They spent a week in the house, Christa because she was grounded and Caleb because he didn't want to be alone. With her electronics confiscated, there was nothing to do but wait. When their parents finally returned her belongings and permitted her to go out, the first place she visited was the library.

Why did she choose to go to the library rather than simply searching "haunted hospital ghosts" on her phone? Who knows. Perhaps because this was typical of characters in fiction. Once she arrived and realized she had no idea what she was looking for, though, she did turn to the internet, picking out books now and then whenever she saw them mentioned.

Perhaps she could make a post titled "I went trick or treating, and my little brother got stabbed, and then at the hospital, we fell into a creepy ghost dimension. Should I be concerned?" Surely the people of Reddit would have an answer.

Instead, she found herself falling into an endless rabbit hole of conspiracy videos and blog posts which, admittedly, weren't much more professional. The longer she spent scrolling through the endless pools of text, the farther she drifted from her original search. The article about reality shifting into the Harry Potter universe was intriguing. Wait, how had she gotten here again?

In the end, she left with a stack of books, a weird look from the desk lady, and far more questions than answers.

Caleb was eager to fulfill their promise despite his vehement fear of the hospital, but they had trouble figuring out how to purposely get pulled into wherever they'd been. Based on his accounts, it always happened when he was in the hospital for some injury or sickness. Of course, neither of them wanted to sacrifice their physical health, so it was back to the drawing board.

"Maybe the mask guy is the one who traps us," Caleb suggested while throwing balls into a bin.

"Okay, we need to come up with better names for these people." Christa paced back and forth in the basement, dodging and weaving around the onslaught of balls rather than standing out of the way.

"Like what?"

"I don't know, just... Something better than 'mask guy' and 'tail guy'."

Caleb looked thoughtful for a moment, almost as if he was going to say something cool. "Okay, then... Masky and Taily?" Wow. "Or Taller and Crawler!"

She snorted. "That's good! Really captures the sense of doom and despair you feel when they hunt you down."

A shrug, and she didn't move in time before a ball bopped her in the face. "If we give them scary names that fit, we'll just be more scared of them. Also, it rhymes."

"...Fair point. Taller and Crawler it is."

Satisfied, he leaned back to sink into the beanbag. "Anyway, I got pulled in when the mask guy- when Taller looked at me at the old lady's house."

"He held up and knife, and when I looked back, it was in your chest." She shuddered.

"Right." He was being way too casual about the whole thing. "So I think he sucked me in or... maybe did something to make something else suck me in? Do you think Crawler can do that, too?"

"If Crawler could do it... he would have brought us back, right?" She paused. "No, actually- Maybe he can bring us back, but he's waiting until we're ready...?"

"That could be it." Another ball flew past her face. "Or he just can't, but if he can, he'll probably wait until we can help... somehow."

"So the question is, how do we tell him to let us in?"

"I dunno. Doesn't matter right now. First, we need to know how to help, right?"

"Yeah..." Her eyes drifted to the pile of books on the table, then to the laptop with no less than ten tabs open.