SILENTIUM

TOMMASO: 23rd of October, 2024. Custodia Ultimae Vocis. Isolation Chamber Three. Father Tommaso Lanza analyzing Case TM-2024-051.

The human body is roughly seventy percent water. Forty liters on average.

I- I kept thinking about that while reading Dr. Whitmore's report. All that water just... sitting inside us. Moving through us. We don't really think about it.

Catherine Walsh thought about it. By the end, I think it's all she could think about.

Let's take a step back.

Hopkins hospice. Pancreatic cancer, stage four. The kind that spreads fast. Liver involvement, kidney involvement.

They gave her days when she was admitted. A week at most.

Room 447, third floor, east wing. Standard hospice accommodation. Single bed, vitals monitor that beeped every eight seconds, IV stand. Window facing the parking lot. The air had that particular hospice smell - disinfectant trying to cover something else.

She refused morphine. The staff found this unusual - pancreatic cancer is painful, especially at that stage. But Catherine was insistent. She told the nurses the medication made everything blurry, made it hard to focus. She needed to stay alert. Needed to keep watching.

They noted it in her chart. "Patient refusing pain management despite evident discomfort. Mental status: anxious, hypervigilant. Refuses to close eyes for extended periods".

Catherine had one request when she arrived. Just one thing she wanted.

Her daughter Emily had to bring an iPad from home. Catherine wanted it set up at the foot of her bed, propped on the meal tray table. Angled just right so she could see it clearly. Emily brought in a phone charger with a long cord. Catherine was very specific about that: the device needed to stay on. Constantly. No interruptions.

The nursing staff thought it was harmless. They'd had patients watch cooking shows, nature documentaries, family videos on loop. Comfort during difficult times and this seemed no different.

What she wanted to watch was a livestream from Oregon. One of those ambient video feeds people put online. Just a camera pointed at a river. Water moving over rocks, trees overhead, bird sounds. The kind of thing people have on in the background while they work.

Catherine watched it for twenty-one days straight.

Emily's account describes the first few days as almost normal. Her mother seemed calm watching the river. Peaceful. The hospice staff thought it was helping with her anxiety about dying. Some people want music, some want family photos, some want nature sounds. Catherine wanted a river.

But on the third day, Emily noticed her mother wasn't blinking as much. She'd stare at the screen for longer and longer periods. Emily timed it once: four minutes without blinking. Catherine's eyes would tear up from dryness but she wouldn't look away.

Emily asked if she wanted to watch something else. A movie, maybe or some family videos. Catherine said no. She had to keep watching. She couldn't miss it.

On day seven, Emily tried turning the iPad off while her mother slept. Just to give it a rest, charge it properly. Catherine woke up immediately. Emily said it was like an alarm had gone off. Her mother's eyes opened and she reached for the iPad with surprising strength. Made Emily turn it back on. Waited until the stream loaded and the water was moving again before she'd let Emily leave. After that, the iPad stayed on constantly.

By the second week, Catherine stopped sleeping more than fifteen, twenty minutes at a time. The staff was concerned, sleep deprivation in hospice patients usually means increased pain, confusion. But Catherine seemed focused. Alert. Just watching the water.

Emily asked what she was watching for. What she was waiting to see. Catherine told her the water was pretending. That it flows to look natural, to look random. But if you watch it long enough without blinking, you can see the movement isn't real. You can see that something is performing. Catherine said: Water flows because if it stays still, we'd see what it actually is.

Emily thought it was the liver failure. Ammonia building up in her mother's blood. The doctors agreed. They increased her anti-nausea medication, adjusted her care plan. Standard end-stage delirium, they said.

But Emily noticed something else. Her mother was gaining weight. The medical notes show Catherine's weight went up two kilograms between days nineteen and twenty-one. This doesn't happen. When your kidneys are failing, when you're dying, you lose weight. You stop eating, stop drinking. Your body consumes itself. Catherine's body was filling up.

Day fourteen. The nurse wrote: "Patient's face is swollen. Eyes puffy like she's been crying for hours, but she hasn't. Tried to examine her, but she became upset. Wouldn't look away from the screen".

Day sixteen. Dr. Whitmore tried to check Catherine's legs and back. She wrote: "Patient's ankles are swollen. When I pressed my thumb into the flesh, it sank in easily. Like pushing into cold butter. The indent stayed there for minutes after I pulled away. The skin didn't spring back. Just stayed pressed in, holding the shape of my thumb".

