The Space Between Streetlights

Even at thirty-four, Sarah Mitchell couldn't shake the urge to run between streetlights at night. The compulsion lived in her muscles, a childhood reflex as deeply ingrained as looking both ways before crossing the street. During the day, she was a successful architect with her own firm, known for her innovative designs and meticulous attention to detail. But after sunset, she became that scared eight-year-old again, counting the pools of light that would guide her home.

Her therapist called it a residual anxiety response. "Many adults retain childhood fears," Dr. Harrison had explained during one of their sessions. "It's perfectly normal. The key is recognizing them as echoes of past experiences rather than current threats."

Sarah hadn't told her the whole truth – about what had happened that night twenty-six years ago, about what she'd seen in the darkness between the lights. She couldn't. It sounded too much like a child's nightmare, like something her mind had invented to explain an ordinary shadow or a trick of the light. But she remembered. Oh, how she remembered.

Tonight, walking home from a late client meeting, Sarah found herself doing the familiar calculus: fifteen seconds from this streetlight to the next, another twenty to the one after that. Her heels clicked against the sidewalk in a steady rhythm as she moved from light pool to light pool, never lingering in the shadows between.

The late October wind whistled through nearly bare trees, carrying the scent of wood smoke and decay. Ahead, one of the streetlights flickered ominously. Sarah's pace quickened. A flickering light was worse than no light at all – it created moving shadows, made the darkness seem alive.

Just like that night.

She had been walking home from Jenny Parker's house, where they'd been working on their science fair project. She'd begged her mom to let her walk alone – she was eight now, practically grown up, and it was only three blocks. Her mother had reluctantly agreed, making her promise to go straight home and stay under the streetlights.

Sarah had kept her promise, until the moment she saw something move in the shadows between two lights. Something that shouldn't have been there, something that made her breath catch in her throat and her feet freeze mid-stride.

Present-day Sarah shook her head, trying to dislodge the memory. But it clung like cobwebs, sticky and persistent. The flickering light ahead sputtered again, and she could have sworn she saw something shift in the darkness beneath it.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, making her jump. She pulled it out with trembling fingers, grateful for the distraction. A text from her sister, Kate: "Hey, you still coming to help with Halloween decorations tomorrow? The twins are dying to see their aunt!"

Sarah smiled, thumb hovering over the keyboard to reply. That's when she heard it – a sound she hadn't heard in twenty-six years. A soft scratching, like dry leaves being dragged across concrete. Except there was no wind now, and the sound was coming from behind her.

Don't look back, her eight-year-old self whispered. If you don't look back, it can't get you.

But she wasn't eight anymore. She was an adult, a rational person who designed buildings and paid taxes and didn't believe in monsters. Sarah turned around.

The street behind her was empty. The nearest streetlight cast its steady glow on abandoned sidewalks and parked cars. Nothing moved in the shadows. She let out a shaky breath, already composing the self-deprecating story she'd tell Kate tomorrow about getting spooked by her own imagination.

Then the light went out.

Not just flickered – went completely dark, plunging that section of street into absolute blackness. Sarah's heart drummed against her ribs as she watched the next light in line sputter and die, and the next, like dominoes falling in reverse. The darkness was moving toward her.

Run, whispered her eight-year-old self.

For once, Sarah listened.

She ran, her heels a frantic staccato on the concrete, her breath coming in short gasps. The darkness pursued her, swallowing streetlight after streetlight. In the space between one footfall and the next, she was eight years old again, running from something that shouldn't exist.

That night, she had run too. Run until her lungs burned and her legs felt like water, run until she reached her front porch and threw herself through the door, sobbing. Her parents had assumed she'd scared herself with an overactive imagination. Even Jenny Parker, her best friend, had laughed it off the next day at school.

But Sarah knew what she'd seen in the space between streetlights. Something dark and angular, with too many joints bending in impossible directions. Something that moved like shadow given form, that made a sound like dry leaves scratching against concrete.

Something that had whispered her name.

Now, as an adult, she ran past dark houses and sleeping gardens, her shadow stretching and distorting in the few remaining lit streetlights. Her office wasn't far – just around the corner, with its bright security lights and keycard-protected doors. If she could just make it there...

"Sarah."

The whisper came from the darkness behind her, exactly as she remembered it – like rustling leaves and creaking branches and something else, something that made her teeth ache and her skin crawl. She ran faster, fumbling in her purse for her keycard.

The office building loomed ahead, its glass facade reflecting the few remaining streetlights. Almost there. Almost—

The security lights went out.

Sarah skidded to a stop, her ankle turning painfully in her heel. The entire block was dark now, except for a single streetlight across from her office building. As she watched, something began to emerge from the shadows beneath it.

It unfolded itself like a piece of origami in reverse, angles and planes appearing where none should be. It was exactly as she remembered, yet somehow worse – because she was seeing it through adult eyes now, eyes that understood more about what was and wasn't possible in the natural world.

"You've been avoiding me, Sarah," it said in its dry-leaves voice. "Running from light to light, never lingering in my spaces. But you can't run forever."

