Zer0 tightened her grip on the steering wheel until it squeaked.

“Okay,” she said, trying to summon any lick of courage she could. “This is nothing. It’s not like you haven’t been here before.” She leaned close to the driver’s side window, looking to the top of the ancient building expecting to see a murder of crows or snarling gargoyles staring. The lack of anything looming seemed even worse. She settled in her seat and noticed her knuckles blanching. She released her death-grip, flexed her hands, trying to coax feeling back into her fingertips.

It’d been thirty years. She was a child back then. Her fingers tapped the steering wheel nervously as she recalled sitting in the office. That god-awful clack from Mrs. Martinez’s electric typewriter popped away as Principal Byron tried to explain to her mother for the third time that, “we simply can’t have Zoe disrupting the students with her stories.” Little Zer0 winced away from the statement, sweeping the muddled carpet. Cautiously, her eyes drifted to the empty shadow in the corner where she watched the little boy with burned clothes play marbles with himself. She could smell him. Like overcooked food and a busy street. Even now, she could still see his dangling tongue and contemptuous eyes burning red and angry behind a face missing its jaw.

Zer0 shook the image from her head and looked at the sky. The school’s shadow stretched as the broad side of the building slowly swallowed the evening sun. It would be dark soon and she didn’t want to be around for that.

“Okay,” she whispered. She pulled the pog from the dashboard where it’d been gathering sunlight. It was warm and heavier than it looked. She tucked it back in her bra, took three breaths in quick succession, held the last, and shot out of the car, closing the door behind her. “Alright,” she said to herself with a head nod. “Hardest part is over. Now just turnaround.”

The looming building was so tall Zer0 to take a step backward. She blinked back to reality reminding herself the building was actually quite squat. Iron eaves left tendrils of rust stains running down like pattern tracers of prisoners escaping capture. The main entrance was covered by a dilapidated awning that served to keep the children dry during rain and shaded in the summer. In the distance, past the bald spot where the playground equipment used to be—long since removed by the city—stood three somber weeping willows, the school’s namesake. Underneath was the only thing left that reminded passersby what the building once was: an old bench and a lonesome carousal, it’s yellow paint chipped and dingy.

“Come on, Z,” Zer0 whispered to herself. She looked around. The coast was clear.

Zer0 nimbly hopped the guard rail and scurried, head down, hood up, and hands tightly in her hoodie pockets, to a plank fence. She pulled one of the slats free, squatted low, and slinked through. She pressed her hands against the backside of the fence and shimmied sideways between the fence and the side of the building to a window she knew didn’t latch.

A shadow perched itself atop the roof of, Madam Wong’s Happy Hot, a Chinese restaurant notorious for food as angry as Madam Wong herself. It was almost a block away from the school but that was smart. It knew Seers. The other demons didn’t give them that title for nothing.

The shadow’s green eyes narrowed as it watched Zer0 peer around again, place her hands on the window, and push. It smiled, its chipped, gnarled teeth flashing in the light of the setting sun. With one last check, Zer0 was gone and the window slid closed behind her.

“Do things go as planned?” a nasal, monotoned voice said, announcing its presence.

“They do, me’lord,” the shadow hissed, its voice modulated and beating with unnatural vibrato. “The Seer entered the site of the vortex just as you predicted.”

“Don’t call her that in front of the Cryptic. They hate when humans get titles.”

“Noted, Lord Epoch,” the shadow responded, slithering an awkward bow.

“Sepsis and Trench are already waiting?” the man responded, walking next to the shadow and peering around the outside of the building. He carried himself differently now that he wasn’t in presence of the hissing monitors. He knew his place. Everyone knew their place when it came to the Cryptic.

“They stand at the ready, Lord,” the shadow answered, its foggy eyes scouring the empty streets around the school, empty save for the single car in the parking lot, a battered Nisan with a dangling mirror on the passenger side.

“They better not fuck this up,” Epoch growled. “We don’t have the luxury of slips.”

