential crisis left her wondering if she was running away from something or towards another, I realized I was not as sure of my own options as I used to be.

So I just said, “I’m not sure the two things are as different as we want them to be. Maybe you left because you were never told you could do otherwise,”

We both went silent then, and kept that way for a little while, two beings from drastically different worlds sharing a cold metal grating two stories up in a city neither of us had been raised in.

When she eventually broke her silence again, it was with a tip of her head to the side.

“You know, it’s strange... but sometimes, when I’m sitting here, I can smell lavender.”

She took a deep breath.

“Did I ever tell you there was a big patch of lavender just down the road from my house growing up? I’d smell it in the night. Kinda cool.”

Chloe was still sitting there when I went back inside and headed down to the basement. The stud was still in her fingers, but maybe since then she’s put it back on the jacket.

I don’t know. But she didn’t answer her question that night, and neither did I, and even now, a week later, I still haven’t faced my own version of it.

How do you know if you stayed because you wanted to, or because you just didn’t know how to leave?

That kind of question is a little less like a weight, and a little more like just... something you carry.

I think there’s a difference.

Probably.

Write again soon,
Gary

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Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

MORE APARTMENTS OF THE DAMNED STORIES:

I don’t go through the lost and found box often. Part of that’s because it needs a certain willingness I can’t always give on a weekday.

But it’s mostly because one of the last times I did, I found three things that had no business being in this dimension, and one... that had every business being in mine.

Living and working in The Wickery comes with certain hazards, not least of which is the amount of time I actually do not have to do anything but keep everything—and everyone—going. One day, I might have twenty different leaks needing fixed, and another might be spent trying to convince the gargoyles on the roof they really don’t need to unionize, or, at least, don’t have to be so vocal about it at three in the morning.

So it’s rather rare I have more than a few spare moments to do the other little things that need to be done, like going through the lost and found box that always sits in the corner of the laundry room.

Sure, some of the folks here might come down and take a peek in there, see if anything of theirs happens to have been tossed in. But most of the people here are really just as lost as the things in that box, and not everyone likes to be reminded of that.

Well, much to my surprise—and probably a little of Henderson’s chagrin—I actually found myself with a little time to get busy on my “forever needing to dos,” and at the top of that list was the lost and found box.

It was a Sunday, and, like most Sundays here, the place was reasonably quiet. I don’t know why that is, really. Most other days, there’s so many bursts of activity happening around here, you’d think it was Grand Central on Thanksgiving weekend.

Maybe it has something to do with the church in the basement. Desecrated or not, it still carries the weight of the importance of the Sabbath to some.

Can’t say for sure. But on Sundays, I notice the building just sits and breathes.

That’s not a bad thing in my book.

I slid the box over to my workbench, the weight of it causing the dust on the floor to gouge as the thick cardboard pressed hard. I swear, I’d never be surprised if that thing had an anchor in it sometimes.

I started the kettle—that great coffee you sent me is almost gone, by the way—and perched on my stool to finally dig in.

At the top were some papers; the white pages were covered in crayon. I didn’t have to guess who made these. There was no doubt it was the Chesterton twins. Only a couple of mimic kids would draw the mailboxes in the lobby with smiling faces or the word “Fluffy” over a picture of a chair with a leash attached to it.

Sweet kids, but they always end up transforming into things they really shouldn’t. One time, the younger of the twins, Tammy, decided to become the support I-beam for the seventh floor. She’s always trying new things, but that one, I think, was the most interesting.

It’s not the first time I’ve found their little drawings in the box, and I always hate throwing that kind of thing away. I set them aside to stick in the drawer with the rest of their “architectural textures” later.

I’m not sure what language the book I found next was in, but every page had a picture of a bird on it with some hand-written notes for each. As I flipped through, though, I saw the last one to get a special note seemed to stop after only a few words.

A leather glove with eight fingers, a compass that just spun around in circles, a jar that either had ancient jelly or something else really hard inside. Mostly the same old, same old.

