by Michael Earp
Growling animalistic noises come from deep within the person, as if there is something living inside them.
OFF.
An almost inaudible ding and the bulb turns ON as the spider bites into the hind legs of its dinner. The room is bright and the person is momentarily blinded. The warmth burns their skin and they scream. The high pitch pierces the silence.
With the light comes clarity in the room. There is a window; it has been boarded up from the outside and does not allow any brightness in. The door has also been boarded up and the doorknob lies cracked on the ground in front of it. A bed sits unmade next to the window, with a long timber frame that stretches just a few feet from the roof. A thick layer of dust sits atop the floor.
Some children wait in illuminated rooms and get their parents to turn lights on ahead of them so they never have to be in the dark. I was the opposite. I would get my dad to turn the lights off before I came into the room. I demanded candles over light bulbs. I couldn’t handle the brightness. It burned my eyes, my skin, searing into me. After many tantrums he relented and the corridors of my childhood home were lined with encased tea lights.
I even took showers in the dark. I knew it was a safety hazard. I had been told many times. But the warm water pouring over my body in the darkness was everything. I could be whatever I wanted and saw in my mind’s eye. I would sit on the floor of the shower, letting the water dribble down my chin. I’d close my eyes and feel the details of my face. Where my skin dipped and protruded. I memorised its craters and felt the ridges where history had marked its place. I didn’t have to look in the mirror. I didn’t have to face reality. I could be whatever I wanted.
It’s not as if I was a brave child. I was afraid of most things. I was scared of dogs, afraid of cats and absolutely terrified of balloons. But the darkness made sense.
Most people were afraid of what might be hiding; I was pretty happy to be the thing that hid.
I thought of myself as nocturnal. Night-time was the best time. Dad would say goodnight and switch the light off, leaving the gentle green glow of my night-light vibrating through the room. I would pull the blanket up and over my head and delve into the worlds of my books. “The monsters are only real on the page,” I’d remind myself every time my breath quickened. Holding up glowsticks to print, I turned each page eagerly, escaping into other realms. I’d fall asleep with novels splayed out over me, evidence of having eventually been knocked out by my curiosity and exhaustion.
The skin on the person’s face begins to blister and bubble. Their shoulders tense past their ears. Blue, thick veins burst through their neck and their collarbone protrudes from their frame. A fragile and broken chest, bruised and outlined with purple and brown. It rises slightly with their shallow breaths. Large sores along their arms mark maps to distant islands. Their mouth fills and cheeks swell as their body bends over and they begin to heave. They become wet with sweat. Legs solid, heavy, exhausted, poked with ink, their body twitches and shakes. Cold chills travel up bony ladders like rats running vertebrae by vertebrae, their little feet scratching as they scramble.
OFF.
The first time I truly saw the dark – not just immersed in it but breathed it, choked on it, spurted it out of my throat – I was seven years old.
I woke up and skipped towards my parents’ room, bursting with the energy of an 8 pm bedtime. Dad had shuffled off to work a few hours prior and Mum and I had a tradition of me watching cartoons on the screen in her room while she read the paper. On this particular morning she was still asleep when I came in, so I switched on the cartoons and entertained myself. My feet flapped towards the end of the bed, which was something I did when excited. I watched animated characters dancing and singing and jumping around the screen. Mum’s tangled curls were strewn over the pillow. I inherited her hair. It only took a day or two before a point of no return and knots would need to be cut out. Mum was very close to that point. She stirred a few times and I caught a glimpse of the dark purple that had burrowed beneath her eyes. Her skin looked pale against the eggshell bedsheets. She barely reacted when I came in. This happened sometimes when she’d stayed up late and had a wine or two.
I went to my room and picked out my clothes. This was a special treat. I thought maybe Mum was tricking me for my birthday, which was coming up in only a few days. Maybe we were going somewhere special and she wanted me to choose my own outfit for once. I selected stripey, white corduroy overalls I hadn’t been big enough to fit into yet, but I had a feeling it would work for this occasion. I wore a bright-red skivvy underneath and glow-in-the-dark Skechers. I put on my amethyst necklace, my all-time favourite crystal, and went into her room to show her what I had chosen.
Mum couldn’t get out of bed. I tried pulling on her arm as she grumbled and turned over. She was hidden under the doona, completely in the dark. So I thought maybe she was just scared. I opened the curtains and as the sun lit up the room she yelled; I jumped and closed them again immediately. I tried to climb on her but that only made her angrier. I knew something was wrong. Her eyes marinated in large, dark circles.
I left her room to play in the garden. It was overcast and I knew it would probably rain at any given moment. I ran around chasing butterflies I couldn’t catch and finding insects I could. I scooped them into my insect collector to investigate later. Proud of my accumulated collection, I soldier-marched inside as the storm began to break. I could smell the rain approaching – I lived for that smell. It was like what I imagined clouds would smell like if I could reach them. Fresh and damp and landing in a special spot deep in my lungs, a place not all smells were able to reach. I went inside for lunch and to display my new insect collection to Mum. I expected to find a toasted cheese sandwich on the table, but there was nothing.
