“Come on, for fuck sake” I muttered, repeatedly yanking the cord that in any functional household, would turn the bathroom light on. What must’ve been a hundred tugs later, and within minutes, the flickering bathroom light screamed into being, its yellow aura barely illuminating the room. Great, another thing to get the council to fix when they can be bothered to send out a maintenance person. Mid-internal rant, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and almost didn’t recognise what I saw. When was the last time I looked at myself, really? I couldn’t help but take notice of my sunken, hollow eyes, and the pasty, leathery mass that resembled skin. Human, of course, but humanity? It was fleeting, and it was obvious that the guilt was eating away at me, bit by ravenous bit.
I was leaving the house for the first time in weeks - there would be other people, some of who might even look at me - would they know what I’d done? I had to look presentable and regular, like I hadn’t spent the majority of my time shovelling cold beans from the tin into my gullet, or scrambling behind the sofa every time the letterbox as much as flinched. I washed my face with water as hot as this stupid ancient boiler would allow, and tried to brush my greasy hair into a vaguely symmetrical shape. Good enough, for today at least.
I was almost ready to leave, when the television caught my eye - ‘Two missing as Bletchley Estate chasm continues to expand’. Once again, the guilt rose like acid in my chest. This was the fourth report like this in the past week alone, nevermind all the reports that came out the month it happened. I wish that guilt WAS acid, and that it burned me away and gave me some kind of accountability for causing all this. For answering that call. For taking that photo. For releasing it into this world.
“Alright lad?” someone shouted next to me, their hand firmly patting my back. It was enough to snap me back to cognition - I don’t remember walking, but I clearly wasn’t in my flat anymore, unless someone had parked some cars in there. Autopilot must have kicked in, because now, I was standing in front of our community center, rain pissing down. As I looked at the source of the sound, my eyes met with the somehow familiar, friendly gaze of Damien Sellars.
The last time I’d seen him in person was a decade ago, but he was exactly as he looked back then, and the spitting image of his picture on the leaflets that made a collage amongst the pizza menus and council tax bills in front of my door. He was a small, stocky man, perpetually oily and thinning hair dangling in front of his bottle glasses like spaghetti dangling out of the pan. Local hero he was - if you couldn’t afford food or electric, he’d be round quick as, box full of food and some spare cash to see you through the night. The next morning? He’d be over, warm cups of coffee in hand, armed with a pen and a notebook ready to get you set up with a plan, mobile phone loaded with credit, and soul loaded with fire to see you right. I’d looked up to him and all he did for me and my Dad growing up - I’d always wanted to be like him. The closest thing to a celebrity our little estate had.
“You here for the support group?” he questioned, with a slight nod and arms folded. I could only muster a nod in return, before his hand shot out, bringing a smile with it. “Name’s Damien, a pleasure - what’s your name son?”. I don’t think he recognised me. I don’t blame him - I could barely recognise myself this morning, and he’d not seen me since the funeral years ago.
I think I shook his hand, and I think I told him Jamie. Being honest, I don’t remember - this was my first bit of social contact with someone since I locked myself away in my shitty, decrepit flat. I was so worried that the moment I met someone real, they’d immediately know that this is all because of me. They’d know that I was the one that opened up that hole in the ground, I was the one who let all those wretched things pour out and infest the estate - that I was the sole person responsible for all the death and nonsense this estate has been pushed through. Like bloodhounds for guilt, they’d whiff the stench of my evil molecules and rip me to atoms like I deserved, on the spot. Yet another thing to be terrified of.
But no. Instead, I was shown kindness; somehow, that was even worse. I couldn’t tell if he actually remembered me, or just wanted to be friendly, but as he took me in his strong bear hug, I fought back the tears. It’d been a long time since I’d been hugged by anyone. “Come on son, let’s run inside - with how dark these clouds are making it, I don’t want one of them things spotting us out here.”
When I found myself focusing again, I was sat on a plastic chair in a sweaty smelling hall, with the usual climbing apparatus you’d expect to see (you know, every primary school has one, but you were never allowed to use it for some reason). It hadn’t changed much - it was the same hall I’d spent years in with my local Scout group, it just looked smaller because, well… I’m bigger. The most noticeable difference was the boarded up windows, the lack of natural light, and the missing light bulbs packed neatly in the corner. Real precautions were being taken to make sure this place stayed secret it seemed.
