It began in a cage. Not a fine little box where you would expect to find a bird. No, this was a crudely constructed crate of bones and sinew. The little girl in a pink raincoat could not remember how she ended up in this cage, much less this world. From her trapped view in her prison, she saw tables and chairs the height of three story buildings.

She had to escape. The pink raincoat girl gnawed the bone bars until she felt her teeth would fall out. Her efforts were rewarded when the bars finally gave out.

She could not have known it, but nothing was natural in this world. She was only as tall as a fork.

On either side of her, there were walls of stacks of boxes. Her only path was forward. The air was heavy, causing every one of her breaths to feel heavy. Occasionally, a rat or cricket would cross her path, but they paid her no heed. They had greater evils to fear.

In this world, known as Nowhere, the only inhabitants are young children, such as the tiny girl in the pink raincoat, and Visitors. The Visitors came to this world long ago, hunting every child until none remain. Mysteriously, the time of their appearance has been forgotten, as have their reasons for this hunt.

The little pink raincoat girl crept toward a soft, cold light. It was pure white, like a moonbeam. Upon finally reaching it, she discovered it was the gap between a door and the floor. Her only option was to slide under and discover what waited for her on the other side. A tall Visitor stood in a living room with its black eyes fastened on a clock on the wall. Its body was disproportionate, as its legs made up almost its entire height. It had long, wavy arms that hung limply at its sides. It wore a tattered jacket and ripped stockings. Since it wore no shoes, its feet were nakedly displayed.

Without making the slightest noise, the girl tiptoed past the black mass under a shelf, likely used for storing oversized spices. The Visitor, pleased with the clock, walked out of the kitchen and unceremoniously dropped its form onto a leather couch. Afraid for her life, the little girl proceeded through the kitchen, past a pile of questionable meat lazily left on the stone floor, and into the living room. She briefly rested under the same couch where the Visitor sat a few feet above her pink hood. After gathering her courage, she maintained her trek until she found a dead end.

There were tall jars filled with pickled fingers, toes, tongues, and eyes of victims of the Visitor. Through the glass, she saw a mouse hole which meant safety. The Visitor still reclined on the couch. She weaved through the first few jars with ease. One of the jars had leaked fluid on the floor, creating a slippery surface for the girl to walk across. At first, this did not pose any trouble for the child. After taking a bad step, the unthinkable happened: she tripped. Every glass jar around her fell and shattered.

The Visitor's eyes immediately saw the intruder.

The little girl dove for the mouse hole, and wriggled inside. The visitor clawed and scratched and snarled and snapped at the entrance like a hunting dog. The girl pressed her back to the wall and shuffled across, out of the Visitor’s view.

And then a hand clamped over her mouth.

The girl froze.

The hand was small, like hers, and warm, too. But it was paler, skinnier and a lot less strong than she expected.

‘Shh,’ the owner of the hand whispered behind her. ‘It’s okay. My name is Lindy. We’re safe in here.’ Lindy released the girl and turned her around.

Lindy looked nothing like the girl. She wore a yellow dress, had short red hair and was very, very skinny. But the girl paid no attention to that. She peered behind Lindy, past her stumpy, ground down teeth and bleeding knuckles, to the tunnel behind her.

‘Yeah,’ Lindy whispered. ‘I dug it myself. I think if I tunnel through the walls, I can get out of here without getting hurt.’

’But you are hurt,’ said the girl.

Lindy held up her bleeding hands, where the skin was worked to the bone and her nails falling off. ‘This? This is from digging. So are my teeth. It’s nothing compared to what the Visitors can do.’

’The Visitors? Did they hurt you?’

Lindy shook her head. ‘My brother.’

"So, what is your name?" Lindy politely asked. The girl in the pink raincoat had forgotten, unsure if she ever had one. "I don't have one." Lindy perked up at this. "Then I must give you a name!"

How wonderful a name is. It is uniquely one's own. One is called by it by friends and strangers. To the girl in the pink raincoat, Lindy seemed like both. They continued through the tunnels dug by Lindy until the girl herself suggested a name. The idea came to her after a white butterfly flew over their heads in a small clearing littered with newspaper. "What about Moth?" Both of the girls were delighted with this name.

