Chapter Text
[CLICK]
[SILENCE FOR A MOMENT. THEN, THE SOUND OF A DOOR OPENING AND RAPID FOOTSTEPS]
GRIAN
Good, you’re already on. I found…well, I found something. I’d just finished the follow-up to Case #0160208, and I just–it’s late, but I needed to know if there was more to the story. There had to be at least one more statement from this person.
I was looking through the stacks of files that the first statement had come from, but it just…felt wrong, I don’t know. On a total whim, I went to check some of the filing cabinets in the back corner of the room. I hadn’t gotten many good ones before but I, well, I felt like checking there. And this statement–this one called to me.
The name’s covered up and I can’t read it, just the other two. This one isn’t blurred out, though. It’s smudged with some sort of…
[HE TRAILS OFF, THE ENTHUSIASM FADING FROM HIS VOICE]
( disappointed ) Dirt. It’s smudged with dirt.
[FOOTSTEPS START UP AS HE PACES IN FRONT OF THE DESK]
Dirt, a mark of The Buried. You know, the opposite of The Vast, which is the entity clearly affecting the statement giver? If I’m going to be mysteriously drawn to a statement by some all-seeing Eye who feeds off the fear of others, because as much as I deny it I know that’s what’s happening, I might as well get drawn to the right one!
[PAPER RUSTLING. HE SIGHS]
And the dirt won’t come off. Wonderful. Maybe if I squint, I might be able to make out the name…
[A HAND IS SLAPPED ON THE DESK]
Woah, alright, no, almost fell over again. I hate dealing with…
( Pause )
With vertigo.
[A SLIGHT CREAK AS HE SITS DOWN IN HIS CHAIR]
I didn’t think The Vast and The Buried could coexist like this but…hah, I suppose Joe would tell me I’m “thinking too small,” or something like that. Only one way to find out, I suppose.
Statement of unknown, regarding a failed attempt at gardening. Original statement given November 14, 2017. Audio recording by Grian, Head Archivist of the V.O.I.D. Institute, London. Statement begins.
GRIAN (STATEMENT)
They say third time’s the charm, but I don’t think I’m charmed. I think I’m cursed. I asked one of your assistants on the way in here how often they get three statements from the same person, and they just looked at me sadly and told me they rarely get two. Guess I’m just real special, or something.
Or just really, really unlucky.
The dreams are worse. Every night I’m at the edge of that platform, and every night it gets harder and harder to fight the urge to just fall . It would be so easy, you know. To just step off, and let myself drift down into that peaceful void–no, no, I’m not gonna space out while I’m writing this thing. I can keep it together, at least for the next hour. I can do that.
The truth is, I didn’t come here to tell you about the dreams. What I just wrote is really all there is to say on the matter. No, what I came here to tell you today, I swore I’d never tell anyone. But I just want it on record, in case…in case. This whole thing with the the void, it’s not the first time I’ve dealt with something weird and unexplainable.
So, here goes. The story of the first time I should have died.
I’d been living in American foster care since I was a baby, and I’d never moved more than a couple hours away to get to a new caretaker. Shortly after I turned twelve, though, I was put on a plane and shipped off to the UK. I think that’s when my love–er, my former love of heights–came from, now that I think about it. Obviously I’d never been on a plane before, at least not in my memory, and I remember being completely starstruck by the view from my window seat. Being on the same level as clouds and watching whole cities pass by in a matter of minutes was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.
Now, I’m not expert on the legal details of foster care, but I’m pretty sure foster kids aren’t usually brought to a different country, unless they’re refugees. But me, I was just told one day that’d I’d be living in England from now on. Considering I was twelve and had nothing better to do, I didn’t exactly complain.
Evolution Foster Home, at first glance, was your average group home. It was a decently sized brick building with white trim, vines spiraling up the columns framing the entrance. It looked pretty old, a lot older than the other group homes I’d stayed in, but well kept. When I was led inside, I was greeted with a lungful of that old dusty house smell. Everything inside looked so much fancier than what I was used to. More of an old person home than a kid’s home, twelve year old me had firmly decided.
I peeked around the corner as the adults talked, just to make sure there were actually other kids here and there hadn’t been some sort of mistake. There was a kid sitting on the floor playing with what looked like a stuffed squid, and two more seemed to be guarding a pillow fort with a cardboard sign reading Property Police .