Day eighteen. The nurse's notes get more detailed: "Patient's skin has become translucent. In certain light, appears almost see-through. Like wax paper that's gotten wet. Visible fluid movement beneath surface. After blood pressure check, cuff marks remained visible for ten minutes, deep grooves in flesh. Tissue consistency similar to wet clay."

Emily noticed her mother's hands changing. The fingers getting thicker. Swollen. The skin stretched so tight it looked shiny. When Catherine gripped the iPad to adjust the angle, Emily said she could see something shift under the skin. Fluid, moving from her knuckles down to her wrist. Rippling. Like her mother's hands were full of water instead of blood and muscle.

Day nineteen. Dr. Whitmore pressed her fingers into Catherine's forearm to check the swelling. Standard procedure. You press down, the fluid is supposed to move away from your fingers. Spread out to the sides. Catherine's didn't. The water moved toward the pressure. Gathered under Dr. Whitmore's fingers. Like it was curious. Like it wanted to touch back.

Day twenty. Morning shift. Nurse Angela Miller had to reach across Catherine to adjust the IV. Her arm passed between Catherine and the screen. Catherine's hand shot out. Grabbed Angela's wrist. Hard enough that Angela screamed. Five bruises. Dark ones. The kind that last for weeks. Emily said her mother's grip was too hard, too firm. Like Catherine's fingers weren't fingers anymore, like they were packed full of something, pressurized. Angela said later that it felt like squeezing an overfilled water balloon. That same tightness. That feeling that if you squeezed any harder, something would burst. When Angela pulled free, her uniform sleeve was wet. Not from sweat. Catherine's palm had left a damp handprint on the fabric. Cold and wet. Angela tried to dry it under the heating vent. The print stayed wet for hours. And it smelled like pond water. Like something that's been sitting still for too long in the dark.

Day twenty-one. The last examination. Dr. Whitmore's notes:

"Catherine has gained twelve kilograms in three weeks. She's dying of cancer. She barely eats. This is impossible. Her skin. I can see through it now. I can see the veins underneath, dark blue lines. I can see the water beneath the surface, moving in her arms and neck. I touched her throat to check for swelling. It felt like touching a sponge full of water. Dense. Heavy. When she swallowed, I could see something moving under the skin. Not food. Not saliva. Water. Following paths that don't make anatomical sense. Branching through her throat like tributaries. Her eyes are the worst. They look clouded. Like dirty glass. And there's water in the corners: tears, but they're not falling. They're just gathering there. Building up. Waiting. We tried to take her for imaging. She refused. Became agitated when we moved to disconnect the iPad. Said she couldn't leave. That she'd 'miss it.' That it was 'almost ready."

Catherine was retaining water. Her body weight increasing when it should have been decreasing. Fluid moving backward, toward pressure instead of away from it.

In baptism, we say water is the medium of a new life. Of transformation. I don't know what Catherine was transforming into.

October 9th. 3:47 AM.

Catherine had been unconscious for six hours. Her breathing had that awful pattern, the kind you hear at the end. Long silence. Then a gasping breath, wet and rattling. Then silence again. Each breath sounded like drowning.

Emily was holding her mother's hand. Had been for three hours. She told Dr. Whitmore later that her mother's hand was too heavy. Too cold. Not the normal cold of dying. Colder than that. Like holding something pulled from a freezer.

Angela was checking Catherine's vital signs every fifteen minutes. Blood pressure jumping around. Heart rate climbing, then dropping. Temperature kept falling, down to 34 degrees when it should have been 36. The room was warm, but Catherine's body was cold.

Emily said her mother's skin had changed color in those final hours. And it was not yellow or grey like you would expect. No, something else. Like looking at someone through frosted glass. Translucent. The veins underneath were visible as dark lines running through pale skin. And the water beneath, Emily said you could watch it moving. Slowly. Creeping through channels under the surface that shouldn't be there. Catherine's face was swollen. Puffy. Features distorted so she barely looked like herself anymore. Her closed eyelids bulged. The skin around her neck was tight, stretched. When Angela checked her pulse, she said the artery felt strange under her fingers. Too thick. Throbbing with too much pressure.

