LET ME IN

Seven years.

It had taken seven years to build the bunker beneath his modest suburban home. It had taken seven years to prepare for the end of the world.

It had also taken his savings, his marriage, and most of his waking thoughts. His ex-wife had said he was digging his own grave in the basement. His neighbours simply referred to it as his strange hobby, a charitable term for what they really thought: that Morgan Ellis was unhinged, though harmless.

But Morgan knew better. The world was a house of cards, and unlike his ignorant neighbours, he would be ready when it all came crashing down.

The alert came on a Tuesday evening. He had just finished reorganising his medical supplies when the emergency broadcast signal blared from every device in his home. The television, his phone, even the old analogue radio in the kitchen.

“THIS IS NOT A DRILL. SEEK IMMEDIATE—”

Static swallowed the words.

“—CONTAMINATION DETECTED IN—”

More static.

“—CHILDREN AT HIGHEST—PROTECT THE—DO NOT ATTEMPT—”

The fragments cut in and out, each one incomplete, but equally urgent. The broadcast dissolved into white noise before resolving into silence. The power cut plunged the house into darkness.

Morgan didn’t hesitate. He’d run this drill hundreds of times in his head and for real every Friday night since he had finished the bunker. Ninety seconds later, he was descending the concrete stairs into his basement, throwing back the rug that concealed the heavy metal hatch, which then swung shut behind him with a satisfying pneumatic hiss. The magnetic locks engaged with a deep thunk that resonated through his chest. He was safe now.

Unlike the cramped fallout shelters of the Cold War era, Morgan’s bunker was a sprawling complex. Three bedrooms, a fully stocked kitchen, medical bay, communications room, multiple store rooms and a hydroponics garden. Enough space and supplies for seven years of complete isolation. He’d even splurged on recessed lighting that simulated natural daylight cycles.

“This is what you built it for,” he told himself, switching on the primary systems. “Nothing can get to you in here.”

His eyes drifted to the small photo frame on the desk. He turned it face down.

The generator hummed to life. Air filtration systems whirred. In the communications room, Morgan scanned emergency frequencies, catching fragments of panicked reports. Something in the atmosphere. Military mobilisation. Borders closed. And then, all at once, every station went silent.

Three days passed without incident. He maintained his schedule rigorously: system checks at 0600, breakfast at 0700, inventory at 0800. He kept himself busy and hummed as he worked. An old lullaby he thought long forgotten.

At night, the bunker had its own set of sounds. The gentle hum of the ventilation system. The occasional ping of metal contracting as the temperature dropped. The distant gurgle of water moving through pipes. Normal sounds. Expected sounds. Safe sounds.

But on the third night, Morgan found himself lying awake, ears straining in the darkness. Something had changed. Nothing he could pinpoint exactly, just an unsettling feeling that a new, subtle noise had joined the familiar ambient sounds, something playing just at the edge of his hearing.

He increased the volume on his white noise machine.

The silence of the communications room continued to mock him. This is where the monitoring system should have been: £12,500 worth of sensors and cameras that would have told him exactly what was happening outside.

“No more of this, Morgan,” Sarah had said. “If you buy all that shit I’m leaving.” He’d chosen her, believing she would stay. But in the end she left anyway. Without Emma, nothing could be salvaged.

On the fourth night, Morgan woke to a new sound.

Knock, knock, knock.

He lay in the darkness, heart racing, straining to hear. The sound came again, faint but deliberate. It was coming from above, from the hatch.

Then he heard the voice.

“Let me in.”

Morgan grabbed his torch and sidearm, making his way through the dim emergency lighting to the entrance shaft. He stood beneath the sealed hatch, the gun raised toward the metal and concrete.

“Please,” the voice called down, muffled but clear enough. “Let me in.”

“Who are you?” Morgan demanded.

“Let me in. Please.”

“Tell me what’s going on outside. Is it safe again?”

Silence.

He slowly backed away. This could be a trap. Or worse, the person could be infected, contaminated with whatever had caused all this. One compromised individual would destroy everything he’d built.

Perhaps it hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared. But how could he be sure? And why wouldn’t they tell him?

“I can’t let you in,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

He hurried back to his bedroom and closed the door.

He was deep in sleep when the nightmare came. He watched as his own hands turned the wheel lock of the hatch. The seals broke with a hiss. Relief flooded through him.

The hatch swung open.

