Estimated reading time — 9 minutes

Lucy was good at hide-and-seek. Maybe even the best.

Other children were always hiding in the most obvious places—a closet, under the car, behind the sofa. But Lucy knew better spots. She hid in the shadows, almost in plain sight, where the seekers’ eyes simply failed to deliver the message to their brains. It was almost like invisibility. Lucy never understood why more kids didn’t use this trick.

When the seeker finally gave up, Lucy stepped out from around the corner.

“That’s not fair!” her younger brother Thomas cried. “I looked for you there!”

Lucy stuck her tongue out in playful mockery. “Did you try opening your eyes?” she laughed, darting away as Thomas charged after her.

Their mother’s call drifted across the yard, summoning them to dinner. The game ended abruptly, but neither of them minded; the thrill of hiding had stirred up a healthy appetite.

“Wash your hands!” their mother commanded, giving Thomas a light smack on the back of the head when he tugged on Lucy’s ponytail.

When the family finally sat down—Lucy, Thomas, and their parents—Lucy’s gaze drifted to the empty chair at the end of the table. Her brother Adam had been missing for two years, yet her mother never failed to set his place as though he might walk in at any moment.

He won’t, Lucy thought. Even at twelve, she understood her brother was most likely never coming home. She also understood her parents’ reactions: her mother’s refusal to accept the truth, and her father’s determination not to think about Adam at all. It was unhealthy, but what could she say? Thomas, younger and still wrapped in childhood innocence, barely registered the tragedy.

And me? I’m also a child in every sense, Lucy thought. But it doesn’t feel like it. I see Adam even when he’s not here. I see the reality of his absence.

After dinner, Lucy turned down the chance to watch TV. Let Thomas watch whatever he wanted. Thinking about Adam had drained her. Even reading sounded exhausting. She only wanted to close her eyes and let sleep carry her away.

She woke while it was still dark outside. Lying in bed, she listened to the deep quiet of the house at this hour…

…except the world wasn’t as quiet as she first thought. There was something—a rhythm.

Lucy slipped out of bed and opened her bedroom door. Maybe Thomas couldn’t sleep and was playing? Maybe the TV had been left on?

But the sound wasn’t coming from the hallway or anywhere in the house. Lucy turned toward the far wall of her room.

There.

She walked slowly toward it. The sound grew slightly louder. She pressed her ear to the wall.

Dum dum… Dum dum… Dum dum.

Lucy immediately thought of the biology video Mrs. Watson had shown them—an animated heart pulsing, arteries branching like roots, beating tirelessly.

Dum dum… Dum dum… Dum dum.

“It’s a heartbeat,” she murmured. Her half-asleep mind crawled toward understanding. There can’t be a heart in my wall. It’s just a wall.

But the sound was real. As real as her own pulse.

Suddenly, dizziness washed over her. She stumbled back, collapsing onto the floor. A strange metallic taste filled her mouth. As she tried to gather herself, she realized the house was silent again. Completely silent. The heartbeat was gone. Pressing her ear to the wall revealed nothing.

Lucy crawled back into bed, sinking gratefully into her warm duvet. Sleep took her again.

By morning, the mysterious sound had faded into a pale, dreamlike memory, overshadowed by ordinary routines: breakfast, bus, school, bus, home.

Thomas was already back, working on homework. Mom was in the garden.

“Dad has extra responsibilities at work. He’ll be late,” she said. But Lucy noticed the irritation in her mother’s eyes. “Go finish your homework. Then you can help me out here.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and sighed theatrically. As if half a day at school wasn’t enough—now garden work too? Still, she obeyed and went to her room.

She tried to focus, but a nagging sensation tugged at her thoughts. A shadow across her memory. Without noticing, she began tapping her nails on the desk.

Tap tap… Tap tap… Tap tap.

Like a heartbeat.

The memories of the night crashed back into her mind, sharp as a hammerblow. The heart in the wall. She could almost see it—flesh fused into wooden beams, veins threading through wallpaper, the house groaning like ancient bones.

The pressure in her head surged. She vomited across her desk and fell from her chair, writhing on the floor like a pale worm in sunlight. Pain closed in around her—

—and then only darkness and cold.

Wind roared. Icy crystals tore at her naked skin. The ground beneath her bare feet vibrated in time with a colossal heartbeat. Crimson light flooded everything…

When Lucy next opened her eyes, she was in a hospital bed. Weak. Sore, as if after an awful PE class. Her mother slept in a chair, still wearing her gardening clothes. A nurse entered, immediately noticing Lucy was awake.

