We are deep in the story here. Want to start from the beginning?

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Susan opened the bamboo door, and Keira stumbled in onto her bed. Her arms wrapped around her legs, which gave her the small comfort of feeling like she was being hugged, but then she couldn’t breathe. The sobs poured out as she tried to find air. Where had all the air gone?

“I’m sorry,” she bumbled out. Then hid her face again in her knees.

Susan watched her for a few moments. It wasn’t a look of concern, or a motherly care. It was a look of hard assessment. She was judging whether Keira really was ill or if she was faking, and Keira felt it. She knew it, and it made anxiety fill up inside of her. She must have passed, because Susan closed the door. There were no words of warmth, no sentences of comfort or gestures of care. The only sound was the click of the door closing. And being locked.

Keira started taking deep breaths. There was nothing for her to do but calm down, and then she had to figure out a way out. She couldn’t stay here. She didn’t want to find out what these people were doing. This wasn’t the place she thought it was. The more she looked around, the more she saw that there was something here that wasn’t right.

Keira got up and went to the wall. She leaned against it and put her arms up so her chest stretched, and she could get air in. Her body didn’t want to stretch. It wanted to buckle over and curl up. But she couldn’t let it. Her body had done this once before. The night that the monster took Babby. The overwhelming feeling that she had one job. All she had to do was keep her little brother safe, and she had failed. That night, when her mom died, she had taken Keira’s hand and told her to keep the baby safe. She was only five, or six, at the time, but she remembered it so well. Her mom’s deep blue eyes. The feeling of her hand, wrapped around hers. It was the last time she had felt truly safe, within the walls of their house.

They were out on the street a few months later.

She closed her eyes and imagined her mom as she tried to take deep breaths. Slowly, her body relaxed. She heard a noise, and her eyes shot open. There was something in the room with her. But it wasn’t a person. There was no place for a human to hide.

There, from the shade of the corner, came the Shadow Cat.

Keira’s eyes filled up with tears. She felt relief take over as she fell to the ground. The cat bounded up to her and purred.

“Where did you go, Shadow?” Keira whispered as she hugged the small creature. “These people are crazy! I don’t understand what is going on, but we can’t stay here. How are we going to get out, Shadow?”

The cat purred as the clouds that had been threatening to burst finally did. Keira could hear the rain come through the various skylights in the cave. She looked outside. The waterfall that brought fresh water in roared on the edge of the cave, but she could see rain pounding in. Keira turned and saw all the people were still on the benches. They were still sitting there, completely still. None of them were moving. The rain fell on them, wetting their hair and drenching their clothes, yet none of them moved. They all sat still, looking towards the fire that crackled despite the water. Keira couldn’t see their faces, as they were turned away from her, but she didn’t want to. There was something creepy going on.

Keira turned back to the cat and knelt down.

“What are we going to do, Shadow?” she asked again.

The cat looked at her, with its head knocked to the side. It peered around, as if to try and help Keira, which Keira knew was ridiculous. The cat, surely, didn’t understand her. Yet, it felt like it did. It felt like it was going to help her, and that’s all that Keira needed to know in that moment.

“Did you know about these people?” she asked. “Is that why you hid?”

The cat purred and then got up to rub against Keira, who smiled. She then walked over to the dark corner, and within seconds, she disappeared.

“Yes, I know,” Keira said, a little nervous that her only friend had disappeared. “You can disappear in the shadows. That’s why we call you Shadow.”

There was a meow.

“What?”

Shadow walked out from the darkness and came back to Keira, then walked back again to the corner.

“You want me to hide there, too? I can’t hide like you, Shadow.”

There was another meow.

Keira smiled and pushed herself up. She walked into the corner and sat down.

“You see?” she smiled. “I’m just a regular human. I can’t be part of the shadow.”

There was a click at the door, and Keira took a sharp breath. She felt Shadow climb into her lap. She wanted to hide, but her body wouldn’t move. The lock was opened, and the door was pushed open. Susan looked in the room. Her eyes skimmed over where Keira was. Keira was confused. Why was Susan not acknowledging her?

She looked down and saw that her body was part of the shadow. Her cat had somehow spread her ability to Keira. Keira looked up again at the door.

“Keira?” Susan’s voice said, a little shaky. She looked around again. Susan turned to someone who was behind her.

“She’s not here.”

“What do you mean?” another voice said, sounding like Eric.

“She’s not here; have a look yourself.”

Keira threw her hands over her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream. Eric’s face appeared, but there was something terribly wrong with it. His one eye was gone. All that was there was that black tar that looked like the same black tar the monster would leave behind.

“WHERE THE HELL IS SHE?” he yelled at Susan.

Susan shook her head. “I locked it, Eric. I swear!”

“I can’t go through with this again, Susan… I can’t go back!”

“Calm yourself, Eric,” Susan hissed. “You only have yourself to blame, with Katal. I told you we should have left that girl alone.”

“But she was a little girl. I thought she would tell us what happened. And she did! We know it was her brother taken. But we need to know why we are all feeling so weak. Something happened when she went down there, Susan. She said it was her brother. Why does her brother not… I don’t know… hate or fear anyone?”

“HUSH! What if she is still here?”

Eric’s distorted face looked around the room, then back to Susan.

“She’s not here.”

“Ok, one-eye. Then where is she?”

“She couldn’t have gotten far. But she is small. Remember that. She’s probably skulking somewhere.”

“You go down that way; I’ll go this way. She’s probably going to try to sneak her way out by the way we came in—through the waterfall. We’ll cut her off.”

Eric and Susan left, as Keira sat, invisible in the shadows, watching the door gently sway from Susan’s push off it when she left. Eventually, the door stopped moving, half-closed. Shadow moved off her lap and she looked down to see her body return back to her.

“I can’t hide in the shadow all the way out of here,” she whispered to the cat. “Thank you, Shadow, but we need to think of a better plan. If they’re all going to go to the waterfall, we need to go in the opposite direction.”

Shadow jumped on the small table by the window. She sat down and then looked out. Keira moved quietly next to her. The cave was circular, with all the buildings and lodgings around. The firepit and communal area were in the middle. If Keira looked to where the small tunnel and waterfall were and followed her eyes to the opposite side, it took her to the doors where Katal had come out of.

Keira looked at the cat.

“I guess we’re going to have to go through there,” she said. “Hopefully there is another way out.”

She looked to the communal area where all the villagers were sitting, with their backs to her.

“And I really hope none of them move…” she whispered.