Damien handed me a small plastic cup of lukewarm water, with a reassuring pat on the back. I took a small drink, and looked around the room. Sat in a circle; people just like me, and maybe even just like you. About ten to fifteen of them, all shapes, sizes and ages, just sat waiting for something to happen. The last time I’d seen a room of people this miserable, I’d been at my uncle’s wedding.
“Sorry Vicky, was just looking after our friend here. You were saying?” Damien returned to his seat, fixing his glasses and clasping his hands, a conformational indicator that he was in fact listening.
“Oh, not a problem.” she chirped, adjusting herself in her chair. “Well as I was saying, hi everyone, I’m Vicky - I know it’s been a while since I was last here, but you know… life… never gets easier, does it?”. She paused, lifting the cracked mug to her lips, taking a cautious sip from her mug. Looking at her, she was your average thirty-something. A shining beacon of Instagramability, hair bleached to a standard paper manufacturers could only dream of achieving. She looked confident and happy in herself - it was a rarity these days.
“Well, Vicky, welcome back!” Damien said, his ever friendly voice echoing a little too enthusiastically around the hall. “Do you want to tell us why you came back? I mean, not that we don’t want you here of course” he chuckled, looking around the group “But, you know, did something happen that made you want to come back to our little support group? Is everything okay? We didn’t exactly leave on… the best terms, I know.” There was a pause while people turned to look at her, waiting for a response. “But, we’d love to know what’s brought you back to us, and if we can do anything to help”. I wish you could’ve seen it man, her face was scrunched up, like she was deep in thought, or mid digesting a lemon, or deep in a lemon, mid-digesting a thought… Her tattooed-on eyebrows did little to convey whatever emotion she was feeling in that moment - she could’ve been surprised, or maybe they were tattooed on too high, I couldn’t tell.. A real mixed bag of body language if you ask me.
“Well… I was sitting at home, as you do… not much to do on a weekday mind you. Work’s still shut, electric’s still being rationed… you know, that’s a lot of time to sit and think about all this. All this stuff that’s gone on. Feels like only a few weeks ago, kids were riding their bikes around the estate, we were meeting up for coffees and the usual chit chat… but I look around our estate, I look at where the playground was, where some of the flats used to be… and do you know, some days, I think I’ve gone bloomin mad. I remember thinking about how life was just the same every day, my biggest fear was my son getting older and swanning off to uni, forgetting about me and leaving me here to become one of the old bingo goers that swarm this place on Friday nights. I used to be so scared I’d only see him once a month - now I’m scared I’ll never see him again”. This was obviously difficult for her - a sharp faced woman to her left, extended an arm around her shoulder, giving her a gentle supportive back tap.
I leaned over to Damien, softly asking “what happened to her son?”. Interestingly enough, I didn’t even realise this was the first time I’d spoken in a while, let alone seen other humans. After the fissure opened up, I’d not hung around to survey the damage. The moment I blew it open, I felt a sinking feeling in my chest - almost instinctively, I boarded myself up in my shitty little flat, and hid from the mess I’d made. I cried, and I mourned, and I screamed into my pillows as day by day, the noises and the shadows and the forms that passed by my window trying to tempt me out of my hiding spot grew more and more irritated. When my next door neighbour banged on the window screaming for help, I watched, motionless, as a slithering form of darkness coiled itself around her and melted her into nothing. When her young children ran out to try and save her, I only observed as I watched the entire potential of their youth ripped away by snarling mouths dictated by evil spirits. I did nothing that same night, when I heard them again: a bad imitation of all of their voices begging to come in once more. I hated my mind in moments like this, because my first thought was that despite them all now being replaced by other-worldly copies, I internally chuckled at the thought that they’d still be deemed fit to work - I think it was an attempt at suppressing just how terrified I was while it was happening, and how each drop of sweat filled me with the fear of them smelling it and deciding to force their way in.
Damien thought for a second, before carefully saying “When that crack opened up… nobody thought much of it right? It started off small didn’t it, everyone just thought that we needed another round of tarmac. Problem is, her boy and his friends? Nosey shits, in the nicest possible way. They’d go to it every day, poking, prodding, shoving things down the crack, playing games with it. Pretty sure one of them named it. Then one day, they turn their backs, their parents look away at just the right second, and something from inside gets them. There wasn’t even a scream, or a cry for help - Vicky had only turned around for a second, and when she looked back, she wasn’t quick enough to grab the tiny fingers that were clawing on to the edge of the crack for dear life. She spent ages digging at that crack, chipping away at it… never could get it back open. Hammers, drills, shovels? Forget it. Until, you know, the day it exploded out of nowhere.”
