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“Statement of Dian Cooper, regarding the corners of my childhood home. I— statement given because I want to; because I think I need to. Because I think I now know what happened.”
“It’s official. This is weird. I’ve never dictated to my tape recorder like this before, but… well, Mr Sims once said this is the type of thing they do over at the Magnus Institute, so. It felt fitting. And after learning about the big wide world, and all, I thought… well. Might as well get it all out there. Right. Where do I start?
When I was a child, everything was so much scarier than it had any right to be.
But, I mean, isn’t that true of every child? The world is so large, so daunting—still is, I guess. But when you’re a kid, everything is different. You don’t know nearly as much, your faculties not nearly as developed. You get told a thing; you take it as fact. You see a thing, and it has a much larger impact on you as a child than as an adult.
Though I guess I’m still in that in-between stage, aren’t I? Not an adult, still a child in the eyes of the law and the eyes of science—but there’s still that disconnect, right? Between you as a teenager and you as a tiny little kid.
I don’t remember moving, the first time. It’s one of those things that you’re told happened, so much so that maybe you do remember it after all—but you don’t. Not really.
My false memory tells me I loved that house the moment I set my eyes on it. My mother says I kept staring at it—at this room on the second floor—eyes wide and, according to her, ‘full of wonder’. That room became my bedroom. I don’t know if she ever realised the mistake she made.
I say it’s a false memory because I refuse to believe that it’s true. I can’t have loved that house. In the eight years we lived there, I never once enjoyed going to sleep.
And— okay, what child likes sleeping? They’re still full of energy, not worn down by existence yet. But… turning the lights off in that bedroom felt like a gamble every single time. Like they might never turn back on again… like the light becomes a bedtime story that was never real.
My parents never understood—I didn’t have the words to describe it, not then—but they let me have a night light, and never tried to make me sleep without it as I got older. I would stare at it long into the night, just waiting for it to turn off. It never did, granted. It didn’t help much, either. It still didn’t help me sleep. But it stopped the dark from becoming too much. Too overpowering.
It always lurked in the corners of that old house. The dark. It hid where the light couldn’t reach, gathering there like dust. I think I was the only one who ever noticed. My parents certainly never seemed to think there was anything odd about it, even when I pointed it out.
But it would sit there. Waiting and waiting, for the time when there was no light left to hold it back. At some point I started to notice its movement—over those eight years, I think it grew past what one might safely call a corner shadow, and darkened parts of the wall and ceiling that shouldn’t have been possible. Like a mould—spreading over every inch it could find a stranglehold in.
I kept away from those corners. I kept well away. And I kept away anyone who would listen to a childs inane ramblings.
Despite it all, I was never really afraid of the dark. I think I was wary of it, sure. Even as a child, I understood the danger it posed. A reasonable adult might call that fear, but I thought it was a rational assessment of my surroundings. And when you understand something, you can’t be afraid of it.
At least, that’s what I thought.
When I was eleven, some extended family came to stay with us. My aunt on my mother’s side, and my uncle, and their son. We had plenty of space with plenty of rooms to offer, but for whatever reason my little cousin had to share a room with me. He was about two or three years younger than I was—I don’t quite remember, it’s been a while since I’ve seen him—and unlike me, he really, truly, feared the dark.
My kid-logic brain tried to rationalise with him, to explain that it couldn’t touch him so long as there was a light—because that fact was still true, even then. He said he knew that. He said that’s why the room light stays on.
See, my piddly little night light wasn’t good enough for him. He needed to sleep with the room light on, because it was brighter. His parents didn’t see anything wrong with that. Neither did mine. Only I did, but I couldn’t seem to figure out why, much less put it into words.
I could never go to sleep quickly in that house, but even if I slept like a regular human, that light was so blinding it would have kept me up anyway. I don’t know how my cousin managed to sleep, but at some point, I rolled over and realised that yeah, he really was knocked right out. Helpless to the world around him.
I can’t be sure, but I… I think I envied him, in that moment. For sleep to come so easily to him, even in this house, even in this room, even while it continued to elude me.
