SILENTIUM

TOMMASO: 17th of November, 2024. Custodia Ultimae Vocis. Isolation Chamber Three. Father Tommaso Lanza analyzing Case TM-1922-014.

I've been staring at this photograph for some time now. It's gelatin silver print, standard for the era. The emulsion is cracked with age, and there's water damage along with the bottom edge. But the image itself is perfectly clear.

A twelve-year-old girl. Lucia Innocenti. Sitting upright in a narrow bed. Hands folded in her lap. Eyes open, staring directly at the camera.

And around her head, a perfect circle of white light.

The photograph was taken on September 3rd, 1922, at the Convent of Santa Chiara in the Apennine Mountains. Remote location. Twenty-three nuns. Twelve orphaned girls in their care. The convent had been there since 1347, built on the ruins of a Roman shrine.

Lucia had arrived at the convent six months earlier. Her parents died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. She was quiet, the records say. Well-behaved. Spent most of her time in the chapel, praying. The nuns considered her devout. Unusually so for her age.

On August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption, Lucia complained of headaches. Pressure behind her eyes. The Mother Superior, Sister Agnese Martinelli, gave her willow bark tea and sent her to bed.

But the headaches didn't stop.

August 19th. Medical log from the visiting doctor, Dr. Cesare Bonetti from the nearest village, twelve kilometers down the mountain. He wrote: "Patient complains of persistent cranial pressure. Pupils responsive to light but patient reports difficulty focusing. No fever. No signs of meningitis. Recommended rest and prayer."

Prayer. That's what they recommended.

August 23rd. Sister Agnese's diary, which the Custodia obtained in 1957 when the convent was finally abandoned: "Lucia's eyes have changed. They appear brighter. When she looks at the candles during vespers, I can see the flame reflected in her pupils even when she turns away. As if the light stays inside her."

August 27th. Another entry: "Lucia no longer closes her eyes when she sleeps. Sister Maria checked on her during the night. The child was lying perfectly still, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. When Maria tried to close the girl's eyelids with her fingers, Lucia's eyes resisted. The muscles wouldn't relax. Maria said it felt like trying to close a door against a strong wind."

September 1st. Dr. Bonetti returned. His notes are more detailed this time: "Patient's pupils are significantly dilated. Minimal response to light stimulus. Sclera appears inflamed, vessels prominent and darkening. Patient reports no pain, only pressure. When I examined the back of her eyes with an ophthalmoscope, I saw something I cannot adequately describe. The optic nerve appeared swollen. Distended. As if under great pressure from within."

He recommended immediate transfer to a hospital in Florence. The Mother Superior refused. She believed Lucia was experiencing a spiritual trial. A test of faith.

September 2nd. Evening vespers. Sister Agnese wrote: "During the Magnificat, I noticed light around Lucia's head. At first, I thought it was the sunset coming through the window behind her. But the light moved with her. When she turned to face me, the light turned too. A perfect ring. A halo. Like the saints in our icons. Several of the sisters saw it. We fell to our knees. We prayed."

They thought they were witnessing a miracle.

September 3rd. Dawn. Sister Maria went to wake Lucia for morning prayers. She found the girl sitting upright in bed, eyes open, and the light around her head was no longer subtle. It was bright. Visible in daylight. Sister Maria ran to fetch the Mother Superior.

Sister Agnese brought a camera. The convent had one, an old Ernemann folding camera, a donation from a wealthy benefactor. Film was expensive, rarely used. But this, Sister Agnese believed, needed to be documented. Proof of God's favor upon their house.

She took one photograph.

The image I'm looking at now.

Lucia sitting in bed. The white ring around her head. And the nuns in the background, slightly out of focus, their hands clasped in prayer. Their faces turned toward the girl. Reverent.

They weren't looking at a child in agony. They were looking at a saint.

But when you look closely at the photograph, when you really examine it, you can see what that ring of light actually is.

It's not a halo. It's not divine radiance reflecting off her skin or some artifact of the photographic process.

It's tissue.

Neural tissue. Optic nerves that have exited the eye sockets and wrapped around her skull like a crown.

Dr. Whitmore examined the photograph two weeks ago using high-resolution scanning. She sent me her report.

"The white structures visible in the photograph are consistent with neural tissue under extreme photosensitivity. The optic nerves appear to have herniated through the orbital fissures and spread across the cranial surface. The tissue shows signs of incandescence. Literal light emission from biological matter heated to several hundred degrees Celsius. The subject should not have been conscious. The pain should have been incomprehensible. Yet her facial expression shows no distress. No indication of suffering. This is medically impossible."

