The Second Language

The first time I noticed something was wrong with my brother, Karl, was on a Tuesday in late September. We shared a two-bedroom flat in the old part of the city, and he often crashed on my sofa after late shifts at the hospital. That night, he was mumbling in his sleep, his voice low and rhythmic, almost like a chant. I couldn’t make out the words, but they had a strange cadence, a musicality that I didn’t recognize. I woke him up, and he looked at me with glassy eyes before closing them again, turning over. I shrugged it off. He was a nurse, exhausted, and people talked in their sleep.

But it kept happening. Lights flickered in the hallway when he was sick with a cold, and I’d feel a cold spot in the corner of my room, even with the heating on. I started to avoid being in the flat alone, especially when Karl was away on night shifts. The feeling was like being watched, a pressure behind my eyes, a whisper just out of hearing. I told myself it was my imagination, stress from my dissertation, but the unease grew.

One night, Karl was on my sofa again, recovering from a fever. He was mumbling, and this time I propped myself on my elbows, straining to listen. The words were foreign, guttural, and they made my skin crawl. I didn’t recognize the language, and I’m not sure I wanted to. I texted his boyfriend, Daniel, who lived a few blocks away, asking him to come over and check on Karl while I had to go to a mandatory evening seminar. Daniel was calm, said he’d be there soon.

At the seminar, my phone buzzed. It was Daniel. His voice was tight. ‘He’s awake, but he’s speaking in Latin. He won’t stop. He’s shaking, crying. Please come home.’ I bolted, heart pounding, a cold dread filling my chest. When I burst through the door, Karl was sitting upright on the sofa, tears streaming down his face, but his eyes were open and unseeing. His mouth moved rapidly, Latin pouring out, words I didn’t know but that felt ancient and wrong. Daniel was at a loss, holding his shoulders, trying to snap him out of it.

After about a minute, Karl blinked, looked at us as if seeing us for the first time, and collapsed into sobs. He clutched me, begging me not to go out that night, to stay with him. I asked why, but he just shook his head, saying he couldn’t tell me, that it was too dangerous. I looked at Daniel, who shrugged, equally confused. I decided to stay, thinking it was just a fever dream, a panic attack.

The next morning, Karl seemed fine, but he wouldn’t talk about it. He just said it was a bad dream, and for a while, things returned to normal. But then I started to notice things in the flat. Books on the shelf would be rearranged, not in a messy way, but in a pattern I didn’t recognize, almost like a code. The plants in my room would be wilted in the morning even though I watered them. And at night, I’d hear faint scratching sounds from the walls, like something was trying to get in.

I began to research. The Latin words Karl spoke, I wrote them down phonetically, hoping to find a translation. A few weeks later, I found an old, obscure text in the university library about a ‘sleep language’ spoken during the plague years, a tongue that was said to be a conduit for spirits. The words Karl had spoken were a warning, a plea for protection. They were a ritual to ward off something that followed people home, that latched onto the weak and the sick, and that grew stronger when the siblings were apart.

I confronted Karl, and this time he broke down. He told me that when he was sick, he saw a figure standing at the foot of the sofa, a tall, gaunt thing with eyes like burning coals. It spoke to him in Latin, told him that it needed a host, and that it would take me if Karl didn’t obey. Karl had been fighting it, but it was getting stronger, and the words he spoke in Latin were its commands, not his own. I was terrified, but I knew we had to do something.

We tried to cleanse the flat, brought in a priest, burned sage, but nothing worked. The figure became more bold, appearing in mirrors, in the corner of my eye. One night, I woke to find Karl standing over my bed, his eyes black, his mouth moving in that ancient language. He was speaking of a ritual, a bargain to exchange our vitality for its freedom. I screamed, and he blinked, confused, not remembering a thing.

Desperate, we sought out a linguist who specialized in obscure dead languages. She listened to our story, and her face paled. She told us that the language wasn’t just Latin; it was a precursor, a language of the void, spoken by beings that existed before our world. The ritual Karl was reciting was a summoning, not a banishing. The only way to end it was to make the being believe we were no longer a threat, to fake our deaths, or to give it something it wanted more.

We decided to leave the flat, to separate for a while, hoping the distance would break the connection. But the day I packed my bags, I felt a cold breath on my neck, and I heard the click of claws on the floor. I turned, and there it was, in broad daylight, a tall figure with a featureless face, blocking the doorway. It opened its mouth and spoke in a language I now understood, a language that made the air thick with dread.

‘You cannot run,’ it said, its voice like grinding stones. ‘You are already marked. The one who speaks the words belongs to me. But you, the listener, are the key. I will consume your connection, and then I will take your brother.’

I looked at Karl, who was pale, shaking, his eyes wide. And in that moment, I knew what I had to do. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and cut my palm, writing the Latin symbols on the floor, the ones from Karl’s first night. The figure laughed, a sound that tore through the room, and began to advance. But I had a plan. I spoke the words I had memorized, the ones Karl’s boyfriend had recorded, but I reversed them, turning the summoning into a binding.

The figure shrieked, its form flickering, collapsing in on itself, and then it was gone. The flat was silent. Karl rushed to me, crying, but I felt a strange calm. I bandaged my hand, and we sat in the living room, not speaking. I didn’t tell him that the binding required a sacrifice, that each time I spoke those words, a piece of my soul would be consumed, until there was nothing left. I only said it was over, hoping that was true.

But that night, I woke to a whisper in my ear, a voice I recognized all too well. It was the same rhythm, the same cadence, but now it was mine. I was speaking Latin in my sleep, and my own words were a warning, a plea for help. I knew then that the second language had taken root in me, and the only way to save Karl was to become the vessel myself, to endure the weight of eternity so he could live. The lights flickered, and I smiled, because now I understood the language of the void, and it was a language of sacrifice.