The moment Jamie stood up, the sky overhead rippled like liquid glass. Clouds of rust and ash swirled around a sunless blood-red glow, casting everything in hues of decay. Bramble Hollow had been swallowed by something else—this place wore the face of his hometown, but its features were grotesque parodies. It felt like walking through a photograph left too long in a puddle: warped, blurry, and wrong.
His head throbbed. Dried blood flaked down his forehead, and his fingers trembled as he wiped it away. The air was thick and wet, not with mist, but with something more suffocating—like breathing through soggy cotton. Smells of scorched meat and sewage churned in his nostrils.
Jamie looked behind him. The tunnel was gone. In its place stood a concrete wall covered in handprints—hundreds of them, child-sized, pressed so deep they looked like they'd been burned into the stone.
A siren moaned somewhere far away.
He turned back toward the center of town, backpack slung over his shoulder like armor. He moved slowly, every step accompanied by the squish of grime beneath his shoes. Windows stared at him like eyes, though there was no movement inside any of the houses or buildings.
Except they weren't windows. Not really.
As he passed a familiar-looking diner—the Red Spoon, where Sadie once dared him to steal a milkshake—he noticed something grotesque. The window wasn't made of glass. It was flesh. Thin, translucent skin stretched tightly over hollow sockets in the building's wall, pulsing faintly. Veins spidered across it. Jamie gagged and stumbled backward.
It blinked.
He ran.
The world twisted around him. Streets didn't match up. Places that had been blocks apart now lay side by side like puzzle pieces forced together. He passed a library that had no door, only a spiral staircase vanishing into darkness. The fountain at the town square no longer sprayed water, but thick, black liquid that hissed when it hit the cracked pavement.
Jamie stumbled through the center of this warped Bramble Hollow, eyes wide and heart pounding. He turned a corner—and froze.
Someone was watching him.
Across the street, barely visible behind a broken stop sign, stood a figure in a yellow raincoat.
It was a child. Same size as Jamie. The coat was zipped up to the throat, the hood pulled low, casting a shadow over the face. Their arms hung too still at their sides.
Jamie stepped forward. "Hey!" he called. "Do you know where—"
The figure raised a hand, palm out.
Then it pointed.
Jamie turned to follow the gesture.
There was a building he didn't recognize. A brick school, tall and leaning slightly, as if buckling under its own weight. Vines pulsed along its exterior like arteries. The sign out front was rusted over, but he could just make out the letters:
WILLOW'S END ELEMENTARY
Something about the name made his skin crawl. He turned back to the figure in yellow—but they were gone.
He crossed the street, gravel crunching underfoot, and stepped up to the school's iron gate. It creaked open before he touched it. Inside, the hallway was dark and stank of mildew and rot. Fluorescent lights flickered erratically, casting brief glimpses of decayed lockers and broken desks. The walls were lined with drawings, but they were not the happy, stick-figure scribbles of normal children.
These were violent.
Crayon depictions of children being pulled apart by shadows. Houses burning. Eyes with nails driven through them. One drawing showed a boy hanging from the jungle gym, his eyes plucked out, replaced with buttons.
The lights flickered—and Jamie heard laughter.
High-pitched. Gleeful. It echoed down the hall.
He followed.
The sound led him to the cafeteria. The smell of blood hit him before he even opened the doors. Inside, dozens of long tables were filled with twisted mannequins—children frozen in mid-bite, trays of unidentifiable meat steaming in front of them. Their faces were stitched into wide grins. Black, tar-like tears streaked from their button eyes.
At the far end of the cafeteria stood a chalkboard with words scratched into it:
TODAY'S SPECIAL: YOU.
Something moved behind the counter. Jamie ducked low and crept forward. He peered over—and stifled a scream.
A thing stood there, too tall and too thin, dressed in a blood-soaked apron. Its head was a mass of writhing tendrils that hissed as they slithered around each other. It used a rusted ice cream scoop to ladle red chunks from a bin into a tray. When it turned, Jamie saw that its face was missing—only a jagged hole gaped where a mouth should be. From it, the laughter returned.
He backed away. A metal tray clattered to the floor.
The thing turned, sniffing the air.
Jamie bolted.
Out the cafeteria, down the hall. Doors slammed shut behind him of their own accord. He tried the exit—but it was gone. In its place was a wall covered in children's drawings.
Only now, the drawings were moving.
Stick figures turned their heads. Smiled. Walked toward him.
He ran again, turning corners at random until he burst into the gymnasium.
And there she was.
Sadie.
Tied to the bleachers with cords of hair. Her mouth was sewn shut, eyes wide and filled with pleading. Behind her, a mass of shadows writhed on the ceiling, limbs twitching and coiling, watching him.
Jamie screamed and sprinted forward—but the floor gave way. He fell through darkness, the world shredding around him.
And then—
He was outside.
Back in the warped town.
He lay gasping on the ground, the blood-red sky spinning above. A burning sensation flared on his arm. He pulled up his sleeve—and found a word carved into his skin.
LIAR.
He wasn't sure if he'd done it to himself.
Then, from somewhere behind him, a whisper:
"She's still below."
Jamie stood, knees shaking, and looked back at the school.
Its windows—all of them—were watching him.