Chapter 4: Pffungh-kuh

The hand holding his was impossibly small, like a child's, but the grip was steady and sure. Ethan let himself be led deeper into the void, his other senses compensating for his useless eyes. The air around him felt different here—thinner somehow, as if he was walking at altitude, and charged with an energy that made his skin tingle.

His guide moved with confidence through the absolute darkness, never hesitating or stumbling. Ethan found himself matching their pace instinctively, his bare feet finding purchase on what felt like solid ground but might have been something else entirely. The silence was so complete it had weight, pressing against his eardrums until he could hear his own heartbeat thundering in his chest.

After what felt like hours but could have been minutes, they stopped. The small hand released his, and Ethan immediately felt bereft, cut adrift in the endless dark. He reached out tentatively, feeling for his guide, but his fingers found only empty air.

"Don't go," he whispered, hating how small and lost his voice sounded. "Please. I need to understand what's happening to me."

The silence stretched so long he wondered if he was alone again, abandoned in this impossible space between worlds. Then, soft as a held breath, came a voice.

"You... brought... phone?"

It was unmistakably female, young, with the careful pronunciation of someone struggling with difficult words. Each syllable seemed to cost her tremendous effort, as if speaking was an act of will rather than instinct.

"No," Ethan said quickly. "I left it in the kitchen. I got your message—the note about the phone. You said it would kill me."

A soft sound that might have been relief, or approval. The presence beside him shifted, and he caught that scent again—cinnamon and dust, vanilla and something else, something that tugged at memories he couldn't quite grasp.

"The note," he pressed gently. "You wrote it, didn't you? The blue crayon—I found one in my kitchen today. The same color."

"Had to... warn you." The words came easier now, though still halting. "You were... going to... bring it. Phone. Bad place for... for phones."

Ethan's mind raced. She spoke as if she knew him, as if she'd been watching him. "How do you know me? Who are you?"

The silence that followed was different somehow, weighted with something that felt like sadness. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible.

"Watch you. Always watch you. You're... you're lonely."

The words hit him like a physical blow. The casual observation, delivered with such simple certainty, stripped away all his carefully constructed defenses. He was lonely. Desperately, achingly lonely in a way that went deeper than Sarah's departure, deeper than his failed relationships and withered friendships. It was the kind of bone-deep solitude that made him question whether he was real, whether he mattered to anyone in the world.

"Yeah," he admitted, his voice cracking. "I am."

"Me too."

The confession was so soft he almost missed it, but it carried a weight of eons, of endless watching and waiting and existing on the periphery of someone else's life. Whoever she was, whatever she was, loneliness was something they shared.

"What is this place?" Ethan asked. "This hallway—it's impossible. It doesn't exist in my apartment."

"Between," she said, and somehow he understood. Between walls, between worlds, between what was and what could have been. A space that existed in the cracks of reality, where impossible things were simply facts waiting to be discovered.

"And phones... they're dangerous here?"

The response came not in words but in sound—a noise that made every muscle in Ethan's body clench with primal terror. It started as a whisper, barely audible, then built to something like a wet implosion, a sound of violent collapse that seemed to tear at the fabric of reality itself.

"Pffungh-kuh."

The syllables hung in the air like a curse, and suddenly Ethan understood with crystalline clarity. It wasn't just that phones were dangerous here—they were catastrophically, apocalyptically dangerous. That sound was what happened when electronic signals met whatever laws governed this space. Not destruction, not explosion, but something worse. Annihilation. The complete cessation of existence, matter and energy collapsing into nothingness so fast it didn't even leave an echo.

His phone hadn't just died in the darkness two nights ago. It had been moments away from taking him with it, folding him into nonexistence before he even realized what was happening. If not for Jake's meow calling him back...

"You saved me," he breathed.

"Tried to." The voice was closer now, and he could feel warmth radiating from his unseen companion. "Scared you would... would bring it again. Had to warn."

"The crayon—how did you get a crayon into my apartment?"

A pause, then something that might have been embarrassment. "Is mine. Blue is... is my favorite. Left it for you before. You don't... don't remember."

Before? Ethan frowned, trying to parse what that could mean. "I've never seen you before. I would remember."

"You were... small. We colored together. Kitchen table. Grandma made cookies."

The memory hit him like lightning—golden afternoon light streaming through lace curtains, the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking, someone small sitting beside him at his grandmother's table. He'd dismissed it earlier as a false memory, a trick of his stressed mind. But now...

"That was real?"

"Real for me. Always real for me."

Ethan's knees went weak. If she was telling the truth, if those fragments of memory were genuine, then she'd been part of his life since childhood. Watching, waiting, existing in the spaces between moments where no one else could see her.

"What are you?" The question came out harsher than he intended, driven by fear and confusion.

The silence that followed felt wounded, and he immediately regretted his tone. When she spoke again, her voice was small and hurt.

"Don't know. Just... am. Always been. Always watching you, wanting to... to help, but couldn't. Not until now. Not until you were so sad you could finally... finally see."

The loneliness in her words was staggering. An existence spent watching life unfold around her, unable to participate, unable to connect except in moments of crisis when the barriers between worlds grew thin.

"I'm sorry," Ethan said softly. "I didn't mean to sound afraid. I'm just trying to understand."

"Understand is... is hard. Even for me."

He took a tentative step toward where her voice seemed to originate. "Can you tell me your name? I'd like to know what to call you."

The pause was so long he wondered if she'd disappeared again. When she finally spoke, her voice carried a weight of significance that made his chest tight.

"Lily."

The name hit him like a physical blow, resonating through his body with recognition so profound it left him gasping. Lily. How did he know that name? Why did it feel like coming home and losing everything at the same time?

"Lily," he repeated, tasting the syllables. They felt familiar on his tongue, worn smooth by repetition in dreams he couldn't remember. "That's... that's a beautiful name."

"You gave it to me." Her voice was barely a whisper now, heavy with something that might have been tears, if entities made of memory and shadow could weep. "Long time ago. Before you forgot."

Before he forgot. The words echoed in the darkness, carrying implications that made his head spin. He'd named her, had given her identity and purpose, and then somehow lost all memory of her existence. What kind of relationship left such profound traces while vanishing so completely from conscious memory?

"Lily," he said again, and the name seemed to brighten the darkness somehow, as if speaking it aloud had given her more substance in this impossible place. "Will you help me remember?"

Her hand found his again in the dark, small fingers intertwining with his own. The touch was warm now, real, anchoring him to something beyond his own confusion and fear.

"Will try," she promised. "But remembering... remembering hurts sometimes."

Ethan squeezed her hand gently. "I think I'm ready for it to hurt."

In the darkness around them, something shifted—not sound, not movement, but a change in the quality of existence itself. As if the space between worlds was preparing to reveal secrets that had been buried for decades.

And somewhere in the distance, barely audible but growing stronger, came the sound of a child humming a lullaby he'd forgotten he knew.