The room had changed too. Despite the air conditioning, water had formed on the windows. Droplets running down the glass in slow lines. The air felt thick, heavy with moisture. Emily's clothes stuck to her skin with dampness. Angela's hair started curling from the humidity.

The iPad was still playing. Twenty-one days without stopping. Emily had thought about turning it off once her mother lost consciousness. But she didn't. Couldn't make herself do it. She told Dr. Whitmore later that she felt like something was watching through the screen. Waiting. And turning that it off would be... noticed.

At 3:47 and 23 seconds, the sound changed. Emily described the river making a different sound. Like the sound of moving water changed. It stopped sounding like liquid. Started sounding like impact. Heavy. Like meat being thrown against something. Each wave hitting rock wasn't a splash anymore, it was a strike. Deliberate. Forceful. She said: That's what water sounds like when it stops flowing. When it moves with intention.

Emily was still holding Catherine's hand. The temperature dropped. Instantly. Between one heartbeat and the next, her mother's hand went from cold to freezing. Not the normal cold of approaching death. Deeper than that. Emily said it burned. Like touching ice. Her fingers went numb where they made contact. Within seconds, frostbitten.

The river stopped. The livestream stayed active. Timestamp kept updating. A bird flew across the frame. Trees moved in wind. But the water stopped flowing. Surface went flat. Underneath, every current frozen mid-motion. Every wave crest holding its shape. But not still. The foam on the waves didn't dissipate. It held shape. And Emily could see it moving slightly. Pulsing. Like muscle fibers under skin. Like the entire river had flexed and was holding position.

Emily told Dr. Whitmore that in that moment, watching the river hold itself still, she understood something. The river in Oregon wasn't... it. It was just a part. One small part. Like a finger. Or- or a cell. She said she could feel it, something vast. So vast that maybe it was all the water in the world. Every ocean, every river, every raindrop. All of it connected. All of it aware. And her mother had been watching one tiny piece of it for three weeks. One molecule learning to recognize her.

The air pressure in the room changed. Emily's ears popped. Angela dropped her clipboard. Said later her hands stopped working properly.

The humidity spiked. Within seconds, everything was damp. Emily's clothes stuck to her. Condensation appeared on the walls. The smell, the smell... Emily described it as ancient silt. Stagnant water. Like opening something that had been sealed for a very, very long time.

Catherine's eyes opened. Both at once. She sat up. Shouldn't have been possible. Three weeks in bed, muscles wasted, body failing and swollen with twelve kilograms of water that had nowhere to go, but she sat up smoothly. Easily. Like puppet strings pulling her upright. Her neck made a wet crack when it straightened. Not bone breaking. Something liquid shifting position inside her throat.

Emily said in that moment, under the glow from the iPad screen, she could see everything under her mother's skin. The water. All of it. Moving through her like dark rivers under ice. And all of it gathering at her throat, pooling there.

Catherine's hospital gown was soaked through. Water was coming out of her skin. Not sweat. Actual water. Beading on the surface like condensation on cold glass. Running down her arms in thin streams, dripping from her fingertips.

She didn't look at Emily. Didn't seem to know her daughter was there. Just stared at the iPad. At the river that had finally stopped pretending to be normal water.

She opened her mouth. The security audio is... affected. Sounds like it was recorded underwater.

Catherine collapsed. Heart stopped at 3:47 and 47 seconds. Twenty-four seconds after sitting up. A couple of seconds after speaking the Tongue. When she fell back, Emily heard something. A sloshing sound. Inside her mother's body. Like a bucket of water tipping over. All that fluid, shifting. Settling.

Angela checked for a pulse. Nothing. Called for help even though they were a hospice, even though Catherine had signed papers saying not to. Angela told Dr. Whitmore she needed other people in the room. Witnesses. Because the body was still changing. The swelling was going down. Fast. Too fast. Emily watched her mother's face. Watched the puffiness disappear like someone was draining it. Watched her mother's stomach flatten, the skin pulling tight over ribs that had been hidden by all that water. But the sheets under her mother's body stayed dry. The water wasn't coming out. It was simply going somewhere else.

On the iPad, the river started moving again. Like nothing had happened. Just water over rocks. Trees swaying. Normal.

Emily hasn't been able to drink water since that night.

