I don't know how long I stood frozen in that half-collapsed hallway, listening to the echoes of a world that was no longer mine. The air had turned brittle, the kind that feels like it could shatter if you breathed too hard. I didn't dare move. Not until I heard it—
A voice.
Not my daughter's.
Not a staff member.
Not human.
A whispering chorus, faint but layered, like six people speaking through the same throat.
And then I recognized it.
The ghost family.
The ones I thought I'd left behind in the Boundary Land.
The ones who watched me from the windows of that abandoned village, their heads turning too slowly, their smiles stretching too wide, their eyes empty and wet like rotting glass.
I swallow hard, my hands trembling so violently the flashlight wobbles like a candle flame trying to survive a storm.
"No…" I whisper. "No, no, no—this can't be happening again."
But the hallway answers me in its usual cruelty.
Sccrrrrrrrch.
A dragging sound. Something metal against the floor. A chair? A bed frame? Something being pulled closer, inch by inch.
Then I see them.
At first it's only a distortion—dark silhouettes at the far end of the corridor, barely visible through the flickering emergency lights. Four shapes. Maybe five. They shift, ripple, their outlines blurring as if my eyes can't decide where to place them.
And then the lights stabilize just long enough for me to see their faces.
The mother.
The father.
The two children.
And the infant wrapped in gray cloth.
Just like before.
Except… worse.
Their forms look like burned film—patchy, charred edges, pieces missing. Light passes through some parts of them, bending like heat distortion. They aren't fully stable. They don't belong here. This world pushes against them, but they push back harder.
Their presence turns the entire corridor colder. Frost creeps up the peeling wallpaper. My breath fogs.
The mother tilts her head first. Always her. I remember her most vividly because, in the Boundary Land, she was the only one who tried to speak. The only one whose mouth moved even when no sound came out.
Now she speaks again—but her jaw unhinges farther than before, cracking like bone snapping under pressure.
"You."
Her voice grinds like wet gravel shoved through a pipe.
The others speak the same word at the same time—perfectly synced, unnervingly unified.
"You."
"You."
"You."
The chorus wraps around me, a cold noose tightening.
I step back, my heartbeat rattling against my ribs. "I don't want to go back," I whisper, but it's useless. They hear everything—your words, your breaths, even your thoughts if you're too scared to guard them.
The father takes a step forward, dragging something behind him. A rusted stretcher. I can hear the wheels squeal every few inches, grinding against the warped hospital floor.
His eyes never blink. None of them blink. Their lids look melted into place.
My legs tremble so badly I have to grip the wall to steady myself. The wallpaper flakes beneath my nails.
The children move next.
Not walking.
Gliding.
Their feet hover one or two inches off the ground, toes pointed downward, swinging lightly like they're floating in water instead of air. Their heads twitch with every flicker of the lights.
The boy, the older one, holds something in his hand—a small wooden toy horse. In the Boundary Land it was always broken. Now it looks repaired… but the repairs don't look right. Someone stitched the pieces together with something dark and sinewy.
The girl clutches a doll. The same doll that once whispered to me in that decayed room with the peeling blue wallpaper. The doll whose glass eye had rolled toward me on its own.
I'm losing my breath. My vision blurs.
The mother whispers again, each word a scrape against the air.
"You left."
I shake my head. "I didn't belong there," I whisper. "I didn't belong with any of you."
The four adults—mother, father, two grandparents behind them now emerging from shadow—tilt their heads in the exact same angle, almost synchronized.
"You were chosen," the father says.
"You were taken," the mother adds.
"You were ours," the children whisper.
"You were promised," the grandparents finish.
Their voices layer together into one monstrous harmony.
And then the infant cries.
Soft.
Wet.
Longing.
It sounds real enough that my womb aches. My chest tightens. My knees buckle.
"No," I whisper. "Don't do this. Don't use that sound. Don't use a baby's cry against me."
But the mother lifts the cloth anyway.
And inside is not a baby.
It is something shaped like one, yes. Small, curled, fragile-looking. But its skin is made of translucent, glistening membrane. Its face is blurred, unfinished, like someone painted it with water and smeared the features. Its arms twitch like a dying insect.
It is not alive.
Not dead.
And not human.
But it knows me.
It reaches for me with tiny shaking fingers, skin stretched too thin.
It wants something.
No—it needs something.
My breath stops. For a moment, I feel the echo of my own dead baby, the one from the gender reveal, the one I lost. The weight of that memory crushes me. I grip my stomach instinctively, an old reflex.
And the mother smiles. A slow, wide, unnatural smile that splits her cheeks slightly at the corners. Dark fluid drips down her chin.
"You miss yours," she says.
I bite my lip hard enough to taste blood. "Stop…"
"You miss the life that left you."
A step closer.
"You miss the one who never opened her eyes."
Another step.
"You miss the ghost of your own child."
I shake my head violently. "STOP!"
