Short Story: Is Hallows Eve Haunted?

 

Chapter One: The Marked Ones

Neve Harper’s reflection blinked before she did.

She stood frozen in the school bathroom mirror, watching her own face move independently. Her reflection’s mouth curved into a smile Neve wasn’t making. Then it pressed one finger to its lips. Shh.

The lights flickered. When they steadied, her reflection matched her again, wide-eyed and terrified.

“You saw it too.” The voice came from behind the cubicle door. Kelly Pemberton emerged, her face pale as chalk. “Mine waved at me yesterday. My reflection. It waved, and I wasn’t moving at all.”

Neve’s throat felt tight. “We should tell someone.”

“Who’d believe us?” Kelly twisted her hands together. “My mum said I was overtired. Told me to stop reading horror novels before bed.”

The bathroom door swung open. Shelly Pemberton, Kelly’s twin sister, stumbled inside. Identical faces, but Shelly’s expression carried something Kelly’s didn’t. Terror so deep it had carved shadows beneath her eyes.

“It’s getting worse,” Shelly whispered. “The shadows. They’re moving wrong. Following people. Following us.”

Outside, the October wind rattled the windows. Ravensmere Secondary School felt smaller today, as though the walls had shifted inward during the night. The corridors seemed narrower. The ceiling is lower. Everything pressing down, squeezing tighter.

Neve’s mobile buzzed. A text from Rory: meet at the oak tree after school. urgent. Bring the twins.

She showed the message to Kelly and Shelly. Both girls nodded, their synchronised movement unsettling in its precision.

The school day crawled past like something wounded. In maths, Neve watched the clock hands move backwards for three full seconds before lurching forward again. In English, Mrs Patterson’s voice distorted mid-sentence, stretching into a low groan that made Neve’s teeth ache. Nobody else seemed to notice. The other students sat placid, taking notes, existing in a world that hadn’t started breaking yet.

But Neve felt it. The fractures are spreading through reality like cracks in ice.

After school, five figures gathered beneath the ancient oak tree at the edge of the playing fields. Rory Kendrick arrived first, his usual easy grin replaced by something grim. Carlo Martinez came next, his football kit still muddy from practice. Josh Winters followed, clutching his backpack straps so tightly his knuckles had gone white.

“Something’s happening to us,” Rory said without preamble. “Something nobody else can see.”

“The shadows,” Josh interrupted. “They’re alive. I watched one peel itself off the wall in the science lab. It moved across the floor like oil, and when it touched my shoe, I felt it. Cold. So cold it burned.”

Carlo nodded. “My locker. This morning. When I opened it, there was frost inside. In October. And I heard breathing. Something breathing from inside the metal.”

“Our reflections are wrong,” Kelly added. Shelly stood pressed against her sister’s side, nodding frantically.

Neve’s chest tightened. “So we’re not imagining it.”

“No.” Rory pulled something from his pocket. A photograph, old and faded. “I found this in my gran’s attic last night. Look at the date.”

The photo showed six teenagers standing beneath the same oak tree. The date scrawled on the back read: October 31st, 1994. Thirty-one years ago. Hallow’s Eve.

“So what?” Carlo frowned. “It’s just an old photo.”

“Look closer.” Rory pointed to two figures at the edge of the frame. “That’s Nathan Frost. And that’s Tyler Black. They went to this school. And on Hallow’s Eve 1994, they disappeared.”

The wind picked up, scattering dead leaves across the grass. The temperature dropped so suddenly that Neve could see her breath.

“They didn’t disappear,” a voice said from behind them.

All six children spun around.

A boy stood ten metres away. Seventeen, maybe eighteen years old. He wore clothes from another era, jeans and a leather jacket that belonged in a 1990s catalogue. His skin had a grey pallor, like meat kept too long in a freezer. But his eyes. His eyes were black from edge to edge, no white visible, reflecting nothing.

“We evolved,” the boy said. Nathan Frost. It had to be. “We found something better than this dying world. And tonight, we’re coming back to share it.”

He smiled. His teeth were too sharp.

Then he was gone. Not walking away. Simply absent, as though he’d never existed at all.

Shelly made a small, broken sound. Kelly grabbed her sister’s hand.

“What was that?” Josh’s voice cracked.

Neve’s mobile buzzed again. A message from an unknown number: you’re marked now. When midnight comes, you’ll see what we’ve become. You’ll join us in the cold and the dark and the beautiful nothing.

