The Broken Open Room

Sixty-one months four days

This is a house of monsters, and we are its keepers, Herc and I.

We never know what we will face when we enter. Today, all was calm. The Persian rugs which line the creaky floorboards lay in place, untorn, the walnut panelling was unstained with ooze or gore, and the crystal chandeliers, although flickering, were intact.

I am sure that vapours of the noxious history of this house have seeped their way into the grain of the wood, the fibres of the carpets. Try as I might, I am unable to cleanse it.

There is little ventilation. As we moved through the corridor I could detect Carbonith’s presence - it is very hard, no, impossible, to rid the house of his stifling effect on the breathable air. The house is not designed to contain these monsters and simply doesn’t have the ventilation. We have no choice but to air the house for the duration of our visits; even though they are in cages when I open the windows I fear for the monsters’ escape. But should they come close to suffocation, to have them fear for their own lives would be catastrophic.

In the house are five Constant monsters. I call them this because they remain - I hesitate to call them strong, but let’s say, they remain present and have done so for some months. Their number includes Orphana, whose desperate wails create a futureless hollow of anguish, Meteorus, who threatens the very structure with his mass, Falloth, whose strengthening dessicates your skin and dissolves your bones, Gauntmaw, who disorientates, rearranging the hallways of the house, and of your mind, and Carbonith, who overwhelms the life-sustaining air and emits the sludge of ages.

Occasionally a new corridor will open - or perhaps I should say a previously unknown corridor, for nothing here is new. A door will stand ajar, and we must cross the threshold for a new monster to become known to us. Some become Constant. Others are Passing, like Needlet, Houndling and Scule.

Then there is the Broken Open room. We call it this because it contains a monsterless cage, bars wrenched apart by force, still contorted into the impressions of the wrathful fists that did it. A hole was opened in the wall beyond, which is the only other exit from the house. The entrance to the Broken Open room sometimes evades me and for that I am glad.

The monsters wax and wane in their strength, not with the moon but seemingly with their own orbits, sometimes dim and dormant for many months, other times floodlit and feisty in a day. Herc and I have our routine. On every visit, we must first assess their condition. We do the rounds today; all seem unusually quiet, except Gauntmaw, who hurled his rattling bones against his bars, growls shaking every part of his atrophied body, and Orphana, whose wails carried the vibrations of every soul entreating the universe for the parents it no longer has.

Herc went to replace Falloth’s cooling water and I steeled myself outside Orphana’s room. It's a cliche, but our tasks fall along gendered lines. He is better equipped to take on the physical tasks, such as cooling Falloth, chipping Meteorus, and cleaning up after Carbonith. I, Meg, see to comforting Orphana, and feeding Gauntmaw.

Orphana’s distress is waxing as of late. When I entered her room, I saw a mess on the floor of playdough, cutters and shaped surrounded by a now mostly indeterminate mix of colours, offcuts of twisted anthropomorphic figures. I quickly scooped up the detritus and hurled it out the window. It flew downwards into the thick, gunmetal clouds - they are always there and I do not know what exactly lies beneath, but no matter where I throw the items, they always return home.

‘You are not supposed to let them in,’ I scolded Orphana, who did not break her scream. She cannot speak, in any case.

I should not have used my words so harshly. This is not how to care appropriately for Orphana.

She wails not from one seeking mouth, but many. They are innumerable with corrupted, decaying teeth, and cover every inch of her eyeless frame, forever bent double. Pink pyjamas stretch over her distended ribcage, haunted by the spectres of rainbows and unicorns, threads chewed loose as tiny mouths gnaw away at the fabric. The lips are encrusted; bleeding; sore from biting. Every mouth ululates with some horrible facet of a five-year-old’s grief: a hand unheld, a comfort unwhispered, a way unguided. Just a cry from one alone is unbearable. From several is a psychosis. And from all at once? I have never heard it.

I called her name loudly: hoping for a moment of recognition, for her to let me in.

‘Orphana!’ I called. ‘It’s okay. They’re going to be okay.’

I never say who “they” are, but this reassures her.

The sound, though abating, beat me down. I expended no energy on thought, saying the first thing which comes to my mind. I looked at the books.

‘Everybody’s safe, Orphana. Hush. Want a story?’

There’s a break in the crying. I’d filled her cage-side library only with stories in which parents remain alive and well. I grabbed the first one and read, but speech, even just delivering words from the page, was dredged from me like a body from the river.

At last, Orphana slumped into quiet. With all else calm, I hoped I was no longer needed in the monster house tonight.

I found Herc outside the east hallway boot room, having finished venting Falloth and recirculating his cooling water. He squeezed my hand. ‘I’ll take Gauntmaw and close the windows,’ he said, knowing Orphana drained me.

For another day, the monster house is contained.

Sixty-one months six days

I did not want to be back so soon, but a child was crying; Orphana would not settle.

