When I was a teenager I used to spend my summers at my uncle’s farm in the country. The only one in that whole branch of the family who really liked me was their old basset hound, Boomer. He always looked pleased to see me when I dumped my suitcase down on their porch, which is more than can be said for my cousins. They were a pain and looked down on me because I was from the city, so I spent a lot of time on my own whilst they went down to the lake most days, swimming and larking around.
My uncle wouldn’t have liked this if he’d known – there’d been some children going missing in the local village over the past spring, taken by animals maybe – and he had forbidden us from wandering alone. However my cousins disliked me as much as I disliked them so they kept my secret and we kept our distance.
The area around my uncle’s farm was all scrubland and dry grass in the summer, the heat from the relentless sun growing stifling during the long afternoons alone. His farmhouse was the only home for miles around, a single blot on the wide empty expanse of the valley. It was positioned at the foot of the steep hills which rose out of the valley and were covered in thickly crowded trees. This shady wood was the only cover for miles around and, because I liked rambling around but didn’t like sunburn, I used to walk up through these woods most days. As I passed the first trees at the base of the hills I could always still hear my cousins yelling down by the lake, but as I pushed deeper their cries were drowned out and the only sound was the constant chirping and humming of crickets.
The sun dappled down through the canopy of trees and created a dim light, the air quiet and still. I spent many happy days climbing right to the top and out of the woods, looking down over the valley, but one day something happened that put a stop to that forever.
On this particular afternoon I deviated from my set path up the hill, going off the trail and pushing deeper into the gloom than I ever had before. Even the crickets didn’t follow me there; it was dead silent. As I put my foot down on the leaf-covered dirt I noticed that instead of the usual earthen crunch, the sound my footstep made was an echoing ‘bang!’ As if I had stepped on something hollow.
I stooped down and pushed away at the shrubs at my feet, revealing a trapdoor made of dark wood. I looked at it for a few minutes, trying to work out why it was there. My cousins had told me that there was a network of old mineshafts built into these hills but they’d been disused for a hundred years. This trapdoor, however, looked relatively new and sturdy, not at all decrepit or rotten. Perhaps someone had put the old mining tunnels to new use?
I remember that I lifted up the lid and it came out of the ground with a creak and a suck of air. The shaft beyond was dark and deep, a ladder leading downwards into the abyss. A strange smell wafted up towards me on a gust of dead air; not pleasant. It smelled like an animal had got in there and had never got out. Today, I can’t remember what possessed me to climb down there. It could have broken and I could have fallen to my death – I didn’t know how far down the shaft went. I could have been falling forever. But I was a kid, and I was stupid, so I climbed down into the hole.
I found that the ladder only went down a short distance, and then there was a short drop onto a dirt floor. It was dark down that shaft, almost pitch black, with what little light there was coming through the trapdoor in the ceiling. The tunnel seemed as if someone had excavated it further than it would have been when the mine was still operating and the walls looked like someone had dug them out, making more room for the passage of a person’s body. I was planning on just going a few steps into the tunnel in front of me, enough to have a story to tell my cousins, then running back down the hill to the farmhouse. In time for dinner and boasting about my adventure.
However, a sound from deeper within the tunnel made me pause. It sounded like… a whimper, like an injured animal. A dog, maybe. I’ve always had a soft spot for dogs and the idea that one had fallen down the shaft and been hurt plagued my mind. What’s more, when I strained my eyes I thought I could see a faint light coming from the end of the tunnel, a soft light just on the edge of perception. The whimpering sound came again, from that direction, and I resolved to follow it.
As I continued down the tunnel my eyes became accustomed to the darkness. I realised that under these hills was a maze of different disused mineshafts, as I could see tunnels branching off at regular points, many so small that I would have to crawl through them even as a teenager. The unpleasant smell grew stronger, as did the sound of moaning, and I braced myself to find the animal in a dreadful state.
The light that I could see in the distance was getting brighter, and I decided that it must be daylight streaming in from another opening into the mine. By the light it afforded me I made my way into a sort of chamber that opened out from the main tunnel and was obviously used for storage back in the days this mine operated. There were still crates, broken and dusty now, littering the floor. I saw that behind a pile of long-rotted sacking was a small hole, big enough for me to crawl through, in the craggy wall of the mine. I got down onto my knees in the dirt and peeked through. At first, all I could see was darkness. Then I made out a shape, right in the back of the antechamber I was peering into. It was a huddled shape, small and ragged, like a dog curled in on itself in pain. The whimpering sound was coming from this creature.
