Under the House

October 3

Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m meant to write. Dr. Hayworth said to keep a record of anything Isla says or draws that seems “distressing or persistent.” His words. I guess this counts?

It feels strange, documenting your own child like a science experiment. But I’m willing to try anything at this point—particularly after three nights without sleep. I keep jolting awake just as I drift off, half-expecting the sound of her scream.

Or that silence. Worse, sometimes, the silence.

Last night, it was around 2 am when she screamed. When I got to her room, she was sitting upright. Not crying. Just staring, like she was waiting. Eyes locked on the little floor vent beside her dresser.

I asked what she saw. She said, “She’s not gone. I can still feel her.”

She doesn’t remember it this morning. Or pretends not to.

Dr. Hayworth said drawing might help externalise whatever fear she’s processing. This morning, over cereal, Isla slid this across the table to me without saying a word. She didn’t look at me, she just kept glancing toward the back hallway like she was listening for something else.

Drawing: A square house. No windows, no door. A stick-figure girl inside. Beneath the house, a black scribble like tangled hair or tree roots. It reaches upward.

I asked what the black part was, but she just shrugged at me.

I can’t make heads or tails of what the picture is supposed to mean.

Also, I swear she called me Lorraine this morning. Just under her breath. I asked her what she’d said, and she just stared at her cereal like I’d imagined it. I haven’t spoken to Lorraine in weeks. Or is it months? My twin was always pretty flaky. I’m fairly certain that she’s only seen Isla twice since she was born, and not since she was a baby.

Not since the funeral, at least. Maybe she overheard the name there.

October 4

This morning started kind of strange. I was washing dishes when Isla came in and pointed to the floor vent near the kitchen table. “She’s gone,” she said, like she was answering a question I hadn’t asked. “It’s safe to come out.”

I asked who. She didn’t answer. Just tilted her head and said, “The other one. She'll be back later.”

I wasn’t sure if she was playing a game or something, so I tried to make a joke of it. I told her it sounded spooky, like a Halloween story. She didn’t laugh. Just blinked at me like I’d gone insane.

She ate her toast in silence. Halfway through, she got up and returned with another drawing.

Drawing: A woman lying flat, face-down under floorboards. Her arms stretch unnaturally wide. The kitchen table floats above.

The detail was unsettling. She even included the little crack in our floor tiles.

I told myself it’s just her imagination, maybe something from a show she saw. But she hasn’t watched TV since we moved here. And I’ve never talked about the crawlspace under the floor around her. At least, I don’t think I have.

October 6

Isla drew me today. I’m holding hands with someone. No face. Just hair, and a ring.

It’s strange—I swear the ring is familiar. A thick band with a missing opal. Mum had always worn one like that. I’m sure of it, but I have no idea what happened to it after she passed. Maybe Lorraine knows: she moved into the old farmhouse after the stroke. I’ll have to ask the next time I see her.

Drawing: Two stick figures holding hands. One wears a ring. The other is a faint outline, no features.

I asked Isla who the other person was, and she just shrugged. She said something that sounded like, “She’ll be back from the store later”, but I might have misheard.

And then she stared down at her drawing like she'd said too much.

October 7

I woke up to find the fridge door wide open this morning. Milk gone sour.

Isla claimed she didn’t leave it open. “Maybe it was her?” she asked, but I have no idea who she was referring to. It’s just us here.

I barely slept last night, so I had no patience for her games. Some damn animal scratching away in the wall of my room kept me up for most of the night. At least I think it was an animal.

I think she asked me something then, about someone else being in the house, but I was still half-asleep and strung out from lack of sleep.

October 10

She’s been humming the same tune all day. A strange little melody with no real rhythm. It gets stuck in my head, then disappears just when I try to hold onto it.

I hummed it back to her while brushing her hair, and she froze. Just stopped breathing for a moment, then said, “That’s not how she does it.”

Later I tried to write it down—just the notes. But the paper tore under my hand before I’d finished. And I’m not sure the notes made any sense. They looked more like… marks. Cuts.

She didn’t draw anything until late tonight. I found it tucked under her pillow when I went to check on her.

Drawing: A woman hanging upside down, arms stretched toward the floor. Her mouth is too wide. Her eyes are empty.

It’s me. Or someone meant to be me.

I asked her about it in the morning. She said, “I didn’t draw that.”

I've never seen her lie like that before. Or maybe she wasn’t lying. Maybe she really doesn’t remember.

October 13

She wouldn’t come out of the cupboard this morning. She locked the door from the inside with the old hook-latch that Mum installed while I was a little girl.

When I knocked and asked what was wrong, she said, “She’s going to take me back.”

I asked her who. Her voice was steady.

“The other one.”

Something in her tone made me pause, but we were already late and had to get going…

Somewhere. Strange that I can't remember where we had to go as I write this.