I went alone, always vastly more unpleasant, but how could I ask Herc to join me again so soon after our last visit? The corridors themselves seem accusatory when walked alone, the portraits and mounted heads of game staring with silent blame. A stuffed otter, perched between drawing room and lounge, bares its teeth in reproach.

I became keeper of this place before I met Herc, and in those days the burden was far heavier. Every shake of the building felt like Meteorus’s explosive form would, with little warning, destroy the building. I did not understand how to properly attend to Falloth, and through neglect, my skin began to flake. In those days I did not understand my purpose. I thought the monsters would go away.

I know they cannot be killed.

I tried everything I could to keep Herc from the monster house, thinking that he would naturally be horrified by what dwelt within. That he would see the shadows of this place cast under my eyes. But my absences became too frequent; too suspicious, and in concern for my welfare, one evening he followed me.

I did not realise this until I came upon him in the Great Hall, eyes fixed on the ceiling mural depicting Beowulf. In that moment, I realised how similar he appeared to the warrior overhead. I assumed it was because I found him heroic; I think now perhaps I foresaw his aptitude for handling monsters. Instead of fleeing, he absorbed the house with wary reverence, as if to understand me, he must first understand this place. He moved through its corridors with steady courage, undaunted by Meteorus’s titanic frame or the horrifying pallor of Gauntmaw.

The last thing I expected was his offer of help.

‘Confronting demons is always easier done in company,’ he said.

But in those days we had fewer monsters. One person could contend with them alone, though only barely.

After our first child was born, Herc shouldered the weight of the monster house for us both. Yet I could sense overwhelm, and eventually, he sat me down.

‘Another Constant,’ he said, interlocking our fingers. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t handle her.’

I bowed my head.

And now she proves the most grievous of them all.

Her unrest unsettles them all, I know it. Her wailing will not be impeded by bricks and mortar; skirting boards only seem to transport and amplify it. The other monsters loathe it.

Her cries summoned me down the corridor. Toys were strewn everywhere, papers drifted across the floor covered in stick figures with mouths for eyes. I snatched them up and cast them through the window.

She was crying for a litany of absence. A birthday unremembered, a laugh unheard, a fear unsoothed. The sound insisted itself upon me until my eyes burned, and her thought pressed against mine: let me speak to the children.

I did not get angry. I am their protector. As Herc says, emotions do not give me strength, and he knows strength. Instead, I sing. When the Boat Comes In, Lavender’s Blue, All Through the Night.

And I was there, almost, all through the night, watching a galaxy wheel from east to west as over and over, childlike melodies eddy my throat. I cannot continue.

Sixty-one months ten days

I have neglected to mention that as the monsters grow stronger or more fearsome, the cage bars weaken; the house is pervaded with rising damp, rotten corners. It edges closer to surrender. I have dealt with escapes before. Herc has not.

I had allowed Meteorus to grow unchecked, failed to chip him back as the tools laid out demanded. His rocky mass groaned and pressed outward until the room itself became a cliff face, the iron bars bending before his weight.

Eventually they yielded, and he was able to force his way out. He was slow, but his movements were ruinous: a door smashed, a wall torn asunder, a ceiling in fragments. I gave chase and lured him to a wing of the house I call the Hunter's Lodge, although its contents are more sinister. From a drawer there I seized a case of grenades. One by one I cast them, until his form was reduced to rubble.

At the core I found him, a single indestructible stone. I pounded on it with a hammer until I could no longer move my arms. He could not be destroyed. I swore it would not happen again.

Orphana's cries pressed upon my ear drums, without cessation. What she felt became more complex; the mouths vacillate between a shifting kaleidoscope of terrors. A cry unanswered, a wound undressed, a bully unchallenged. I could not break through and she would not listen.

I just wanted her to stop screaming.

The noise corroded my soul, and I could see that rust on her cage bars blistering roughly, cracking under my fingers as I pulled closer to the cage. I have never touched her even though I know it could help; I cannot bring myself to. But in that moment she was beyond letting herself be vulnerable; she flinched violently as I came closer.

No story, no song could penetrate her cries. The noise was unbroken. She made it less a house and more a few feeble walls surrounding countless voids.

Herc had done the rounds.

‘Can’t you deal with her?’ he asked, holding his ears. Despite his own formidable muscularity, he is tender. I understand his distress - the noise makes me ragged too.

‘I’ve tried everything,’ I said.

It was as if some taut cord had snapped in him.

‘I'll take the others,’ he said. ‘All of them, for however long she's like this. Just focus on her. Do anything you can.’

His eyes were pleading. I gave him the lie at the forefront of my mind.

‘I’ll think of something.’

But to do that, I would have to dispel the sense memories, the gatekeepers of any rational thought: brittle rust giving way to my grip, mould spores in my nostrils, and that awful, awful howl.

Sixty-one months eighteen days

We lingered before the door, reluctant to enter the monster house. Yet I knew the consequences of hesitation.

