Dark the night, cold the wind, low the moaning sound. Then the scratching claws against the door. The lock rattled. A probing shadow bled beneath the wood. It was a nondescript building from the outside. The morgue was just a big concrete block, like a prison for the dead.

  The shadow grips the door from the bottom and shakes it with increasing urgency. The sun will rise soon, and oh how they hate the light. A heavy blow pounded upon the door. A dog started barking, but the world would not wake. The shadows at the base of the door pooled and grew. As smoke, as oil, floating and distorting in the air. One by one the daemons slipped beneath the door to form inside the concrete hallway. There was no light, but those haphazardly scattered yellow eyes blink and wander every which way. Dropping to all fours, or all sixes, or all eights, the daemons sniffed their way along the walls. They stuck clawed fingers beneath the doors, and sniffed at the cracks.

  Presently one of them squealed with excitement. The others rushed to share its discovery. Through the door, into a large room dominated by giant metal drawers. On the other side were metal lockers. The daemons began throwing these open at once. Jewelry, clothing, shoes, hurled wildly at one another or thrown into the air. The daemons chittered in their alien tongue as they played. They put on the hats and clothing of the dead. A daemon with a tattered blue dress over its head scampered across the floor to collide with the wall. Another was going through someone’s wallet and eating up all the bills.

  Other daemons sniffed their way along the large drawers. Opening one, the daemons revealed the hard dead face of a fat old man. The daemon smacked him across his cheeks. The neck was so rigid, it barely registered the blow. The drawer closed again, and the daemon sniffed along. Then one discovered what he was looking for. It squealed with delight. The note was harsh and long, soon joined by the other voices. The grating strain of their voices twisted as it rang. The demented melody began in laughter, but ended in torment.

  The haunting sound could be heard all around the building. A trembling hand rested on the outside door handle. The elderly janitor double checked the pockets of his overalls. He still had the keys. The door was still locked. The lights were all off. Yet the tormented cry rose baleful from inside. It was still only 4 in the morning. He was never here this early, but he’d wanted to get a head start to catch his flight later that day. Surely this sound couldn’t be normal though.

  The janitor fumbled with the keys. Then with his phone, thinking to call the police. But his fingers felt numb and clumsy, and he never finished dialing. This was no burglary. He froze and listened to the unearthly chorus. He ran to the windows, peering in. Only darkness. The window panes trembled with the straining heights of their song. No human could produce such a sound, he decided. Someone was playing a trick on him. Someone left a stereo on, playing some Halloween crap. Mr. Therney, the mortician?

  It seemed to the janitor that he recognized the same chittering squeal repeat, and decided it really was a song on loop. He took a deep sigh and fit the key into the lock. Then opening, he turned on the lights in the hallway.

  “Mr. Therney? Are you here already, Mr. Therney?” he called hesitantly.

  The haunting chorus stopped at once. That really made the janitor’s blood freeze. He stared down the hallway, looking at the lone door which shouldn’t be open. Slowly a black claw reached around the door and drew it in. The janitor didn’t breathe again until it clicked closed.

  He could not believe his eyes. And so he didn’t. This was the same hallway he’d been down a thousand times. The doors were all closed, just like they should be. Everything was quiet, everything as it always was, except for that image burned into his memory. But surely he was just tired from being up so early. The inhuman song didn’t seem real anymore. The claw certainly not. The janitor stared, and willed himself not to believe, and so he didn’t. And in case he forgot that he didn’t believe, he reminded himself every step.

  But if he really didn’t believe, why did his heart protest so violently as he approached the door? Why did his fingers cling onto the handle, holding it shut against his will? The janitor opened the door. His hand immediately shot to the familiar light switch just inside. In a second it was on, and his reality shattered.

  Scaled in places, with patchy fur. Yellow eyes where they didn’t belong. Gaping maws with black tongues and needle teeth. The daemons huddled around that new lady who Mr. Therney processed the other day: Mrs. Orwell. She lay cold and still on the floor. Shadows with substance traced through her gray hair and along her face. Down her long nose, along her stiff proud lips. The daemons cradled and covered her naked body, now clothed in shifting shadow.

  “God damnit!” The janitor slammed the door shut. He pressed his shoulder against it for support. Just in time before the onslaught began: first the shrieking, the feral rage. This was completely different than the woeful song a moment ago. Sledgehammer blows upon the door. The first one jarred the janitor so badly his shoulder went numb. He pressed his back to the door after that, struggling to find the right key which would lock the hall door.

  The daemons were only getting louder and more frantic. The light was still on in their room. Powerful rows of overhead florescent lights, bright enough to minutely examine a body. The light flooded every corner of the space, drenching and drowning the daemons. They suffocated and burned in its glare. The shadows of their body dripped and dissolved away. They had to get out. They flopped over one another as they beat their way to the door. They couldn’t take the shape of shadows and escape underneath the door now that the light destroyed their power. If they couldn’t go under, they must go through it. They hurled themselves madly, those torpedoes of rage.

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  The janitor fitted the key at last. He turned it the wrong way in his panic. The door bulged out from its frame. He slammed his numb shoulder to force it closed again, this time locking it. Then scrambling away along the floor, tripping and falling over himself, he dashed away.