‘Poor boy’, I said, trying to work out how to squeeze into this little room and bring the dog out to safety. As I spoke it froze and stopped that low keening noise it had been making. It stayed curled up on the ground, I could just about see that, but it was suddenly quite still. I got down on my knees and crawled through the hole, into the dark. I had just about enough room to stand up in the dingy space. I made my way over to the huddled dog, which I could now see was shivering wildly. Suddenly I saw something that made me stop dead.
A hand. A human hand – or humanoid, at least. I could see that underneath the dirt and grime was white skin and cracked, sharpened nails. As I took this in and began to back away – slowly, I was still in shock – the thing began to turn towards me. In the gloom I could see it was hairy, wild black hair that looked course and matted, and as its face looked up at me I thought I could make out a glittering, malevolent eye.
It groaned low in its throat and began to drag itself towards me, painfully slowly, like it had no use of its legs. It smelled like the rotted gases of an unopened coffin and it moaned and moaned like a dying animal. I yelled and banged my head on the earthen wall, scrabbling to get out. As I crawled back through the hole in the wall I could feel its hair brush my naked shin, feel its hands – its claws – pulling on the leg of my jeans. When I stood up I began to run blindly back up the tunnel that I had come from, and as I cast a look over my shoulder I saw that glittering eye looking back at me.
The moans had turned into screeching, tortured screams that seemed to come from all sides. And they were coming from all sides, I realised as I sprinted for the light of the trapdoor. There was more than one of those things down there, those shuddering groaning things, and I could hear their yells of frustrated hunger from all around. As I grabbed for the ladder that would lead back up to salvation I glanced around and saw three of the dark creatures crawling across the dirt floor towards me, their eyes shining in the dark. I yelled again and sped up the ladder, slamming the trapdoor closed as soon as I reached the top.
I was fifteen that summer, ten years ago now. And I’m telling this story for the worst reason possible. My uncle died recently and his funeral was held was held three days ago, so – being a dutiful nephew – I went back to attend it. This meant entering that old farmhouse which I hadn’t returned to since I was a teen. I’d never really explained to my relatives why I suddenly stopped wanting to summer at their house, just as I’d never told anyone about what I had seen. How could I? What I had seen wasn’t human but it wasn’t animal either. It was monstrous, and it came back to me again as I stood at my uncle’s graveside.
The reading of his will was due to commence an hour after the funeral, but as I looked up at those hills surrounding the valley, those woods that held those terrifying tunnels, I was struck with an insane desire to return. I was twenty-five and too old to be frightened by things that went bump in the night. I had been haunted by nightmares ever since that summer and I had a sudden thought that returning might help me lay those ghosts to rest.
The wake was being held at the house, only twenty minutes’ walk from the graveyard. Some mourners, including my cousins, had chosen to head back on foot and I joined them. I split off from the main party after a little while though, telling my cousins I had an errand to run. Maybe it was the sobering quiet of the graves or the thought of my kindly uncle’s slow descent into the depression which had ended his life, but I had been suddenly struck with the urge to fine that trapdoor again. To find that spot in the woods which held the entrance to those awful tunnels.
I think I managed to convince myself that if I could just take a peek inside and come away from there not scared out of my mind, then maybe the whole thing had been only a nightmare or some crazy fever dream. In any case, I reasoned, the worst I could find would be a perfectly normal feature of the old mines, some disused tunnel and perhaps equipment; nothing supernatural there. Then perhaps my memories would leave me alone forever. Yes, that was a good idea.
The sun was just as hot on the back of my neck as I made my way up out of the valley and into those woods, although the day was stiller and much more quiet than I remembered. No crickets sung anymore. I reached the place where I remember the trapdoor being very quickly – my adult stride far out-matching that of my fifteen year old self. Besides, now I had a purpose and that drove me on faster than I could have believed.
As I came to the spot I saw that someone had placed wooden boards over the top of the door, and I felt a surge of both disappointment and relief as I realised that the shaft had been nailed shut from the outside. Nails had been bolted haphazardly into the wood, sealing up the opening with a finality that made my stomach sink.
I considered my options. Should I turn back and let the past – and those creatures that haunted my waking dreams – stay buried in those mines? Or should I go down to the farmhouse and get a hammer, maybe a pickaxe, and force my way through the sealed trapdoor into the darkness beyond? I had come too far to turn away, I decided. Ten years too far.
