Underneath Us All, And Unspoken

I know it's Down There, but I don't know what to call it. I don't know what it is - just that it's bad, Really Bad - because the grown-ups know it's there, too, but they won't talk about it. It's like they're scared it will hear them if they do. So it doesn't have a name.

That's how I know. Grown-ups ignore children when we talk about monsters they know aren't real. They get impatient, maybe. They get annoyed and tell us off for being silly. They don't look scared. These grown-ups - my grown-ups - look scared, all the time. But especially if I try to ask about it, especially when it starts to get dark, and especially when the noises from Down There get louder.

It's not like some things that grown-ups will talk about so long as they think there are no kids around. Jokes with dirty words. Mucky stories. Stuff about people dying. Money worries. Grown-up things that children shouldn’t hear about, but we overhear anyway. It feels like this is something they won’t talk about, no matter who’s around, because they don’t want to think about it. Instead there are looks. If someone mentions something that’s too close to the thing we can’t talk about, there will be this hot, prickly silence, a frown, and sometimes a shush. And then somebody will change the subject to something very boring and ordinary.

Occasionally, they’ll talk around it. Like when they had to make excuses for why I can’t have friends sleep over, why we can’t go away for more than one night, or why we can’t have any pets. Why even the plants in the house are plastic. Why all the rooms in the house have doors with big, heavy bolts on the inside, besides the door that leads to Down There, with even more, bigger, heavier bolts on the outside. They say things like, “In life, you have to make compromises,” and, “Everything comes at a price.” They say, “All families have some secret they live with.” They say, "Sometimes, we need to make sacrifices." They say, “You can’t have everything,” and, “We’ve got it pretty good really. We’re better off than a lot. We should count ourselves lucky.”

I don’t feel lucky, but maybe I’m just ungrateful. It doesn’t feel lucky, on the days when things start turning Bad. The lights are the first giveaway; nowhere in the house ever seems bright enough, no matter how many bulbs are on. And sunlight seems very far away and dim, like the windows are dirty when they’re clean, and like it’s cloudy even if it’s not. The shadows start to look darker and thicker. They move when they shouldn’t. Water runs out of the tap warm and yellowish and nasty-smelling. We don’t drink it. The grown-ups buy bottled water, especially, even for brushing our teeth. The walls look soft and kind of spongy, like they’d squelch if you pushed your hand into them, but it’s hard to see for sure, because everything turns sort of cloudy and out of focus. You can’t tell how far away things are.

And we can’t leave. The doors stick and jam. Keys go missing, or they turn round and around uselessly in keyholes but don’t unlock them. Even the windows, letting in that dull, used-up light, won’t crack open an inch, like they were never meant to be opened in the first place. The air feels scratchy on the way down and in your chest, and it’s like you can’t breathe in deep enough. You can’t do anything fast, and every part of you sort of feels weak and heavy and useless.

I know better than to turn the TV on those days. Something messes with the programmes and the shows are all strange. The faces are wrong. Everyone looks too sharp and hungry. Their voices don’t sound quite human. And if I keep watching - the not-quite-people on the television - they start saying awful things. Doing awful things. And sometimes the television turns on by itself, on the Bad Days, and it shows me things I don’t want to see. It doesn’t even need electricity. It tries to stop me, but sometimes I can pull the plug out of the wall socket, and the TV keeps on playing, getting louder and louder, and the sounds coming out of it just keep getting worse. Sometimes I’ll throw a blanket over it, and then I just have to put my fingers in my ears and hum as hard as I can, so I don’t have to hear it.

On the Bad Days, I have to go to my room by 5:00pm. I remember when I used to beg for one of the grown-ups to stay with me. I used to cry and scream and beg them not to leave me by myself. But they always would. They’d tell me, those are The Rules. They’d tell me to lock my door and draw all the bolts across as soon as they were gone. They’d tell me to stay away from the door, and if I heard someone speaking to me from outside my room, don’t answer back, but don’t trust them, no matter what they say, no matter whose voice they use. Whatever else, they would tell me, do not open the door.

They’d tell me that we all had to follow The Rules, and that would keep us safe. It’s important to listen to grown-ups. Grown-ups know what’s best.

Right?

So we follow The Rules. But we never talk about why. We never talk about what might happen if we didn’t.

The Bad Nights, I hide away in the cupboard with blankets and pillows and a lot of torches and batteries. I know it probably sounds silly. I probably sound like a real baby. But you don’t know. I need a lot of torches, because they’re the same as the house lights on the Bad Days, the same as the daylight, but with five or six of them, I can just about keep the inside of the cupboard lit, so the shadows don’t start to move in on me. The bedroom is too big, and I can’t keep them all back out there. Lots of batteries, because on the Bad Days, everything dies fast. Even food goes mouldy. The ham in the fridge starts to look petrol-shiny, and the edges curl up; white and green fur takes over the fresh bread; yesterday’s roast chicken is just maggots and bone by noon. Birds that fly over just drop out of the sky; you can hear them sometimes, these tiny thuds like big raindrops. Only fat, wet-looking, buzzing flies seem to survive.

I don’t know what the grown-ups do to get through the Bad Nights. Sometimes I think I hear them - or something that sort of sounds like them - moving around the house, but I try not to listen. Whatever I hear on the Bad Nights, I try not to listen. I never understand any of what I’m hearing anyway, and none of it really makes sense, but I know enough to know I don’t like it.

I usually try to stay awake until it’s over. I don’t want to fall asleep before the end, because I don’t want to wake up in the dark with the Bad Night not over yet. I have to stay up and keep changing the torch batteries until it’s done. If I leave it too long, the batteries don't just die, they leak this thick, black yuck that gets on everything. The batteries sprout these weird little bumps, like toadstools.

You can tell when it’s All Over; about an hour, usually, after the noises stop, the lights all get brighter. The windows let you open them again. It gets easier to move, easier to breathe. I mean, it’s never completely easy to breathe, because you’re still waiting for next time, but it’s… better. For a while.

When it’s over, we never talk about it. We pretend like nothing happened. Even when we’re replacing the locks and bolts. Even when we’re fixing the mess. Even when we’re scrubbing blood stains. We act like Everything Is Normal. I suppose that’s all part of The Rules, too. It’s hard to know what we can talk about, without breaking The Rules, so we talk less and less.

I don’t really know much about the grown-ups, I guess. I don’t know much about the house. I’m pretty sure I’ve always lived here. I don’t remember the first time that things got Bad. There are only broken-up, jumbled moments of memory: The Rules; locks, bolts, chains; shadow snakes chasing me down the hallway; a flickery black and white TV cartoon where a murdered boy’s skeleton pulls itself back together and dances as it tells me to come to the basement; the stray dog that wandered onto our drive, and the way it sounded as it died.

I think I’ve always lived like this. I think the grown-ups lived here for a long time before me, and maybe their grown-ups lived here before them, and taught them The Rules. I think that the thing we’re not allowed to talk about has always been here.

I think I had a sister once.

I think… I think The Rules were wrong, weren't they? We were never safe. That's why it doesn't matter what I say now. It was never safe, anyway, even if we followed The Rules, even if we never talked about it. We just pretended.

It went bad, didn't it?

*****

Transcript of interview with Name Redacted, aged 11, 6th September, 2023. Name Redacted was the sole survivor recovered at Location Redacted on 1st September, 2023. Police investigations are still ongoing.