The brass door handle was as cold as a shard of ice freshly torn from the heart of a dead winter.
Kyle and Victor’s small bare feet stood on the wooden floor, which creaked softly beneath their slight weight.
Two four-year-old children, trembling in thin cotton nightshirts that protected neither from the cold nor from the terror.
Victor turned toward Kyle. His blue eyes reflected the flash of lightning outside, and he nodded with a childish gesture filled with blind determination.
With their small hands clasped together, they pressed the heavy handle with all the strength they had.
Creeeeak...
The sound of the rusted hinges scraping through the silence of the night was like the dying scream of a wounded beast.
The door slowly opened, revealing the long, dark corridor of Dawn Hope Orphanage.
At this hour of the night, the corridor did not look familiar.
In daylight, it was rely a gloomy place. But now it had beco the throat of a giant entity swallowing the light.
The ceiling lamps were turned off, except for a faint, flickering glow from a broken lamp at the end of the corridor, sending out dying pulses of light.
"D-do you see Kayla?" Victor whispered, his voice trembling—not only from the cold, but from that invisible weight pressing on their chests.
Kyle narrowed his crimson eyes, trying to pierce through the thick curtain of darkness.
"No... but she definitely went this way. This is the only path outside."
They moved forward very slowly.
Their bare feet touched the cold stone tiles of the corridor, and each step sent a harsh shiver racing up their spines.
The silence was absolute, except for the rapid beating of their hearts, echoing in their ears like primitive war drums.
The air here was different from the dormitory’s air—heavier, stagnant, filled with the sll of chemical disinfectants desperately trying to hide another scent... a sweet, sickening odor like at left under the sun.
They reached the massive wooden door at the end of the corridor—the door that led to the orphanage’s backyard.
It was slightly ajar, and cold currents of air slipped through the opening, carrying the sll of rain and wet soil.
Together, they pushed the door and stepped outside into the yard.
The storm had cald a little.
The heavy rain that had been lashing the windows monts earlier had turned into a thin, icy drizzle, falling like tiny frozen needles that pricked their delicate skin.
The yard was a wide stretch of mud and dark puddles, surrounded by tall iron fences topped with sharp spikes like the teeth of a giant shark.
The two children stood under the rain, shivering violently as their nightshirts clung to their thin bodies.
"Look!" Kyle suddenly gasped, raising his small trembling finger toward the other side of the yard.
Through the curtain of drizzle and the faint mist beginning to form over the mud, they saw a shadow.
A figure wearing a dark coat moved quickly and silently toward an old, isolated stone building at the far corner of the yard—a building children were strictly forbidden from approaching, under the excuse that it was "a storage place for dangerous equipnt."
The children watched as the shadow slipped through the heavy tal door of that building.
The mont it entered, a sharp chanical locking sound echoed.
Clack.
"That... that’s Kayla!" Victor said with hushed childish excitent, his eyes shining with hope despite the rain washing over his face.
"I saw her coat! It must be her! She went to the old storage building... maybe she got stuck and needs us to open the door!"
Childhood is a sacred kind of innocence.
Their pure minds did not connect the suspicious timing, the locked door, and the mysterious shadow with anything evil.
They only saw Kayla—the girl who wiped their faces and sang to them to help them sleep.
That childish instinct to repay kindness was what moved them forward.
"We have to hurry," Kyle said, grabbing Victor’s hand again.
They ran across the yard together.
Their feet sank into the cold, sticky mud, splashing filthy water across their clothes.
The rain grew colder, and the closer they ca to the stone building, the heavier the air beca, as if the very area rejected life.
They reached the massive tal door.
It was a rusted steel door that looked more like the entrance to a bank vault than an orphanage storage room.
They stood before it, panting, water dripping from Kyle’s black hair and Victor’s blond hair.
The door handle was round and far too high for their small height.
"I can’t reach it," Kyle said, standing on the tips of his toes.
"I’ll lift you!" Victor replied quickly.
Victor bent down and clasped his hands together to form a step.
Kyle placed his muddy little foot into Victor’s hands, and Victor pushed him upward with all his tiny strength.
Kyle managed to grab the rusty tal handle.
It was cold like death.
He twisted it with both hands and pressed down with all his weight.
Click...
The door wasn’t completely locked as they had thought.
The lock was loose—perhaps the shadow that entered had been in too much of a hurry.
The heavy steel door slowly slid inward, releasing a low, deep sound like the dying sigh of a fading creature.
Kyle fell onto the muddy ground, and Victor helped him back to his feet.
Together they stood on the threshold, staring inside.
It wasn’t a storage room.
It was a sloping corridor descending downward, built from smooth concrete that reflected a faint, pale light.
The air rushing from inside did not carry the sll of dust or old wood.
It slled like... hospitals.
The sharp odor of chemical sterilizers burned the lining of their noses, mixed with that rusty tallic scent they had noticed in the upper corridor—but here it was concentrated, heavy, and suffocating enough to make them nauseous.
They exchanged glances.
Fear had begun creeping into their small hearts, whispering for them to run, to return to their warm beds.
But the image of Kayla waiting for their help overca that instinct.
"Let’s go," Kyle whispered, and together they stepped into the corridor.
The descent was slow.
The corridor was extrely long, stretching like the intestines of a gigantic earthworm.
The lighting was dim—faint light strips fixed to the ceiling every few ters.
With every step, the air grew colder, as if they were descending into the belly of ice.
And before the end of the long corridor, on the right side, there was a door.
It was not an ordinary door.
It was a wide tal door with a thick rectangular glass window in its upper half.
And from that window... a deep crimson light spilled out.
A faint, pulsing glow the color of coagulated blood.
They slowly approached the door.
Strange sounds leaked through the glass.
The hum of dical machines.
Liquid bubbles bursting.
And the faint murmuring voice of a woman.
They reached the door.
The glass window was almost at the level of their eyes.
With hearts beating like the wings of terrified birds, Kyle and Victor slowly lifted their heads and peered through the clear glass into the red-lit room.
And what they saw in tha t mont...
tore apart their childhood, crushed their innocence, and carved into their minds a nightmare that would never fade—
even if they lived a thousand years.
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