Sarah backed away, her twisted ankle protesting. "You're not real," she whispered. "You're just a childhood nightmare."

The thing made a sound that might have been laughter. "Is that what you've told yourself all these years? That you imagined me? That the dark spaces between lights are empty?"

It moved closer, and Sarah could see it more clearly now – a form that seemed to be made of gathered shadows and sharp angles, with limbs that bent in ways that made her mind revolt. Its movement was smooth but wrong, like watching a film played backwards.

"What do you want?" Her voice shook, but she forced herself to stand her ground. She wasn't eight anymore. She had spent years building a life, designing spaces filled with light and order. She wouldn't let this thing from her childhood destroy that.

"The same thing I wanted twenty-six years ago," it said. "To show you what lives in the spaces you try so hard to avoid. To teach you about the geometry of shadows, the architecture of darkness."

Sarah's mind caught on that word – architecture. Something clicked into place, a connection she'd never made before. All these years, she'd been designing buildings with wide windows and abundant natural light, creating spaces that left no room for shadows to gather. Her signature style, critics called it. But it hadn't been style at all. It had been fear.

The thing was closer now, close enough that she could see the way reality seemed to bend around it, the way shadows clung to its form like a second skin. But for the first time, she looked at it with more than fear. She looked at it with the eyes of an architect.

Its angles weren't random, she realized. They followed a pattern, a complex mathematical design that both attracted and repelled the eye. It was, in its own terrible way, beautiful.

"You understand now," it said, and its voice was different – less like scratching leaves and more like the whisper of wind through an empty building. "You've always understood, Sarah. Why do you think I chose you that night?"

Sarah's racing heart began to slow as a strange calm settled over her. "The spaces between," she said slowly. "They're not empty at all, are they? They're... structured. Designed."

The creature inclined what might have been its head. "Every shadow is a doorway. Every dark space holds potential. You've spent your life trying to eliminate them, but imagine what you could create if you embraced them instead."

Sarah thought about her buildings, about the way she'd always seen darkness as something to be banished. But wasn't shadow just as important as light in design? Didn't every great building play with both?

"Show me," she heard herself say.

The creature extended one impossible limb toward her. "Are you sure? Once you see the architecture of darkness, you can never unsee it."

Sarah thought about her eight-year-old self, running terrified through the night. Then she thought about all the amazing things she might have missed, hiding in the light all these years.

She took its hand.

The world shifted, twisted, reformed itself around them. Suddenly, Sarah could see the spaces between streetlights as they really were – not empty darkness but intricate structures of shadow and void, geometric patterns that folded through dimensions she'd never imagined. Every dark corner held designs more complex and beautiful than anything she'd ever created.

"This is what I wanted to show you that night," the creature said. "But you weren't ready then. You are now."

Sarah moved through the darkness with new eyes, seeing how the shadows flowed and gathered, how they created spaces within spaces. Her mind was already racing with possibilities – buildings that would work with the darkness instead of against it, designs that would honor both light and shadow.

"Why me?" she asked, though she was beginning to understand.

"Because you could see me," it replied. "Most humans look away from the darkness, pretend it isn't there. But you saw me, even if you ran. And you've been seeing me ever since, in every shadow you tried to design away."

The creature began to fold in on itself, its angles collapsing into darkness. "The dark spaces will always be here, Sarah. But they don't have to be something you fear."

As it disappeared, the streetlights slowly flickered back to life, one by one. Sarah stood alone on the sidewalk, her twisted ankle throbbing, her mind full of impossible geometries and new possibilities.

The next morning, Sarah sat at her drafting table, sketching frantically. Her latest project – a public library – had been giving her trouble for weeks. Now she knew why. She'd been trying to fill it with light, to eliminate every shadow. But that wasn't what it needed.

Her pencil flew across the paper, adding deep alcoves and reading nooks, places where shadows could gather and create intimate spaces. She adjusted the windows, not to maximize light but to create interesting patterns of sun and shade throughout the day. Every dark space in her design had purpose now, had beauty.

Her phone buzzed – Kate, reminding her about Halloween decorations. Sarah smiled as she texted back a confirmation. She wasn't afraid of the dark spaces anymore. She understood them now, and that understanding had transformed her childhood fear into something else entirely: inspiration.

That evening, walking home from her office, Sarah moved differently through the night. She still noticed the spaces between streetlights, but now she saw them for what they really were – not empty darkness to be feared, but architectural elements in their own right, as essential as the light itself.

And if sometimes, in those spaces, she caught glimpses of impossible angles and geometric shadows? Well, every great design needed a little mystery.

She had finally learned what that creature had tried to teach her twenty-six years ago – that darkness wasn't the opposite of light, but its partner in creating something beautiful. Her buildings would never be the same. Neither would she.

Sarah walked home through the gathering dusk, her footsteps steady and unhurried. Around her, shadows gathered in their complex patterns, and somewhere in the space between streetlights, she could have sworn she heard the whisper of dry leaves against concrete, like soft applause.