Six phones buzzed simultaneously. The same message. The same sender.

Rory looked at Neve. “We’ve got until midnight to figure out what’s happening.”

“Or what?” Carlo asked.

Nobody answered. They didn’t need to. They all felt it. The invisible hourglass is turning. The sand is running out. The world is tilting towards something vast and hungry that had been waiting thirty-one years to feed again.

Above them, the sky darkened. Not with clouds. With something else. Something that moved.

Chapter Two: The Cold Spaces

They went to Rory’s house because his parents worked late on Thursdays. The six of them crowded into his bedroom, door locked, curtains drawn. Outside, Ravensmere looked normal. Cars passed. People walked dogs. The world continued, oblivious.

But inside Rory’s room, reality felt thin.

“We need to find out what happened in 1994,” Neve said. She sat cross-legged on the floor, Rory’s laptop balanced on her knees. “There has to be something. News articles. Police reports. Anything.”

Her fingers flew across the keyboard. The others watched in silence, their faces illuminated by the screen’s cold glow.

“Here.” Neve turned the laptop so everyone could see. “Local news archive. October 31st, 1994.”

The headline read: TWO RAVENSMERE STUDENTS MISSING AFTER HALLOW’S EVE PARTY.

The article described Nathan Frost and Tyler Black, both seventeen, last seen at a party near the old quarry. Search parties found nothing. No bodies. No evidence. Just two boys erased from existence.

“There’s more,” Rory said, leaning over Neve’s shoulder. He clicked another link. “Look at this.”

A follow-up article from November 15th, 1994: MISSING STUDENTS’ FRIENDS REPORT STRANGE OCCURRENCES.

Four other teenagers from the original photograph had reported seeing Nathan and Tyler after their disappearance. Seeing them in mirrors. In shadows. In the spaces between things. All four teenagers were referred to psychiatric services. The reports stopped after that.

“They saw them,” Kelly whispered. “Just like we’re seeing them now.”

Shelly’s hand found her sister’s. “What happened to those four teenagers?”

Neve clicked through more archives. Her stomach dropped. “They disappeared, too. All four of them. Exactly one year later. October 31st, 1995.”

The room went silent except for the laptop’s quiet hum.

“So Nathan and Tyler took them,” Josh said slowly. “Took them to wherever they are now.”

“And now it’s our turn,” Carlo finished.

A sound came from downstairs. Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Climbing the stairs.

“Your parents aren’t home,” Neve said to Rory.

“I know.”

The footsteps reached the landing. Stopped outside Rory’s door. The handle turned slowly, metal squeaking. But the door was locked. The handle turned anyway, pushing against the mechanism, forcing it.

“Window,” Rory hissed.

They scrambled towards the window. Rory shoved it open. Cold air rushed in, carrying the smell of frost and something else. Something rotten.

The door burst open.

Tyler Black stood in the doorway. Like Nathan, he wore clothes from 1994, his face grey and wrong. But Tyler’s wrongness went deeper. His proportions were off. Arms too long. Fingers with too many joints. When he smiled, his jaw unhinged slightly, revealing a throat that went down and down into impossible darkness.

“Nathan wants you to understand,” Tyler said. His voice echoed, as though spoken in a vast empty space. “The cold is beautiful. Nothing is peaceful. You’ll stop fighting. You’ll stop hurting. You’ll just be.”

“Get out,” Rory said, but his voice shook.

Tyler took a step forward. Frost spread across the carpet where his foot touched. “We were like you once. Scared. Desperate. Then we found the space between. The place where nothing hurts because nothing exists. And tonight, at midnight, the veil is thinnest. Tonight, we can bring you through.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Neve said. She grabbed a cricket bat from beside Rory’s wardrobe, gripping it with both hands.

Tyler laughed. The sound was wrong, layered with other voices, other laughs, all slightly out of sync. “You don’t have a choice. You’re marked. We marked you weeks ago. Haven’t you noticed? The cold spots in your houses? The shadows that watch? The dreams where you can’t breathe?”

Neve’s blood went cold. She had noticed. They all had.

“Why us?” Kelly asked. Her voice was small, childlike.

“Because you’re sensitive,” Tyler said. “You can see the cracks. You can feel the spaces. That makes you perfect. Perfect for crossing over. Perfect for feeding the nothing.”