The optic nerves don't just fail and exit the skull. That for sure doesn't happen. Nerves don't move like that. They don't snake around the skull and fuse into a rigid structure. And they certainly don't glow.

But in this photograph, Lucia's do.

I can see them clearly now that I know what I'm looking at. Thin, branching lines of white light emerging from both eye sockets. Spreading across her temples. Meeting at the back of her head. Forming a complete circuit. A crown of burning neurons wrapped around a twelve-year-old girl's skull.

And the nuns prayed.

The Custodia acquired this case in 1957, thirty-five years after Lucia's death. The convent had been abandoned for a decade by then. Most of the nuns had died. The few survivors refused to speak about what happened to Lucia.

But Sister Agnese's diary remained along with Dr. Bonetti's medical notes.

And, most importantly, the photograph and a silver crucifix that stood on the table beside Lucia's bed.

Before I get to that, I need to explain what the Custodia believes happened to Lucia. What I believe happened. Because this case is different from the others I've analyzed. This isn't simply about someone dying and speaking the Tongue in their final moments. This is about something trying to use a living person as a lens.

The report from our theological analysis team describes it as an attempted transmission. Not a message being whispered. A direct neural impulse. One thought, one signal, trying to pass through Lucia's brain.

But human neurology isn't designed for this. We're not built to receive transmissions from something that exists outside our physical laws. When you try to force a signal through an inadequate conductor, you get resistance. You get, well, heat.

The light around Lucia's head wasn't divine. It was the heat of her nervous system failing. Burning. Reaching incandescence.

Dr. Whitmore's report includes thermal calculations based on the photographic evidence. To produce visible light from biological tissue, you need temperatures exceeding 500 degrees Celsius. The human body can't survive that. The proteins denature. The cells rupture. The tissue should carbonize.

But Lucia lived for eleven more days after that photograph was taken.

Sister Agnese's diary documents what happened during those days. I'm going to read some of it. Not all of it, I can't, it's thirty pages of small, cramped handwriting. But the relevant sections, those will do.

September 3rd, afternoon: "Lucia cannot see anymore. Her eyes are still open, still bright, but when I wave my hand in front of her face, she doesn't react. Dr. Bonetti returned. He examined her eyes again. He went very pale. He said the structures inside her eyes have melted. The retinas are gone. The lens is opaque. But the light continues. He doesn't understand how. He wants to take her to Florence immediately. I told him no. God has chosen this child for a purpose. We cannot interfere."

September 4th: "Lucia has not eaten or drunk anything in twenty-four hours. She cannot swallow. Her throat muscles don't respond. But she continues to breathe. Steady, even breaths. Her pulse is strong. Sister Maria tried to give her water with a spoon, but the liquid just ran down her chin. Lucia didn't react. Her face is completely expressionless now. Like a statue. Like the saints in our chapel."

September 5th: "The light is growing stronger. We can see it from outside her room now. A glow beneath the door. Some of the younger girls are frightened. They say Lucia's room is too bright. That it hurts to look at. I tried to explain that this is holy. That we are witnessing God's presence. But I confess, I too find it difficult to enter her room. The light makes my eyes water. My head aches after only a few minutes inside."

September 7th: "Something is leaking from Lucia's ears. A clear fluid. Dr. Bonetti says it is cerebrospinal fluid. That the pressure in her skull has become so great it is forcing liquid out through any available opening. He is begging us to let him take her to a hospital. I have forbidden it. Lucia is in God's hands now."

September 8th: "Sister Maria kissed Lucia's eyes this morning. She wanted to show her devotion. To prove her faith was stronger than her fear. When she pulled away, her lips were burned. Small blisters forming on the skin. The light is hot now. You can feel it radiating from Lucia's face like standing near a furnace. Sister Maria is in the infirmary. She is praying for forgiveness for her weakness."

September 9th: "The other children are using the fluid from Lucia's crown to bless themselves. I saw them this morning, dipping their fingers in the small puddle that forms on Lucia's pillow each night. They touch it to their foreheads, their lips. A relic from a living saint. I have not stopped them. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps this is what miracles look like."

September 10th: "Lucia sat up this morning. We did not help her. One moment she was lying down, the next she was upright. Her movements were smooth. Her eyes are completely white now. The pupils are gone. Just blank, glowing stones. When she turned her head to face me, I felt something I cannot… describe. A presence. Vast. Looking through her. And then looking at me. I left the room. I… I am very ashamed of my fear."