But there was also a cassette tape with Z’s handwriting splattered across it. Maybe a band name? I don’t know. It was marked as 1993, and I know that’s the year Z died, so maybe it was one of the bands he’d been in. Demo tape or something.

I figured he’d probably want that back, so I tossed it on the bench and reminded myself to take it up to him later.

When I reached the next thing, I knew it was one of those “do not touch this one, Gary” pieces. Just a feeling I get with some of these. The Wickery’s home to a lot of things, you know? And some of those things, even if unintentionally so, are not safe for humans to bother.

I covered that one up with what I assume were some of Dot’s stockings she’d once again lost down the laundry chute. Ghost or not, that gal really needs to control her bunders.

A wooden figurine came up next, and I knew right away who it belonged to.

Saff. I’ve talked about Saffron before, right? She’s up on seven. Been here a while now. She’s quiet, which is surprising when you think about it. A Bigfoot, you’d think, would make a lot of noise, given how large they are. But she’s always been a bit different.

Maybe it’s because she was born so different from the rest of her tribe. She’d told me before how her childhood was a deeply coldhearted one. Being born without hair was a bad omen for them. You see? She was misfortune walking, and when they eventually just cast her out for being so different and a danger, it, I think, cut out a big part of her soul.

But that figurine in the box? That’s a testament to her gentleness. It’s the kind of thing you make with your hands when your hands need something to do, and the rest of you absolutely has to be still. She’d taken up the “hobby” even back during that childhood in the woods, and everything she makes with wood has a really special touch.

She might have fists the size of dinner plates, but that girl has a gentle spirit I’ve never known anyone else to have.

I really do hope she can actually make a living selling these things someday, instead of being stuck working the night shift at Walmart.

One of those small, pocket sized Bibles came out next. It was old—the inside marked with 1887—but it looked almost new. Nothing else on it said who it might have belonged to, but that’s not too much of a shock.

The Wickery has a way about it; you know? Sometimes things get dredged up from the past we least expect and can’t ignore.

That very thought was in my head as I reached in one more time and pulled out something wrapped in flannel.

I’m... I’m not even sure if you’ll ever read this, because you know I don’t really like to talk about my past much. There’s always too much going on here at The Wickery for me to have time to sit and think about things back then.

They’re not all that pleasant, anyway.

But this... This was something I had to sit with for a while, despite whatever was on the to-do list that day.

See, I knew what it was before I even unwrapped the flannel. When I did, when I saw the thing, the building stopped moving.

It stopped breathing.

The kettle stopped breathing.

I stopped breathing.

That’s when my world went black.

Well.

Not completely.

Slight movements, small flickers of light, the sound of something softly scraping and scratching and pausing and starting again, all wafting and wefting around me. I no longer felt the stool beneath me, no longer smelled the dust and dampness of the basement or the soft hissing of the pipes always present.

Just a person, a young woman with a tiny smile on her face, gently putting a black pen to a paper on a desk in front of her. A scent was there, a soft, flowery sort of aroma coming from her, and I stepped closer, though she seemed so big.

She saw me from the corner of her eye and put the pen down, turning to me with a bigger smile, and my heart, my ever-so-young heart in that moment soared at her smile.

But then she was gone, and the big man was beside me, and we were in the middle of a hug, and the air was so cold as the wind rushed around us. He was my protector, my Uncle Gordo, whom I’d come to love ever since my mother died, the one who’d taken me in and tried to make things right.

But that moment, too, had been so terrible, knowing he had to send me to the school for my own protection, knowing all the while it was the last thing he wanted to do. He held me there, at the rough and rusted iron gates of that place, and I’d not felt such a gravity from him since the moment he stepped into my life and told me mother was gone.

I felt something slide against my coat, and didn’t know until later it was a pen—her pen—snuck there in one of the most difficult moments of my young life. I put it on my desk, surrounded by a strange room I didn’t want to be in and hearing the calls of other children in the hallways around me.

There was the frantic search for it later, the desperate moments of a child who’d endured the wiles and whims of bullies, discovering what they thought would be a fun thing to do.

It was gone, and I had to learn, in the hard way some children have to do, that you just have to stop looking, because the evil people in the world will make sure what you lose is never found again.

