But what choice do we have? The rain is getting colder, and the sky isn’t getting any lighter, like the nighttime is here to stay forever.
We continue deeper along the tram track until the grass thins and dies, giving way to cracked, weeded pavement.
The thick trees pull back around us, and when I come to an abrupt stop, everyone else halts with me.
My wide eyes drift upward, neck craning as cold rain patters across my face. The crumbling buildings rise ahead—tall and ruined pillars of absolute black against the sickly grey sky.
They don’t just stand, they fucking loom.
Hundreds of empty windows stare down like gouged sockets, dead and waiting. Weeds and vines choke every surface, and between the towers stretch thick, glistening webs that sway in the wind, as if something inside them is still alive.
“What… the fuck,” Mattie whispers beside me, her voice already fraying.
My gaze keeps sweeping across the forgotten land, but it doesn’t just feel abandoned. It feels evacuated in a panic, like whatever catastrophe happened here was so terrible that even the ones responsible ran before they could finish witnessing what they’d unleashed.
Overturned bikes sink into the earth, scattered belongings lie exactly where they were dropped, slowly being eaten by the weeds.
A low pressure builds behind my eyes, a familiar static of dissociation flickering at the edges of my vision as the buildings seem to lean in, just slightly.
“What the hell is this place?” Another murmurs from behind.
Suddenly, a low creaking drags my attention to the left, and my head turns, almost against my will, as if the sound has hooked behind my eyes and is pulling.
They land on a playground and an immediate wave of anxiety hits me.
There’s a rusted slide that curls, a see-saw tilting gently up and down in slow rhythm. Two swings drift back and forth, chains groaning softly, moving exactly like small bodies are still sitting on them.
Although the rain is still falling, the wind has calmed down here, but the swings keep going. And I can’t tell if it’s just the breeze… or if something is still playing there.
My stomach folds in on itself, old memories clawing up from the darkness of my own childhood, and for a moment the entire scene blurs.
Mattie’s shaky hand brushes my arm.
“We should keep moving,” she whispers, but her voice sounds far away, like she’s already halfway gone.
I nod without looking at her, and my legs move before my mind agrees, carrying me forward along the cracked pavement, deeper into the dead town.
We weave between the towering buildings, my pulse hammering in my ears.
Then I see it, far ahead.
A huge shadow morphing over one side of the black monoliths ahead, taller than any man, slipping between buildings like liquid night pouring through cracks.
My breath halts in my throat, head exploding into blinding white noise.
Old terror surges up through me, the kind that taught me long ago that some things cannot be outrun.
“Run,” someone hisses.
We dart left anyway, feet pounding over broken concrete and tangled weeds, straight toward the nearest building, the door shattered like a gaping mouth.
Spilling inside, the air suddenly feels thicker in here, dense with rot and damp.
I press my back against a wall just inside the entrance, trying to make myself small, and the others crowd in beside me.
The building groans softly around us, as if settling in to keep us.
“We need to go higher,” someone whispers beside me, their voice thin, already half-eaten by the dark.
