Fracture

The night the storm rolled in over Blackridge Hollow, the world seemed to split.

Lightning clawed at the sky. Thunder cracked like a giant’s roar, shaking the ancient trees around the farmhouse. Inside, 17-year-old Ellie Dawson stood at the kitchen sink, staring out into the darkness.

Her brother, Jamie, hadn’t come home.

Again.

It had been three months since their father disappeared. Some said he walked into the woods and never came back. Others whispered about the old mine—sealed shut for years after a deadly collapse, but still full of shadows and rumors.

Her mother refused to talk about it. She stopped going to work, stopped cooking, stopped… being. And Jamie, once her partner in everything, had turned quiet and strange, sneaking off into the forest without explanation.

Tonight was different, though. Ellie had seen something from the upstairs window—a flickering light moving through the trees behind the barn. A flashlight? A lantern?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t just the storm.

Grabbing her jacket and boots, Ellie slipped out into the rain. The wind howled like a living thing, and the forest floor was soft and treacherous underfoot. But she followed the light.

Ten minutes later, she reached the mine entrance. The old wooden barricades were broken. A set of muddy footprints led straight in.

Ellie hesitated. She’d heard the stories: how people who entered the mine sometimes didn’t come out the same. Or didn’t come out at all.

But Jamie was in there. And Ellie wasn’t going to lose anyone else.

She stepped inside.

The mine was damp and close, the air thick with silence. Her flashlight cast long shadows across rotting beams and rusted rails. Deeper in, she saw the glow again—faint and pulsing, like it was alive.

“Jamie?” she called.

A voice echoed back. But it wasn’t hers.

It wasn’t Jamie’s, either.

“Help… me…”

The voice was layered—like many people speaking at once, overlapping and disjointed. A chill ran through her.

She pushed forward, turning a corner and entering a vast chamber. There, in the center of the space, stood Jamie. His eyes were wide, unblinking, reflecting the strange light pouring from a deep fracture in the stone wall.

It wasn’t a crack. It was a rift.

A thin, glowing line that seemed to pulse with energy and shimmer like broken glass under sunlight. Through it, Ellie saw glimpses of something else—another version of the mine, flickering like a memory.

“Jamie!” she ran to him.

He didn’t move. “I saw Dad,” he whispered. “He’s in there. Trapped.”

“That’s impossible,” Ellie said, grabbing his arm. “Dad’s gone. This… this is some kind of hallucination!”

But the rift pulsed again—and Ellie saw her father. Standing just beyond it, wearing the same jacket he had the day he vanished. He looked right at her. And smiled.

“I think this mine cracked reality,” Jamie murmured. “That collapse… it didn’t just bury people. It fractured the world.”

Ellie wanted to pull him away. Run. Forget. But something deeper, older, was at play.

Suddenly, the rift widened. A wind blew from inside it, filled with voices, memories, regrets. Ellie saw flickers of her childhood—Christmas mornings, sunlit fields, her parents laughing. And then: the fights, the pain, the day everything shattered.

She realized the fracture wasn’t just in the mine.

It was in them.

In their family.

“I can’t fix this,” Jamie said, eyes filling with tears. “I thought if I found him… I could undo it.”

Ellie shook her head, gripping his hand tightly. “We can’t undo the past. But we can stop it from pulling us under.”

With one last look, she turned away from the rift, dragging Jamie with her. The light behind them flickered, then began to fade. The mine rumbled—softly at first, then louder, until the walls trembled and the air filled with dust.

They ran.

Outside, the storm had passed. Dawn was breaking over the ridge, light spilling through mist-covered trees.

Back at the house, their mother was waiting on the porch. She didn’t ask where they’d been. She just opened her arms.

And for the first time in months, they all held each other.

The fracture remained—but it no longer defined them.

Some cracks don’t heal.

But sometimes, they let the light in.