Zer0 grunted when her feet hit the ground. She was much taller now than she was when she was in elementary school but the windows were still pretty high. She stood but never managed to straighten up completely. Her back was slightly hunched and her shoulders rounded under the sound of empty clicks and the ambient echoes the city leaves in places with tall ceilings.

Zoe Rebecca McLoughlin, named after her great grandmother, walked to the center of the hallway of the abandoned elementary school, stood perfectly straight, and closed her hazy, grey-blue eyes. She took a deep breath through her nose, held it, and pushed. She pushed hard. She compressed all the air in her lungs into a little ball in her lower torso and she kept pushing. She pushed until her face reddened and her skin shimmered with perspiration. She pressed and pushed and sweat until her abdomen convulsed, twitch and pulling like it did just after climax, as she lay smiling and straining. Her eyes rolled back and forth under her eye lids like they were searching desperately for something no one else could see. And when she thought maybe she would never find it, she saw. It was close.

Her abdomen convulsed again and she exhaled a stuttering, foggy breath. Her eyes opened halfway and she walked westward, toward the setting sun, sliding her fingertips across the faded green tiles. She traipsed delicately, one foot directly in front of the other like she was walking on railroad tracks. She turned a corner and moved down the next hallway, deeper into the belly of the building until she touched a door. She blinked herself awake and looked up. A sign reading “PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE” perched dangerously above the doorway, tacked to the wall with rusted nails. She peered around herself, took another deep breath, and turned the knob.

Once Zer0 was out of the hall, Sepsis and Trench emerged from the space under a derelict cart covered in dusty books, cleaning supplies, and random tools. With every inch they covered as they moved away from their hiding place they expanded and grew until they were towering above the ground some seven feet each, their true size. They looked at each other with intent and started toward the door, Sepsis pulling himself across the ground, brown and glistening, like a putrid mass of gelatinized blood. And Trench skittering along the wall then to the ceiling, upright but hanging by thirty of his hundred legs.

Zer0 padded across the tattered, orange-speckled carpet of the receiving room to Principal Byron’s old office. Mrs. Martinez’s desk was still there, old and rusting and heavy. Zer0 could still hear the clack of her typewriter. She sniffed. It smelled old and dying, like the terrible scent you catch when you lift a heavy stone in the forest; like there were things alive there, before the rock fell. There are other things under there now, things that are alive but only because the once-living things aren’t.

She pursed her lips. He wasn’t there. It had been decades. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She even changed her name. He wasn’t there. She knew it. So why was she avoiding it? Why didn’t’ she just look?

Zer0 raised her eyes to the corner. No burned boy, no marbles. She sighed. “Come on, Z,” she whispered and pressed forward.

The setting sun shone brightly into the single office window, a narrow opening covered with glass brick. The sounds of the city continued outside as though she wasn’t in a terrifying old building all by herself.

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“Just need a feeling,” she said. “That’s all. A feeling and I’m outa here. Come on.” She reached into her pocket and felt around. “Shit,” she lamented. She patted her other pockets and put her hands in her hoodie. “Shit,” she said again. Bruse told her never to go out without her lighter and she didn’t want to hear from him right now..

Bruce taught her how to use a wick and fuel lighter to get a feel for the energy in a room.

“Not just any wick,” she heard him grumble in her head. “It needs to be cotton and copper. That’s why Chris and I use Zippos. Cotton for protection and copper is a natural conduit. Watch.” Zer0 closed her eyes and watched Bruce spark that stupid lighter with the batman symbol on it. He cupped his hand around the back of the flames and looked through his fingers nodding toward the elongated shadows then back at the flame. “See how it swells and shrinks like a heartbeat? There’s something here.”

Zer0 inspected her pockets again and slapped her thighs in frustration. “Fuck you, Bruce,” she said scornfully. Her ear perked and she whipped her head toward the door.