It was heavy, so heavy in my fingers that day in the basement.

Small, black with little ornate designs along the shaft, the nib on the end glinting in my eyes as the memories rushed through me.

Were they memories? I was so young when she...

I was barely old enough, then, to even be a person yet. I never got to know her, not in the ways people do. You know? But what I have is precious to me, regardless.

I recall one thing she told me, once, as she was writing something down. She said letters are the most honest thing someone can do, because you can have time to find the words.

The thing I wondered then, in those moments I tried to put myself back together again, was what it all meant.

Was it really hers? I didn’t doubt it then, and I don’t now. Not even a little.

How had it found its way into the lost and found box? I couldn’t answer that either, but I have a sense of something.

I think The Wickery itself had something to do with it.

See, this place, this strange little space we’ve come to be a part of here, does something. It brings the lost together and gives them a special spot they can call their own.

We have all kinds here; you know? Bigfoots, and cosmic wanna-be gods, and Gorgons, and ghosts, and yes... even humans. All of us somehow able to carve out a world of our own within these walls of a place that probably never should have existed, either.

Things just have a knack for finding their way to where they belong here, and I guess none of us would want it otherwise.

I’ve never put that pen away. Writing to you now with it, in fact, using it the way it was always meant to be used, and I’ve noticed when I hold it in my hand, the basement here always seems a bit warmer.

Not hot. Just warmer, and I wonder if something in the walls smiles.

I guess, in the end, that’s all any of us can ask for.

Write again soon.
Gary

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Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

Most folks like a story with a clear beginning, a middle, and a heroic ending where the guy in the cape saves the day and the credits roll.

If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ve got the wrong address. The Wickery doesn’t do “grand finales.”

My name is Gary. I’m the super here. You’re about to read through some files—logs, letters to my friend Benny, and accounts of things that have happened within these walls. You don’t need to read them in any particular order. Reality here is like the plumbing: it’s interconnected, it leaks in weird places, and sometimes it loops back on itself for no damned good reason at all.

What you’ll find here isn’t an epic saga.

It’s a collection of the afternoons where the trash chute developed a pitching arm, or the siren in 2B accidentally turned the water main into a choir. It’s about the Gorgon next door trying to navigate a relationship with a blind gal, a banshee trying to finish a synth-pop album, and a cosmic entity in 1B who is currently convinced his avocado pit is a dormant god.

It’s about the vampire on the third floor who got his fangs ripped out and the werewolf next door he does the tailoring for when those moons drive him a little nuts.

It’s about the family of mimics who decided life in a dungeon wasn’t for them, and are now trying to make their way in a big city with a couple of kids who don’t yet know the difference between wood and steel girders.

In this building, we aren’t trying to save the world. We’re just trying to make sure the radiators don’t scream loud enough to wake the neighbors and that everyone’s rent is in on time, because the landlord is a lot more disturbing than any eldritch horror I’ve ever had to snake out of a drain.

So, pick a floor, mind your step on the stairs, and try not to look the tenants directly in the eye if they aren’t wearing sunglasses. Welcome to Apartments of the Damned.

I’d stay and chat, but my coffee just started having an existential crisis.

—Gary Kowalski
Superintendent, The Wickery

The building is haunted, the plumbing is cursed, the elevator has anxiety, and the landlord thinks it’s all just “old wiring.”

I’m Gary Kowalski. I’m the super. I don’t fight monsters—I fix their radiators, unclog their drains, and remind them that rent is due on the first regardless of what dimension they’re originally from.

Apartments of the Damned is a series of letters from a man who holds the strangest building in the city together, one work order at a time.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

I found Andrew perched on the groaning, rusted fire escape at three in the morning, his compound eyes dilated to the size of dinner plates as he whispered sweet nothings to a five-thousand-lumen halogen bulb.

And it wasn’t even the most expensive thing I had to fix before sunrise.

I’d been down in the basement for a few hours, working on that old leaky valve I’ve been trying to calm down. You know how it is. You let a pipe get even one idea that it has an option to form a union, and you’re in for a world of trouble.

