Work Text:
“Statement of Cinno Thegod, regarding a series of power outages in their childhood home. Statement taken 17th of January, 2015. Statement recorded 25th of December, 2020. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins.”
Did you ever have that moment after turning out the light, where you’re plunged into unequivocal darkness and you’re so, so certain that the monsters are coming to get you now? Have you ever raced up basement stairs, thundering up those steps in your haste to escape the unseen hands that grab at your back?
I always felt like that when I was younger. Still do sometimes, if it gets too dark.
The house I grew up in was a dark place, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. 100 Charming Avenue was plagued by power outages, maybe two or three a week, lasting hours at a time. And it was only ever our house. None of our neighbours were ever affected, and I can’t say they would have settled into it like we did if they were.
Once when I was 7 or so, the power went out for a week. It felt like camping, how we would roast marshmallows over a portable gas stove, how we would go out and buy ice to keep the chilly bin cool and our food fresh. We’d stay up late telling ghost stories, chasing away the creeping dark with our flashlights.
Whenever there was a blackout, those shadows only ever grew. They’d crawl out of corners, ever present and ever still. They’d drench the walls, whole rooms in darkness. The day is darker than it is when there’s power and the night is darker still. There were times when I wandered the house, unable to see my own hand if I were holding it to my nose.
The shadows had a presence, during a blackout. They’d crawl out of their lurking corners, out of the spaces under beds. They’d drench the walls, in darkness so thick that I thought that if I reached out, my fingers would brush the barrier between light and shadow. They were heavy, weighted as if they were a person standing beside me, the ringing silence a leaden weight within the darkness.
Because there was always a silence that rang with the blackout. Without the hum of electricity, the shadows deepened in the resulting quiet, and there were times that, no matter how deeply I was sleeping, no matter how used to it I got, the ringing quiet of the blackout always woke me up.
If the power went out, I noticed. Even if the lights were off, if it was the middle of the day and the midday sun was the only source of light and nothing else was on, I noticed. Between the way my hair would prickle the back of my head, the ringing pressure in my ears from the sudden quiet, and the tension that drew across my spine like a bowstring, it was hard not to.
At times like those, it wasn’t hard to imagine why the human race developed that deep, primal, instinctive fear of the dark. Why children are so afraid of it, as sensitive to things as they are. As I was, at the time.
So when the darkness came in the quiet of the night, I was awake in seconds. Most of the time I can recognize what's happening, and be back asleep in minutes, but this time felt… different.
That tension in my spine was taut, and the shadows were more present than they’d been in the past. As if there was something there, standing over me, just out of sight.
I opened my eyes.
Eyes, pitch black things like holes photoshopped out of reality, blinked back at me, hiding in the shadows between the open door and the wall.
Whatever those eyes were attached to, I couldn’t see it. Darkness drowned out my room, casting it into a shadow that I was oh so familiar with. I saw nothing of the body, but I remember how my child's mind twisted those shadows into long and wicked claws, into a warped and grotesque mockery of a body. I remember staring into those pits, and burying myself under the covers with a flashlight until the power came back on.
The flashlight was only a small comfort, flickering into moments of darkness that made my heart catch in my throat, but it was something, and I lay there in leaden silence for hours until I could hear that faint hum of electricity again.
And then I moved on.
Growing up in that house, I grew up accustomed to the strange blackouts. I knew it was odd, yes, but there was nothing we could do about it besides move. Believe me, we tried. But there was never any problem with our wiring, or with the power lines outside. My mother had it checked dozens of times.
So I became used to it. To the shadows creeping down my neck. To carry batteries in my pocket. To the silence and the tension, and never venturing too far into the darkness. To that careful fear of what might be lurking just out of sight.
The kids at school were never mean about it, but I saw the way they shied away from me. The way they inched away from my shadow like it was poison, like touching it would make the darkness cling to them, rot them. I never cared. I was used to it. So I refreshed my batteries, and chased away the darkness that followed me when the power went out.
Looking back, maybe it was that bone-deep fear of the dark that kept them away. Our evolutionary fear to stay out of the shadows. Hard to tell, now, but I would have been a ripe target for getting picked on if their instincts didn’t drag them away.
My mother hated the blackouts. Early on, I would hear her cussing out whatever poor city official was on the other end of the line. When it became clear that there was nothing to be done, she only scowled when the lights flickered out, and cursed the house to Hell and back. It’s a miracle I didn’t grow up to swear like a sailor drunk in a pub, but Amos wasn’t so lucky. It’s impressive how hard he could cuss someone out in a single breath.
Amos was my brother, about three years my senior. While I was young enough that my memories of the place are hazy, Amos was about to graduate high school when it all came to a head. That last blackout.
I still wonder how he felt about all of it. If he was used to it, like I was, adapted to it like human beings are prone to do. If he liked it. If it chilled him to the bone. If he felt that instinctive terror. Hard to know, now.
