Darkness folds in around me after his voice fades from the intercom, swallowing the hallway, swallowing the air, swallowing the last thread of sanity I was clinging to.
My child.
My baby.
Pulled between two worlds like a scrap of fabric caught on a nail.
I feel the scream climb up my throat again, sharp and clawing, but nothing comes out. There's no space for it. The air is too thick, too still, too heavy.
I force myself to breathe.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
The Boundary Land listens to everything—every breath, every heartbeat, every fear. It grows stronger when I lose control. It twists reality when I panic. I learned that during my first time trapped here, when I was young, when I didn't understand the rules or the hunger of this place.
But I am not that girl anymore.
And I am not alone anymore.
I have a daughter to find.
I push myself up from the broken floor, ignoring the shards of brittle tile digging into my palms. My knees throb from the fall, but pain is grounding. Pain keeps me here—keeps me from slipping fully into the shadows.
I whisper into the dim hallway:
"Baby? … Are you here? Can you hear Mommy?"
Silence.
But the silence feels wrong.
Too alert.
Too aware.
Like something is holding its breath.
I swallow again and start walking.
The hallway stretches forward, longer than before, like it grew while the worlds were overlapping. The floor is coated in dust so thick it muffles my footsteps. Old hospital beds line one side of the corridor, some missing wheels, others flipped on their sides like carcasses.
I step past a gurney, and something creaks beneath it.
I freeze.
Lean down slowly.
A small shoe.
A child's shoe.
Pink.
Dirty.
Worn.
Not hers… but close enough.
My breath shudders out of me. I'm not alone. Children have been here before—lost in the seams, ripped from their worlds. The Boundary Land feeds on those who slip between realities.
I keep moving.
Every few feet the hallway shifts, subtly but deliberately, like the walls are breathing.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
I tighten my hands into fists.
"Don't do this to me," I whisper into the dark. "You won't win this time. I'm getting her back."
A faint metallic rattle echoes behind me.
I turn.
Nothing.
Except… the child's shoe is gone.
I stare at the empty floor where it had been seconds ago, my heart slamming against my ribs. The dust is disturbed—dragged in a thin line toward a shadowed doorway.
Something took it.
Or someone.
My daughter's voice echoes faintly through my memory:
"Mama, monsters aren't real."
God, how I wish that were true.
I follow the disturbed dust trail to the doorway. The door itself is hanging off its hinges, one broken bolt scraping against the floor. The room beyond is dark—impossibly dark, like the shadows are thicker inside.
I step in.
The temperature drops instantly. My breath fogs in front of me. My hands tremble.
"Baby?" I whisper.
A soft tapping responds from somewhere inside the room.
Three taps.
Silence.
Three more taps.
Like a child knocking on a desk.
My heart stutters.
She does that.
She does that when she's scared.
She taps the table, the wall, my arm—anything—to tell me she's still there.
I rush deeper into the room, hands outstretched, bumping into overturned furniture. A broken desk. A shattered cabinet. Something wet dripping from the ceiling onto the back of my neck.
I don't stop.
I can't stop.
"Sweetheart? It's Mommy! Can you hear me?"
Another set of taps—faster this time.
I turn toward the sound.
A small figure stands in the far corner, barely illuminated by the faintest sliver of flickering light from the ruined hallway.
She's tiny.
Four years old.
Hair falling into her eyes.
"Baby!" I choke out, stepping toward her.
She lifts her head.
Her eyes glint.
But they're wrong.
Too black.
Too wide.
Too empty.
My daughter's silhouette fades—like smoke unraveling.
Then it collapses inward into a ball of darkness and vanishes.
I stop so suddenly I almost fall forward.
It wasn't her.
It was a mimic.
One of them.
The Boundary Land creates echoes of those you love to lure you deeper, to make you follow the wrong voice, the wrong shape, the wrong shadow.
I cover my mouth with my shaking hand.
"I know your tricks," I whisper. "You won't fool me again."