There’s a note by the door in my handwriting: Pick up Isla 3:10. But I don’t remember writing it. Or going anywhere.

It took nearly twenty minutes to get her out. When she finally stepped into the light, her face looked—blank. Like she’d been emptied and filled with something else.

“She knows you’re not ready to remember yet,” Isla said abruptly.

Her voice was so calm. Not scared. Not accusing. Just… resigned. As if she knew I’d been trying not to see something that had always been there.

I can’t for the life of me work out what it is Isla thinks I’ve forgotten.

October 14

Last night, I dreamed about the hatch behind the laundry wall. I didn’t even remember there was one until I saw it again.

In the dream, I was a child again. Crawling underneath. I could hear humming—low, almost kind. But wrong. It wasn’t Mum’s voice, not quite. It almost sounded like someone trying to sound like her, but not quite getting the vowels right.

I woke up on the hallway floor, my hands scraped. I must’ve fallen? I don’t remember going to bed.

All day, I’ve had the feeling that something is watching from beneath the floorboards. That if I stood still long enough, I’d hear them breathing with me.

October 16

The humming hasn’t stopped. Even the quiet parts of the house seem to echo with the strange tune. When I tried to sleep, the tune was almost deafening.

The hallway stretched again last night. It does that now—pulls itself longer when I’m not looking. I’m sure it might be just in my head, but I still walk faster past the corners.

Isla hasn’t said a word since yesterday morning. She just draws, again and again. Circles mostly. Sometimes with jagged shapes inside. Little teeth. A ring. A doorway. She’s started using red pencil again—just rings, mostly. One inside another.

This afternoon I found her whispering into the vent. I leaned closer, and she said: “You can have her. She remembers now.”

I don’t think she was talking to me, and I’m not sure I heard her right.

I’m so tired. The air tastes wrong. Like rust and dust and something old and dying.

October 17

Last night I dreamed I was inside the walls. Not just behind them, but in them. Cold. Hollow. Breathing out through every crack in the floorboards.

When I woke, Isla was standing at the end of the bed. Not looking at me. Just… listening. I asked what she was doing. She said, “Waiting for her to stop watching.”

Later, I found a new drawing:

Drawing: A woman made of floorboards, her arms sprouting nails. Her eyes are vents. Inside her mouth is a staircase.

I asked her what it means, and she said, “That’s you. From underneath.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how to respond. Lack of sleep, and the damn humming, making it hard to focus. To think clearly.

Then later, when I passed the hallway mirror, I didn’t recognise myself.

There was something off. Not the face. The angle. Like I was watching someone watch me from the wrong side of the glass.

I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.

October 18

The page was already open when I woke. I don’t remember writing anything.

Ink smeared across the table. My hand hurts, like I’ve been gripping the pen for hours, but I hadn’t written anything since yesterday.

There are words here, but they’re buried under layers. Written, scratched, written again. Eleven times. Maybe more.

LET HER GO. LET HER GO. LET HER GO. LET HER GO.

And beneath it, something else. Fainter. Pressed in with the edge of the pen. I can’t make it out. Just a curve. A name?

Isla won’t come near me. Why won’t she come near me?

I just want to hold her. It's been so long.

October 22

Dr. Hayworth came by today.

He sat at the table like it was any other session, notebook open, face soft with concern. He said I’ve been missing appointments again. That I haven’t answered the phone in weeks. That I’d stopped taking the medication we discussed. That he was worried.

He said Isla isn’t real.

He said she died in a fire. That I was at the funeral. That he saw me there. That I spoke. That I cried.

But that can’t be right.

I spoke to her this morning.

She came into the kitchen while I was buttering toast. Her hair was wet, like she'd just come in from rain I didn’t hear. I asked if she’d been outside, but she didn’t answer. Just smiled. Then handed me another picture.

Drawing: The same square house. Still no windows. Still no door. But this time, there’s a second figure beside the one inside. Taller. Bent slightly, as if listening. Or waiting. The space beneath the house is darker now, layered black as if something is shifting underneath. At the bottom: a ring. Drawn in red.

Dr. Hayworth said I should keep going with the journal. Said it might help ground me—help draw a line between what’s real and what isn’t. Between memory—and what I keep mistaking for memory, but might be something else entirely.

I nodded. I think I even thanked him.

But after he left, I heard the humming again, low and steady, coming from somewhere behind the fridge.

I reached for a glass of water and saw the note. It was stuck under a magnet I don’t remember touching.

“Pick up Isla 3:10.”

It’s in my handwriting.

There’s no school run. No appointment. No child to collect.

But it’s there, as clear as anything. And the ink looks fresh.

The fridge is still humming. The floor just creaked. The hallway feels longer than it did this morning.

I can hear Isla playing quietly in her room.