Vicky coughed, purposefully interrupting what we were talking about. Damien had tried to be quiet, but a stranger in the group hearing what she said - what else could I possibly be asking about? Directions to the library?
“Sorry Vicky, you were saying” Damien said, giving the floor to her. I had questions still, but they could wait.
“Well, where was I? Right, well.. You know, eventually, I started to think to myself - the crack’s bigger now, and it’s cordoned off and everything… maybe someone could go and get him? So I asked the police to go in and get him, they said no, it’s not safe, but nobody’s even tried to go down there since it took him. Nobody’s given a flying fuck, and we’ve all been fenced off and abandoned in this bloody estate while them doctors look at that thing, not to save my boy, but for science or whatever. Nobody cares about my son, and I don’t give a shit what happens to me if he’s not here. We’re not getting out of this estate any time soon, if they wanted to arrest me, they’d have to lift a bloody finger and put a prison in here. So, I did it.”. She took another sip of her drink - again, a face that didn’t betray any thought of emotion, for all I knew she could be hating that drink. She’d been holding it long enough that it can’t have been as cold or as hot as when she first got it - the mug might’ve even been empty. I got the impression that for her, it was less about the drinking, and more about the familiarity of doing something comforting. Some semblance of normality, in a little pocket of the world that was growing increasingly stranger.
“What did you do?” one of the other voices asked - a larger, rounder man asked. It was the first time I’d heard him speak today - in fact, I’d not really heard anyone speak yet. Somehow, we were all too engrossed in Vicky’s story. I’d only met this woman moments ago and yet, I found myself dangling to the edge of her sentence, waiting in anticipation for the next thing she would say. It felt like ages before finally, as if the little wheel inside her had finished buffering, her voice trembled, and she forced out a sentence that was clearly stuck in her throat.
“Well.. I went in, didn’t I? And I found him.”
If the room was quiet before, it was deathly silent now. The slight smile that was on everyone’s faces prior, had dropped. Those who weren’t looking away or deep in thought, had a face of annoyance present. Even Damien, a man who in my very brief time knowing him had come across as kind and patient, let out a deep, irritated sigh. Not completely absent of compassion, but still with a hint of frustration.
“Vicky..” he began, but then paused - probably to make the decision to take on a more sympathetic tone. “It’s wonderful to have you back, it really is - I’m over the moon that you’ve joined us again not only to heal, but to support your community with their healing. But… joking about things like that… please don’t. I don’t want to be the person who tells you how to cope with trauma, and what you’ve lost? It’s awful, and we ARE here to support you. But everyone else in this room has lost something to that… thing too. Some of us, more recently than others. So, I have to insist that while this is an open honest space, we avoid abstracting from the truth in ways that can be hurtful to our friends here, yes?”
The tension continued, before Vicky spoke again
“Well… yes, I understand. But I really did. I went down there, when those coppers weren’t looking one night. And I went down, and-”
“Vicky” he said more sternly now, with a reluctant authority “I don’t want to point out the obvious that we’ve all seen people go down there, on the news, in person. Every time someone does, how many times do we hear about them coming back?”
“Well, nobody yet, but-”
“Exactly” he interjected “Nobody. And yet here you are, sat here, perfectly intact, barely a scratch on you. Now I don’t want to throw about the L word, but our minds, sometimes they trick us into things and make us believe we’ve done stuff we have no way of doing Vicky. I hope you’ll forgive my tone - but you’re here for support, and we need to face this hurdle our community’s been thrown with a bit of…”
Damien’s voice trailed off, his mouth dropping. I turned to look at what had stopped this commanding, present man so suddenly - and I understood what it took to silence Damien Sellars. Holding my own jaw up, I stared at what was before me. Vicky was stood now, thick winter coat fully unbuttoned to show her tank top. We weren’t shocked at her fashion choices, no - what was gathering our disbelief, was the writhing, pulsing, dark mass that was sweeping across her neck, chest and shoulders. There was no sound, but the thick red aura it was emitting did more to convey pain and malice than Vicky’s long winded sentences ever could. I didn’t even know light could be black - yet whatever was wrong with her, somehow shone darkness.