“Mum?” I yelled. “Muuuuuuum!” Her bedroom door was still closed. I didn’t want to wake her so I put my raincoat on and quickly ran outside around the corner of the house to where her bedroom window was, curtains still closed. I ran back, stripped off the raincoat at the door as I was always instructed to, wiped my feet on the haggard dog-brush style doormat and went inside. I gently turned the knob to her room. She was still in bed. No movement.
The last time you ever speak to someone replays over and over in your head. You can’t help but ask yourself – accuse yourself – if there’s anything you could have done differently. I’ve given myself the third-degree for years now. Screaming into a void until my vocal chords were charred, I felt so entirely helpless. I know Dad did too.
My mother always hated the dark, perhaps because she could never escape it.
ON.
Inhuman sounds explode from within. Their face is bleached, rolled-back eyes and their mouth begins to make small, wet sounds. They heave again, their skeletal figure launching forwards. Something begins to rise through their oesophagus. Their throat swells. They close their eyes tight and hurl something solid onto the floor. It drops with a thud and rolls a metre ahead of them. It looks like a black orb, made of something unidentifiable. They begin to rock back and forth.
Not again.
The sphere is stone hard and begins to glow. Lighting up like phosphorous, the person covers their eyes with the palms of their hands. The glow is so powerful that they can see right through them.
OFF.
There is no light now other than the glow of the sphere. The person watches as a tiny crack forms at the top and the seal breaks. It is hatching.
I knew by the time I was twelve that I would never be alone. That the darkness followed me wherever I went. It was a part of me.
One day, I was walking home from school along the train tracks. I didn’t often take my hair out after it had been tied up all day, but my scalp was sore and I knew no one was around to see the mess upon my head. The wind gently blew my curls out of my face and settled on my skin with a refreshing chill. Goosebumps climbed my skinny arms – chicken arms Dad always called them – and I shuddered with the cold. Sometimes I wondered how su
ch stickly limbs could carry me around. I was grateful for them nonetheless. My school bag was heavy on my back and I lazily loosened the straps so it hung low on my shoulders, touching the top of my thighs. The air smelled of autumnal change and I kicked through some leaf piles as I strolled. The colours made my plain black school shoes seem so pedestrian. I suppose that’s what school aimed to make you feel.
Quite suddenly, the hairs on my neck stood up and I felt like someone was following me. I slowly inched my head over my shoulder, letting my eyes lead at a snail’s pace. My heart thumped in my chest and I actively tried to slow my breathing. What did that meditation app I had downloaded say? I breathed in deeply through my nose and out through my mouth. I surveyed the empty train line with my eyes. I chased it to the edge of the horizon but saw nothing. I quickened my pace slightly and looked up at the sky. Pale blue with a few clouds, it was a perfect day. I heard a twig snap and turned back again, this time without hesitation. I needed to catch whatever it was that was freaking me out.
Nothing.
I really needed to pee, but home was still another twenty minutes’ walk away and I wasn’t sure I’d last. I tried to ignore it and tightened my thighs together. The pressure built and I realised I either had to find a nearby bush or sprint as fast as I could home, potentially leaving a trail of urine as I’d go. Which wouldn’t exactly work to keep a low profile if someone was following me.
“I’m sure there’s no one here. These train tracks have been abandoned for years and I walk through here every single day on my way home from school,” I told myself. What if there’s someone or something living out there and it’s been watching you every day and has decided today is the day to attack? the darkness replied.
Eventually, I managed to talk myself down. Less because of rationality and more because by this point I was certain I would pee myself. I ducked behind a tree and started peeing, the cold wind hitting my lower back. There’s no relief like pee-relief.
I looked around and watched the leaves in the breeze and wondered how long it would take them to find me if something happened to me. Perhaps they never would.
ON.
The dark egg begins spilling a black gelatinous substance onto the floor. The crack stretches along the circumference of the obsidian orb until it breaks in half, leaving two shell pieces covered in dark liquid that rock back and forth. The sticky fluid on the ground starts sliding across the floorboards. It is alive. The person’s eyes do not follow the movement; they are in a state of shock, glossy and void. The ground creaks and a shape begins to form from the growing dark puddle.
It writhes and twists slowly as it rises from the slick pool of deep oil. Growing in height, for a moment it resembles a black cat, standing up on its hind legs. It stretches upwards and outwards, the size and shape of a dark-cloaked man. But it does not stop growing there. The torso reshapes disproportionately and stands on abbreviated legs. It seems to be made of the viscous fluid from the orb and sprouts into a tree-like statue. The growing shadow-creature now towers over the rhythmically rocking person. It is dripping gel-like liquid all over the ground beneath it. Rumbling sounds erupt from the beast as the person continues to rock, looking downwards.
A section of the creature’s body plops onto the floor and slithers into a corner, beginning to grow into another figure. Limbs fall off the large creature and divide to birth others. Two becomes three and continues to multiply until the room is infested with these animalistic aberrations.
The monsters are only real on the page.
Dad decided to do something nice for the two of us and planned a little road trip for the weekend. We were driving along the freeway, Dad singing his favourite Bob Dylan songs as I looked out the window.