Lindy brought Moth back to reality. "Moth, please be careful. Follow my lead. We are about to cross a Visitor's basement. We'll only be able to follow my tunnel halfway behind the basement," Lindy gulped, "we'll need to walk the second half in the open." Moth's heart dropped. Lindy was the only friendly being Moth had met in this Nowhere. She had so many questions.

"Where are we?"

"Why do the Visitors want to eat us?"

"Is there an escape?"

As the safety of the tunnels ended, Moth's heart began to beat faster, like a drum picking up speed. Her ears rang and her chest shook, but she comforted herself in the presence of her new friend Lindy.

The basement floor was cracked and covered with the remains of countless others. More jars of remains, stood on shelves to the girls's right. Flies swarmed the jars, desiring to consume their contents. On their left, the wall was bare except for knives. These knives were three times as long as them, with edges sharp enough to slice through their skinny bodies without so much as a second thought. Their path forward was clear, but they still need to exert caution. Moth asked Lindy, "Are there no Visitors here?" Lindy's reply was: "Not at the moment."

Lindy led the way across the floor; Moth followed closely behind. Chains hung overhead, swaying carelessly.

Moth and Lindy made it to the other side of the basement. They were safe.

For now.

They did not stop walking.

Even after the basement faded behind them and the tunnel walls closed in once more, Lindy kept crawling forward on her elbows and knees, her breath shallow and quick. Moth followed, trying to match her pace, trying not to think about the knives, the jars, the chains that still clinked faintly behind them as though remembering their passage.

The tunnel narrowed until their shoulders brushed the dirt on either side. The air felt thicker here, heavier, like it did not want to be breathed. Moth’s chest rose and fell in short, nervous bursts.

“Does it always feel like this?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Lindy said. “The deeper you go, the more it notices you.”

Moth paused. “What notices us?”

Lindy didn’t answer.

Instead, she stopped crawling and pressed her ear against the dirt wall. For a long moment, she stayed perfectly still. Moth copied her, hesitantly pressing her hood against the cold earth.

At first, she heard nothing.

Then—

Thump.

A slow, heavy beat, like a heart buried deep inside the house.

Thump.

Moth recoiled. “The walls… they’re breathing.”

Lindy nodded, eyes wide but strangely calm. “That means we’re close to the center of this place. Houses here aren’t just houses. They’re part of Nowhere. Alive, in their own way.”

Moth swallowed hard. “Do they… help the Visitors?”

“No,” Lindy said. “But they don’t help us either.”

Another thump echoed through the tunnel. Dust sifted down from the ceiling, landing softly on their hair and clothes. The ground felt warmer now, almost feverish.

“We should keep moving,” Lindy whispered. “When the walls start breathing, the Visitors start listening.”

They crawled faster.

The tunnel sloped upward and widened just enough for them to walk hunched over. The dirt floor gave way to wooden planks, old and warped, that creaked under their tiny feet. Each step sounded far too loud in the tight space.

Moth held her breath as long as she could, then let it out slowly. “Lindy… your brother. What happened to him?”

For a moment, Moth thought she wouldn’t answer. Then Lindy spoke, her voice thin and distant.

“He wasn’t taken,” she said. “Not at first.”

The planks creaked as she resumed walking.

“He was bigger than me. Braver, too. He said the Visitors were just pretending to be monsters. That if we showed them we weren’t afraid, they’d leave us alone.”

Moth’s stomach tightened. “Did they?”

“No.” Lindy’s fingers curled into fists. “They watched him for a long time. Days. Maybe weeks. Then one night, he stopped being afraid of them.”

Moth blinked. “Stopped being afraid…?”

Lindy turned back, her face pale in the dim tunnel light. “That’s when he started acting like them.”

The air seemed to grow colder.

“He stopped talking,” Lindy continued quietly. “Stopped blinking. He’d just stand in corners and stare at things that weren’t there. And one day… he tried to bite me. Said he was ‘helping them find me.’”

Moth felt her legs go weak. “What happened to him after that?”

Lindy looked away. “I ran. Dug these tunnels so he couldn’t follow.”

They walked in silence after that, the only sound the soft creak of wood and the distant, rhythmic thumping of the breathing walls.

