Sid wasn't looking at the TV anymore.
Something was happening on the far wall.
At first it was nothing — or at least nothing he could name. A shimmer, like heat rising from tar in the summer, except the night air was cool and still. Then the shimmer sharpened, thin lines spreading across the plaster like someone was sketching with light.
He knew that wall. He had stared at it all morning, blank and pale, nothing on it at all.
But now, the wall was being rewritten.
The lines glowed, held, and connected into a tall rectangle. Its edges pulsed softly, like the beat of something alive.
Sid's breath stuck in his throat. His fingers clenched the blanket until his knuckles ached.
He wanted to blink, but didn't dare. Afraid that if he did, the thing would vanish and he'd never know if it had been real.
Then, as though the glow had always belonged there, Moony stepped through.
No sound. No fuss. She simply arrived — tail high, paws neat, fur catching the glow as though made of it. For a heartbeat she looked otherworldly, lit from within.
And then the light folded in on itself and was gone.
The wall stood bare again.
Sid gasped, finally remembering to breathe.
He scrambled off the bed and stumbled forward, heart rattling against his ribs. His hand shot out, pressing flat against the plaster. Cool. Smooth. Solid.
He knocked once. The hollow thud rang back, insulting in its ordinariness.
"Did you just…" His whisper cracked as he looked at Moony. "…come out of it?"
The cat had already leapt onto the windowsill. She paused mid-groom, turning her golden eyes toward him. A slow blink, sideways, patient. Then she flicked her tail once and bent to her paw again.
No explanation. No answer.
Sid's pulse hammered in his ears. He pressed the wall again, dragged his fingertips across its surface, tapped along the edges as though there must be a seam, a switch, a trick. Nothing.
The silence was louder than any noise.
He waited. A minute passed. Then another. He shifted back a step, staring, willing the glow to return. Hoping it would.
But the wall remained stubbornly blank.
He sank onto the bed, still facing it, every nerve awake. The TV screen threw shifting colors across the room, too ordinary now, too fake compared to what he'd just seen.
Bheema barked outside, chasing something invisible. The call of a night bird echoed from the trees. Moony yawned, stretched, and curled deeper into herself as if nothing had happened.
Sid hugged his knees to his chest. His mind ran in circles: dream, trick, imagination, madness. He tried them all, but none fit.
Because he had seen it.
He had felt it.
The impossible thing burned behind his eyes like an afterimage he couldn't blink away.
And for the first time in days, school and shame were gone from his thoughts.
Something else had taken their place. Something stranger.
Something that made his skin prickle with fear.
And yet, under the fear, something else stirred too.
A flicker of wonder.
Sid's gaze drifted to the other walls of his room. Plain. Pale. Silent. Yet now each one seemed like it was holding its breath.
What if they can change too?
His stomach knotted, half with fear, half with a thrill he didn't have a name for.
Eyes still fixed on the wall where the glow had been. Tomorrow, he decided, he wouldn't just wait. He would look. Not just here, but in the corridor, the halls, everywhere in this house.
If there were more of these… doors—whatever they were—he would find them.