September 11th: "Dr. Bonetti will not return. He came to the gate this morning and shouted that we are murdering the child. That what we call a miracle is torture. I told him to leave. He is a man of science. He cannot understand the ways of God. But I confess, when I go to Lucia's room now, I… do not see God."

September 12th: "The light around Lucia's head is pulsing now. Rhythmic. Like a heartbeat. But faster. Much faster. Sister Teresa tried to count the pulses. She said it was approximately 400 times per minute. Far too fast for a human heart. When the light pulses, we can hear something. A low hum. It makes the walls vibrate. It makes our teeth ache. Several of the sisters have left. They have broken their vows and fled down the mountain. I cannot blame them. I want to leave too. But I am the Mother Superior. I must bear witness to whatever is happening here."

September 13th: "Lucia is speaking. Not with her mouth. Her lips haven't moved in days. But we can hear words. Coming from the light. From the air around her head. The words are not Italian. Not Latin. Not any language I recognize. Sister Agnes, who is from Germany, says they sound like ancient Germanic. Sister Isabella, who studied Greek, says they sound like proto-Greek. I don't know what they are. But they hurt to hear. Like someone is speaking directly into the center of my brain."

September 14th, morning: "This will be my final entry. I can feel it. Whatever is happening is reaching its conclusion. Lucia has not moved in twelve hours. The light has stopped pulsing. It is constant now. Bright enough that we cannot look directly at her anymore. We have placed a curtain across her doorway. But the light shines through. It fills the entire hallway. The other children are in the chapel. They are praying. I have given them permission to leave if they wish. None have. We will witness this together. Whatever comes."

The diary ends there. Sister Agnese's handwriting gets shakier toward the end. The final words are barely legible.

Dr. Bonetti's report, filed with the local authorities three weeks later, states that Lucia Innocenti died on September 14th, at approximately 2:47 PM. Cause of death listed as "unknown neurological catastrophe."

The report also notes that all twenty-three nuns and twelve children at the convent were found alive but temporarily blinded. Their vision returned within six to eight hours. None could provide a coherent account of what happened in Lucia's room at the moment of her death.

Except Sister Agnese, who wrote one final note on a scrap of paper found in her pocket. Undated. Just a single sentence in shaking handwriting: "I saw God and God saw me."

Sister Agnese died three days later. Heart failure. She was forty-two years old.

There was no recording equipment in the convent in 1922. No way to capture sound. The Tongue that Lucia spoke in her final moments was heard by twenty-three nuns and twelve children, but none of them could reproduce it. Or wouldn't. They claimed they couldn't remember the words. That the sound had erased itself from their memory the moment they heard it.

This happens sometimes with the Tongue. Certain manifestations seem to resist being remembered. As if the sound itself has properties that prevent the brain from storing it properly.

But the Custodia has methods for recovering lost audio.

In 2019, we began using laser vibrometry on objects present during historical manifestations. The technique is simple: any vibration, any sound, leaves microscopic physical traces in nearby materials. Wood grain shifts. Metal surfaces develop micro-fractures. Glass develops stress patterns.

If the sound was loud enough, violent enough, those traces remain. You can read them. Extract the vibrations. Reconstruct the audio that caused them.

The silver crucifix from Lucia's bedside table arrived at the Custodia in 1957, along with the photograph and Sister Agnese's diary. It had been sitting in our archives for sixty-seven years. No one had examined it. No one realized what information it might contain.

Until six weeks ago, when Dr. Reeves, our materials analyst, ran a standard vibrometric scan on all metallic artifacts from pre-recording era cases.

The crucifix lit up. The vibration patterns were dense. Layered. Indicating multiple sustained sound events over several days, culminating in one massive impact.

Dr. Reeves sent the data to our audio reconstruction team. They spent three weeks processing it. Building waveforms. Cleaning interferences. Reconstructing the sound that had physically deformed the molecular structure of a silver crucifix sitting several centimeters from a dying child.

I'm going to play it now. I need this documented.

The reconstruction is thirty-seven seconds long. The final seven seconds contain the Tongue.

[THE TONGUE SPEAKS]

VORAM... BET... KROSH.

The sound is way worse than I imagined. That oscillating hum fills the chamber. Makes the walls vibrate. My jaw hurts. My teeth ache. And there's a metallic taste in my mouth that won't go away. Like blood but not quite. Like licking a battery terminal.