There were more pressing matters, though, because the adults had left my night light off. Looking back, I think under any other circumstances that would have been fine. There wasn’t any need to leave it on, with the room light blaring as brightly as it did. But it did mean that it wasn’t turned on when my uncle reached in and, because my cousin was asleep and would never have known, turned off the light.
I have never seen such total darkness. It was as though all those growing corner shadows finally seized their chance and came flooding in, filling the space with such absolute black that I couldn’t see the nose in front of my face. It was heavy; claustrophobic; thick and hard to breathe.
I think my cousin woke up at that moment and started screaming. At least, I’m pretty sure he did. I knew he was, but I couldn’t actually hear anything—as though the shadows had swallowed it up.
I—
I’m not going to pretend that I was any kind of hero in that moment. I was eleven. All I could do was lie there, frozen, staring into that inky darkness around me, listening to but not hearing my cousins screaming.
He was afraid of the dark, but this was something else. Something worse. And it made me afraid, too.
There was something else there. Some part of me must have realised the truth of the shadows in the corners—it wasn’t just the darkness that lurked there, waiting. It was this… this thing, too. Some creature that lived in darkness, and preyed on all that entered its domain.
And it—
I never saw what happened. Not… really. The darkness was consuming and… and endless, and whatever this thing was it hid so seamlessly that there was nothing to see. But I was looking in the direction of my cousin. I hadn’t moved, after all.
I didn’t see it, but I was looking at it, and I knew I was looking at it. So, when the darkness retreated into plain, ordinary night, and the greying dawn let my eyes adjust—I knew what it meant when the other bed was empty.
It ate him. It ate my cousin.
And I… I rolled over. And I went to sleep.
I couldn’t be woken until noon. My mother was fretting out of her mind, terrified that I’d fallen into some kind of coma—bad enough that her nephew had gone missing in the middle of the night, but her daughter falling into an endless slumber, too? Heh. The fairytale setup isn’t lost on me.
I’d always had trouble sleeping in that house, and it stayed that way until we left. But that wasn’t until a month after. My cousin’s disappearance became an unsolved missing person’s case, and his parents… I don’t think they ever recovered from that. They asked me, of course, but they interpreted what I said as an abduction, not… not whatever it actually was. I kept my mouth shut, after that. Some part of me was scared they’d arrest me for it, even though I was eleven and it wasn’t even my fault. Kid-logic, I suppose.
Then we moved. My parents couldn’t stand to be in that house any longer, citing that ‘terrible incident’, but you know what I think? I think they started to notice the shadows. I think they started to realise what hid in them.
And then, abruptly, all my sleeping issues disappeared. No longer would I stare into my night light, unable to sleep out of worry for the danger. Because there was no danger, not anymore.
New ones arose in their place. As though my body were overcompensating, lethargy began to rule my life. Hypersomnia, the doctors called it. But that was never quite right.
I’ve tried all kinds of solutions. Medications only gave me side effects; physically waking me up only made it worse later that same day. One time I got really desperate and drank from one of Ko’s mugs. That… that had been the worst insomnia of my life, even counting all those sleepless nights in that room. It worked, sure, I’ll give it that—but the trade-off was so much worse.
I’ve never understood why my symptoms never exactly fit, why traditional solutions never worked for me—not until that class. Not until Mr Sims sat us down and explained the truth of the world.
The Dark. Mr Pitch. The Sandman. It makes a disturbing amount of sense, really.
…
…I never heard my cousins screams, even though I knew they were there. I never saw what happened, either, even though I was looking right at it. I did witness one thing—one thing I tangibly, wholly experienced, without simply understanding what was happening.
It spoke.
It had a voice like smoke—the kind of polluted black smoke you see at night, blotting out the stars and making the darkness even darker. It certainly wasn’t kind, but it wasn’t the type of voice you’d call evil, either; no cackling, or cruel tone. It spoke like a secret; passionless, intimate, impersonal.
It ate my cousin, and it spoke to me.
And the darkness whispered: welcome home.”
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“Statement ends—”