Behind me, something slams. A door. Maybe several. The sound echoes like the hospital itself wants to cage me in.
I'm trapped between the ghost family and the twisted geometry of this not-hospital.
The boy floats closer, holding out the stitched horse.
"Play with us," he whispers.
"Stay with us," the girl adds.
"Be our mother," the grandparents chant.
"Be his bride," the father finishes.
I freeze.
Their voices weren't blending by accident. They were leading to that.
Everything always leads back to him.
My ghost husband.
I know he is near. His presence presses on my chest like a heavy, cold hand. My pulse stutters. My vision dims at the edges.
Every time he is close, the world bends.
Every time he is close, something inside me breaks a little.
The mother steps aside now, revealing someone behind her. A tall figure, shrouded in gray mist, head slightly turned as if waiting for me to notice.
My heart drops.
He is here.
The ghost husband—my groom, my captor, my haunting.
He steps forward, emerging fully into the flickering light. He looks almost human but not quite. His body is too still. His eyes—those hollow, depthless black eyes—reflect no light.
He wears the same torn wedding clothes from the ceremony in the Boundary Land. His chest is smeared with ash. His ring finger is broken, bent back at an unnatural angle.
But he smiles like I am the only thing he has ever wanted.
"You came back," he whispers.
My throat closes.
"I didn't," I manage. "You dragged me."
He laughs softly, and the entire corridor shivers with the sound.
"I don't drag," he says. "I reclaim."
The ghost family lowers their heads in reverence, like they're bowing to him, worshiping him, or maybe protecting him from me.
My knees threaten to buckle. My breath comes in short, sharp bursts.
"I want my daughter," I say. "Where is she?"
The mother looks up slowly, her neck cracking audibly.
"She was here," the father says.
"She walked through us," the children giggle.
"She called for you," the grandparents add.
The baby-thing in the mother's arms pulses slightly, shuddering.
"She followed the path," the mother finishes.
"What path?" I choke out.
The lights overhead buzz louder, flickering faster. The corridor stretches unnaturally, elongating like a rubber band being pulled.
The groom tilts his head, studying me with the fascination of a predator observing prey.
"You will find her," he murmurs.
"If you stay."
"If you obey."
I grip the wall, panic clawing at my throat. "She's mine," I say. "She's not part of your world."
He steps closer.
Too close.
The air around him feels colder than anything I've ever known.
"You don't understand," he whispers.
"She was born with one foot in each world."
"She belongs to both."
"Just like you."
A shiver slams down my spine.
"No," I whisper, nearly choking on the word.
But he smiles wider, revealing teeth too sharp to be human.
"Your daughter is special," he says gently.
"Perfect."
"Pure."
"Unclaimed."
My stomach flips.
"What do you mean unclaimed?"
Silence.
Then the grandmother ghost steps forward, her voice like brittle leaves crushed underfoot.
"In the Boundary Land," she says slowly, "a child without a claim…"
"…is taken by the shadows."
"…unless the mother chooses."
"…or the father."
My blood turns to ice.
Father.
They don't mean the human father.
They mean him.
The ghost husband.
I take an involuntary step back, pressing against the wall so hard the paint flakes stick to my skin.
"You can't touch her," I whisper. "I won't let you."
He smiles with a softness that terrifies me more than any threat.
"You don't have to let me," he murmurs.
"She came willingly."
My vision tunnels.
"No… she wouldn't."
The little girl ghost giggles. "She was looking for you."
The grandmother nods. "She followed your voice."
The mother presses the infant-creature closer to her chest. "She walked into the dark without fear."
The father lifts the rusted stretcher again. "She called your name."
I clutch my chest, feeling my heart threaten to split open.
"Where is she?" I scream, losing every ounce of composure.
The ghost husband steps forward and touches my cheek with cold, dead fingers.
His touch burns like frostbite.
"She is where you should be," he whispers.
"She is waiting."
"She is not afraid."
"Not yet."
My eyes fill with tears.
"Tell me," I beg. "Please, tell me where she is."
The lights flicker violently.
One long flicker—
—everything goes dark.
When the lights return, the ghost family is gone.
Every trace of them.
Except one.
On the floor, right where the little girl ghost had floated, lies a small object.
My daughter's hair clip.
Pink. With a tiny white butterfly.
The one she was wearing when I called her into the hospital.
My stomach drops so fast I nearly collapse.
She's not just missing.
She's in their world now.
And they left this behind as a message.
A lure.
A breadcrumb.
Or a warning.
I don't know which.
But I know one thing…
To save her, I have to go deeper.
Back into the world I barely survived.
Back into the realm where nothing stays dead and nothing stays whole.
Back to where the ghost husband waits for me like a twisted version of fate.
And the worst part?
A small part of me knows:
He planned this.
He wanted this.
He took her so I would follow.
And I will.
Because she is my child.
And I will burn through worlds to bring her home.
---