Zer0 dropped to a squat and scurried behind the desk. She crawled underneath. She tucked her knees to her chest and tried to control her breathing. Silence. She peeked through the slit between the kick board and the desktop. She smelled it before she heard it, a rotten smell, like someone was burning spoiled meat. She tucked her head between her knees and closed her eyes hard. There was a shaking, rattling noise, like a dried-out hull filled with handful of beads or maybe a withered rattlesnake tail, only old, cracked, and massive. That chattering was followed by several clicks, like two pieces of dead wood being knocked together.

“We know you’re in here, little human.” A hideous voice breathed and hissed, followed by the rattle and clack.

“You should just come out.” A second voice, equally grotesque but deep and blubbering.

Zer0 heard a noise, like someone was poking and pulling the carpet with pliers. She peeked again and saw ten massive, pointy insect claws scurry next to the desk and stop. They picked and pierced the carpet impatiently. The bug thing spoke again, its voice bleating and followed by the clacking sound it absently made.

“There’s no need to make this hard on yourself.”

“Maybe she went in there,” the second voice plopped.

“Shut up, idiot!” the insect monster hissed. “We saw her come in here. Check under the desk.” Zer0 slinked down and tried to hold her breath as the things moved about the room.

“Maybe we should get the artifact,” the blob monster said in a belch. “The Seer can’t take it if it’s in our possession.”

“That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard come out of that blubbering mouth of yours,” the first thing said.

As the two monsters moved toward the doorway to the principal’s inner office, Zer0 stretched her neck and peered into the room. The first monster, the one who seemed to be the brains of the outfit, was a massive centipede creature of some sort. Its carapace was covered in scratches and tick marks. Its muted, puke-green exoskeleton gradually faded to a gross brown color at its underbelly where it’s purple feet skittered and stabbed along the carpet. It had triangular shaped slits for eyes and a massive set of dull, chipped mandibles that clicked together when it spoke making that god-awful clacking noise.

The other monster was a little shorter but still massive. It looked like a living ball of phlegm, greenish-brown, and dripping everywhere. It pulled itself along the ground like a slug leaving a trail of goop in its path. Instead of eyes, two glowing clouds of white smoke bled out of the top portion of its body, like someone placed pieces of lit coal in its head that continually burned into its face. When it spoke its own melting surface dripped over its mouth hole making the words sound gargled.

“What are we looking for, Trench?” the blob creature bubbled.

“Idiot,” Trench shot. “I don’t know. Not even Lord Epoch knows.”

“Well then how will we know when we find it?”

“Oh, we’ll know, Sepsis.” Trench said skittering into the office room. His carapace thumped against the door, swinging it open and into the wall. “Lord Epoch said it will resonate. That’s likely why they sent the Seer in to find it.” He whipped his head around, his triangle eyes scouring the room. “I haven’t forgotten about you, little human,” he stuttered through his teeth and mandibles, the latter clacking rhythmically as he spoke. “Once we find what you’re here for, we’ll be back for you.” He fully entered the interior room with Sepsis slumping behind, unable to fit without squeezing through the door, leaving phlegm dripping along the jamb as he did.

As the two things in the office thumped and cursed at each other, Zer0 released her breath. She slid out from under the desk and crawled along the wall toward the entrance. Her charge wasn’t to find any artifact like the demons said. It was only to get a feeling and the mission was accomplished in droves. The feeling was strong and angry. Two fucking demons were walking around an abandoned building during the day!

She looked over her shoulder. Sepsis and Trench were still tossing the office, strewing papers and tipping file cabinets. She furrowed her eyebrows a moment until she saw the tail end of Trench wave past.

“Yeah fuck that,” she mouthed and pressed toward the doorway when the worst thing possible could happen. It suddenly felt like her insides were animated, announced very loudly that their accommodations were unacceptable, packed everything the owned, and evacuated through her nose. Zer0 fumbled and swatted but she couldn’t get her phone to stop ringing.

The monsters piqued and shot into the receiving room.

“There you are!” Sepsis boomed through his melting face.

