A lot of people got the two mixed up. But really, learning to live underground came eons before learning how to hide. It started with Billie Buck, that crazy Rollins kid, but it didn't end with him. He played a game of hiding down the rabbithole and forgetting, and things might've stayed alright -- well, not alright, but salvageable -- if he hadn't insisted on teaching it to others. There's no point telling thirteen year olds they ain't got nothing real to forget, not really, 'cause they'll just spit at you. They started doing just that, spitting their elders in the eye, mocking our customs, racking up the past. We tried telling 'em. The past's for making your peace with, for locked doors and dry wells.
Still. Kids got a way of kicking up a ruckus.
It was weeks before anyone bothered telling Cain. There's a man like Cain that lives across stories, like a shadow, spoken of under covers, in a hush. There's a version of Cain that's Russian and mean, and there's a Cain that's honest divying up the spoils. Last, there's our Cain, with his daddy gone and one eye blind. He spends most his days up guarding the old well. He can afford to play a little hooky with who does what, on account of the honesty pact. On account of fear, or perhaps basic trust. Except even children here get to, at times, be brave and foolish, and defy what they should not.
The Rollins kid started digging up the rabbitholes on a boredom kick. Or perhaps a dare. He was darn scrawny, was Billy Buck, even for his age. What was he, nine? Ten? Couldnta looked more than seven, and sickly too, like the sickle lady forgot to claim him. A strange sorta kid who got it into his head there was more room underground for all the thoughts and terrors that jimmied our locks at night. That Rollins kid started hiding himself under the earth, and when they found him, the kid proved quick and slip-tongued, and somehow tricked the older uns into hiding with him. Bad business, all round. It was weeks before they told Cain. Weeks. By then, the mud had got inside their nostrils, and up their brains, and there wasn't nothing more anyone could do about that.
When word got to him Cain was furious. Pressed his tongue to the belly of the earth and bellowed. Still, the kids musta guessed there'd be hell to pay once up, so they figured it'd be easier to just defy him.
Before they heard the carnage, the kids underground musta heard the scuttling rats. Rats always got a sixth sense about these kinds of things, and Cain, Cain was just too human for his own good. He clung to this notion that as long as the well was guarded daily, he could see anyone before they proved a threat. With him, you always got this sense of before, of catching danger just in the nick of time. 'cept how often does that work in real life?
He had a magnetism about him, he did, even managed to raise some of us old ones round the campfire, to fear marauding hoards, barbarians coming to pillage and rape our women. When carnage came, it started by nibbling at the guts. Folk started getting all sorts of open sores round their ankles. Children rocking on-top the cupboard, refusing the set foot on the ground. There seemed to be a peril to the dirt, only by the time we realized, we'd gotten too old to hop, our knees all rickety and bent. Me, myself, I could only lift one foot up at a time, and never for longer than thirty-seven seconds. They started getting me, at first a little, then suddenly a whole, spitfire lot.
They ate us gristly and all-bone, but didn't seem to mind. When he realized what was going on, Cain gathered up the younger ones, and led them uphill to the old dry well. It was a clever move, except it left their feet still exposed, and so not clever enough. In time, they'd learn to hide up old oaks, and inside barren, rock-dust caves, but that only came later. For a while yet, we still lived in the daylight, the smell of death only pungent when the wind turned. For a while, up an old forgotten hill, there was still hope.
It travels, though, by digging up the dirt, and propelling itself by its haunches. It took some time, but in the end, it managed its way up the hill. Some of the stragglers claimed they recognized Billie Buck, only I know that couldn't be, 'cause I'd caught little Billie digging round my foxhole the night before the great raid, and shot him dead, and tore that boy's throat straight out. I wept while I did it, 'cause while Billie might not have remembered, I did. Could see in him the boy he'd been once, still, the strange little face, playing at being a mole.
Except not. If the things that came for us were once human-born, they must've long ago forgot. Those of us that still could, with time, we learned how to climb, and inside it, found places to hide and wait. A world in which there's still a them, and an us. A world that Cain built, for there's a Cain inside every story, inside every town. Where there's a child with too much dirt inside his mouth. Where there's elders knowing to look for the rats.
We started watching 'Stranger Things' and even though I don't see the cult appeal, it's found a way to influence this, I suppose. More so, this song and this superb rendition which has (as the kids say) lived inside my head rent-free for over a decade.
The day the carnage came to town,
We locked and bolted our doors down
We lay silent on the ground
Hoping we would not be found...