This one had been a real pain about it for a week, ever since that last batch of scales from Euryale’s snakes decided this month is shedding month. Not usually a problem, but when you have dozens of them on top of a Gorgon’s head doing it all at once, it gums up the works something fierce.

Vic must have heard me banging on things down there. I’ve told you about Victor, right? Poor guy has never really gotten through losing his fangs, and for a vampire, that’s probably about the worst thing that can happen.

Well, aside from getting tossed out into the morning light, maybe.

Anyway, Vic came in carrying his laundry. Two in the morning, of course, but when else is a five-hundred-year-old vampire supposed to bleach his tighties?

He nodded when he noticed me, and I smiled back. Victor’s always been a good guy, no matter what people might say about him otherwise. Sure, he’s got a predator’s instincts, just like all of “the Turned” do, but that doesn’t mean he has to follow them. I think, fangless or not, he’s always had a bit more of a gentle nature than a hunter’s.

Just has that way about him.

He started shoving his clothes into the washer and plunked a few coins in.

“So, Gary,” he said as he turned my way. “You know I’ve been doing my nightly walks since the weather’s getting warmer, right?”

Yeah. I knew about that. Henderson, the landlord, always complained about the doors opening and closing at the front of The Wickery late at night.

“Well, you might want to check on the fire escape.” He finished inserting the coins and started the machine up. “I’ve seen Andrew up there three nights in a row now, and he’s been looking worse every time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like he seems like he’s just hanging out or something.” Vic’s eyes traced my hands as I put my wrench down on the desk. His own neatly folded his light-pink floral pastel sheets on the table. “He looks a bit frayed around the edges. Maybe he’s been skipping his grooming or something.”

Hmm. Andrew’s always been rather delicate, if I’m being honest, but if he seems bad enough for a vampire to get concerned about their nocturnal goings-on, it might be something to check on.

That fire escape has always been a bit on the unsafe side. No matter how many times I tell Henderson we need to do something more about it, he just tells me to keep reinforcing the steel and maybe he’ll get around to ordering better construction, “when we have the extra funds for it.”

That man could create diamonds out of coal for as much as he holds onto things.

Andrew Pringle has always been a complex person. I remember when I first met him; he didn’t even want to look me in the eye. He just seemed so embarrassed to exist, I think, but given the things he’s been through, I can understand it.

See, the problem is, Andrew’s a guy of really tragic misunderstandings.

Yes, he’s a Mothman, and yes, people talk about his kind in whispers and fear, but that’s not at all what they’re about.

They don’t cause disasters. They’re drawn to them like they’re a light. He told me, in the days leading up to some impending doom, he gets this sickening pressure in his skull and a burning behind his compound eyes that just seems to force him to migrate toward the center of it. It’s like he has to bear witness, and he has no choice.

And that’s the thing, right? He’s helpless to it, and is forced to be an observer. For centuries, the poor guy would arrive at spots of some horrible thing coming up, and he’d try his best to warn the humans.

But he’s an eight-foot-tall critter of feathers and chitin and bright, burning red eyes. If he tried to scream a warning, they would hear a demon screech.

When he’d reach out to pull someone from a crumbling ledge or something, they’d fire a shotgun at his chest.

His entire existence has been nothing but being blamed for the very tragedies he was trying to prevent.

I think that’s why he wears a three-piece suit all the time. It’s like a blanket, holding his wings tight against him, you know?

Hell, maybe it’s all why he became an accountant. Numbers can be controlled when other things can’t.

He tries to be civilized, and being here at The Wickery gives him that chance. He’s a creature of omens that can’t help but live in the dark and be drawn to the light.

Before I even got to the sixth floor landing, I knew the problem. That light Henderson had the construction guys install last week shone like the sun.

Guess that’s what happens when you hire guys who illegally install 5000-lumen LED security lights. Doing it right outside the apartment of a Mothman who’s trying to suppress his instincts is like sticking a star out there.

So, yeah. Andrew was there, crouching on the landing of the sixth floor escape, just outside his opened bedroom window, and he looked a mess.