At last, a faint grey glow appeared ahead.

Lindy raised a hand, signaling Moth to stop. They crouched low as the tunnel opened into a narrow gap between two floorboards. Through the crack, Moth could see a new room above them.

It was enormous, even bigger than the last.

Tall cabinets lined the walls like silent giants. A long dining table stretched across the center, its legs as thick as tree trunks. On top of it sat rows of empty plates and silverware, perfectly arranged, as though waiting for guests that would never come.

Moth’s eyes drifted upward.

At the far end of the table, something moved.

A Visitor sat in a high-backed chair, far taller than the others they had seen. Its arms were folded neatly in its lap. Its head tilted slightly, as if listening to something far away.

Then it spoke.

“Two heartbeats,” it murmured softly, its voice thin and echoing. “So close together.”

Moth’s blood ran cold.

The Visitor slowly turned its head toward the floorboards.

Toward them.

Lindy’s hand shot out and gripped Moth’s wrist with surprising strength. Her eyes were wide with terror, but her voice was barely a breath.

“Don’t. Move.”

The air of Nowhere had intensified in this very moment. Lindy's and Moth's eyes locked. Their eyes were filled with fear.

Lindy had never met a Visitor with such intelligence as this one. Normally, they have weak minds and awareness. This one was different, as if its eyes were enlightened. This realization terrified her.

Moth was still afraid of all Visitors, as she had only been here for a few hours.

The girls dared not to breathe too loudly, for the Visitor had begun to approach their hiding spot under the floorboards. Even the mice were frozen in fear. Before Moth, knew what was going on, she was blinded with the light from the ceiling. In several long moments, she recovered her sight. The vision that greeted her mortified her. The Visitor had Lindy trapped in his iron grasp, looking at her with menacing, hungry eyes, as if he had some egregious plan for her. Lindy shouted, "Run, Moth! Run!!!" Moth came back to her senses; she darted out of the dining room with the Visitor's feet pounding behind her. She saw another one of the entrances to Lindy's tunnels. Her legs tightened with new purpose. She dared not look back, but the hair on her nape stood straight up, feeling the Visitor about to catch up. One of the uneven floorboards tripped her before should could reach the hole. The Visitor's hand reached out for her. Lindy was screaming, but Moth couldn't hear her; adrenaline had deafened her.

By her feet, she found a toothpick. It looked like a spear to her, as it was made by one of the Visitors. It was her savior. She instinctively lunged for the pike and held in front of her as the hand descended to snatch her. With a cry of fear and courage, Moth impaled the palm of the hand. The Visitor recoiled in pain with a bloodcurdling yell. Once he had recovered, Moth had already escaped.

She kept running, even though she was safe. After minutes of sprinting, the adrenaline began to wear off and the realizations hit her. Moth had escaped by a miracle, but Lindy was not quite as lucky. Lindy was in the clutches of a Visitor. Moth's knees gave out and she cried for her new friend that she had so lost so soon.

Moth did not know how long she cried.

Time in Nowhere did not move the way it should. There was no sun to rise or set, no ticking clock to measure the passing of seconds. Only the distant thump of the breathing walls and the slow cooling of her tears on her cheeks told her that moments—many moments—had gone by.

Her small hands curled into fists against the dirt floor of the tunnel. Lindy’s last words echoed over and over inside her head.

Run, Moth! Run!!!

“I ran,” Moth whispered hoarsely. “I did what you said.”

But the words did not comfort her. They only made her chest hurt more.

She pressed her forehead against her knees, trying to make herself smaller, as if shrinking might undo what had happened. The tunnel around her felt tighter than before, the walls pressing in as though they disapproved of her survival.

Another slow thump pulsed through the earth.

Thump.

Moth lifted her head.

The sound was closer now. Stronger. It did not feel random anymore. It felt… deliberate. Like something inside Nowhere had turned its attention toward her.

“You noticed me,” she murmured, remembering Lindy’s warning. “Because there used to be two heartbeats.”

Her breathing hitched. She forced herself to inhale slowly, quietly, trying to calm the frantic rhythm of her chest. If the Visitors listened for heartbeats, then fear itself could betray her.

