The Hour Between

“Some nights aren’t dreams or nightmares—they’re just the space in between, where something remembers you.”

That night, I couldn't tell if I was awake or dreaming.

The darkness inside Room 6 had a different flavour than the darkness at home. It was thicker, heavier, like it had been poured into the corners and left to settle, seeping in through the windows and under the door in slow, patient waves. Not the kind of darkness that came from the absence of light, but the kind that felt like it was choosing to be there. Watching. Listening.

The digital clock on the bedside table glowed green, faint and unnatural. 2:17. The numbers hovered in the gloom like a pair of eyes, quietly judging anyone still awake. I lay still beneath the stiff motel blankets, my arms pinned tight against my sides, not from fear exactly, but from a sense that moving might draw attention I didn’t want. My breath formed tiny clouds above the covers, disappearing as quickly as they came, like ghosts testing the air.

The room had come alive in the way all unfamiliar rooms do at night.

A slow groan from the pipes somewhere in the wall—long and low, like a throat clearing in the dark. A drip from the bathroom tap, precise and rhythmic. Seven seconds between each splash. I counted. Over and over. Each drop was a reminder that time was still passing, even if everything else felt frozen.

The bar fridge whirred to life again, its quiet buzz sending a gentle shiver through the floor beneath the beds. It sounded like a creature sleeping fitfully, stirring every so often to remind you it was there. I’d tried to ignore it earlier, but now it was the only sound I could hear above the hush.

The heater had long since given up, clicking off sometime around midnight, the air steadily losing its warmth to the night beyond the walls. Cold crept in at the edges—around the window frame, under the door, through the worn seals of the vents. It wrapped around my toes, climbed up my shins. I curled tighter under the covers, trying to pull the warmth back in, but it was a losing battle.

Mack was asleep.

I could tell by the sound of his breathing—the slow in-and-out rhythm of someone deep in dreams. His mouth was open slightly, letting out a faint whistle every few breaths. It was oddly comforting. Reliable. He was bundled in his blanket like a caterpillar in a cocoon, knees pulled up, face turned toward the wall. Only a patch of hair stuck out from under the blanket’s edge, dark and soft-looking in the half-light.

Mum hadn’t made it to bed.

She’d curled up in the motel chair at some point, her legs drawn up awkwardly, head resting on her folded arm, like she hadn’t meant to fall asleep there but didn’t have the energy to move. Her cardigan had slipped off one shoulder, exposing the pale skin of her upper arm to the cold. Her phone lay face up on the carpet beside her, black screen reflecting nothing, like it had turned itself off in protest.

She looked smaller like that. Not younger, exactly—just… less. Less certain. Less everything. Her face was slack in sleep, mouth slightly open, breath shallow. The tightness she’d carried all day had loosened. I wondered what she was dreaming about. If she even let herself dream anymore.

The wall clock ticked.

Not loud, but deliberate.

I counted with the drips from the tap.

Seven ticks between each splash.

Seven seconds between each reminder that the world kept going.

Outside, something cracked the silence.

A loud backfire—sharp and sudden, the kind of sound that yanks your heart into your throat before your brain can explain it away. My body sat up before I told it to, hands gripping the edge of the blanket like reins. My legs were still under the covers, but tense, ready to move. Mack didn’t stir. Mum didn’t flinch.

I waited.

Nothing followed. No running footsteps. No shouts. No headlights sweeping across the window. Just the slow return of the fridge’s hum, the tick of the clock, and the ever-persistent drip from the bathroom.

I pushed the covers aside and stood, careful not to wake Ribbons, who lay face-up on the pillow, her little arms outstretched like she was catching snowflakes.

I moved across the carpet on tiptoe, avoiding the known creaks—the one near the bathroom, the loose board by the heater. At the curtain, I pinched the fabric between my fingers and peeled it back slowly, releasing a puff of dust that made me blink.

The car park was still.

A shallow basin of tarmac and frost, ringed by low motel buildings that crouched like quiet animals in the dark. The lights along the walkway had gone dull with condensation, casting a soft amber glow that made the frost glisten like sugar.

No people. No cars that hadn’t been there before.

The sky was a cathedral—black and endless and full of stars. I tilted my head back, just for a moment. There were so many of them. Clusters and bands and rivers of light that pulsed faintly, as if breathing in the silence. I thought about how small we must look from up there. Just a motel on a stretch of nothing. Just three people hiding in the middle of a continent made mostly of dust and silence.

The motel sign flickered.

COPPER POST MOTEL. The “C” buzzed and blinked, half-lit, then went dark again. OPPER POST, it read now. A name that meant nothing. Like a message partway through being erased.

Its light caught the windscreen of our car and lit up the dashboard in pink and white and flashing red. For a second, it looked like someone was sitting inside. Just the shadow of the passenger seat, maybe. Or maybe not.