At this point, my newest caretakers had started started introducing themselves, but I tuned out whatever they were saying in favor of looking out the window behind them. There was a small garden out there, with the brightest flowers I’d ever seen. Yellow, purple, blue and pink blooms swayed in the breeze, and I watched them, almost mesmerized. I’d never seen such vibrant ones before. At the time, I just assumed that the UK had better soil than the US, or something like that. There really wasn’t anything weird about it. Like I said, the place seemed entirely normal.
It wasn’t, though. I think I knew that for a lot longer than I’d care to admit.
There was something wrong with the building, I think. I don’t mean a leak or something like that, I mean the “not natural” kind of weird. Like I said, it was old, probably from the 1800s, but it felt so much older than that. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it was just my imagination twisting things up, but whenever I thought too long about it, I could feel… something in the air. Like something was, I don’t know, calling me or something? It sounds stupid, I know. You’d have to have been there to understand, and I doubt whoever’s reading this has been there.
When I first started living there, I didn’t notice anything was off. Like I said, I knew something was off far longer than I’d care to admit, but I didn’t acknowledge those feelings until after I’d, ah, left. It’s so easy to just go about your normal routine, even when things around you are anything but normal. Helps you stay sane, you know?
A lot of my time at Evolution was spent doing your typical foster home shenanigans: cause mayhem, attempt to bribe my caretakers for treats, fool around with the other kids, that sort of thing. We all got along pretty well, for the most part. I mean, we fought sometimes, but we cared a lot about each other. I grew a lot closer to the kids there than I had at other places. It makes sense, I mean, I stayed there a lot longer than I did anywhere else. But even early on, I felt a sense of belonging, despite being in a different country.
I didn’t get that feeling with my caretakers, though. Or maybe I did. One of the weirdest things about my time there is that I can’t remember a single caretaker there. Not their names, not their faces, nothing. I remember the other kids just fine, and I have a vague sense of what the caretakers were like. It wasn’t like I’m blocking out some sort of trauma, either. They were all nice, stern when they needed to be, that sort of thing. But I can’t actually remember anything discernable about them, you know?
Enough about them. What you want to hear about is the garden.
First off, let’s make this clear: I hated the garden. Well, not the garden itself. Like I mentioned earlier, the garden was beautiful. But I hated gardening. It was my least favorite chore. I’d have chosen taking out the trash over gardening any day. It wasn’t the dirt, or the bugs, or being outside. I liked all of that. No, I just couldn’t ever get it to look right. Mulch ended up everywhere and the flowers always ended up wilting. I didn’t have an eye for it, or something like that.
My best friend, on the other hand, was an absolute pro at it. He exactly where each flower should go and the garden thrived under his care. Whenever I asked him how he could stand such a boring chore, he just shrugged and said it was satisfying to do all that hard work, then step back and admire it.
I guess I should tell you a bit about Grian. What I just wrote makes him sound like a super mature twelve year old. Which I guess is true if you consider spouting random wisdom mature, but for the most part, he was a lot like me. Namely, he was a master prankster. We wouldn’t have gotten away with half the stunts we pulled if he hadn’t always had a backup plan ready. We didn’t always get away with things, but we had fun doing it.
One of his more ambitious pranks involved sneaking into our caretakers’ office. It was the one place in the building that we weren’t allowed. We got caught while Grian was trying to pick the lock. Turns out he actually had no clue how to pick a lock and thought he could just figure it out in the moment.
They knew I hated the garden, which of course meant I ended up working in the garden for two weeks as punishment. I was out there for an hour each day, wrist deep in soil as I pulled out weed after weed. You know, now that I think about it, weeds shouldn’t be able to grow back that fast. I mean, every day when I went out there, the weeds I’d pulled out the day before had already grown back to full height. I think twelve year old me assumed my caretakers were replanting them in the night just to make me pull them all up again or something.
The one nice thing about working in the garden was seeing all of those incredible flowers. They seemed to gleam in the sunlight, like jewels planted in the ground. I wasn’t very knowledgeable about plants, considering how much I disliked working with them, but I could identify a fair amount just from listening to Grian ramble about them.
