Chapter 1: The Hand Behind The Curtain
The room looked ordinary enough to make my caution feel unreasonable. Warm light lay across the floorboards and softened the furniture at the edges, turning the domestic space into something settled and harmless. Nothing moved except the thin curtain near the back of the room. I crossed toward it slowly anyway, scanning the corners, the gaps beneath the furniture, the narrow spaces where a person might disappear without leaving much behind. The air held the faint dry smell of fabric and dust. Somewhere under my shoe, a floorboard gave a quiet click.
That small sound seemed to make the curtain draw farther away from me. It hung between the room and the dark back area, light gathered on one side and withheld on the other. The room invited me to keep walking as if nothing had changed. The barrier insisted that something had. My hand rose, then stopped inches from the fabric. My fingers were trembling. I curled them once, trying to steady them, and reached again.
My name is the only part of that morning I could place with certainty.
I had been searching without knowing what answer I expected. The warm light followed me as I moved, but it did not reach behind the curtain. I put my fingertips against the edge and pushed it aside. The fabric dragged over its track with a muted scrape. A narrow opening appeared first, then a wedge of shadow, then the outline of someone folded into the hidden space beyond.
“there.”
The word left me before I understood what I was seeing. My hand stayed on the curtain. I leaned toward the opening, and the shape inside shifted just enough for recognition to arrive. Sid. The face, the posture, the unmistakable presence of the person I had been looking for. My attention fixed on Sid so completely that the rest of the room blurred around the edges.
For a moment I could not move. My eyes widened; my mouth opened, but no sound came. Confusion gave way to understanding without offering any explanation with it. Sid was there, in the back area, where the light thinned and the curtain had kept the room from seeing clearly. The discovery should have answered the search. Instead, it made the question harder.
I released the curtain and stepped closer. The space was tight enough that my shoulder brushed the frame. I kept my movements careful, as though a sudden gesture might send Sid farther away or close the barrier again. There was a plain, tangible chill in the shadow compared with the warmth behind me. I noticed the difference at once: warm room at my back, hidden air in front of me, Sid between them.
“Hey, Sid.”
I reached out, stopping before my hand made contact. Sid remained within reach, visibly present but giving me nothing I could safely interpret. I watched for movement, for any sign that would tell me whether the silence meant fear, refusal, exhaustion, or something else. The hidden area offered no answer. Behind me, the curtain hung open now, exposing the place that had been kept from view.
May you like
I looked once over my shoulder at the room. Everything still appeared undisturbed—the warm light, the furniture, the ordinary arrangement of things. That normality felt less like comfort than evidence of how long concealment could exist without being noticed. I turned back to Sid and held my hand in the narrow space between us.
The next fact was there, just beyond what I could see, waiting at the threshold with us.