I held my breath.

Watched.

Nothing moved.

Then the sign flickered again. Full. Then partial. Then dark.

The shadow vanished with the light.

I let the curtain fall back into place, gently, and stood there a moment longer, fingers still holding the fabric like I wasn’t sure if I should open it again.

Then I padded back to the bed and slipped beneath the covers, curling toward Ribbons, who waited without question or judgement. I tucked her against my chest, listening to the muffled breath of my brother just a bed away.

I closed my eyes.

But the motel didn’t sleep.

It hummed and creaked and ticked.

It waited.

And so did I.

Then I heard it.

Not loud. Not clear. But there.

A low sound—thread-thin and hesitant—just outside the window. It wasn’t mechanical, not the flickering neon of the sign buzzing to life again, nor the low grumble of a road train shifting gears far off along the highway. It was something softer. Something living.

A whine.

The kind that pricks at memory before it reaches the ears. The kind you don’t just hear, but feel in your bones—familiar and fragile and full of something ancient and animal.

Then came the scrape.

The faint, delicate scratch of claws on concrete—like someone dragging fingernails across stone, tentative and slow. Not threatening. Not urgent. Just present. A sound that belonged to a body with weight and breath and wanting.

I didn’t move at first.

Just listened. Still as the blankets around me, eyes open wide into the dark.

Then I slid from the bed as quietly as I could, the covers parting with a whisper of cotton on cotton, and padded barefoot across the room. My skin prickled instantly as it left the warmth behind, the cold air curling around my ankles like smoke. Ribbons dangled from one hand, her arms limp, one leg dragging slightly on the floor like she was as tired as I felt.

I pressed my face to the window, my breath fogging the glass in widening then shrinking rings. The pane was freezing, its chill soaking into my cheek, into the skin beneath my eyes. I tilted my head slightly, trying to cut through the reflections—my own face, half-lit and ghost-pale, the faint outline of the bed behind me, the dim flicker of the motel’s dying light.

Nothing.

Just the edge of the car park and the scrub beyond—flat, silver-brushed paddock stretching into the shadows. A scattering of mulga trees, their black limbs twisting skyward like dancers mid-rehearsal. Frost clung to the edges of the grass like the world had grown a skin overnight.

But I was certain—absolutely, impossibly certain—that I’d heard Charlie.

Not barking. Not howling. Just that small, sad sound she used when she was waiting outside the laundry door, nose pressed to the flyscreen, tail wagging in slow, hopeful beats. The whine that meant, “I know you’re in there.” The one she saved for us.

It cut through everything.

The motel, the kilometres, the days of dust and hiding.

I opened the curtain wider, the stiff fabric rasping along the metal rod. Cold air bled in through the glass, tingling along my arms, pebbling the skin into goosebumps. I squinted, eyes straining against the dark. The porch light outside flickered once, then held steady.

Still nothing.

A plastic bag cartwheeled across the gravel, catching on a bush and deflating with a soft sigh. The wind teased the long grasses near the fence line, making them whisper secrets to each other that only they understood.

Somewhere out there was a life we used to live.

I stood there for a long time. My toes curled against the gritty carpet. The numbers on the bedside clock blinked and shifted. 2:43. 2:44. 2:45. My breathing slowed, fell into rhythm with the slow inhale of the wind outside and the exhale of the heater’s ticking silence.

No more sounds.

No whine. No claws. Just the old building exhaling around us, alive in its own strange way—the tap, the fridge, the occasional shifting groan of the walls like they remembered all the people who had ever slept here.

Eventually, I let the curtain fall back into place.

It didn’t swish. It just dropped—quiet and heavy, like the night folding back in on itself.

I climbed into bed, the springs creaking their familiar protest beneath me. I tucked Ribbons against my chest, her stuffing cool and slightly flattened. She smelled like dust and detergent and something that was almost home. I nuzzled my nose into the top of her head, into the worn patch of fabric between her ears that still, somehow, after all the washing and hugging and travel, smelled faintly of Mum’s old laundry powder.

The room seemed darker now.

The light from the car park traced a line beneath the door—a line so thin you’d miss it if you weren’t looking, but enough to remind you that the world was still out there. That we were on one side of it, and something else might be on the other.

The shadows on the wall hadn’t moved. They stayed still, stretched long and tall like silent watchers, like sentries who’d taken an oath not to blink. I pulled the blanket up to my chin, one hand gripping Ribbons’ arm tightly.

I didn’t sleep.

Not really.

I drifted—hovered somewhere between waking and dreaming—listening to the quiet, listening for a sound that might never come again.

But I knew I’d heard it.

And I knew what it meant.

Charlie was still out there.

And somehow, she was trying to find us.