She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her pink raincoat and stood on trembling legs.

“I can’t just hide,” she said to the empty tunnel. “Lindy didn’t dig all this just so I could curl up and wait.”

The words sounded braver than she felt, but they were enough to make her take one step forward.

Then another.

The tunnel ahead forked into two narrow paths, both sloping deeper into darkness. Moth hesitated. She had always followed Lindy before. Now there was no hand to guide her, no whisper telling her where it was safe to crawl.

Only silence.

Moth crouched and studied the ground. The dirt was disturbed on the left path, tiny grooves and scuffs left by small hands and knees. The right path was smoother, almost untouched.

“She would have gone where it was harder,” Moth reasoned quietly. “Lindy always chose the difficult way if it meant staying hidden.”

Clutching that thought like a lifeline, she turned left.

The tunnel grew rougher the farther she crawled. Splinters of wood jutted out from the ceiling where the earth had given way to old floorboards above. Once, a rusty nail hung down like a crooked tooth, and she had to carefully duck beneath it.

Every small obstacle felt enormous now that she was alone.

As she crawled, she began to notice something strange. The breathing of the walls was no longer steady. Sometimes the thumps came faster, like a racing pulse. Other times they slowed until the silence between beats stretched uncomfortably long.

It was almost as if Nowhere itself was uncertain.

Watching her.

Testing her.

Moth shivered but kept moving.

After what felt like an eternity, the tunnel widened into a small hollow space reinforced with scraps of newspaper and thin wooden sticks. Lindy must have dug this out as a resting place. A few crumpled pages were scattered across the floor, covered in faded ink and unfamiliar pictures of smiling people who did not belong in a world like this.

Moth picked one up carefully.

The paper was brittle and smelled faintly of dust and something sour. Across the top, in bold letters, was a word she did not understand. Beneath it were rows of smaller words and images of a bright house, a dining table, and a family sitting together.

They looked happy.

The sight made her chest ache.

“They don’t know about Nowhere,” Moth whispered. “Or the Visitors. Or the jars.”

Her fingers tightened on the page until it crinkled.

A soft sound interrupted her thoughts.

Tap.

Moth froze.

Tap… tap.

It was faint, almost lost beneath the heavy breathing of the walls. For a moment, she wondered if she had imagined it. Then it came again, clearer this time.

Tap.

The sound was not coming from the tunnel ahead.

It was coming from the wall beside her.

Slowly, cautiously, Moth pressed her ear against the dirt. The earth was warm, almost feverish, and vibrated slightly beneath her skin.

Tap… tap… tap.

Her eyes widened.

It wasn’t random. There was a pattern to it. Three taps, a pause, then two more. Over and over, steady and desperate.

Like someone knocking.

“Lindy?” Moth breathed, her voice barely more than air.

The tapping stopped.

For one terrible second, there was nothing but the deep, echoing thump of Nowhere’s heartbeat.

Then—

Tap! Tap! Tap!

The rhythm came faster now, frantic, as if the unseen person on the other side of the wall had heard her voice.

Moth’s heart leapt so violently she had to clamp a hand over her chest to quiet it. Tears blurred her vision again, but this time they were hot with something other than grief.

Hope.

“You’re alive,” she whispered, pressing both hands against the dirt as though she could push through it by sheer will. “You’re still alive!”

The wall shuddered slightly under her palms, and the breathing of Nowhere grew louder, more uneven, as if disturbed by the communication happening inside it.

A low creak echoed through the tunnel above. Dust drifted down from the ceiling in soft, grey flakes.

The tapping on the other side of the wall slowed… then stopped.

“No,” Moth said quickly. “Don’t stop. I’m here. I’ll get to you. I promise.”

But there was no reply.

Only the deep, watching silence of Nowhere.

Moth leaned back, breathing hard, her mind racing. If Lindy was on the other side of this wall, then the tunnels still connected. Somewhere, there had to be a path that reached her. A way around the dirt and wood and whatever else stood between them.

The breathing walls thumped again, louder than ever, like a warning.

Moth didn’t listen.

She chose a direction and began to crawl, faster than before, her small hands digging into the earth with a purpose that pushed past her fear.