He took another step. The frost spread further, climbing the walls, covering the windows in intricate patterns that looked almost like screaming faces.

“Run,” Rory said.

They ran.

Out the window, dropping into the garden below. Neve felt the impact jar through her ankles, but didn’t stop. Behind them, Tyler’s laughter followed, not fading with distance but growing louder, as though the space between them was collapsing.

They ran through Ravensmere’s streets as the sun set. Streetlights flickered on, casting orange pools that seemed dimmer than usual. Shadows stretched longer than they should, reaching towards the fleeing children like grasping hands.

“Where are we going?” Josh panted.

“The library,” Neve gasped. “Mrs Thatcher. She’s been the town librarian for forty years. She’ll remember 1994. She’ll know what happened.”

They burst through the library doors just as the last light died from the sky. Inside, the building felt safe. Warm. Real.

Mrs Thatcher looked up from her desk, her elderly face creasing with concern. “Children? What’s wrong?”

“Nathan Frost,” Neve said between breaths. “Tyler Black. 1994. What happened to them?”

Mrs Thatcher’s expression changed. The concern vanished, replaced by something harder. Fear. And recognition.

“You’ve been marked,” she whispered. “Oh no. Not again.”

Chapter Three: The Between

Mrs Thatcher locked the library doors and drew every curtain. Her hands trembled as she worked, age-spotted fingers fumbling with the latches. When she finished, she turned to face the six children huddled near the reference section.

“Sit,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I know. But it won’t be enough to save you.”

They sat. The library felt different now, less sanctuary and more tomb. Books lined the walls like silent witnesses, their spines facing outward, watching.

Mrs Thatcher lowered herself into a chair with a soft groan. “I was twenty-six in 1994. New to Ravensmere. I didn’t understand the town’s history then. Didn’t know what lurked in the spaces.”

“The spaces?” Neve prompted.

“The between,” Mrs Thatcher said. “That’s what the old families call it. The space between moments. Between heartbeats. Between breaths. Most people never notice it. But some do. People like Nathan Frost. People like Tyler Black. People like you.”

She gestured at the six children.

“Nathan and Tyler were obsessed with the occult. They found something in the old quarry. A place where the veil was thin. On Hallow’s Eve 1994, they performed a ritual. They wanted to see beyond. To touch the nothing. To understand what exists in the spaces between existence.”

“What happened?” Carlo asked.

“They succeeded.” Mrs Thatcher’s voice dropped to barely a whisper. “They opened themselves to the between. And the between opened itself to them. It consumed them. Changed them. Made them part of itself. They became doorways. Living portals to the nothing.”

“The four others who disappeared,” Rory said. “The ones who saw Nathan and Tyler afterwards.”

Mrs Thatcher nodded. “Marked. Just like you. Nathan and Tyler needed others to cross over. Needed to feed the between. So they marked four of their friends. Haunted them. Drove them mad with visions and cold and shadows. And on Hallow’s Eve 1995, exactly one year later, those four children walked into the quarry and never came back.”

Shelly made a small whimpering sound. Kelly pulled her sister close.

“Why now?” Neve demanded. “Why us? It’s been thirty-one years.”

“The cycle,” Mrs Thatcher said. “Every thirty-one years, the veil thins enough for them to reach through properly. To mark new victims. To bring more souls into the between. They tried in 2025, but nobody was sensitive enough. This year, they found you.”

“How do we stop them?” Josh’s voice cracked with desperation.

Mrs Thatcher’s expression was bleak. “You can’t. Once you’re marked, you belong to the between. At midnight on Hallow’s Eve, you’ll feel the pull. You’ll want to go. The cold will feel like comfort. Nothing will feel like peace. And you’ll walk into the quarry, just like the others did.”

“No.” Neve stood abruptly. “There has to be a way. There’s always a way.”

“There isn’t.” Mrs Thatcher’s voice was final. “I’ve researched this for thirty-one years. I’ve read every book, every account, every scrap of folklore. The between doesn’t let go. Once it marks you, you’re already half-gone.”

The library lights flickered. Once. Twice. In the darkness between flickers, Neve saw them. Nathan Frost and Tyler Black, standing among the bookshelves, watching with their black, empty eyes.

When the lights steadied, they were gone.

But frost covered the windows now, intricate patterns that spelt out words: MIDNIGHT. QUARRY. COME HOME.

