Empty Evening

“The quiet doesn’t always mean you’re safe—it just means something’s watching without moving.”

We decided to try sleeping early.

Not because we were tired—although we were, the kind of tired that sinks into your bones and makes your eyes burn, makes your limbs feel like they’re filled with lead. But mostly because the hunger had changed. It had stopped being sharp and shouty, the kind that growls and twists and makes you double over. Now it was quiet. Heavy. Like someone had filled my belly with wet sand and packed it down tight. It dragged at me, pulling everything inward, pressing my ribs from the inside.

Mack said sleep would make it go faster.

I didn’t ask what it meant. The night? The hunger? The waiting? Probably all of it.

Outside, the sun was sliding away, draining from the sky in thin, watery colours—orange bleeding into purple, purple dissolving into blue. It reminded me of when you clean your paintbrush in a cup of water and the colours swirl before disappearing.

It looked pretty. But it didn’t feel pretty.

The light had gone soft and strange, like it didn’t want to touch anything properly. Like it was apologising for leaving. Like it knew it shouldn’t.

Inside the building, the air had cooled. The warmth from earlier had bled away, swallowed back into the floor, into the earth. Like the ground was pulling its warmth down into itself, reclaiming it. Like it might pull us down next, if we stayed still too long.

A breeze moved through the holes in the walls—thin and lazy, slipping through like a whisper through a half-closed door. It carried the scent of dust and rust and something else, something sharper, older. Something that smelled like stone and iron and dried blood.

I lay down on the mattress. My lips stuck together when I blinked too slow, the edges cracking like old paper when I forced them apart. My tongue felt thick, heavy, like it belonged to someone else. I hadn’t felt truly hungry for hours. That biting, gnawing pain was gone. Replaced by something duller. Tiredness. A weight pressing down on me from the inside out. Whenever I sat up too fast, the world tilted slightly, like it was trying to shake me off.

Mack saw me shiver.

Goosebumps prickled across my arms—tiny bumps like little mountain ranges under my skin. The kind that rise up when you feel too much of something—cold, fear, both.

Without a word, he unzipped his jacket.

The one he always wore on school trips. Navy blue with the stitched patch on the sleeve and a zip that got stuck if you pulled too hard. The inside made a soft shh shh noise when he moved, like someone passing secrets back and forth.

He draped it over my shoulders.

It was warm. Not hot, but warm in a way that felt safe. The lining held the ghost of his body heat, and the smell of him clung to the fabric—sweat and that green apple shampoo he always insisted wasn’t “girly,” and something else too. Something that was just Mack. Something familiar.

“Put it over your jumper,” he said, his voice scratchy and dry. “It holds heat better that way. Traps the air between layers.”

I nodded and pulled it tighter around me, my fingers curling into the sleeves. It felt like a shield. Like something that could keep the strange world out for just a little bit longer.

Mack lay down beside me, on top of the mattress. I noticed he’d positioned himself between me and the door. Like he was preparing. Like he thought something might come through. Like he’d already decided he’d be the one to stop it if it did.

We didn’t speak.

Not for a long while.

The silence wasn’t as loud as it had been the night before. But it wasn’t quiet, either.

It was waiting.

That was the feeling that crept in around the edges. Not peace. Not rest. Waiting.

The kind of silence that makes you hold your breath without realising. The kind that fills up a room and makes your skin itch. The kind that listens.

Outside, the wind picked up.

Not strong—not stormy—just present. A low, steady brushing sound, like someone running a palm across sandpaper over and over. It slipped along the walls, curled round the corners, wove itself through the cracks like invisible fingers searching for a way in. Not urgent. Just... curious.

The posters fluttered again—those old, curled safety signs with peeling corners and faded warnings. That soft flap-flap sound, like someone turning pages too quickly. Or a message being sent in a language I didn’t know. A code meant for someone else.

Then something creaked.

Long and slow—metal shifting, maybe—like the bones of the building remembering how they used to move. It started high, somewhere in the rafters, and travelled down through the frame like a yawn, or a shiver. The sound of something ancient stretching.