The sound is not what I expected. It's not properly a… voice. Not human. It's almost mechanical. Industrial. Like standing next to a massive electrical transformer that's failing. A deep, oscillating hum that shifts in frequency. Rising and falling in a pattern that feels almost rhythmic but wrong. Too complex for anything organic.

Layered over the hum is something else. A wet clicking sound. Precise. Repetitive. Like someone trying to focus a camera lens. Or an eye adjusting its iris. Click, click, click. I don't know…

Anyway uhm.

Voram. Bet. Krosh.

Three words. Spoken slowly.

I need water and then I need to check The Lexicon.

Voram. We know The Lexicon lists this as Tier One. I encountered this word in case TM-2024-047. Confirmed translation: Witness. Observer. One who sees.

Bet. Also Tier One. Eighteen occurrences. Translation: Flesh. Vessel. Physical body.

Krosh. This one is Tier Two. Only nine occurrences. Hypothetical translation: Perception. Vision. The act of seeing.

Three words. Witness-Flesh-Perception.

One who sees through physical form.

Or: Flesh used for witnessing.

Or: Perceiving through a vessel, we might say.

You see, the structure is ambiguous. The Tongue doesn't follow standard grammar rules. Word order can indicate emphasis rather than syntax. Compounds can form new meanings.

But the intent seems clear.

Something was using Lucia's body to see. Her flesh was a lens. Her optic nerves were the transmission cable. And what was transmitted, what tried to push through her inadequate human neurology, was perception. Vision. The ability to see.

But see what? See where?

The Church would say Lucia was granted a vision of God. That the light around her head was divine presence making itself known. That her suffering was the natural consequence of human limitation encountering divine infinity.

I don't think that's what happened.

I think something vast tried to look through her. Something that exists in a way we don't. Something wanted to see our world the way we see it, through eyes, through light. And Lucia's body couldn't handle it. The signal was too strong. The conductor too weak.

I shouldn't call the light around her head holy. It was waste heat. The biological cost of being used as a window for something that either doesn't have eyes or it has too many.

I've been thinking about Sister Agnese's final note. "I saw God and God saw me."

All twenty-three nuns were temporarily blinded when Lucia died. The light was too intense. It "bleached" the room, according to Dr. Bonetti's report. Turned everything into that room, every wall, every piece of furniture, into a featureless white void. No other color than a pure, immaculate white.

But their blindness was temporary. Six to eight hours. Then their vision returned.

Except it didn't return the same. Not entirely at least.

I found a follow-up report from 1923. The local bishop sent a representative to check on the convent six months after Lucia's death. The representative noted that many of the nuns had developed unusual symptoms. Chronic headaches. Sensitivity to light. And something else.

They reported seeing things that weren't there. Flashes of light in their peripheral vision. Geometric patterns when they closed their eyes. And occasionally, rarely, a sense of being watched. Of something looking back at them from inside their own heads.

Three of the nuns died within a year. Heart failure, stroke, aneurysm. All sudden. All unexpected for their ages.

The representative recommended the convent be investigated for possible demonic influence. The bishop declined. He ordered the convent sealed instead. No investigation. No exorcism. Just abandonment.

By 1927, all of the nuns who witnessed Lucia's death were dead. Average age at death: thirty-eight. For women in religious orders at that time, the normal life expectancy was late sixties.

The twelve children who were there all survived. Most were adopted by families in nearby villages. But I found records for seven of them. All died before age thirty. All of sudden neurological events. And according to family accounts, all of them mentioned seeing strange lights in the days before they died.

Lucia was the lens. The primary focal point. But everyone who witnessed the light, everyone who was exposed to what looked through her, became secondary lenses. Smaller. Weaker. But still transmitting.

Still being used to see.

I think about the nuns kissing Lucia's eyes. The children blessing themselves with the fluid from her crown. They thought it was holy. They thought they were venerating a saint.

They were volunteering. But I still can't see it as something good, the Church must forgive me.

Anyway. TM-1922-014. Voram-Bet-Krosh. Seeing through a vessel.

One word added to the Lexicon.

… Quindi è questo che ti succedeva? A volte mi dicevi che riuscivi a vedere il sole che brillava anche a occhi chiusi. Solo adesso riesco a capirti un po' di più, scusami. [So this is what was happening to you? Sometimes you said you could see the sun glowing even with your eyes closed. Only now I can understand you a little better, I'm sorry.]

---

Translation Summary

← Back to Episodes