What spilled in wasn’t air or light or another person. It was darkness, pouring down into the bunker. The nothing that remained out there. The void that had been calling to him from above. And within it, faces, hundreds of faces whispering in unison as they flowed around him, through him.

“Finally, you let it in.”

Morgan sat bolt upright. His throat felt raw, as though he’d been screaming. The security panel showed 3:18 AM.

He stumbled to the bathroom, retching. When he straightened and faced the mirror, he could have sworn he saw darkness receding into the corners of the room.

The knocking returned the next day, more insistent.

“Let me in, Morgan. Let me in.”

“How the fuck do you know my name?” He hollered back. “Leave me alone.”

But it didn’t leave. Instead it whispered down to him all day. Every day. And on the seventh day, the voice changed.

“Morgan? It’s me. Please let me in.”

He froze, a spoonful of beans suspended halfway to his mouth. It was Sarah’s voice.

“I know you’re angry with me, but please. It’s bad out here. I’m scared.”

“You’re in Arizona,” Morgan whispered. “You’re dead in Arizona.”

“I’m not. I came back when I heard the warnings. I’m sorry for everything that happened. Please let me in.”

Morgan stood beneath the hatch, trembling. “Prove it’s you.”

“I once told you that I had killed her as much as the driver,” Sarah’s voice said. “Because I was the one who wanted us all to go out for ice cream that night.”

“You’re dead,” he repeated, but with less conviction. “You’re dead in Arizona.”

She went silent and Morgan slunk back into the darkness of his bedroom. But he soon found himself returning to the hatch, listening for her voice.

For three days, there was silence. Uninterrupted silence. Horrendous silence.

On the morning of the fourth day, Morgan heard a new sound from above. Not knocking, not Sarah’s voice, but another. A soft, gentle voice.

“Daddy?”

The coffee cup shattered into a hundred pieces and scalding hot liquid soaked his bare feet. He didn’t move a muscle.

“Daddy, I’m scared.”

“No,” Morgan whispered, the word strangled in his throat. “No, no, no.”

Emma had been gone seven years. The accident, a drunk driver on a rainy night, had destroyed everything. Their little girl, their marriage. Everything.

“You’re not real,” he said, his voice breaking.

“Mummy told me you were down here.”

“Emma is dead,” Morgan whispered.

“Please let me in, Daddy. It’s dark out here and I’m scared.”

The voice was perfect: the slight lisp from her missing front tooth, the way she always said “Daddy” with emphasis on the first syllable. Exactly as she had at five years old.

“Sing me our special song, Daddy. Like you used to.”

Morgan found himself humming before he could stop: the lullaby he’d made up for her, that only the two of them knew. The lullaby he had tried so hard to forget. The voice above joined in, every note perfect, every inflection exactly as Emma would have sung it. With her little lisp, from that missing tooth.

He smiled.

But she wouldn’t have that missing tooth any more. Or the lisp. It had been seven years and she’d have been twelve now.

“You’re a liar.”

He pulled at his hair.

“YOU’RE A FUCKING LIAR.”

He ran through the bunker, room to room, searching, until he found what he was looking for. He dragged a box of tools from the supply store and slowly climbed the ladder. His hands shook so badly the welding torch kept slipping. The metal plates went on crooked, slag dripping from unsteady passes. He mixed concrete with trembling fingers and applied it in thick, uneven layers around the edges. Finally, he disabled the emergency release. No voice, no matter how convincing, would make him open that hatch.

When he finished, he sat beneath the ladder. The hole above now sealed. Safe again.

“YOU’RE NOT HER!” he shouted, voice cracking. “SHE’S DEAD!”

In the days that followed, Morgan noticed things.

The photo frame on his desk was standing upright. Someone had touched it. Stood it up. Someone had wanted him to look. Those big brown eyes staring back at him, that gap-toothed smile.

He gently turned it face down again and walked away.

Then, while checking the ventilation system, he traced an electrical fault back to the main junction box. The communications cable was severed, the copper ends clean and sharp. This was no accident. Something had cut it deliberately. Something didn’t want him to hear what was happening above. Something wanted him to stay isolated.

He heard a soft thump from the hydroponics bay, like something being knocked over. He spun toward the sound and fumbled for his gun. When he reached the bay, one of the grow lights had been unscrewed from its mount and lay on the floor. Impossible. Those fixtures were secured.

He woke from a nap to find doors open that he’d closed. He found a child’s drawing on his pillow. A crayon picture of a little girl outside a house, rain falling. In wobbly letters: “I’m sorry I got out of the car, Daddy.”

