The Quiet Kind

“There’s the kind of scared where you scream—and then there’s the kind where you don’t make a sound because even the dark might be listening.”

The dark didn't come all at once.

It crept in, slow and sneaky, slipping through the holes in the walls and the cracks around the window frames, soft as breath. It pooled in the corners first, gathering strength, spreading like spilled ink across the concrete floor. One minute we could still see the shapes of things — the corner of the filing cabinet, the bent chair leg, the ragged outline of the map still clinging to the wall — and the next, they were just parts of the black. Consumed. Transformed into something else entirely.

I'd never known dark could be so complete.

In Broken Hill, there were always streetlights, porch lights, the glow from a neighbour’s telly through half-closed curtains. Even at Grandma and Grandpa’s, the bathroom light was often left on, or Grandpa’s bedside lamp would cast a warm stripe beneath their door. Night was never truly night. Just a softer version of day, with all the edges blurred.

But here, in this forgotten place, darkness had weight. Substance. It pressed against my skin like a cold, damp cloth. I could feel it in my lungs when I breathed, carrying the scent of decades of abandonment.

We hadn't turned the torch back on yet.

Mack had said we needed to save the battery, and I'd nodded, even though I didn't really know what that meant. I understood batteries ran out, of course—like when my light-up trainers stopped flashing or when the remote control for the telly needed new ones. But in the back of my head I thought maybe there were plug sockets in here, hidden in the walls beneath years of dust. Or maybe Grandma would bring more batteries when she came back. She'd think of that, surely. She always thought of everything.

But I didn't say it out loud.

Speaking would make the darkness notice us. Would give it shapes to reach for, sounds to follow. So instead, I hugged my knees to my chest and concentrated on making myself smaller, less noticeable to whatever might be watching from the corners.

I whispered to Ribbons. Quiet, made-up things. Nothing important. Just stuff to keep the dark from listening in.

“It's a special mission,” I told her, my lips close to her tattered ear. “We've been chosen because we're brave. That's what Grandma said. And soon there'll be a signal, and then we'll know what to do next.”

She didn't reply, of course.

Her button eye caught a sliver of fading light, reflecting it back like a tiny, trapped star. Her stuffing had shifted after years of being squeezed and hugged, giving her a lopsided look. She looked tired in the darkness, as if she too was confused about why we were here instead of safe in bed.

But it helped, talking to her. It was like creating a tiny bubble of normal in all this strangeness.

I sat cross-legged on the mattress, pulling the ends of my jumper over my hands to keep them warm, and looked up at the ceiling. We could only see the shapes now — the long rusty beams that crisscrossed above us, the places where bits of the roof had peeled back to show slivers of night sky. They were like charcoal smudges on black paper, barely visible unless you knew what to look for.

The metal beams groaned occasionally as they contracted in the cooling night air, a deep sound that reminded me of the whales we'd heard on a nature programme once. Lonely sounds. Sounds that travelled long distances to find someone, anyone, who might hear them.

“We're not in a mine anymore,” I said suddenly, as if I'd only just realised it. The words came out louder than I'd meant them to, seeming to bounce off the dark walls and return to me. “We're in a spaceship.”

Mack was lying on his back, eyes open, head propped on his backpack. He'd been so still I wondered if he'd fallen asleep with his eyes open, like lizards do. But I saw his chest rise and fall with each breath, slightly too fast for sleep. He didn't answer at first.

A pause stretched between us, long enough that I thought he might be ignoring me. Maybe he thought I was being childish. Maybe he didn't want to play pretend anymore, now that we weren't just pretending to be in danger.

“A spaceship?” he said after a beat. “What kind?”

Relief flooded through me. He was still willing to play, still willing to transform this scary place into something magical. Still my brother, even though everything else had changed.

“A secret one,” I said, crawling a little closer and whispering like it was a code. “It used to be part of the army, but now it's just for us.”

“Are we flying?” he asked, turning his head toward me. In the dim light, his face was just a pale oval, his eyes two darker smudges. But I could hear the slight smile in his voice.

“Not yet. It's still waking up.” I hugged Ribbons tighter, warming to the game. “The engines are humming, but we need to plot a course first.”

I pointed at the torn poster on the wall. “That's the control panel. The safety man? He's the captain.”

Mack smiled, just a little, and sat up. The mattress dipped under his weight, pulling me slightly towards him. “And what about that?” He gestured toward the broken filing cabinet, its drawer hanging open like a gaping mouth.

“That's the cryo chamber,” I said with growing excitement. “For putting people to sleep when we travel through time. The long sleep, while we journey to distant stars. That's how we stay young while the universe gets old around us.”

“And Ribbons?” He reached out and gently tapped her nose, a gesture so familiar from a thousand games played in safer places that it made my throat ache suddenly.

“She's the scientist. But she also flies the ship when we're tired.” I made her nod solemnly, her head bobbing on her worn neck. “She's got all the star maps in her head. She knows the way home.”

Mack nodded seriously. “Cool. I think she looks smart.”

“She is.”