His suit was rumpled, and his wings trembled as they extended a bit from his back.

The rest of him, including his eyes, did not move as he stared directly into the blinding halogens only feet away.

I couldn’t catch the words, but he was muttering under his breath, whispering in a frantic, rhythmic sort of way.

I called out his name, waved my hands toward him, and even tapped the metal railing with my wrench, but Andrew didn’t even blink. Just those massive, dilated eyes completely locked on the light.

Seemed like all of his reasoning went out the window with him.

I started in with instincts of my own, slipping my heavy gloves on and heading for the light. I found a small crate near and used it to help me get up there a bit.

Whew. The heat from that light was pretty horrendous, let me tell you. Even with the gloves, and a few inches away, it was enough to make me think twice about grabbing that bulb.

But I had to do something, and fast, or Andrew might fall apart entirely. I couldn’t just let the poor guy sit there like that, caught in instinct.

It’d be uncivilized.

But the moment my hand blocked a fraction of the light, Andrew snapped.

A loud screech pierced through the night, and I reeled backward, stumbling over the crate as my feet landed.

He grabbed my arm, and I can tell you, if Andrew wanted to do some damage, he could have. The grip had a desperate strength, and I gasped a little as his voice cracked.

“Don’t, Gary. Don’t take it away.”

I got my arm out of his grip, but I didn’t move aside. He wasn’t attacking; he was just panicking.

“I can’t be without it.” The voice moaned from him, but his eyes kept a lock on the light. “It’s the only thing loud enough to make the buzzing stop.”

I came down beside him, sitting a few feet from him as he leaned back again, and thankfully he seemed at least aware enough to keep his twitching wings from me.

I can’t say for sure how long we were there, just two folks of very different backgrounds and even species, watching the glow of the brightest light for miles around, the soft hiss of the heat from it burning any dust that dared come across it.

When he finally spoke again, it was not really a new revelation, but it confirmed some thoughts I’d had over the years about him.

It’s an addiction. See? The light is terrible for him because, when it comes down to it and all other things are set aside, he’s a creature of the night. But that addiction, that light, somehow helped soothe his anxieties.

Do you remember Charlie, the tenth-grader from back in our Meadowbrook Academy days? I’d heard he fell into addictions, too. Heroin, I think it was. He’d gotten involved in some pretty bad stuff, but wanted to get clean from it all and tried to quit cold-turkey.

It didn’t work out too well for him.

I figured Andrew might have the same kind of reaction if I just killed the light. Hell, he might have some really bad psychological break right there on the fire escape.

I needed a transition. Not a blackout.

I headed back down to the Wickery’s basement, trying to remember where I last put the stuff. The last time I used it, it was to fix one of the pipes up on Eight after a gargoyle stepped wrong.

It took a bit, but I tracked down the amber-tinted Kapton tape. That stuff is super heat-resistant, you know. We even use it for boiler wiring.

Andrew was, of course, still sitting there when I got back up to the Sixth, and I started extending the tape a bit before slipping on my gloves.

I tried to say some soothing words as I worked, hoping it’d be enough to help distract Andrew’s thoughts as I placed first one strip, and then another, over the bulb.

The whole time I was at it, I could feel the slight vibrations in the metal beneath my boots as Andrew’s wings resonated with it. But, as the white crime-scene glare of the lamp, which had turned the alleyway into a burned out husk with every rivet and rust spot glaring like stars rampaging in the sky, dimmed to a softer, eased smolder, the shadows crept slowly back in.

A few minutes more, and the amber tape covered it completely.

From behind me, I could hear Andrew’s breathing slow and become more steady. I turned, shoving the remaining roll into my pocket, and saw the tension draining away from his body.

Finally, his wings folded away, pressing into his back comfortably, and he blinked. He rubbed his eyes a little and looked down at the ruined remains of his suit.

Andrew was profoundly embarrassed, and had he the skin for it, I am willing to bet it’d almost glow with red. His eyes were doing enough of that for him, though.

I told him it was alright, that there was no need to feel anything but tired, and that I’d make sure to get a different, dimmer bulb installed tomorrow.