One morning, he stepped into the bathroom and froze. Dark smudges tracked across the tiles. Muddy footprints. They led from the doorway to the shower tray, then stopped.

He backed into the corridor, pulse racing. They ran all the way back down the hall to the ladder. He glanced down and saw that his own boots sat by the entrance exactly where he’d left them the night he’d sealed himself inside. Upright. Clean. Perfectly dry.

The air began to taste different too. Fine one moment, like strawberry ice cream the next. He checked the filtration again and again. All readings normal. But the taste remained, coating his tongue, seeping down his throat. Making him retch.

He sealed the vents in his sleeping quarters. Covered the cameras. Stopped drinking the filtered water. But the incidents continued.

It was only when he caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror that Morgan finally saw it. His reflection smiled back at him, but it wasn’t him smiling. Then the lips began to move and it spoke: “Let me in, Daddy.”

He threw himself backwards, tumbling over a chair and winding himself.

That night he used duct tape to seal his nose and ears, so it couldn’t sneak inside. He wrote warnings on himself with permanent marker.

IT’S LYING. SHE’S DEAD.

Eventually, he stopped sleeping altogether, using stimulants from his medical supplies to stay awake. He could feel it in his head now. Someone else’s thoughts. Something else. The lapses in memory growing longer. Sometimes he’d come around to find himself standing in the storage room, staring at the wall, with no recollection of how he’d gotten there.

Morgan knew now, with all certainty, something had gotten inside.

He had to get out.

He attacked the hatch with everything he had. Blow torch. Drill. Sledgehammer. The steel and concrete barrier, designed to withstand the apocalypse, remained impassive to his efforts. Every weld he’d made in panic now imprisoned him. Every layer of concrete sealed him in. No longer a bunker but a tomb.

His skin split across his knuckles. Blood ran down his arms. Still he hammered and thrashed.

On what he calculated was day forty-seven, Morgan sat beneath the hatch, hands bloody from his latest attempt to claw his way out. His supplies of food, water, and medicine remained abundant. The air filters functioned perfectly. The bunker would sustain him for seven years still, just as he’d planned.

He slowly rose to his feet, dragged himself up the ladder, and rested his forehead against the cold metal of the sealed entrance.

“Let me out,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Please. Let me out.”

But there was no response from the outside.

“LET ME OUT!” he screamed, voice hoarse. “PLEASE, GOD, ANYONE, LET ME OUT!”

He pounded on the sealed metal, each impact sending pain shooting through his arms.

A small voice came from below him. “Why do you want to leave me?”

Morgan didn’t look down but he knew Emma was standing at the foot of the ladder, looking exactly as she had that night, in her yellow raincoat and red boots. He pressed his cheek against the cold metal.

“Promise you’ll never leave,” she said. “Promise, Daddy.”

***

“What’s that?” asked the woman, pausing at the bottom of the basement stairs. She pointed to the round metal disc in the centre of the concrete floor.

“Ah, yes,” said the estate agent. “Previous owner built it. Some kind of bunker for an apocalypse that never came. Bit of an obsessive type, they say. One day he just upped and left. Disappeared into the mountains, according to the neighbours. Who are all lovely, by the way.”

The husband ran his hand over the smooth steel. It was cold to his touch. “Has anyone opened it?”

“God, no. It’s locked or jammed or something. Nobody’s been able to open it. Don't worry, it’s not dangerous or anything.”

“Did they ever find him?”

The agent shrugged. “Mortgage company foreclosed after eight months of no contact. The guy just walked away from his life. Happens more than you’d think.” He flipped the rug back over with his foot. “See, all gone.” He checked his watch. “Anyway, foundations are solid, no asbestos, no lead pipes. Great price point for the neighbourhood.”

“How do you know he isn’t in there?”

“Like I said, it’s sealed shut. Nobody could get in, even if they wanted to.”

“It gives me the creeps,” the woman said.

Her daughter tugged at her hand. “Mummy, can I have the pink bedroom?”

“We’ll see, sweetie.”

As they climbed back up the stairs, the little girl glanced over her shoulder at the threadbare rug. For just a moment, she thought she heard something: a muffled sound, like someone far away, shouting. No, not shouting. Screaming.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

“Hear what?” her mother replied. “Come on, shall we go look at that bedroom again?”

“Yes, please.”

The basement door closed behind them with a soft click.