We were never that close, Amos and I. At least on the surface. We kept out of each other's way, Amos because he didn't want to deal with an annoying younger sibling, and me because I found my own fun. I'm ashamed to say I never really knew him. But I know he watched over me.
Whenever there was a blackout, Amos would come and find me. He'd help me cast away the shadows that crept and crawled at us during those times, and carried an extra flashlight in case I forgot mine.
He never spoke during those moments, but he never needed to. Even then, I understood the concern in his eyes.
I do know that he hated the basement. It was the kind of basement that was half finished, the kind that had the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, and not the top. There were no ground level windows, and if we tried to use our torches, they simply sputtered and died.
Amos told me to never, ever go down there. I really should have listened.
I have a vague memory of the time my mother had sent an electrician down there, to take a look at the wiring. He was down there for hours, long enough for one of the shorter power cuts to come and go. When he emerged, he was paler than I've ever seen, trembling from head to toe and stumbling around blind.
His eyes were wide, and glassy, and unseeing. It must have been so dark.
So the basement became a place we avoided. At times, during some of the longer blackouts, I swore I could see the shadows under the door that led down those steps reach out for us, tendrils of fingers stretching out along the cracks in the floorboards.
Beckoning. Inviting. Luring.
I don't know what possessed me to go down there. Maybe I was curious. Maybe I never had a choice, and the shadows had always had a claim to me. Maybe I was just a naive little child, who didn't understand the danger.
Whoever the reason, between blackouts, I had found myself at the top of those foreboding stairs. And once, just once, I decided not to listen to Amos's warnings. And once was all it took.
They led down into the darkness, the shadows creeping in at every step. I couldn't see anything beyond the first few steps, and for a second, and single second, I saw a pair of eyes, deeper than the shadows that birthed it, blink up at me.
I took a step down. And then another. And then another. Behind me, the door swung closed, and I heard the tell-tale hum of electricity abruptly end.
The darkness enveloped me, surrounding me. And it. Was. Complete.
Thicker than the nights where I couldn't see my own nose. Heavier than the blankets that protected me from what lurked, hidden. Quieter than the breath I held when I felt something unseen brush my arm.
I continued down the stairs, and felt for the light along the wall. Only, there was no wall. I reached into nothing, where there should have been something , and then reached further.
Abyss.
There was a laugh, faint in the silence but no less clear. A grinning chuckle. Amused, at my stumbling around in the deep deep dark, blind as blind can be.
I froze. A deer in headlights, but this time the headlights were a pair of dark, dark eyes, that blinked and grinned in the silence and the cold and the shadows.
The monsters were coming for me.
I never saw a single sign of them, blind as I was. Never heard a whisper of movement beyond that tiny little laugh. But they were there. I was so sure of it.
I screamed, a terrible and mangled thing, and ran for the stairs.
Fingers brushed at my neck, at my hair and my clothes, just shy of gripping me tight and dragging me deeper. My feet thundered against the creaking wooden steps, pounding as I pushed myself up them. A desperate sprint for the light.
I'm told that plenty of children are scared of the dark. That as they turn off the light they might run for safety, that they might run up the stairs or into the next room.
What they never told me was that there's a lurch, a moment where your stomach drops and your heart picks up it's frantic race, where the dread pools in your throat, thick and heavy and choking.
I could barely scream through the silence.
I reached the door and rattled the handle with all my strength. It would budge. I felt my heart leap into my throat as I banged my fists against it, yelling, screaming for my mother, Amos, anyone .
The door flew open in a sudden rush of air and I tumbled into the landing, but I only caught a glimpse of a vicious, victorious smile, a wickedly clawed hand reaching out, and Amos's wide eyes before the door slammed once more closed behind me.
Silence reigned. I don't know what I expected, to be honest. Maybe for Amos to run back out, safe and whole. Maybe for me to run for help, go get my mother.
I sat there, on the floor, as the heavy quiet slowly, slowly lessened its overbearing weight, until the power came back.
We never found Amos. I miss him.
I'm not asking for your help. Just. Stay away from this house. You might think you can survive a few blackouts, but you can't. Not here.
"Statement ends.
Followup and final comments. Amos Thegod was reported missing on the 20th of April, 2009. No evidence was ever found, nor a body, so seven months after this statement was given he was declared as dead. It seems that the Dark isn't too fond of letting meddlers go.
As for the house, 100 Charming Avenue no longer experiences any blackouts, though the nearby electrical company has extensive records of calls to that address, and a representative from the local City Council has had to bin many complaints from the family. The family still lives there to this day, and Mx. Thegod was happy to confirm that there have been no more incidents. I'm glad. Just so long as there aren't any more places like Hilltop Road.
What stuck out to me was the way that Amos seemed to know what was going on. I can't help but wonder what his story was, as I can't quite seem to--
Oh. Well, that would certainly explain why... In any case, Amos still seems to be looking out for his younger sibling. In his own way.
Recording ends."