  The terrible wailing from the daemons was met by the screeching sirens of the police outside. The sound had been reported. The officers Dave and Sara were having a most unusual night. They were getting out of their car when the janitor sprinted from the building as if it was on fire.

  “Is that your alarm? What’s that terrible noise?” Dave asked loudly to be heard.

  “Daemons!” he janitor gibbered. He fell to his knees, out of breath. He realized how mad that must make him appear, but was left speechless.

  The officers looked at one another. “Stay right here, okay? We’re going to check it out.”

  “Daemons. In the morgue, the cold room. The old woman — God, what were they doing with her body?”

  “Who? Who is the old woman? Is she alright?” officer Sara barked urgently.

  The janitor shook his head frantically. “She’s dead. But it’s a morgue, she’s supposed to be. The daemons had Mrs. Orwell’s body out of the cabinet! Right there on the floor! Such a disgrace.”

  “Mrs. Orwell!” Dave cried. “It’s got something to do with Emma Larson! I knew that girl wasn’t being honest with me.”

  The sound inside began to trail off. One by one the daemon voices stopped shrieking, until only a lone melody remained. It went on for several painful seconds before it too fell silent.

  “You’re alright now. You stay here, officer Dave and I are going to have a look around.”

  “The door is locked. I’ll come with you,” the janitor said stubbornly. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea of me, officers. I work here. I’m supposed to be here. And I’m not mad. I didn’t do anything wrong. It was the daemons who were breaking up the place!”

  “The daemons. Right.” Ordinarily, Dave would have dismissed such a thing out of hand. But after hearing that terrible screeching sound, it was hard to think of what else may be. Were people not joking when they called Mrs. Orwell a witch?

  “So quiet now. I think the light might have done them in,” the janitor explained when they stood outside the locked cold room. “They were singing something else until I turned the lights on. I hardly had a chance to get a look before they went mad. Nasty little creatures they were. Like rips in the fabric of reality. Never seen anything like it.”

  The officers exchanged another glance. They read each other well, and moved in unison to flank either side of the door. Handguns at the ready, Dave nodded to the janitor.

  “Open it.”

  His fingers still shook, even with his escort. The lock clicked. The door gently swung out.

  The daemons were gone. Discarded clothing and personal items were strewn around the room. Mrs. Orwell lay bare and resolute, alone on the tiled floor. Along the ground were black smudges. Little piles of soot and ash dusted the scene.

  “They must have gotten out,” Dave said. “They must have been pretty stupid daemons not to know how light switches work.”

  “What a mess. It looks like wild animals were here though.” Sara prodded a pile of clothing with her boot.

  “No. No no no…” the janitor said. He pointed a shaking finger at the mortuary cabinets. “They’re closed now. One of them was open the first time. The one that had Mrs. Orwell in it. I bet it’s real dark in those drawers. I bet they crawled inside to get away from the light.”

  “Not it,” Sara said immediately.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not opening it. You do it.”

  Dave knelt beside the closed door. He put his ear to the metal. Nothing. He rapped it with his knuckle. Nothing. Nothing. Just his own heart, going so fast.

  “Good lord,” the janitor mumbled, crossing himself.

  “Should we be handling this?” Dave asked. “Maybe it’s more of an animal control kind of thing.”

  “Way to be a man, Dave. Let’s get this over with.” Sara pushed her way past Dave. Her drawn gun in a her free hand, she heaved open the metal door.

  The sound hit them first. The tormented screech as the light flooded into the metal drawer. A dark explosion, like a smoke grenade flooded out. All six of the hiding daemons swarmed at once to wildly fling themselves in all directions.

  Sara’s gun went off. More light, more noise, more chaos. The daemons rushed straight past the officers though, once more clothing Mrs. Orwell’s body with their shadows. Sara was about to fire her gun again, but Dave had his hand on her arm. The daemons were ignoring them completely. They lifted Mrs. Orwell’s body from the ground and fled through the open door. Dave spotted one of daemons scampering aside to snatch a set of golden keys from the discarded personal items, as well as what might have been an emerald necklace.

  The officers rushed after the daemons into the hallway. They were moving fast now. Their limbs flowed like liquid as they streamed down the hall. Even carrying Mrs. Orwell, their feral quickness was impossible to match.

  “Stop, police!” Dave shouted vainly. “Sara, get in the car. Follow them!”

  Racing through the parking lot. Guns sheathed, hands on the door handles. Dave and Sara stopped short, both staring at the daemons. They were rising into the air now. Black wings of smoke billowed up to beat the air in slow powerful strokes. Mrs. Orwell’s body lifted off the ground entirely and was being carried away.

  “Maybe not the car,” Sara said. “What the hell? Seriously, what in the nine hells! Is that what a daemon looks like?”

  “What do you think they want her body for?” Dave asked. He leaned heavily against the side of the car. “I feel a little sick.”

  “Were those her daemons? Whose are they now?” Sara asked.

  The janitor only shrugged. There was no way he was going to make his flight now. But maybe that was okay, because home seemed unusually appealing.

  “I don’t know how we’re supposed to phone this in. Should we call it a break in?”

  “I think we need more information first,” Dave replied. “Emma Larson has some more explaining to do. But first, maybe a stop at the church to see Father Austin.”