After returning to the house to retrieve the tools I needed from the old shed – and avoiding my cousins who surely would think me insane if they saw me sneaking out of the wake with a pickaxe – I was back at the scene of my nightmares. Thirty minutes later, after prying up each and every nail and pulling aside the lengths of wood that covered it, I was looking down at that same trapdoor.
The smell when I opened it was even more revolting than I remembered. A gust of hot stinking air hit me in the face and I retched. The smell of raw sewage and also, inexplicably, something kind of fruity and sweet. But not in a pleasant, Tutti Fruitti kind of way; more like food that had been left out in the damp too long and was only good for flies. I shivered despite the extreme heat and clambered down into the shaft. I had come prepared this time, bringing with me a torch that I used now to illuminate my surroundings.
I saw that the tunnel that I was following was much the same as I remembered ten years before – perhaps a bit smaller, or maybe it was the same one and I had just grown too big – but the same winding system of tunnels and shafts branched out from this main line I was making my way down. I soon came to the big storage chamber, and I tensed. The thought of carrying on into that place where I had seen… or had thought I’d seen… those things was terrifying to me, despite the rationality that adulthood was supposed to have brought. I had proven enough just by coming this far, I decided, and needn’t go any further. Besides, the reading of the will was due to start soon and I had to get back. I was just turning around to go back up the passageway when a noise came out of the gloom, straight from my nightmares.
A laboured, shuffling sound, like a body being dragged across a harsh floor. Slow and inevitable, it seemed to be coming towards me. Did I hear a groan in the darkness? Or was that the memory of long ago playing tricks on me? I cast the beam of my flashlight around wildly, trying to see what was clawing itself towards me. I backed away from that storage room as fast as I could without taking my eyes off the direction that sound was coming from. In doing so I think I must have taken a wrong turn because I couldn’t feel the comforting bars of the ladder behind me as I backed up to the wall, only dry earth.
Just then the light caught something just on the edge of my vision and all my rational thought ceased; a dark head peering around the corner, hair hanging in tangles to the floor and clotted with dirt, and through the grime I could see… that eye. That crazed, malevolent eye. It was looking straight at me.
I screamed, again, and ran blindly into the dark as I had done so many years ago. I heard a scrabbling behind me as that monstrous creature ran – or crawled, or clawed – after me, a senseless moaning coming from its throat. As I ran my flashlight slipped from my fingers and I felt tears of terror slipping down my cheeks.
Just at that moment, I ran head first into the ladder, and with a relief that was unimaginable I began to pull myself up. In trying to conquer my demons I had only ended up repeating that day so many years ago, right down to this very last detail; as I pulled myself out of darkness and into the light I looked behind me and saw, in the beam of failing light, a glimpse of my pursuer. Long-limbed and athletic, it seemed to jump and clamber along the very walls of the tunnel – and up towards me. Hastily I shut the trapdoor lid and ran, only grabbing the hammer in my haste to be away.
On reflection, I should have perhaps nailed the boards back over the opening, but then… knowing what I know now, perhaps not sealing the entrance again was the only good thing I have ever done.
I was freaked out, of course – that’s an understatement. As I came tearing down into the valley I must have looked like a crazy person, eyes rolling, soaking in sweat and face wet with tears. As I approached my late uncle’s house I slowed down, realising I was no longer being pursued.
Collapsing on the porch, I reviewed my options. I had to tell the police what I’d seen this time. They wouldn’t believe me, they’d think I was mad, but at least they might send a team up into those mines and open them up and release the ghosts within, the ghosts in my mind, and even if they sent me to a mental hospital afterwards at least I might be free. But I would have to wait until after the reading of my uncle’s will. It was due to begin any minute and I was in no state to walk into a police station at that moment. What would I say? There’s a monster in the old mines, send help? I resolved to hear the reading of the will and then decide what to do. They were all waiting for me to take my seat inside anyway.
As I sat down – trying to smooth my hair so I didn’t look too insane – my uncle’s solicitor stood up and cleared this throat.
‘Now we are all here’, he threw a pointed look at me, ‘I should like to first read a letter entrusted to me by the deceased, with instructions that it should be read before the will’.