“It’s only eight o’clock,” Rory said, checking his phone. “We have four hours.”

“Four hours to do what?” Carlo asked. “She just said there’s no way out.”

Neve’s mind raced. There had to be something. Some details were missing. “Mrs Thatcher, the ritual Nathan and Tyler performed. What exactly did they do?”

“Nobody knows for certain. But the police found symbols carved into the quarry walls. Old symbols. Pre-Christian. Symbols for opening and crossing, and becoming.”

“Symbols can be reversed,” Neve said. “If they opened a doorway, we can close it.”

“It’s been open for thirty-one years,” Mrs Thatcher said. “You can’t close something that’s become permanent.”

“But we can try.” Neve looked at the others. “We can go to the quarry. Find those symbols. Try to reverse them before midnight.”

“Or we walk right into their trap,” Josh said.

“We’re walking into it anyway,” Kelly said quietly. “At midnight, we’ll go whether we want to or not. At least this way, we’re choosing.”

Shelly nodded against her sister’s shoulder.

Rory stood. “Then we go to the quarry. Now. While we still have time.”

Carlo and Josh exchanged glances, then nodded.

Mrs Thatcher watched them with ancient, sad eyes. “You’re children. Brave, foolish children. But children nonetheless.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Neve asked.

Silence.

“Then we try.” Neve moved towards the door, then paused. “Mrs Thatcher, if we don’t come back, tell our families we weren’t scared at the end.”

Chapter Four: The Quarry

The old quarry sat two miles outside Ravensmere, hidden behind a tangle of overgrown woodland. The path had been closed for years, blocked by rusted chains and warning signs that screamed DANGER and KEEP OUT in faded red letters. The six children ducked beneath the chains and pushed forward into the darkness.

Neve led the way, her mobile’s torch cutting a thin beam through the black. Behind her, the others followed in silence, their footsteps crunching on dead leaves and broken stone. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees since they’d left the library. Their breath came in white clouds that hung in the air too long, refusing to dissipate.

“How much further?” Josh whispered.

“Not far,” Rory said. He’d pulled up an old map on his phone, the screen’s glow making his face look ghostly. “The main quarry pit should be just ahead.”

They emerged from the trees into a clearing. The quarry opened before them like a wound in the earth, a massive crater carved into the hillside. Sheer rock walls dropped thirty metres to a floor of broken stone and stagnant water. And there, on the far wall, illuminated by their torches, were the symbols.

Hundreds of them. Carved deep into the rock face, spiralling outward from a central point like a massive, intricate web. Some were recognisable, ancient runes Neve had seen in books. Others were alien, wrong, shapes that hurt to look at directly.

“That’s it,” Carlo breathed. “That’s where they did it.”

At the centre of the symbol web was a darker patch. Not shadow. An absence. A hole in reality itself, roughly the size of a doorway. And from that hole came cold. Not a natural cold. The cold of deep space. The cold of nothing.

“We need to get down there,” Neve said.

They found a path, a narrow trail that switchbacked down the quarry wall. It was treacherous, loose stones skittering beneath their feet, but they descended carefully, helping each other over the worst sections. Kelly and Shelly moved together, never more than an arm’s length apart, their identical faces set with identical determination.

When they reached the bottom, the cold intensified. Neve’s fingers went numb despite her gloves. Ice crystals formed on her eyelashes. The stagnant water at the quarry’s lowest point had frozen solid, the ice black and smooth as glass.

“Now what?” Josh asked. His teeth chattered.

Neve approached the symbol wall. Up close, the carvings were even more disturbing. They seemed to move when she wasn’t looking directly at them, writhing and reforming. And the central darkness, the doorway, pulsed with a rhythm like a heartbeat.

“We need to reverse them,” she said. “Carve counter-symbols. Close the doorway.”

“With what?” Carlo gestured at the rock. “We don’t have tools.”

Rory pulled a penknife from his pocket. “We have this.”

It was pathetically small, the blade barely five centimetres long. But it was something.

“We’ll take turns,” Neve said. “Work fast. We’ve got less than three hours until midnight.”

They began. Rory went first, pressing the knife blade against the rock and scraping, trying to create marks that would counteract the original symbols. The sound was horrible, metal on stone, a screech that echoed through the quarry like a scream.

After ten minutes, he’d managed one small line.

“This is impossible,” he panted, passing the knife to Carlo. “There are hundreds of symbols. We’ll never finish in time.”