Soon a doctor arrived. Her mother woke, fear and guilt swirling on her face.

“We still don’t know what caused the episode,” the doctor explained, speaking mostly to her mother. “We found nothing abnormal. Blood, ultrasound, CT, brain activity—everything is perfectly healthy for a twelve-year-old girl.”

A new expression flashed across her mother’s face: frustration sharpened by anger.

“What healthy twelve-year-old girl ends up rolling on the floor in her own vomit, screaming in pain?” she shouted.

The doctor opened his mouth, but she wasn’t done.

“I was home! Just a few meters away! So tell me—with all your fancy schools and education—how do I protect my daughter? What should I do?”

The doctor took a breath. “Mrs. Foy, I’ll be honest. We don’t know why this happened. Medically, there is nothing wrong with your daughter. What happened should not have happened. And without knowing what caused it, we cannot prevent it. Maybe it was a fluke. I doubt it will happen again. But if there is a second seizure, we’ll learn more. Right now… we can’t extinguish fires that aren’t burning. There’s nothing for us to do.”

Lucy saw the storm brewing in her mother’s eyes and imagined her punching the doctor, so she quickly intervened.

“I’m fine, Mom. I didn’t sleep well the night before, and lunch didn’t sit right. I’m fine now. Just… tired.”

She wanted to say she wished to go home, but something stopped her—a shadow of memory. The house. The heart. Even thinking about home made her dizzy. A strange repulsion crawled beneath her skin.

“Maybe I can stay here for a few days,” Lucy said softly. “So you won’t have to worry.”

The doctor nodded; they already planned to keep her a week for monitoring. For once, everyone agreed on something.

Her mother stayed until the nurses gently ushered her out at the end of visiting hours. She promised to return tomorrow with Thomas and Lucy’s father. Lucy smiled reassuringly until the door closed, and then she was alone again.

Exhaustion overtook her quickly.

She woke in her room. Her real room. Not the hospital.

For a few disoriented moments, she lay still. Then dread flooded her.

She was back. The heart had brought her back.

But… there was no heartbeat. No sound at all. Her bedroom looked normal—desk, posters, bookshelves. Nothing strange in the faint red glow.

Red glow.

Where was it coming from?

She couldn’t find any source. And was it getting brighter?

She stepped into the middle of the room. The shadows shifted around her. It felt like she was the source of the light. She looked at her hands—normal, just illuminated like everything else. Yet the glow grew stronger.

It reminded her of her mother’s infrared lamp when she had a cold—except this light was cold. Bone-deep cold, like standing naked outside in winter.

A memory lunged back into her mind.

A dark, frozen plane.
Crimson light pulsing with a heartbeat.

She turned toward the wall where she had heard the sound the night before.

There, illuminated by the red glow, was a shadow that didn’t belong. A tall rectangle, darker than darkness itself. No object cast it. It simply existed. And as the light intensified, the shadow deepened, becoming a void between distant stars.

Door, the word whispered itself into Lucy’s mind.

She stepped back.
She felt its hunger.
The hole wanted to devour her.

From the darkness came a rhythmic sound. Not a heartbeat.

Footsteps.

Something was stepping through the void into her bedroom.

Lucy froze. Even her lungs seemed unable to expand.

With a blast of icy wind from the unnatural door, a silhouette emerged—vague, human-shaped, featureless, but instantly recognizable.

Terror held her for several seconds before she managed to whisper:

“Adam?”

And they sang their wordless song. The worm did squirm and it was long. Is it black or is it red? The heart is beating, and all is set.

It’s dark. It’s cold. Memories lash at Adam with the same ferocity as the tiny crystals of ice hurled at him by the wind.

It can’t be much farther. He can feel the heartbeat vibrating through the ice. Is it calling to him? And if so, is he truly the one meant to answer?

He already knows.

Adam glances behind him, though he won’t see anything through the storm. Still, something in his soul shivers like a rabbit catching the shadow of a hawk.

He cannot see his pursuer, but he knows the Hunter is close. Close enough, perhaps, that Adam might feel his footsteps through the ice as clearly as he feels the beating of the heart ahead.

One step after another.
So cold, so dark.
An endless march through an endless night.

Adam thinks of the Hunter. Does the Hunter suffer as Adam does? Does he imagine the snow and ice infiltrating his bloodstream? Perhaps his skin betrayed him long ago for all the pain he forced it to endure. Perhaps his skin is long dead. Perhaps he is long dead—nothing but a corpse carried forward by the momentum of fear and hatred.

