Mr. Spindel sighed. “Sounds better than the Smurfs.” He finished tightening the wire. “All yours,” he said. He grabbed his stepladder and left the room.

I looked at the old machine. “Where did you get this?” I asked him.

“From home,” Spoon said. “Where else?”

“You still have one?”

“Of course. While the Betamax had lost almost its entire market share to the VHS tape by 1988, Sony continued to manufacture them until 2002.”

“Ooookay,” I said.

Ema put the tape into the Betamax. She pressed the play button. I sat on the right front corner of the bed. Ema took the left. We left enough space between us for Spoon to see.

The hospital TV was mounted on the wall in front of us. Right now, the screen crackled in gray-and-white static. We waited. Ten seconds later, the picture cleared.

“Where is that?” Spoon asked.

Ema and I shared a glance. “That’s the tunnel.”

“The one under Bat Lady’s house?”

“Yes,” Ema said. “In fact, this is pretty close to where we found the tape.”

“Cool beans,” Spoon said.

The camera was pointed straight down the corridor, coming from a spot relatively close to the house and aiming at a spot more toward the garage. For ten seconds, nothing happened. Then the camera gave a little jerk and we heard a familiar voice say, “Oh, I’m so clumsy.”

From behind the camera, Lizzy Sobek appeared.

She was wearing that long white gown, her gray hair down to her waist. She looked younger—it was hard to say how much—but her skin was less wrinkled. She turned back and looked at the camera. “Is it on, Dylan?”

Spoon said, “‘Dylan’?”

“Dylan Shaykes,” I said. “That’s the name of the guy with the shaved head.”

“The one who follows you in the black car?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why does that name ring a bell?” Spoon asked.

“From old milk cartons. He disappeared twenty-five years ago. There were a lot of stories on him recently—”

“And now he . . . ?”

“Works for the Abeona Shelter,” I said.

“Like us.”

“Shh,” Ema said.

On the screen, Lizzy Sobek turned her back to the camera, spread her arms, and said, “Welcome.”

We heard distant voices, but we couldn’t see anything.

A voice from behind the camera, Dylan Shaykes’s, said, “You’re blocking me.”

“Oh,” Lizzy Sobek said. “Sorry.”

She stepped to the side. I squinted at the screen. Four kids—or maybe it was five or six, hard to tell from the distance—appeared down the hall. They stumbled closer to the camera.

“You’re safe now,” Lizzy told them.

One of the kids stepped forward in a challenging way. He put his fists on his hips, almost Superman style. “Who are you? Why are we here?”

I heard Ema gasp. “Mickey?”

I nodded, unable to speak.