A young boy around the age seven went to the beach with his mother and father.

Jasper was his name he looked like he would have been found in a family of hobos.

And a young girl who found herself playing with Jasper, Katie was her name.

Katie was five going on six.

She went to kindergarten and Jaspar was just a year ahead of her.

She loved playing with him, in fact the two of them played at the beach every day.

But one day Jaspar didn't show up.

Amelie’s first instinct was to call the police. She had always wanted to raise the alarm, that boy never had looked well cared for, with his matt of dark brown hair and dirtied clothes. But, on this occasion, her daughter seemed to have more sense than her.

”Maybe he’s gone home,” Katie had said sadly, small hands wrapped tightly around a stuffed bear.

Amelie had stilled then. Home. Yes, that made sense. Living in Cornwall, she was sure Katie had made many a friend over the summer, a child on the beach making sandcastles, a holidaying family that left as fast as they came. Of course Jasper was on holiday, gone home to start school in summer.

So why did this feel different?

The beach was almost empty now, the tide dragging long fingers of foam across the sand. The sky had bruised into twilight, that strange hour where the world felt thinner, as though something else pressed close on the other side.

She walked toward the rocks at the far end of the cove, the place Jasper always seemed to drift toward when he wasn’t building sandcastles with Katie. She’d never thought much of it before. Children liked hiding places. Children liked secrets.

But tonight, the air felt wrong.

A low mist curled around the rocks, clinging to her ankles like pollen. Amelie hesitated, then stepped forward.

A child’s laugh rang out across the coastline.

“Jasper?” she whispered, though she didn’t know why. She had never heard him laugh like that.

The mist parted.

It shouldn’t have been there.

She’d lived here for years. Yet now, a narrow opening yawned between the stones, breathing out cold air that smelled of salt and something metallic, like rusted chains.

But she stepped inside.

Amelia squeezed herself through the narrow passageway, the rocks pulling at her clothes and hair with stinging fingers that left marks along her limbs. She hoped her husband Evan had stayed back to watch over Katie, and thought of the strange child her daughter had spent many an evening tossing sand at and splashing around in the shallows with. The entrance to... wherever she was going, had become tighter, and she imagined the walls moving in closer to squish her into a messy painting of flesh and bones in one final embrace. Her breath came out in ragged pants as she tried to wiggle faster and it felt like she was stuck in place, though she couldn't possibly be, right? She mashed her eyes closed when she thought it was almost over for her...

And then she popped out of the passageway at last, tripping over her feet and falling face forward. Amelia opened her eyes, realising that the texture beneath her cheek was not sand, nor was it rock. It was grass. She pushed herself up by her arms, kneeling on the softest bed of greenery in what must've been all of Cornwall. Was she still even home? She turned, and in a panic noticed that the crack in the wall she entered from had disappeared. With a desperate cry, she flung herself at the rocky barrier, scrabbling for the slightest bit of a splinter that would signify there was a way out. Nothing.

Amelia sunk to the ground, fat drops of salty tears sliding over her cheeks and chin, making small splatters of circles on her denim shorts. Her knees had become dark with dirt from the grass. Where had that come from? She leaned her forehead against the jagged surface, the harsh spikes of rock likely cutting her skin. She couldn't find herself to care. Until she thought of her husband and her daughter. Her family. This was more about finding Jasper. It was now about finding a way home.

“OK,” Amelie told herself, “I definitely am not going home that way again.”

After wiping off her tears with her hand, she picked herself up and looked around.

She was here. She had just lost her only way home known to her. She shrugged in accepting the fact that the only way was forward.

But where or what is … Here …

After her, a mountainous rock-side rose. She wouldn’t be going in that direction any time soon. All she could see before her was grass. Or to be more precise, she stood on a hill overlooking a valley with rolling plains of grass.

On the far side of the plains, she noticed something that looked like structures, man-made structures. At least she assumed that that was what they were. Because that would mean people and maybe some answers. She could only hope and sighed, putting one foot before the other.