Adam scoops snow with his frostbitten hands and stuffs it into his mouth. As he swallows, a vision rises in his mind like driftwood breaking the surface of a foul lake: endless corridors of a forgotten tomb, floors covered with crushed bone. He walks through them in a fever, scooping up pale dust, swallowing until his body matches the color of the dead he devours. The consumed bones in his guts regain their former, whole form, their sharp ends penetrating his flesh and skin.

Bile burns his throat. He collapses to his knees, hands clamped over his mouth, fighting not to empty his stomach onto this cursed plain. He has lived on nothing but snow—days, weeks, or whatever passes for time in a place where the sun is dead and night has no end.

“I am losing my mind,” he thinks. “This is not a path for mortals. Even gods hesitate before stepping onto it. I am no god.”

One step after another.

Something juts from the snow to his right. A tree? No—a rifle. Another lies beside it, and another. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Abandoned? Arranged? Some pattern the mortal mind cannot untangle. A graveyard. A monument to a battle no one remembers.

He feels—more than sees—silhouettes standing among the weapons, vague shapes carved from gale-driven snow. What do they whisper? What do they sing? He almost recognizes the words…

Step by step, from cold and dark to dark and cold.

The heartbeat grows stronger now. Faster. Can it feel him?

Adam almost laughs. Of course, it cannot feel him. He is a dead man. A ghost. A shadow of something that once was.

Or… what if it is the other way around? What if he is the Hunter? What if his prey stumbles ahead, crazed and despairing? What if he has simply forgotten the order of things?

Does it matter here?

Step by step.
Dark and cold.
The beating of the heart. The breath of the Hunter on the back of his neck.

Who am I? Who was I? Who will I be? A worm in old wood? A leaf carried by the wind? Here, there is no wood for worms, no leaves to float on the wings of wind.

Adam laughs softly. He has just realized he no longer carries his rifle. He cannot remember where he lost it. Perhaps the Hunter will find it. Perhaps he already has.

Is that… light?

He stares into the darkness ahead. He has seen light many times on this path, always a rotten fruit of imagination. Nothing survives here—least of all hope.

And yet… light glows before him.

The heartbeat is so intense now that it no longer sounds like a heart. The ice vibrates with its grim, frantic song. The light seeps from beneath the ice: a sick, red glow felt as much as seen.

There it is. At last.

Around the glowing patch of ice lies a camp—or rather a rubbish heap, judging by the chaos. Ragged tents, shattered equipment, all half-swallowed by snow. How many came here, answering the desperate song of the heart? It does not matter. There is work to do.

His pickaxe is still with him, at least. His rifle may have fled him, but the pickaxe stayed.

He wants to collapse in relief, to rest for even a second—but the Hunter is close. Adam can almost see its dark form skulking in the poisonous glow.

He begins digging without hesitation.

When the pickaxe breaks, he tears at the ice with his nails. By the time he reaches the final layer, his hands are little more than twisted stumps of gore.

Beneath the ice lies a body, perfectly preserved except for the yawning cavity in its chest. Inside rests a heart—unconnected to any artery—yet beating, radiating thick red light.

Adam does not dare look at the man’s face.

He lowers what remains of his hands into the cavity and lifts the heart to his lips… and bites down. He tears and gulps, feeling the thing enter him like alien roots threading through every vessel, every cell.

Tears sting his eyes as he finishes. When he blinks them away, the frozen body is already collapsing, melting into a puddle of what once was flesh and bone.

He lowers himself into the hole, into the wet remains of the one before him. The Hunter is coming for his prize—for his curse. They always come. The ice is already reclaiming the pit. Pain blooms in Adam’s chest. As one wound seals, another splits open.

Hopefully, the Hunter will be quicker than he was.
The debt must be paid.
The circle must continue.

Adam was no god.
Immortality was not bestowed upon him.

But he walks the path, and the path is eternal.

The ice vibrates. Is that a heartbeat—or footsteps?

…Silent was their voiceless choir.
The starless sky is not a liar.
There is only one long path.
Step outside and feel its wrath…

Lucy woke up covered in cold sweat. She was still in her hospital bed.

The dream… the nightmare. It wasn’t like nightmares she had before. They eventually started to fade, their edges blurring and blunting. This… this was like a bleeding wound. There would be no ignoring it, no forgetting it. It was there, a gnawing hole in her mind. She remembered Adam. Tears ran down her face. Adam. He was in that… Cold Place. Alive.

Was she there with him? Or… did he come to her?

Lucy walked to the window. It was still night, and the sky was clear. She stared at winking stars. Adam was trapped in that Cold Place. Alive.

“I will bring you home,” she whispered to the stars

Credit: Elyvox