“We have to try,” Neve insisted.

Carlo took over, his football-player strength driving the blade harder into the rock. He managed two lines before his hand cramped, and he passed the knife to Josh.

They worked in rotation, each taking a turn while the others huddled together for warmth. The cold grew worse. Frost climbed the quarry walls. The frozen water at their feet cracked and groaned.

And then, at nine-thirty, the doorway opened wider.

The darkness at the centre of the symbols expanded, spreading like spilt ink. From within came sounds. Whispers. Screams. Laughter that wasn’t quite human. And two figures stepped through.

Nathan Frost and Tyler Black.

They looked more solid now, more real. Their grey skin had taken on texture. Their black eyes reflected the torchlight with an oily sheen. Tyler’s too-long arms hung at his sides, fingers nearly brushing the ground.

“You came,” Nathan said. His voice carried warmth now, almost friendly. “We knew you would. The mark always comes.”

“Stay back,” Neve warned. She held the penknife, though it felt ridiculous, a toy weapon against something vast and wrong.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Tyler said. His jaw unhinged slightly when he spoke, revealing that impossible throat. “We’re here to help you understand. The between isn’t evil. It’s peace. It’s the end of pain and fear and loneliness. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s nothing,” Rory said. “You said so yourself. It’s nothing.”

“Yes.” Nathan smiled. “And nothing is perfect. No disappointment. No loss. No suffering. Just quiet. Just peace. Forever.”

Kelly stepped forward, her face pale but determined. “You’re lying. If it were so perfect, you wouldn’t need us. You wouldn’t need to mark people and drag them in.”

Nathan’s smile faltered. “The between needs to grow. Needs to expand. Every soul that crosses over makes it stronger. Makes the peace deeper. We’re not dragging you. We’re inviting you.”

“No.” Neve’s voice was steady. “We’re not going.”

“You don’t have a choice.” Tyler’s voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried across the quarry. “Look at yourselves. Look at your hands.”

Neve looked down. Her hands were grey. Not with cold. With the same pallor that covered Nathan and Tyler. The marking wasn’t on them. It was in them. Changing them. Making them part of the between already.

She looked at the others. They were all the same. Grey skin. Eyes darkening. Becoming doorways themselves.

“No,” she said again, but her voice was weaker now.

The cold felt less painful. Almost comfortable. The whispers from the doorway sounded less like screams and more like songs. Peaceful. Inviting. Calling her home.

“It’s time,” Nathan said softly. “Midnight is coming. And when it arrives, you’ll cross over. You’ll join us. You’ll finally understand.”

The darkness spread further, reaching towards them like welcoming arms.

Chapter Five: The Choice

Shelly collapsed first. Her legs simply gave out, and she crumpled to the frozen ground. Kelly screamed and dropped beside her sister, shaking her, calling her name. But Shelly’s eyes had gone distant, unfocused, staring at something only she could see.

“She’s crossing,” Tyler said. His voice held something that might have been sympathy. “The between is calling her. She’ll be the first.”

“No!” Kelly grabbed Shelly’s face, forcing her sister to look at her. “Shelly, stay with me. Please. Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

For a moment, Shelly’s eyes focused. “Kelly,” she whispered. “It’s so quiet there. So peaceful. I’m so tired of being scared.”

“I know. I know you are. But you can’t go. We’re supposed to be together. Always together. That’s what we promised.”

Tears froze on Kelly’s cheeks as they fell.

Neve felt it too. The pull. Like gravity, but sideways, tugging her towards the darkness. Towards the nothing. Part of her wanted to resist. But another part, a growing part, wanted to let go. To stop fighting. To just… be.

“Neve.” Rory’s voice cut through the fog in her mind. “Don’t listen to them. Remember why we came here. We’re not giving up.”

She blinked, forcing herself to focus. The penknife was still in her hand. They’d barely scratched the surface of the symbols, but maybe they didn’t need to reverse all of them. Maybe they just needed to break the pattern. Disrupt the ritual enough to weaken the doorway.

“The centre,” she said. Her voice sounded strange, distant. “We need to damage the centre symbol. The one that’s holding the doorway open.”

“You can’t,” Nathan said. But there was something in his voice now. Uncertainty. Fear. “The ritual is complete. The doorway is permanent.”

