Heard a sound this time. Like a voice. A voice drowning as it spoke. Awash in strange tides. Might’ve said, “Come in, Finch.”

Inside: cracked yellow wallpaper. A photo of Wyte’s wife on a rickety table. A short hallway leading to the galley-style kitchen. A couple of crooked paintings showed faded watercolor scenes of Hoegbotton ships hunting the king squid. Fables of a bygone era.

Then the living room. Almost no furniture. As if Wyte were already gone.

But he wasn’t. He lay in the corner of the living room, the weak light of an old lamp dribbling across his body. The lamp had come all the way from the Southern Isles, brought by Wyte’s grandmother. Shells were still glued into the base.

Wyte dwarfed the lamp. Slumped there. Monstrous. Huge. Spilling out in peculiar ways. As if a mossy hill had been dropped into the room. Wandering tendrils as outliers. Above, looking down at Finch, the face within the face. The tiny eyes. White against the encroaching dark. Staring out.

Who’d laid the trap for Wyte? In the beginning? He’d laid it for himself, in a sense. By falling into it.

Wyte spoke. Guttural. Wet. Dissolving. “Thanks for coming, James.” Like everything were normal. Four days ago we were tracking down Bliss.

“It’s going to be okay, Wyte.”

“You don’t have to lie to me. It’s not going to be okay. It’s not. I know that. Even if Otto doesn’t.” A gruff, coughing laugh.

“You’re among friends, Wyte.”

A kind of seismic shift from the thing in the corner. Laughter?

“It’s nice to call you James again. That might’ve been the hardest thing. Remembering to call you Finch. Or John.”

“You didn’t give me up, Wyte. I’ll never forget that.”

A shambling shrug from the mound in the corner. From the thing with Wyte’s eyes.

“Tell Emily. Tell her…”

“She knows. I know, Wyte. No one needs to be told anything.” Finch didn’t even know where Emily lived anymore.

Creature. Monster. Other.

Finch’s hands were shaking. Could he do this? Searching himself. Both Crossley and Finch. Can either of us do this? Kept thinking of Wyte behind the desk at Hoegbotton’s so long ago. Showing Finch the ropes. Patiently explaining the job.

A world extinguished as thoroughly as a spent match in the gutter.

“James?”

“Yes?”

“Like I said on the phone, I can’t control myself anymore. There’s not much of me left. The rest might fight back. But you have to know that’s not me.”

Telling Finch in a candid moment months ago, “I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t want to lose control but still be there, knowing what I am doing.”

“I know, Wyte,” Finch said. Grinding his teeth. Biting his cheek until the blood came. A soundless scream building inside of him. “It’s going to be okay.”