She Knows in a Dead Tongue

My stepsister started speaking in a language that hasn't been used in 400 years and no one in my

family seems to care. It started three weeks ago when Emma came back from her

semester abroad in Romania. She looked different. Thinner. Paler.

But what really freaked me out was her eyes. They were always just slightly too

wide open, like she was seeing something the rest of us couldn't. Then came the whispers.

Every night at exactly 3:17 AM, I'd hear her voice through the walls, speaking in this

guttural, ancient sounding language. I recorded it and played it for my

linguistics professor. His face went white. He said it was medieval Romanian, a dialect used by