My heart jumped.

A hard thud against my ribs, loud enough that for a second I thought Mack might hear it. It pulsed through my chest, my throat, into my fingertips.

I pulled Ribbons closer. Not by the neck this time, like I usually did when carrying her around, but by the waist. Properly. Like I was hugging someone. Like she might hug me back if I squeezed hard enough. Her body had gone lumpy again, the stuffing inside shifted and bunched like old socks. But I didn’t care. She was still herself.

She was still mine.

In a world that kept changing shape, that kept breathing weirdly, Ribbons was the only thing that hadn’t started to feel wrong.

I didn’t want to ask. Not the question that had been sitting in my throat all afternoon like a stone. But I did anyway.

“Do you think he’s coming back?”

I was afraid the question itself might act like a spell. That saying it out loud would bring him back.

The empty-eyed man.

The one who didn’t blink. The one who looked through me, not at me.

Mack shifted slightly, just enough that his arm brushed mine. A small movement, but it felt deliberate. Reassuring. I could hear his breathing, soft and slow, feel the rise and fall of the mattress as we lay there side by side.

Then he said:

“No.”

One word.

Not a promise. Not a comfort. Just a statement. Like something he’d decided had to be true.

I didn’t move. Just waited. Let the word sit between us.

It didn’t convince me, exactly. But it did something else. It gave me something to hold onto. Like a handrail in the dark.

Then, softer still, like he wasn’t sure I should hear it, he added:

“We’re not his kind.”

I didn’t ask what he meant. Didn’t want to.

But the way he said it… Low, certain. Like it was something he’d been turning over in his mind for hours. Like he’d done the maths and come to a quiet, terrible conclusion.

It made my skin prickle.

Not safe.

Not really.

Just… spared.

Like when the teacher picks someone else to answer the question you don’t know. Like when the ball misses your head by inches. Like when lightning hits the tree next door instead of yours.

Not chosen. Just overlooked. For now.

The sky outside faded to black. A real, full black. Not the soft kind you get in town, with streetlights and windows glowing behind curtains. This was the kind of dark that pressed, solid and thick, like it was trying to come inside through every crack in the walls.

Stars blinked into view—cold, tiny pinpricks in the sky. Last night, I’d thought they were beautiful.

Tonight, they looked like eyes. Watching. From far, far away.

The wind didn’t stop.

It just kept moving—finding new cracks to whisper through, new gaps to explore. The building felt more porous than ever, like a sieve rather than a shelter. The air smelled like dry earth and rust, but also something green and sharp. The scent of scrubby bushes releasing their oils into the night, trying to defend themselves from whatever the dark might bring.

Something rustled in the rafters again.

A light, scuttling noise. Could’ve been the possum. Could’ve been something else. Tiny claws on old metal, making a soft scrabbling sound above us.

I imagined small creatures living up there. Unbothered. Just surviving. Eating, sleeping, moving around.

Not scared of dark-eyed men. Not worried about dead phones. Just being.

Eventually, my eyes closed.

Not because I felt safe. Not because the hunger had eased or the fear had gone. Not because I believed we’d be rescued.

But because everything had grown too big. Too much.

And sometimes sleep is the only thing left when the world stops making sense. In dreams, maybe there’d be food. In dreams, Grandma might come back. In dreams, the walls wouldn’t shimmer and no one would step through them.

Just before I slipped under, I felt Mack’s hand find mine.

His fingers closed around mine—warm and steady. Solid. A rope tying me down to the real world, just in case I floated too far away.

The last thing I remember was the sound of his breathing. Even. Calm. Familiar.

And a strange thought, soft and quiet: Maybe we weren’t alone after all.

Not watched by stars, or ghosts, or that dark-eyed thing. Not even by Grandma Dawn, wherever she’d gone.

But by something else.

Something older. Something that lived here, in the cracks and dust and bones of this forgotten place.

Something that had noticed us. Not interfered. Not helped. Just… acknowledged.

And it was waiting, too. Like we were.

Waiting for what, I didn’t know.

And as I drifted into dreams, I realised—I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.