I don’t remember most of them, but I do remember the poppies. They were the brightest red I’d ever seen, so bright I didn’t think they were real for the longest time. Most days, it took me longer than it should have to get my work done because I would find myself just…staring at those flowers. As I watered them and weeded around them and surrounded them with mulch, I could almost understand what Grian liked so much about working in the garden. Almost. I loved looking at the flowers, but working in the garden was still a pain.
I would have worked another decade in that garden if it meant avoiding what happened, though.
It was a week into my punishment when I realized the poppies had been pushed down. The flowers were an inch closer to the ground than they had been the day before. All of the other flowers were fine, it was just the poppies. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if I hadn’t spent so long staring at them the day before. I figured one of the other kids had pushed the flowers down as a prank or something. Annoyed, I carefully pulled the blooms.
I wasn’t just annoyed, I was deeply irritated, so much so that it felt like a physical weight. I didn’t know why, but I needed to fix these flowers. Usually at that point in the morning I was wide awake, but I felt tired as I worked. I didn’t think much of it once I’d finished. The annoyance had faded and I had the rest of the garden to take care of.
The next day, they’d been pushed down even further. After replanting them, I went inside and started asking the others if they’d been messing around with the garden. They all said no, and even though I figured they had to be lying, I was so tired I gave up and went straight to bed.
The rest of the week was much the same. I went to work in the garden every morning. The poppies had been pushed down a little further than the day before and I would fix them. I would do the rest of my garden work. I would stare at the poppies for a little while. I would go inside, get super tired, and sleep through the rest of the day and all night. If the caretakers tried to drag me out of bed for sleeping through dinner, I don’t remember it.
I do remember that during that time, even though I was probably sleeping eighteen hours a day, I never felt rested. My bed felt too soft, too..open. You know how in the summer, even when it’s really hot at night, you still sleep with the blankets on because their weight is comforting? It was like that, but the weight was never enough.
While I slept, I dreamt of the garden. It was even more beautiful in my dream, and larger, too. Flowers of all colors spread out before me in spiraling patterns as far as I could see, shining in the sunlight. Even though it was different than the real garden, I was still able to find my poppies.
Where the daffodils and carnations were in real life, there was a hole in the ground, just big enough for me to fit in. I’m honestly not sure if I was in control in the dreams or not, but every night, I would crawl into that hole and just lie there, next to the poppies. And even though I knew the sky was right above me, I could never see it. It just…wasn’t there. Eventually I’d wake up and head straight for the garden.
On the fourth or fifth day of this, Grian pulled me aside and asked if I was alright. He looked really worried, which I didn’t get at the time. He said I’d been out staring at those poppies all day. I’d started to say that wasn’t possible, I’d only been out there for an hour or so, when I looked outside and realized the sun had nearly sunk below the horizon.
I think, in that same, distant way I knew that house wasn’t normal, I knew something was wrong with me. I knew deep down no one was messing with the flowers to prank me. And I knew that the reason I was so tired had nothing to do with my work in the garden, or the absurd hours I was sleeping, or the fact that I hadn’t eaten or drank anything in days. At the time, though, it all felt…distant. Unimportant.
Kind of like how I feel right now, I guess.
The next morning, the poppies were completely buried. Where they used to be, the dirt had formed a sort of cave in. I realized then, with absolute certainty, that the poppies hadn’t been pushed down–they’d been pulled . If I’d been firing on all cylinders, I might have pulled back and asked for help. I’m pretty sure my two weeks were up at that point, it wasn’t like I even had to be in the garden. But I needed to pull those poppies out. So I reached down into the dirt, feeling around for them.
I pushed my hand through the dirt, feeling for any flowers or roots. The dirt was just soft enough for me to If I could just find them, I kept thinking, everything would be alright. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I’m still not. But I kept thinking it, until I was elbow-deep in dirt, the the morning sun beating down on my back.
Just as my fingers brushed against soft petals, the ground underneath me shuddered. Before I could shout, I was pulled underground and the dirt above collapsed on top of me.
The first thing I did was panic, of course. I squirmed and struggled, but that only sent me sinking further into the dirt. I instinctively opened my mouth to scream, regretting it instantly as I got a mouthful of dirt. I spat it out and clawed at the dirt above me, but with nothing to grab onto, there was no way to pull myself out.