The room exhales—dust lifting off the floor in a single breath.
Then something laughs.
A child's laugh.
But not hers.
Higher.
Sharper.
A sound with edges.
I stumble backward and rush out of the room.
Back into the hallway.
Back into the dim, shifting light.
I press my back against the peeling wall so hard dust flakes fall around me like snow.
I close my eyes for one second.
Just one.
When I open them—
The hallway has changed again.
It stretches impossibly far in both directions, lined with doors I swear weren't there before. Numbers are scratched out. Some replaced with symbols. Some smeared with rust so dark it's almost black.
My daughter's backpack lies at the far end.
My heart stops.
I sprint.
Every step feels like running through thick sand, the air heavy as concrete. The hallway stretches, distorts, lengthens, but I don't slow down. I don't care how far it manipulates the world—I will run until my lungs burst if I have to.
When I reach the backpack, I drop to my knees. My hands shake so violently I almost can't unzip it.
Inside—
Her water bottle.
Her tiny hairbrush.
A snack wrapper.
Her little notebook with uneven doodles of me, her, a house, a sun, our cat.
And on the last page, scribbled in shaky, messy handwriting:
"Mama I'm here."
My vision blurs with tears.
She's alive.
Here.
Somewhere in this twisted version of the hospital.
I wipe my face and stand, clutching the notebook.
"I'm coming for you," I whisper.
The lights overhead flicker again.
The hallway trembles, the walls shifting restlessly like beasts waking from sleep.
And then—
The two worlds begin to echo again.
The real hospital flickers into brief, ghostly focus—clean, bright, sterile. Nurses rushing past. Someone calling my name. A wheelchair rolling across the floor.
The Boundary Land overlaps—rotted walls, broken glass, shadows creeping along the ceiling.
Two realities stacked on top of each other like a broken slide projector.
And in the middle—
A small figure.
Real this time.
I recognize her shape instantly.
My daughter.
She stands between the worlds—her back to me, her tiny shoulders trembling. Her outline flickers, struggling to stay whole, pulled in two directions.
The hospital distortion hums, a rising vibration.
If the worlds snap again, she could disappear between them.
"No," I breathe. "No—baby, stay there! Don't move!"
I sprint toward her.
The worlds stutter.
Left wall—real hospital.
Right wall—ruined hospital.
Floor vibrating, splitting into two versions.
Reality layering, peeling, twisting.
"Stay there!" I shout, voice cracking. "DON'T MOVE!"
I'm only a few feet away—
Then he appears.
My ghost husband.
Stepping out of the ruptured space like he's emerging from smoke.
His empty, hollowed-out face turns toward me.
"Jenny," he murmurs. "You cannot have her."
I freeze mid‑step, breath caught like a fishhook in my throat.
"She doesn't belong to you," I whisper.
"She belongs to whichever world claims her," he replies, voice calm… too calm.
He lifts a hand.
My daughter wavers—her form flickering wildly, almost tearing apart between realities.
"STOP!" I scream. "Don't touch her!"
"She is the anchor," he says softly.
"The thread between worlds."
"The reason you return."
His head tilts.
"And the reason you will never leave."
My knees go weak.
My daughter turns her head slightly, finally hearing me.
Her eyes widen.
"Mama?" she whispers, voice fractured like someone speaking underwater.
I lunge forward—
And the floor collapses beneath us.
The worlds rip apart.
My daughter falls through the tear—down, down, down—
Into the deeper pits of the Boundary Land.
I scream her name so loudly my throat rips.
I reach into the darkness—
And grab nothing.
She's gone.
The worlds snap closed.
Only the ruined hospital remains.
My knees hit the floor. My hands claw at the tiles. My screams echo through the hollow halls, swallowed by the dark.
He stands above me, silent.
Then:
"Find her… if you dare."
He dissolves into smoke.
I collapse forward, sobbing into the dust, the darkness closing around me again.
And I whisper into the floor:
"I'm coming for you, baby. I'm coming."
--