“Do you believe me now?” Vicky shouted at Damien, eyes welling up. “Is this enough proof for you? You all saw those things come out the day it happened. You saw what they did to our friends, our loved ones, you even helped me scrub the fucking blood from the streets so the kids at school didn’t have to see it when they came back. While I mourned my son, I did my best to support this community. And when I locked my doors at night to keep those things out, and when I heard his voice telling me to go get him, and when I asked you all for support, what did you do? Fucking nothing, that’s what you did. I had to do it myself, all I’ve done for you lot, and now look what’s happened to me.” As she screamed out these words, she turned to address the whole room - there was no chance that everybody hadn’t seen what was wrong with her, and that was confirmed by the amount of people backing away from the circle, making gestures to each other to hint towards the door.
Damien was standing now - he ripped his glasses off, planting them firmly in his pocket.
“Vicky.. What did you do? What is that? Do I need to call an ambulance?”
“The ambulance can’t do anything Damien - nobody can do a single fucking thing for us here. We can’t leave, we can’t get help, the world’s watching us through those walls like some kind of zoo, sitting in comfort because they’re not the ones having to deal with the shit that thing is spilling out every day. Do you think those out there are worrying that the next person they see isn’t really a person? That their next drink of water will turn them like it did Lisa? They can see everything that’s going on, they’ve seen this thing inside me. If they wanted to help, they’ve had days to do it. We didn’t matter before this, and we don’t matter now”
Damien held up his hands, giving an assuring half nod “Look, we can try asking for help - it’s been a while since we spoke to the guards. If we show them, maybe they’d see something needs to be done, and they can fix it, or cut it out, or.. or you know, do something. This is different to the other stuff”
“Do you not think I tried to cut it out?” she barked back, throat audibly hoarse from crying while speaking. “No matter how much I dug and scraped and clawed, it won’t come out, I can’t fix it. And you know what Damien? And you know what, the rest of you? I don’t want to fix it. Because this was the price. All I had to do was accept this, and do what it asked, and it said I can have him back. The first real option I’ve been given. I used to think you were all friends you know, our kids played together. But you turned your backs on me, and I had no choice”.
“She made a deal with one of them, I fucking knew it!” the rounder man bellowed, Northern accent cementing the fear in his voice somehow. This was enough to make everyone in the room back out towards the edges of the room. One person tried the door - the glare Vicky shot them was somehow enough to convince them and everyone else that it wasn’t a safe idea.
“Made a deal with what?” I blurted out - I really didn’t have control of what I was saying at this point. Honestly, part of me still thought I was asleep, this entire situation made no sense in the fog of the fatigue and the possible malnourishment one can only enjoy from eating nutritionally incomplete baked beans 3 times a day.
“When I went down there, it wasn’t what I expected. I don’t even really remember it” Vicky explained, now looking directly at me. I could’ve sworn her eyes were swimming too. “All I know, is I walked what felt like hours and days, and I saw him. My boy, sitting there, staring at the floor. I tried to move him, I tried to speak to him - he didn’t respond like he always does. He’s normally so quick to tell me to go away, or leave him alone or stop touching him. But nothing. He was so still, and any time I felt like I moved him a little, he bounced back to exactly how he was before. And then I saw it - he was crumbling. Not much, but his fingers, his little fingers, they were flaking like sand dripping onto the floor. I screamed, and I cried, and I begged someone for help. And it answered.”
“What answered, Vicky?” Damien demanded, his voice once again growing in aggression. They really should’ve mentioned that short fuse in the leaflet, I might’ve prepared a little better.
“I don’t know.. it never really said. But I could trust it, I knew I could deep down. It said it could save him, and bring him back, and we could be together again and be safe and they’d leave us alone. I only had to do one thing for it, that’s all… it just wanted one thing”.
“What was it?” I asked, naively.
“It wanted an audience.”
As soon as those words left her mouth, the room was filled with an impossibly blinding red. The heat, god, I felt like my skin was being blasted from my bones. The sounds were even worse - the sounds of crying, and screaming, and burning, for what felt like forever. I made the mistake of opening my eyes - a mistake I corrected a second later after being far too overwhelmed by the things I was seeing. I tried to reach out to feel someone, anyone, just to check they were okay - but despite Damien being close enough to smell the piss that was now probably in my underwear, I couldn’t find him. And almost as soon as it all happened, it stopped.
When I opened my sore eyes, I looked around the Bletchley Estate Community Center, expecting it to be in pieces. But it wasn’t - it was exactly as it was, pre Vicky’s episode. Except, I was now the only person in the room. And as I took a step forward, and looked around, I couldn’t help but wonder - where the bloody hell did they all go?
Behind me, the door creaked open.