He produced a sealed envelope and opened it, running his eyes over the first few lines. In accordance with my uncle’s apparent wishes he had not opened it beforehand and so this was the first he had heard of its contents, the same as us. After a few seconds the solicitor blanched, looked sharply up from the letter at us and then back down again, before covering his mouth with his hand.
‘My God…’ he whispered.
‘What is it, you old fool?’ Demanded my eldest cousin, pulling the letter from the solicitor’s unresisting hands. He scanned the first few lines and then his eyes grew wide.
‘What is the problem?’ An anonymous aunt cried, a question echoed around the room. My cousin exchanged a look with the solicitor, who seemed like he was trying not to be sick, and in an emotionless voice he read:
‘This is my confession. In the spring and summer of 2007, I kidnapped six children from the local area. I bound their feet so they could not run, and… oh Jesus…’ he faltered, then passed the letter over to me to continue to read as he, like the solicitor, turned pale and started to heave. I read from where he left off.
‘And cut out their tongues, so they could not scream. I held them in the old mine. In the winter of 2008, in order that my crimes should not be discovered, I killed all but two of them. I left their bodies in the hills. Those two that evaded me also surely died, as I sealed off the entrance to the shaft. Now I will put a bullet in my head and be done with it. May God have mercy on me’, I finished in a voice not much higher than a whisper. There was silence in the room, and almost as one every gaze went West, towards the wooded hills which could be seen from the window.
That was three days ago. The police are here and I have to stay, sleeping in the same pull-out couch in the living room I used to take as a teenager. Things have come full circle.
The police sent a team down into the mines. They found five skulls and innumerable other bones, four skulls grouped together in the same antechamber I had stumbled across all those years ago and the fifth found a long way deeper in the mine. All bones showed signs of being gnawed, by animals according to the police sergeant. I’m not so sure. They are also confident that they will soon find the skeleton of the sixth child my uncle kidnapped, but I’m not so sure of that either. They have dismissed my report of seeing a… person down in those tunnels as over-imagination. ‘Probably a coyote with mange’, the sergeant had said, and I just looked at him.
Whatever I saw down there is gone now. Escaped when I left the trapdoor open. Free at last, you could say. I keep going around and around the same thought; if only I had told the police what I’d seen all those years ago, I would have saved them. He kept them in the dark for more than a year after I ran across them, feet tied together, tongues stolen so they couldn’t call for help… could only moan for me to help them… and I ran away. Christ.
It’s getting dark now. I keep looking out of the window, up at the hills. I go around the whole house, turning on every single light so that the farmhouse glows with a comforting warmth. I don’t want to be left in the dark ever again. I know what I saw down there, despite what the police say. I know now what I condemned that poor soul to all those years ago. It – or she, or he – has gone now, perhaps to the home so long ago lost, and for that I am glad. And yet I don’t want to be left alone in the dark.
I’m lounging on my couch-bed, too full of all these thoughts to sleep, writing all this down to try and clear my head. I don’t even know if I will post this. I need some distraction, so I switch on the TV. Reception here is terrible and I can only get one channel, some stupid comedy show. The husband is dumb, the wife is long-suffering, everybody laughs. I sit and chew my nails.
Rising yet again to look out of the window I absent-mindedly run my hand through my hair, then I freeze. In front of me, out the window, my shadow counterpart is spread out on the ground, one hand raised. The light behind me is blazing and I suddenly realise that with all the lights on in the house it could be seen for miles around. The farmhouse is the only building in the valley and it is shining like a beacon.
Frantically I run through the rooms of the house, slamming off all the light switches, skidding on the smooth floorboards in my haste. The beacon is extinguished, the house now in darkness. No one can see me now, I think. I am scared but I am safe. I curl up on the couch and absent-mindedly brush a wad of dog hair off it with my feet. I think about watching some more TV but the idea of making any noise and broadcasting my presence terrifies me.
I am just thinking that perhaps I am overreacting, and starting to feel a little ashamed of myself, when I realise something. Boomer died a good five years ago, his faithful old bones now resting out in the yard. My cousin mentioned that when I first arrived.
I look down at the floor, at that wad of hair. In the darkness I can’t make it out so well but it looks… longer than dog hair. Thick and matted. Terror grips me again, sharp and urgent, and I look up. I can make out a shape at the other end of the couch. I am frozen, unable to look away, squinting to make out any features in the gloom. Then the thing moves closer and I scream. Staring back at me is a single, manic eye.