The fluorescent hum echoed in the silence, a sound so constant that it became indistinguishable from the quiet itself. The walls were a pale yellow, their paint cracked and peeling in places, and the floor was carpeted with a strange geometric pattern that seemed to shift slightly when looked at for too long. Somewhere in the distance, the faint drip of water tapped in an irregular rhythm, a clock counting down to something unknown.
Clara stood frozen, her breath caught in her throat. She had been walking home from the library, her arms full of books, when she had taken a shortcut through an alley she didn’t remember ever seeing before. One moment, she was stepping over a puddle reflecting the streetlights; the next, she was here.
Wherever here was.
The air was cool, almost sterile, and carried the faint scent of mildew. Clara’s sneakers made no sound as she took a tentative step forward, the books still clutched tightly to her chest. The space seemed endless, corridors branching off into more corridors, a labyrinth of uniformity. No doors, no windows, no way to gauge the time or place.
“Hello?” she called, her voice trembling. It bounced off the walls and returned to her, distorted and unfamiliar. She shivered.
Her phone. She fumbled for it in her pocket, nearly dropping it in her haste. The screen lit up, but there was no signal. The clock read 9:15 PM, the same time it had displayed when she left the library. She tried to dial her mom anyway, but the call wouldn’t go through. She stared at the phone, willing it to connect, to bring her back to something solid and real.
Nothing.
Clara forced herself to move. She chose a direction at random, her footsteps hesitant. The fluorescent lights above flickered occasionally, casting brief shadows that danced at the edges of her vision. She told herself not to look back, but the urge grew stronger with every step until she couldn’t resist. She glanced over her shoulder.
The corridor behind her was empty. Yet the sensation of being watched persisted, an invisible weight pressing down on her.
She walked faster.
Time seemed to stretch. Minutes? Hours? Clara couldn’t tell. She passed identical junctions, turned down identical hallways, the monotony suffocating. Her legs ached, but she didn’t dare stop. The books in her arms felt heavier with each step, their weight dragging her down.
And then she heard it—a faint sound, different from the omnipresent hum. It was soft at first, almost imperceptible, but it grew louder as she walked. A melody. A lullaby her grandmother used to sing when Clara was little. The notes drifted through the air, sweet and haunting.
“Grandma?” she whispered, her voice barely audible. Her heart pounded as she followed the sound, each note pulling her forward like a thread unraveling from her core.
She turned a corner and stopped short. The corridor ended in a room, larger than the others she had passed. In the center stood a rocking chair, swaying gently back and forth, though no one sat in it. A small table beside it held a single photograph in a wooden frame. Clara’s breath hitched when she saw it.
It was a picture of her as a baby, cradled in her grandmother’s arms. She remembered this photograph; it had always sat on the mantle at her grandmother’s house. But her grandmother had been gone for years.
The lullaby stopped.
Clara’s knees felt weak, but she forced herself to step closer. The rocking chair stilled as she approached, the air growing colder with each step. She reached out to touch the photograph, her fingers trembling.
As soon as she made contact, the room changed. The walls warped and stretched, the pale yellow shifting to an oppressive gray. The floor beneath her feet became cold, hard concrete. The photograph vanished, replaced by a small, broken mirror. Clara stared at her reflection, but the face staring back wasn’t her own.
The figure in the mirror was a child, her dark eyes wide and unblinking. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Clara stumbled back, the mirror shattering into a thousand shards that scattered across the floor. In their reflections, she saw glimpses of other places: a sunlit meadow, a bustling city street, her own bedroom.
Her breathing grew shallow as she dropped the books she had been holding. They hit the ground with a deafening thud that echoed far longer than it should have.
“What is this place?” she whispered, her voice trembling.
The air shifted, heavy and suffocating, and she heard the faint sound of footsteps. They were deliberate and slow, coming from somewhere behind her. Clara spun around, but the corridor was empty.
Or was it? The shadows seemed to move, pooling together and stretching out, forming shapes that were almost human. Clara backed away, her heart racing. The footsteps grew louder, closer. She turned and ran, her breath ragged as she sprinted down the endless hallways. The shadows followed, their forms twisting and stretching in impossible ways.
She didn’t know how long she ran before she collapsed, her legs giving out beneath her. She lay there, gasping for breath, the shadows looming over her. But they didn’t attack. They simply watched, their presence heavy and suffocating.
“Why are you doing this?” Clara shouted, her voice cracking. “What do you want from me?”
The shadows didn’t answer. Instead, they began to retreat, melting back into the walls. The oppressive silence returned, more deafening than ever. Clara closed her eyes, tears streaming down her face.
When she opened them again, she was no longer in the endless corridors. She was standing in her bedroom, the familiar posters on the walls and her unmade bed exactly as she had left them. Her books were stacked neatly on her desk, as though she had never taken them to the library.
The clock on her nightstand read 9:16 PM.
Clara sat down on the edge of her bed, her hands trembling. She picked up her phone. This time, the call went through.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m home.”
But even as she spoke, she noticed something out of place. The mirror on her dresser was cracked, a thin line running diagonally across the glass. And in its fractured surface, she thought she saw the faintest hint of movement, a shadow shifting just out of view.