“Come on, you know this one,” he coaxed. “Sing along with me.”
“I don’t think I do.”
I did. I wasn’t in the mood though. I wasn’t sure how he always stayed cheery. I watched the industrial complex roll by, so ugly and yet responsible for much of our everyday luxuries.
“We’re heading to Daylesford, which is Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Now, there are plenty of things we can do there. They have mineral springs and cute cafes and kayaking …” His voice trailed off. I wasn’t really listening.
“Oh, wow. That’s interesting. Cool, Dad!”
I gave him responses I knew would suffice, though I’m sure he sensed the sarcasm in my voice.
Be nice.
“And apparently there are a lot of gay people there, which is great! You know I have lots of gay friends, right? I’ve heard they even call it ‘Gay-lesford’!”
My ears pricked up, but I tried not to look too curious and continued gazing out the window. “Gaylesford,” I quietly snickered to myself. I guess that did sound fun.
We drove over the West Gate Bridge and Dad told me about the collapse during its construction in 1970. Apparently thirty-five workers were killed, with a further eighteen injured. He went into the details of the structural design and some other architectural and engineering stuff I didn’t really understand. I wasn’t sure how he did, either. He was probably simply regurgitating information he had read in an article at some point. He did that a lot.
I wondered how their families coped, whether they ever really recovered. I wondered if they took long detours to avoid driving over the bridge; too many painful memories. Or if they just held their breath across the length of it. I started holding mine to see if I could make it.
I wondered how many people had voluntarily taken their lives on this bridge since then. I noticed the height of the barriers and the distance to the water below.
Did witnesses live with the guilt buried so deeply within them that they’d need an industrial drill just to reach it and allow it to pool out? Did they get a constant, dull and throbbing pain in their back that could never be explained by any physical ailment? Did they feel sad all the time, for no obvious reason?
I could see myself standing up there.
The closets of children around the world empty into this space as more monsters appear and grow. The magnitude becomes overwhelming and the person seems to shrink against the sheer mass of sticky-ink beasts that swallow each inch of the room.
There has never been this many before.
The air is dense and dry. All the life has been sucked out of the space. The creatures growl and snarl and one lets out a blood-curling roar. The strength of the noise reverberates off the walls and shatters the light bulb. OFF. Shards of glass fly through the air with explosive force, cutting through skin and bones. The person lets out a yelp and then is silent once again. Darkness. But this time the dark is full, moving, wailing.
The person tries to stand up, preparing to run, except their legs are weak and shaking. They put both hands on the ground to attempt to balance themself, but forget about the shards of glass all over the floor. They nick a palm and pull it back. Holding it up to their face, the deep crimson dribbles out and onto the ground. The sharp pain shoots up their arm, through their back and to the top end of their spine. They collapse back down, defeated.
“You’re a pathetic little faggot, you know that?”
I stood up tall and dusted myself off. Screw Brad. He was such a jerk. My palms stung. I had grazed them on the pavement when I had fallen backwards. I could see the blood begin to pool on my skin and felt myself welling up. Brad and his army of cowardly disciples stared me down.
“Yeah, well, what if I am a faggot? Wouldn’t want to get too close, would you?”
Brad sniggered, seeking validation from his followers. “No one would, not even your own mother.”
“Ooooh!” his crowd jeered.
I wanted to hit him so badly. I could feel the creature clawing at my throat, eager to come out and leap at him. I was furious. How dare he! I distributed my weight to my back leg, ready for a fight. I stood strong. Molten lava was ready to erupt from my chest.
But I knew that hitting him would not make anything better and if I let the creatur
e out, it would be almost impossible to get it back in. I’d seen it happen before. I put a blanket over the fire inside me, gave him a dirty look, spat at his feet, turned on my heels and walked away. I could hear the snarling in my gut, pulling me back, desperate to launch. I breathed in deep through my nose and out through my mouth. I would come out of this intact.
When I got home I huffed up the stairs and buried myself under the covers. This was my happy place. It always had been. Dad came in. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“If I’ve learned anything in my life, when someone says ‘fine’ in a way that sounds definitively punctuated, they’re probably not fine.”
“Dad. I’m fine.” I didn’t want to talk.
“All right. Well, I’m here if you need me. I’ll just make some dinner and leave it outside your room.”
“I’m not hungry. Don’t worry about it.”
“Eat it when you can. Whether you’re fine or not, you’ll still need dinner.”
He left the room tangibly warmer. I pulled the doona back from my head and stared up at the roof. A tear ran down my face and stung the cut on my cheek. When did that happen? I didn’t even remember. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, something I did very infrequently. A small gash lay smiling halfway down the left side of my face. The blood had already begun to crust around it. I put my fingers gently against it and winced at the pain. “Brad is such an arsehole.”
My heart felt heavier and I carried it back to bed like a small child in my arms. I tucked it in and fell asleep, my pillow stained in salted red.
None of the figures grow to quite the height and mass of the first one. It stands frozen, still towering over the person. They slow their rocking and raise their head cautiously. They glance up and recognition settles in. They don’t feel so scared any more.