Trench dropped back onto all his legs and skittered from the ground to the wall and onto the ceiling where he hung two thirds of his body down over the entryway, blocking Zer0’s exit. Zer0, fell to her haunches, and slid backward toward the desk.

“Zer0?” Aury said curiously through phone. “Zer0, it’s me. Where are you?”

“We’ve been waiting for you, little human,” Trench hissed. “And now we have you.” Zer0 stammered in response, bumping into the wall.

“Yeah,” Sepsis added. “We’re gonna have fun with you.”

Zer0 screamed as Trench darted to the wall and back to the ground. In a blink he was just a few feet from her. She pushed off the ground, narrowly dodging his lunge. His mandibles took a chunk out of the wall where Zer0 was just pressed.

She rolled, pulled her knees under her, and crawled as quickly as she could to the desk.

“Zer0!” Aury called from the phone again.

Papers flew as Sepsis circled around the to the other side of the desk, knocking over a filing cabinet in the process.

“I got her, Trench,” he blubbered excitedly. “I got her.”

He rolled forward and pulled the desk out of the way, lifting it up off the ground and flinging across the room. It ricocheted off Trench’s thick exoskeleton.

“Watch it, you walking turd,” Trench barked, hideously clicking his mandibles. His black eyes stared daggers at Sepsis.

“Sorry, Trench,” Sepsis said. “I just have the one arm. I didn’t wanna drop this.” He held up a box that rattled like a broken plate.

“Don’t show her, you idiot!”

Then they shrieked at a brilliant flash of light that filled the room. Trench hissed and jumped behind the desk the way roaches scatter when someone turns on a light. Sepsis, slunk toward the office moaning.

“Malcom Xavier, motherfuckers!” Zer0 shouted, holding the pog up at them. The blessed object like a beacon weapon, casting light in a beam that burned the demons. She passed the light from the desk behind which Trench was currently cowering, back across the room and onto Sepsis. He groaned in pain and dropped the box he was carrying.

Zer0 bolted. In a flash, she was on her feet and spiriting toward the door. She scooped her phone up and in one swift movement, pocketed it, scooped the box up and was breaking for the hallway. She heard Trench curse and order Sepsis not to let her get away but that mandate was stifled when she whipped her arm behind her and shone the bright beam of light back on the monsters as she rounded the corner and exited.

In the hallway she was a blur. She pumped her arms up and down, running on her toes as hard as she’s ever run. She rounded a corner, then another and another all with the sound of shouts and screams and skittering legs following closely behind. As she turned onto the last hall, she reached up at a metal bracer and pulled knocking over an ancient scaffold, blocking the way past. She ran, meeting the wall with full force. She pried open the window, and flung herself out, the two demons cursing at her and sizzling in the dying rays of the setting sun.

“Are you okay?” Aury’s voice echoed slightly through her car’s speakers as she shifted angerly, the gears grinding and tires squeaking as she slammed the clutch.

“I’m pretty far from fucking okay, Mathersburg,” Zer0 said through her panting. “I’m pretty far from fucking okay.”

“What happened? Are you hurt?”

“I’m not hurt,” she responded, starting to breath through the shock. She turned onto the freeway and peered into the rearview mirror. “I’m okay. It’s just… Demons, Aury. Two of them,” she said, tears welling in her eyes, her body’s first response now that she had time to actually feel what was happening. “They were in the school.”

“In the day time?”

“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes and sniffing. She hardened her voice. “Listen, I’m on my way to your place,” she said, checking the mirror again. “Just be ready, okay? We have to talk.”

Epoch and the shadow demon stood unblinking at the scene of the school from Madam Wong’s Happy Hot. They watched the sun slowly disappear, leaving a pink hue in the cloudless sky.

“I was hoping they wouldn’t fuck it up,” Epoch said.

He uncrossed his arms, turned around, and disappeared into the shadows behind the exhaust vents, leaving the shadow demon snarling chipped teeth in the silence.