He smiled a little when I reminded him Vic could probably fix his suit. That old vamp was a wizard with a needle and some thread.

Sometimes, we can’t help but fall prey to our instincts. I think, out of anyone, people like Andrew, and even old Victor could testify to that.

We’re all, no matter the species, creatures that have certain things stuck inside of us we don’t like and would rather didn’t exist. And that’s okay. It’s what makes all of us—vampire, Mothman, Gorgon, even me—human.

But that doesn’t mean we also have to become victims of it.

I’ll make sure Henderson gets the bill for the new bulb and some more amber tape at the end of the month.

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MORE APARTMENTS OF THE DAMNED STORIES:

If you’ve spent any time at all at The Wickery, you’ll have figured out fast Maeve can get loud.

A banshee creating synth-pop, after all, is going to hit some volumes, and it’s especially so when she reaches those high-Es. I’ve had to reinforce more than a few walls in this old place to keep it from crumbling down.

But her noise couldn’t hold a candle to the sheer structural resonance of the Siren she had as her guest the other day.

That gal had the whole second floor--and beyond--humming in perfect C-Minor.

I started noticing things when I was down in the basement. The tap on the sink down there was dripping.

I know. Not really abnormal. But the kind of dripping it was doing was what caught my attention. I could swear it was falling in a rhythm.

Wasn’t long after that the main running beneath the ground floor took on a low, resonant hum that sounded suspiciously like a damned 19th-century shanty or something.

I was just starting my way up a stool to put my ear to it when the phone buzzed.

Henderson, of course. You remember how old August Henderson can deny and compartmentalize more than anyone else I’ve ever known? Yeah. He’s just gotten worse with that over time.

Anyway, a message came in from Henderson saying the water pressure on the second floor was acting up and to fix it before the pipes burst.

Not like I wasn’t already on things, August.

I swear that man is a trifle.

Text message finished up with, “And tell whoever it is up there that they need to turn the whale music down.”

Something told me I might need the earplugs this time. They always come in handy whenever I have to deal with Maeve.

I made sure the heavy-duty wrench was in the bag before starting the climb to the second floor.

I could tell, before even getting off the first floor, the hallways weren’t just vibrating.

Stepping up to the door of 2B, I knocked, but the groaning sounds and thrumming from the walls made that knock just about silent.

Still, the door ended up swinging open at my touch, already unlocked and unlatched.

LEDs illuminated the room in swirling colors and shapes, hitting a pattern of their own that almost seemed in time with the ones coming off the walls and the closed door on the other side of the room.

Those lights, though, weren’t any different from the normal “Maeve Mode.” She liked to keep them flashy. Said one time it reminded her of home, though I’m not sure what the Irish foothills and bogs might have to do with purple and blue glowing strips.

She was at her desk, surrounded by monitors and instruments—the tools of her trade. I’ve never really been a fan of her music myself, but I’ve heard she’s really popular, and when she hits her best notes, I can at least picture why.

She put her digital pen down, stopping the drawing she was in the midst of; she always does her own cover art. She pointed to the doorway across the room and gave a little, half-hearted smile.

Well, I knew that door. It was, as is common in most of the apartments here in The Wickery, a walk-in closet. I think it was... what? About five years ago, I installed some of the special sound-proofing panels Maeve found for sale online, along with some “fairy lights.”

I swear, dealing with those things was a real pain in the rear. First, I had to figure out how to put the bait on the wiring, and then chant the weird ritual spell she said would make the call. Now, I don’t know about you, but trying to read aloud a language that wasn’t really meant for human tongues is difficult at best, but Maeve told me later the fairies had shown up as intended. It just took a day or two for them to get accustomed to the place.

I don’t know. I sometimes wonder if Maeve only did it all as a joke and knew those fairies would show up eventually anyway for the bait. Wouldn’t shock me. She’s always had a weird sense of humor.

I cracked the door open a bit and saw within the closet—aside from the fairies twirling around the wires—the lithe figure of Coral.