“Then why are you worried?” Carlo asked. He pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly. His skin was grey as ash, but his eyes still held fire. “If it’s permanent, it shouldn’t matter what we do.”

Tyler moved forward, his too-long arms reaching. “Don’t touch the symbols. You’ll damage yourselves. You’ll tear yourselves apart.”

“We’re already torn apart,” Josh said. He grabbed the penknife from Neve’s hand and stumbled towards the wall. “What’s a bit more?”

He pressed the blade against the central symbol, the one that formed the doorway’s frame, and began to scrape. Not carefully. Not precisely. Just scraping, gouging, destroying.

The effect was immediate. The doorway flickered. The darkness wavered. And Nathan and Tyler screamed.

It wasn’t a human sound. It was the sound of tearing fabric, of breaking glass, of a thousand voices crying out at once. They clutched at themselves, their forms destabilising, becoming translucent.

“Keep going!” Neve shouted.

Rory joined Josh, using a sharp stone to attack another part of the central symbol. Carlo found a piece of broken metal and began hammering at the carvings. The symbols cracked. Pieces of rock fell away. And the doorway shrank.

“Stop!” Nathan’s voice was desperate now, layered with pain. “You’re killing us! You’re destroying everything!”

“Good,” Kelly said. She’d left Shelly lying on the ground and picked up a rock, joining the others in their assault on the symbols. “You tried to take my sister. You tried to take all of us. I hope it hurts.”

The doorway collapsed inward, the darkness folding on itself like a dying star. Nathan and Tyler were pulled towards it, their forms stretching, distorting. They clawed at the ground, at the air, trying to resist, but the between was reclaiming them.

“Please,” Tyler begged. His voice was almost human now, almost the voice of the seventeen-year-old boy he’d once been. “We didn’t want this. We didn’t know what would happen. We just wanted to understand. We just wanted to see.”

“I’m sorry,” Neve said. And she meant it. “But we can’t let you take anyone else.”

She brought her rock down on the final piece of the central symbol. It shattered. And the doorway exploded.

Light burst from the darkness. Not warm light. Cold light. The light of stars dying. The light of endings. It washed over the quarry, over the six children, over Nathan and Tyler. And then it was gone.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Neve opened her eyes. She was lying on the quarry floor, her body aching, her hands bleeding from the rock. Around her, the others were stirring, groaning, sitting up slowly.

The symbols on the wall were destroyed, reduced to rubble and dust. The doorway was gone. Just blank rock remained, scarred and broken but solid. Real.

And Nathan Frost and Tyler Black had vanished.

“Are they dead?” Josh asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Neve said. “Maybe. Or maybe they’re just… back in the between. Trapped there. Forever.”

Shelly sat up, blinking. Her eyes were clear again, brown and human. “Kelly?”

“I’m here.” Kelly grabbed her sister, holding her so tightly it must have hurt. “I’m here. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

Neve checked her phone. 11:47 PM. Thirteen minutes until midnight. But the pull was gone. The cold was fading. Her skin was returning to its normal colour, the grey receding like a tide.

“We did it,” Rory said. He sounded amazed. “We actually did it.”

“We stopped them,” Carlo agreed. “We closed the doorway.”

They helped each other stand, six children bruised and bleeding and exhausted but alive. Above them, the sky was clear, stars visible between the quarry walls. Normal stars. Not the dying light between.

“We should go home,” Neve said. “Before our families realise we’re gone.”

They climbed out of the quarry slowly, helping each other up the treacherous path. When they reached the top, they paused, looking back at the crater below. In the darkness, it looked like any other abandoned quarry. Empty. Harmless. The horror that had lived there was gone.

But Neve knew they’d carry the memory forever. The cold. The darkness. The thing that had almost claimed them.

“Do we tell anyone?” Josh asked.

“Who’d believe us?” Rory said.

They wouldn’t. Neve knew that. They’d sound mad. Traumatized. They’d be sent to counsellors and psychiatrists and medicated until the memories faded into dreams.

“We keep it between us,” she said. “The six of us. We know what happened. That’s enough.”

The others nodded.

They walked back through the woods together, six children bound by something deeper than friendship. They’d faced the nothing and survived. They’d chosen life over peace, pain over emptiness, existence over the beautiful quiet of the between.

And that choice, Neve thought, made all the difference.

Chapter Six: After

Three days later, Neve sat in her bedroom, staring at her reflection in the mirror. It stared back normally now, no independent movement, no wrong smiles. Just her. Tired. Bruised. But alive.