I probably should have stopped struggling, but it’s hard to think straight when you’re freaking out. So I kept struggling, gasping for air and praying to all sorts of gods I didn’t believe in that someone could hear me struggling.
I thought it was quicksand at first, but we were nowhere near a body of water. Besides. the stuff surrounding me was definitely dirt. I could feel it: on my skin, under my nails, and coating the roof of my mouth. No matter how much I tried to spit it out, I could always feel it in there.
Moving through the dirt was incredibly difficult. I had no idea how I’d fall so far in so easily, because once I was down there, even moving my limbs was difficult. And I was still sinking–the more I struggled, the further down I went.
And, I realized with a new wave of terror, it was getting even harder to move. If I concentrated, I could feel the dirt around me ever so slowly pressing inwards. It was everywhere at this point: behind my ears, in my shoes, all over my scalp. I’d never minded the feeling of dirt on me, but knowing I couldn’t get it off without getting more on me made me mind the feel of it a whole lot.
Even with my life at stake, was really hard to think clearly with the earth pressing in on me everywhere. Still, at some point, I forced myself to stop struggling. With it, I stopped sinking, and the walls stopped pressing inwards on me.
I have no clue how I was breathing down there. There must have been pockets of air down there, I figured. Because if there weren’t, that probably meant I was dead. And, well. I wasn’t exactly ready to accept my own mortality at the ripe old age of twelve.
I sat there, shaking, telling myself someone would come. What else was there to do? Eventually, someone had to realize I was missing, and come looking for me. Our caretakers were…weird, but they would notice if I up and disappeared. Even if they didn’t, Grian would come looking for me. So I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Telling time when you’re buried underground with no light, no sound, nothing but yourself, is unsurprisingly really difficult. I got thirsty at some point, and hungry, so I knew it must have been a few hours. And though I didn’t know how long it was, I knew it was much longer than should have been possible. Even if I could breathe, I should have died of dehydration. But I just grew thirstier and thirstier, hungrier and hungrier.
You probably want a description of the whole experience, but there’s really not much more for me to say. I was stuck underground, much longer than any human should have been able to survive. Any time I struggled, I sank further down. You would think I did a lot of thinking or self reflection or some cheesy stuff like that, but I just thought about my friends and hoped I wasn’t dead.
I couldn’t see anything, but at some point, my hand brushed against one of the poppies. I held it, if only because it was something that wasn’t dirt. That’s probably my clearest memory from the whole experience, trying to focus on the feeling of soft petals rather than the feeling of dirt rubbing against every inch of exposed skin or my potential death.
I never gave up hope. If this happened to me now, I definitely would have, but I was twelve. I was naive and overly optimistic. Grian would come, I told myself. Grian would find me.
I still remember the feeling of roots brushing up against my hands. Even after so long, I could easily identify the delicate tendrils wrapping around my hands. I was so deep down, I thought. No flower’s roots should have been able to grow this far. But I grabbed ahold of them anyways, and I pulled.
Nothing happened, other than the slight movement of my arm causing the dirt to press inwards ever so slightly. I tugged again. The walls of earth surrounding me pressed in further. I tugged again, fresh desperation driving me to grasp the roots and tug with all of my might.
I kept tugging until the earth around me was squeezing me too tightly to even move my arm. Even though I hadn’t had died from lack of air or food or water, I had a feeling that being crushed wasn’t off the table. So I stopped pushing my luck and waited. Just a little longer, I told myself. Just a little longer.
Eventually, I heard a sound. A rhythmic sort of thump. The crunch of dirt accompanied it, and the sound registered: a shovel. Someone was digging down towards me. I hadn’t breathe properly in who knew who long, but I held my breath anyways as the sound got closer, and closer, and closer, until it was right above me.
Then it stopped. For a horrible moment, my heart plummeted. My savior had given up only inches away from me. The idea that I was never getting out of there started to sink in.
And then I heard scraping above me, much softer than the sounds of the shovel. A few moments later, fingers hit my scalp. They dug further, until they reached the collar of my shirt and pulled upwards. As soon as my face broke the surface, I kept my eyes squeezed shut. Even then, the light behind my eyelids was so intense. The feel of it though–it was incredible . I could feel the warmth of the sun, and the wind rustling my hair, and hands roughly brushing dirt off of my face.