Coral, Maeve said upon introducing her to me a week ago, was a friend “from the coast.” What coast? I’m not sure, but Maeve’s been around. For a Siren, Coral was pretty soft-spoken. Makes sense, I guess, if you’re a being who could rile up guys just by the sound of your voice.

Wouldn’t make sense to have a trail of fishermen or random pizza delivery guys hanging around and fawning twenty-four seven, when all you want to do is hang out with your friend and watch a movie or have coffee or something.

Still, I made sure the earplugs were in place well enough before really venturing a further look. They were those special ones I got back when the gargoyles decided to have a shrieking contest up on the roof and I had to negotiate which one was the winner.

They still let me hear things, but kinda cuts down the magic or damage from sounds. Best investment I’ve ever made for the sake of my ears.

So, there was Coral, whispering into the microphone in front of her, instead of singing.

I caught the words “tap on the sea-glass” and something about brushing mermaid scales. Just before I closed the door again, a low-frequency vocal came from her that I swear made the sprinkler shudder.

“She’s live-streaming right now.” Maeve pressed a few buttons on the keyboard, and I could see the waveforms from what Coral was saying wending their way across her stream.

She had ten thousand people tuned in, and Maeve was the producer.

Great. How many other buildings out there were her voice causing some weird resonance with? It was playing hell with the copper plumbing in The Wickery.

And it was all centered on this little thing of a gal with more voice in her whisper than most high-powered diva opera singers could muster.

The bathroom next to the closet kind of filled me in on the rest of the story.

See, this Siren wasn’t making me want to go drown myself off the coastal rocks. She was making me utterly worried this place was going to come down on top of our heads, and, according to Maeve, Coral wouldn’t be able to stop until her flow-state, whatever the hell that meant, was exhausted.

Some of these pipes are well over a century old, see? They can’t handle the amount of pressure their flexing was doing. The weeping condensation and harmonizing toilet weren’t making things any better, either.

A banging on the wall next to me interrupted my thoughts. Euryale was pounding, and even with all the groaning from the pipes, I could hear her complaining the sounds were making her scales itch.

Mine too, Eury. Mine too.

I figured, maybe, if we were lucky, we’d have another ten minutes before a complete structural failure hit and the whole damned building flooded.

So, what’s a maintenance guy to do when the diva in the closet doesn’t want to stop, and the risk of forcing her to do so could cause a scream that’d shatter every bit of glass in the building, and probably the rest of the block?

Well. I guessed trying to insulate things from the sounds would be the best step.

I tore downstairs to the basement and scrabbled through the supply closet. Sure, there was some acoustic foam still in there, but I guessed trying to toss more of that around wasn’t going to do anything for abyssal frequencies.

Instead, I grabbed a bucket of high-density plumber’s putty, a roll of lead-lined tape I confiscated from that one minor demon that came through a few years back, and a heavy iron clamp.

I’ve had that clamp since back in our Meadowbrook Academy days. You remember how Headmaster Vance would always drone on about thermodynamics and their relation to fluids?

Well, there were plenty of fluids in those pipes. Right?

It was only a few moments later I was crawling under Maeve’s sink and into the crawlspace right behind that little closet studio.

Coral was moving on to making some weird whispering mouth sounds, and the pipes, in response, started bucking like wild broncos.

I wrestled with the main junction pipe and slapped on a huge batch of putty before getting it wrapped in the lead tape.

Another breath and I got the clamp over the main valve.

Almost instantly, the clamp started absorbing whatever frequencies were going on, and the pipes stopped their singing in response.

Another few moments and my own sigh of relief joined the one the building made as the tension released.

I crawled out of there covered in dust and putty. Coral, oblivious to it all, finally finished her stream as Maeve tossed me a couple of towels.

I can’t say I totally understand, but Maeve said when they “checked their analytics,” the live stream session had gone viral because her subscribers “loved the authentic, haunted submarine ambient groan.”

I assume that was the pipes.

I guess, if nothing else, we discovered copper pipes can give a surprisingly pleasant baritone, if you threaten them with the right aquatic frequencies.

I’ll send Henderson the bill for more lead tape.

Write again soon,

Gary

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