Her hands still bore cuts from the quarry rocks. She’d told her parents she’d fallen while hiking. They’d believed her, more concerned with disinfecting the wounds than questioning the story. Adults rarely looked deeper than the surface.

Her mobile buzzed. A text in the group chat they’d created: The Marked Ones.

Rory: Anyone else having nightmares?

Kelly: Every night

Shelly: Me too

Josh: same

Carlo: Yeah

Neve typed: me too. I think they’ll fade. eventually.

But she wasn’t sure they would. Some experiences carved themselves too deeply to ever fully heal. The between had marked them in ways that went beyond grey skin and darkening eyes. It had shown them something most people never saw. The edge of existence. The place where everything stopped.

And knowing that place existed changed you.

Another text, this time from Rory privately: You okay?

Neve considered lying, then decided against it. not really. But I will be.

Rory: We all will be. together.

She smiled slightly. Together. That was the key. They’d survived because they’d had each other. Because they’d refused to face the nothing alone.

A knock on her door made her jump.

“Neve?” Her mum’s voice. “There’s someone here to see you.”

Neve’s heart raced. For a moment, she imagined Nathan Frost standing in her doorway, grey and wrong and smiling. But when she opened the door, it was just Mrs Thatcher from the library.

The elderly woman looked older than she had three days ago, as though the events at the quarry had aged her decades. But her eyes were sharp, assessing.

“May I come in?” she asked.

Neve nodded, stepping aside. Mrs Thatcher entered and closed the door behind her.

“You did it,” she said without preamble. “You closed the doorway. I didn’t think it was possible, but you did it.”

“How did you know?”

“I went to the quarry this morning. Saw the destroyed symbols. Felt the absence of the between.” Mrs Thatcher sat on Neve’s desk chair with a soft groan. “I’ve been monitoring that place for thirty-one years, waiting for them to return. And now they’re gone. Truly gone.”

“Are they?” Neve asked. “Or are they just trapped?”

“Does it matter? They can’t reach through anymore. Can’t mark anyone. Can’t feed the nothing. That’s what counts.”

Neve supposed it was. But she couldn’t shake the image of Nathan and Tyler, pulled back into the darkness, screaming. They’d been victims too, in a way. Stupid, reckless victims who’d opened a door they couldn’t close, but victims nonetheless.

“The others who disappeared,” Neve said. “The four from 1995. Are they still in the between?”

Mrs Thatcher’s expression grew sad. “I don’t know. Perhaps. Or perhaps they’re simply gone. Consumed. Erased. There’s no way to know.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yes. It is.” Mrs Thatcher stood slowly. “But you saved six lives. Your own and your friends’. That’s not nothing. That’s everything.”

She moved towards the door, then paused. “The nightmares will fade. The memories will dull. But you’ll never forget entirely. And that’s good. Some things should be remembered. Even the dark things. Especially the dark things. They remind us what we survived.”

After she left, Neve returned to her mirror. Her reflection looked back, solid and real and alive. Behind her, the room was warm, lit by afternoon sun streaming through the window. Normal. Safe.

But she knew the truth now. Beneath the normal, beneath the safe, there were spaces. Thin places where reality cracked and something else pressed through. The between was still out there, waiting in the gaps, hungry for souls to feed its endless nothing.

It would always be there.

But so would she. And Rory. And Kelly and Shelly and Josh and Carlo. Six children who’d faced the nothing and chosen to live. Who’d chosen pain and fear and uncertainty over the beautiful peace of emptiness.

Her mobile buzzed again. The group chat.

Carlo: Quarry tomorrow? Face our fears?

Kelly: Absolutely not

Shelly: never going back there

Josh: Are you insane?

Rory: Maybe in a few years

Neve: maybe never

Carlo: Okay okay. pizza instead?

Kelly: Yes

Shelly: Yes

Josh: Yes

Rory: Yes

Neve smiled and typed: Yes.

They’d meet at the pizza place in town, the six of them, and they’d sit together and eat and laugh and be normal. Or as normal as they could be, knowing what they knew. Carrying what they carried.

Outside, the sun was setting, painting the sky orange and pink and gold. Beautiful colours. Living colours. Neve watched until the last light faded and the stars emerged, cold and distant but real.

The between was still out there.

But so was everything else.

And that, Neve thought, was enough.