Angela Miller submitted an incident report the next morning. Standard procedure for any death with unusual circumstances. But she added a note at the bottom, handwritten. Dr. Whitmore included it in the file she sent to the Archdiocese:

"After patient expired, the condensation on the windows remained for three hours. Despite maintenance adjusting the room temperature. Despite opening the door to the hallway. The water droplets stayed on the glass. And when I went to wipe them away with a towel before the family arrived, the moisture was cold. Colder than the room. Colder than the outside temperature. And it left my hand numb for twenty minutes afterward. I had to run it under hot water for five minutes before I could feel my fingers again".

I spent six hours this morning looking for similar cases. Anything involving water. Aquatic manifestations. Found twelve cases across four centuries. Deaths near water. Rivers, wells, rain. People speaking the Tongue in their final moments near water. But they're not the same. In every one, the water was just a location. People drowned, or were found near water after speaking. But the water itself wasn't part of the manifestation. Wasn't... active.

This is different. Catherine wasn't near water when she died. She was watching it. From a screen. And that water, that specific river in Oregon, responded. Stopped moving and showed her something.

The Church teaches that the Tongue is the language of the threshold. The boundary between life and death. When someone speaks it while dying, they're perceiving what comes after. What waits on the other side.

I don't know what Catherine saw. I don't know what was in that water. Or if it was the water itself. Or something using the water. Or traveling through it. All I know: she watched for three weeks. And when she died, that water three thousand miles away stopped moving for seventeen seconds.

And then there is Emily and her comment about understanding it all...? Some sort of revelation. About all being... connected? To other bodies of water and stuff like that? I mean, why's that? I really don't know what to think about that, considering her state of mind.

Emily Walsh is in the psychiatric ward at Johns Hopkins. They're keeping her there not because she's suicidal, the doctors were very clear about that. They're keeping her because she can't be near running water. Any running water at all.

First day there, a nurse turned on the bathroom faucet. Emily had what looked like a seizure. Full convulsions. Body rigid, then shaking. But the brain scan showed nothing. No electrical activity in her brain that would cause a seizure. The neurologist wrote: "Seizure-like symptoms with no neural cause. Unknown origin".

Emily told Dr. Whitmore what actually happened when that faucet turned on. She heard tapping. Rhythmic. Deliberate. Like fingers drumming on wood. The water coming out of the pipe, Emily said it wasn't being pushed. It was coming out on its own. Moving deliberately. Reaching for the sink basin. When it hit the bottom, it didn't drain. It pooled. Started gathering at the edges. Taking shape. Emily said she could see it starting to form something. To stand up in the basin. Rising. That's when she started seizing.

She won't drink water. Won't let it touch her skin. Won't even cry, she's forcing herself not to cry because she's terrified of producing water from her own body. She's dying of dehydration. Slowly. Kidneys failing. Blood getting thicker. Lips cracked and bleeding. But she refuses.

Anyway, I'm going to play the recorded security audio and analyze what comes out of it.

[THE TONGUE SPEAKS]

MALETH... KHOR...

Maleth-Khor.

Well, that's... pretty clear, right? I understood what it meant when I heard it. Immediately. I know, I know that's not supposed to happen. Translation requires comparing dozens of cases, building context. But I knew, at least part of it. "Maleth" is stream, flow. It's- it's pretty obvious. Right?

I don't know about "Khor" and I'll try searching for references in the Lexicon. But-

Let's see... for "Khor" we have only 2 occurrences, so it's a tier three word. Hypothetical translation is "Time". Of course. So the translation should be the... the...

No, wait a second. Let me check for Maleth and not jump to conclusions quickly. There's no logic in the Tongue, let's not get... let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Maleth. 12 occurrences and- huh? The... the pages are missing. I can see it has 12 occurrences, it's flagged as tier three but. The pages are missing. They've not been torn apart, they're just missing. I- I need to ask about this, maybe my copy of the Lexicon has been modified. Or, or something else, I mean...

Gesù. This case is driving me insane.

I'll add Maleth-Khor as a tier three word with a hypothetical translation following my gut, I guess. It's disgusting as a linguist, but it's better than nothing for now.

So at least for now: Maleth-Khor. Stream-Time. The Flow of Time.

One word added to the Lexicon.

---

Translation Summary

← Back to Episodes