Available Darkness Season 2

called after her daughter, a dozen horrible scenarios racing through her mind — from the dog getting hit by a car to Kayla meeting the bumper’s front instead, plus several more she couldn’t bear to think on, lest she tempt fate into turning them true.
    “Kayla! Stop!”
    Emilia screamed louder, but her daughter kept running after the dog.
    Emilia followed, racing as fast as she could as the clouds above turned swollen and black, racing through the sky.
    Tornado!
    The wind howled, growing angry, as the highest branches began to violently whip through the air. Thunder boomed and lightning crashed, all too fast, as inky clouds swirled through the street and cast her quickly shifting world beneath a pall of dark fog.
    Emilia couldn’t see her baby girl. She ran forth, screaming, “Kayla!!”
    “Mom?” Her daughter’s call came at just more than a whisper ahead, though Emilia couldn’t see her through the darkness.
    She pressed on into the swirling chaos as chunks of hail and God-only-knew what kind of debris pelted her. “Kayla!”
    She squinted, trying to see through the chaos, churning like a freight train above and around her, continuing forward.
    In the distance she caught sight of Kayla, running down the street one moment, straight into the thick fog. The fog then billowed forth and then back on itself before being sucked into a sudden vortex that appeared in the center of the street for just a moment, and then was gone just as quickly.
    And in its place was a perfect circle of light suspended in the air just a foot off the ground and measuring maybe 20 feet in every direction.
    The world was still, so calm that Emilia could hear her breath as she approached the disc in confusion, awe and fear. The disc, she discovered, wasn’t made of light, nor was it a disc so much as a window which revealed an impossibility on the other side — her street replaced with rolling woodlands basking beneath a brilliant sun.
    Kayla and Mocha were nowhere in sight.
    “Kayla!” Emilia screamed, racing toward the giant window. As she drew closer, she realized it wasn’t a window, but a hole in the world.
    What the hell?
    Emilia slowed as she approached, hearing and feeling a buzzing, growing in volume as it vibrated around the hole. The forest on the other side was deep, lush and as real as anything she’d ever seen.
    Emilia felt like Alice, staring through the Looking Glass.
    This can’t be real.
    “Kayla!” she screamed, moving closer as she looked up and down the street to see if anyone else noticed the giant, floating hole in the world. Mrs. Ferguson and Molly were standing in the street, a quarter block away, mouths hanging half to the asphalt.
    So I’m not the only one seeing this. I’m not crazy.
    Emilia stepped as close as she dared, battling every instinct to run into the hole, just as her daughter seemed to do. She hadn’t seen Kayla step through the hole;, she’d seen her rushing in the fog, before disappearing completely. Perhaps, Emilia told herself, her daughter was on the hole’s far side, where maybe the street continued.
    She circled the floating orb, keeping her eyes on the woods beyond, scanning for any sign of Kayla or Mocha. Emilia finally reached the circle’s edge and saw that the street did continue on the other side, though the floating hole was so thin you couldn’t see it from the opposite end. Just a thin, jagged black line floating the height of the hole — like a zipper.
    As Emilia slowly rounded to the hole’s other side, her heart leapt in her throat as her eyes fell on the forest again, this time from a different angle. In the sky, she saw the sun lighting a soft blue horizon with a wicked flicker of orange.
    Emilia saw something surface through the tree line.
    “Kayla!” she cried out, inviting her daughter into her parted arms. “I’m here!”
    The words were spilled from her mouth before she realized the shape wasn’t her daughter, or her dog.
    It was nothing she’d ever seen — something that looked like a man, but was wrapped in angry swath of swirling darkness.
    She stopped mid-wave, afraid to draw further attention from the whatever-it-was. But she was too late. The creature was suddenly a blur of fast-moving darkness, soaring toward Emilia. Two seconds later it was standing just at the edge of the hole, its bright blue eyes almost glowing as they stared inside her soul.
    It reached out, stretching an arm from its impossible world into hers.
    Emilia screamed,