“Taurtis,” a voice said. I opened my eyes, and, well. He found me after all.
I’d been down there for a month. I was spitting up dirt for another two. Our caretakers looked for me, and filed a missing persons report after a day, but no one could find me. They did check the garden, but there was nothing there but an empty patch of dirt. They dug up the whole thing and still found nothing. Eventually the cops gave up. Grian didn’t, though, stubborn kid that he was. He went out looking, to the point where our caretakers had to lock his door at night.
He told me he thought I’d run away. That’s why he planted the poppies. No one else dared to touch the former garden, even once the investigation was called off. Maybe they sensed it was cursed. Eventually, Grian had convinced one of the adults to buy some poppies, and he’d started planting one a day, right where they used to be. He thought if I came by and saw them, I might come back.
I guess he was right, in the end. I did run away. That place was cursed, and not just the garden. If there were more awful things lurking around there, I wasn’t going to stick around and wait for them. I tried to convince Grian to come with me, but he cared too much about the others to just leave them. Until–well, that’s not my story to tell. I guess you’ll just have to hope you get a statement from him about it someday.
We still keep in touch, though. If anything happens when I…well, maybe you can find him. You do read all of these, right? I’d hate to have this just stuffed in a cabinet somewhere. I just…I want someone to know.
Whatever happens, though…it can’t be worse than being buried alive, right?
[A FEW BEATS OF SILENCE, FOLLOWED BY SHAKY BREATHING]
GRIAN
I…
He left a statement.
He left a statement .
He left a statement, and it–it was here the whole time , and I–
I need to–
[CLICK]
***
[CLICK]
[QUICK FOOTSTEPS AND HEAVY BREATHING CAN BE HEARD]
[CLICK]
***
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[SOUNDS OF A SHOVEL HITTING DIRT REPEATEDLY. FOOTSTEPS APPROACH]
PEARL
You know, I was really hoping this wasn’t where you were headed.
[DIGGING STOPS]
GRIAN
( yelp ) Pearl! How did you–No, no. Not right now. I’m, uh, busy. You should go home. It’s past work hours.
PEARL
What are you doing here, Grian?
[BEAT]
GRIAN
( weary ) Taurtis left a statement. Three, actually.
PEARL
Right. And?
GRIAN
Wh–you knew ?
PEARL
Sure did.
GRIAN
How?
PEARL
Well I read the first one, about the hot air balloons, when you asked me to do the follow-up. And then I read the second one, when you asked me to do the follow–sorry, did you say three ? What’s the third one?
GRIAN
It was about the garden. I told you about the garden, right?
PEARL
Grian.
GRIAN
I read it, and the moment he mentioned this place, and he mentioned it by name , so I knew it was legit–I mean, how many foster homes in the UK are named Evolution?–I knew it was him–
PEARL
Grian…
GRIAN
And I still remember how to get here, even though the building’s been gone for years, because how could you forget where you–
PEARL
Grian!
GRIAN
( exasperated ) What? PEARL
He’s not down there.
GRIAN
I just–I have to check–
PEARL
You read his first two statements, Griba. The Vast got him.
GRIAN
That’s not–but that doesn’t make sense . Someone already touched by The Buried wouldn’t be–no, that doesn’t–
PEARL
You should know by now that that’s not how all of this works. In fact, I think you do. You’d just rather it be The Buried again, because you know how to deal with The Buried.
GRIAN
I…
[BEAT. SOUND OF SHOVEL BEING DROPPED]
Yeah. Yeah. ( weak laughter ) You know me too well, huh?
PEARL
I know you like poking your head into danger even more than I do. And I know I’m not losing anyone else.
[BEAT]
Let’s get out of here, yeah?
GRIAN
Yeah. Yeah, okay.
[CLICK]
*** [CLICK]
[SOUNDS OF A CHEESY HORROR MOVIE PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND]
GRIAN
How did you know you’d find me there?
PEARL
I just finished the follow-up for the, uh, Vast dreams statement, and went looking for you because I knew you’d flip.
GRIAN
Rude!
PEARL
Grian, you dug a giant hole on private property in the middle of the night.
GRIAN
…that is a fair point.
[CLICK]