There was no sound. A heart misses a beat and the body answers with adrenaline.

I pushed the door open an inch. Nothing. Another inch. Still nothing. The checkerboard flooring mocked my lack of forethought. Herc couldn’t even move his gaze to the hallway, dawdling behind me, hanging back.

A wave of stifling, tainted air rolled from the corridor, and I choked, retching as I moved forward. Scattered about on the floor were teddies, which I tiptoed around, Herc booted to the side. I looked left, right, up.

Then I saw her.

Knees and hands planted against the ceiling, her tiny body inverted above me, neck craned in dreadful expectation. Her mouths gaped, hungering in suspended agony.

I screamed. I couldn’t stop myself.

With every mouth, she wailed. I recoiled in the full, rancid, breadth of her tragedy. A nightmare unacknowledged, a tyrant unchecked, a helper unsummoned.

She fell upon me and I felt the wetness of her many little mouths, wide and unhinged, across my skin, marking me with the effluence of their despair.

‘Shh, Orphana,’ I began to try and soothe her, though I was sobbing. ‘It'll be all right.’

Herc just leapt. He seized her from me, holding her briefly before a look of abject disgust crossed his face. He threw her from him, slamming her to the floor.

Her cries became screams. I should have reached for her, but Herc grasped for her first. She writhed, spiderlike, away from his fingers, and I watched in horror as she vanished through the open door.

‘Stay here,’ said Herc, ‘you sort the others.’

‘I should -’ I said, but he’d already slammed the door behind him. I tried to follow, but it would not open.

Something was very wrong. I ran round the house, throwing open windows, with only the gunmetal sheet below. What if I leapt? I’d never contemplated it before. I had one foot on the window ledge before I thought better of it, imagining the lacerations from passing through freezing clouds.

I knew what my only other option was.

I’d never looked for the entrance to the Broken Open room before. But memory keeps pathways as much for avoidance as for use, so I knew the way was within me. Only it was harder to find than I expected; I wasted precious time taking different turns, only to arrive at the same spot, the Bared-Teeth Otter. The house groaned: Meteorus awoke, but I was singularly focussed on my task. It felt as though I had been walking for hours, when I found myself at last in the Hallway of Ancestors. I ran past the sports paraphernalia, an old drinks cabinet, to the former private study of the Master of the House.

More than any other, this room feels like a cell.

The door stood open as I approached. Desperation to find an exit drove me in - only to see that the wall, rather than offering an escape route, had been boarded up. Herc had not mentioned he was going to fix it. A helpful act, no doubt, he thought. But I was trapped.

This fact paled before what I saw the room held. Far from being empty, broken open, this room was lived in. Children's plates and cutlery littered the table. Their bedding lay crumpled on one side of the cage. Scrawled on the wall in outsized letters: mumee, luv. On the other side of the cage - I blanched.

My own bedding.

There were footsteps in the corridor behind me.

‘How did you get here, Meg?’

It was Herc, a bruise rising on his cheekbone.

‘Children have been here,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, offering nothing else.

‘How did they get here?’ I asked.

‘Where did you think they go, while you're … busy?’ he said.

‘This is a monster’s room.'

‘Yes.’

The silence that followed was only punctuated by the phlegmy inhalations of Gauntmaw, creeping closer.

‘Where is Orphana?’ I asked.

His expression was unmoving.

‘She is in the world now.’

He told me he couldn’t handle her. I should never have let him go alone.

I heard the distant sound of iron bars straining, scraping on rock. Meteorus. That sound carried an omen.

I looked at Herc and noticed the shadows under his eyes - like those I feared he would see in me. His muscles twitched. ‘What’s happening here?’ I demanded.

His shadow stretched out behind him - much too big - and ran up the wall, the ceiling, loomed over me. The question I wanted to ask, I could not. I was no longer able to grasp it.

He stepped closer, extending a hand. I saw his veins, suddenly excessive, his muscles extraordinary in number. I didn’t take it. He gave a gesture like he didn’t care, flicked his hand, and took hold of one of the twisted bars. His fingers closed around the indentations in a fist. They fit.

I turned to run, but there was no door. I hammered on the wall. Where had it gone?

‘Somebody hasn't been tending to Meteorus, and now he tests his bars,’ he said, slowly.

‘Somebody hasn't been cooling Falloth,’ he continued, ‘and now his rage is incendiary.

‘And someone,’ he said, ‘has starved Gauntmaw. So now you are confused.’

I looked at the children's bedcovers, crumpled inside the bars of the cage. Intertwined, stained, cast aside. I tried with everything I could to protect them.

‘This is all my fault,’ I said, my mind unable to settle on any one thought, any one sense.

The shadow flexed. Herc shook his head.

‘Meg,’ he said, snarling. ‘You don’t have to worry any more. You are in the house now.’

Even his words seemed to carry the abnormal strength I had not noticed in him, until now.

This is a house of monsters.

And I am in it.