For a moment, it worked. The shadows became ship corridors, the dust became space mist, and the mattress was our command deck. The broken chair became the captain's seat, the bent metal pipe in the corner transformed into a laser cannon for fighting alien invaders. I even thought I could hear a faint humming sound — like an engine warming up in the belly of the ship. The building's settling noises became the mechanics of our vessel, preparing for lift-off.

For those brief minutes, we weren't abandoned children in a forgotten building. We were space explorers, brave and resourceful, on a mission so important that only we could be trusted with it.

But then the sound came.

Not loud.

Just… not right.

A shuffle outside. Soft. Dry. Like something brushing against the outer wall. A gentle scraping, like fingernails testing the metal.

We both froze.

The game vanished in an instant, bursting like a soap bubble touched too roughly. The spaceship dissolved, leaving only the cold, dark reality of our situation. We were alone, far from home, in a place no one knew to look for us.

Mack's hand darted to the torch. He clicked it off, plunging the room into thick, solid black. The sudden absence of even that small light felt like being dropped into a well. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, couldn't see Mack beside me, though I could feel the warmth of his body just centimetres away.

We didn't speak.

Not even a breath too loud.

The silence inside matched the silence outside, both waiting for the other to break first. My heart hammered so loudly I was certain whatever was out there would hear it, would follow the sound straight to us.

There was nothing — no voices, no footsteps — just that sound again. The gentle scuff of something moving outside. Maybe a goat. Maybe a bird. Maybe the wind pushing dead leaves against the wall. But in that moment, it didn't matter what it was.

Because we couldn't see it.

And it could be anything.

My imagination, usually my friend, turned traitor. It filled the darkness with shapes—testing men with beeping devices, figures with guns, wild animals with teeth and claws, the ghost of S. Harlow come back to reclaim their locker. Even the cupboard ghost from Grandma's house seemed to have followed us, transformed from a childish fear into something real and hungry.

I squeezed Ribbons so tight I thought I'd pop her seams. Her stuffing shifted beneath my fingers, producing a soft creaking sound that seemed impossibly loud in the silence. My heart thudded in my ears, louder than the sound outside. Each beat seemed to say: not-safe, not-safe, not-safe.

Mack's hand found mine in the darkness. His palm was damp with sweat, but his grip was firm. An anchor in the sea of black. I clung to it as if it was the only real thing left in the world.

We sat like that for what felt like forever.

In total darkness.

Not even the stars through the holes above could reach us now. The sky had clouded over, or maybe I'd just stopped noticing anything beyond the thundering of my own heartbeat and the phantom shapes my mind was creating in the void around us.

My knees were pressed into Mack's side. He didn't move. His breathing had gone shallow and quiet, like he was trying to disappear. Occasionally, I'd feel a tremor run through him, quickly suppressed. Was he scared too? The thought was both comforting and terrifying. If Mack was afraid, what hope did I have?

The sound came once more — a slow scrape of something shifting, then silence. Closer this time? Or was that just my fear making it seem so?

We didn't move.

Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. Time behaved strangely in the dark, elastic and unreliable. I tried counting in my head, but kept losing track after reaching twenty or thirty. Each number slipped away like water through cupped hands.

Eventually, the quiet took over again. Not the good kind. Not the peaceful kind that settles over you like a soft blanket when you're safe in bed.

The kind that holds everything you're afraid of, but won't let you look it in the eye. The kind that makes you strain to hear what's coming, knowing that by the time you do, it will be too late.

The kind that means you're really alone.

Slowly, cautiously, Mack released my hand. I heard him fumble with something—his backpack, I thought—and then there was a rustling of fabric. A moment later, I felt something being draped over my shoulders. His jumper, the thick red one with the frayed cuffs that he'd packed at the last minute.

“Here,” he whispered, his mouth close to my ear. “You're shivering.”

I hadn't even noticed, but he was right. My teeth had been chattering slightly, my body responding to fear as much as cold. The jumper smelled like him—like laundry soap and the faint scent of the eucalyptus mints he'd been addicted to ever since Dad let him try one last Christmas.

“What about you?” I whispered back.

“I'm okay.”

We both knew he wasn't, but I didn't argue. The jumper was warm from being in his backpack, and I pulled it tighter around my shoulders. It was too big, the sleeves hanging well past my fingertips, but that just made it better. Like being hugged without actually being touched.

“What was it?” I asked after a long silence.

“Probably just an animal,” he said, but the doubt in his voice was clear even in a whisper. “Or the wind.”

“What if it's the testing people?”

The question hung between us, too frightening to be answered immediately. I could almost feel Mack considering his response, weighing what would reassure me against what might actually be true.

“They don't know we're here,” he said finally. “And even if they did... they wouldn't come this far out at night. It's too dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Snakes. Holes in the ground. It's not safe to drive these tracks in the dark.”

I wasn't convinced, but I wanted to be. “So we're safe until morning?”

Another pause. “Yeah. We're safe.”

The lie was comforting, even though we both knew it for what it was. What else could he say? That we were children alone in a decaying building in the middle of nowhere, with no way to call for help and no real plan beyond “wait”?

The torch clicked back on suddenly, its beam pointing at the ceiling to cast a soft, diffused glow around us. The shadows retreated to the corners, not vanquished but held at bay for the moment.

“I think it's gone,” Mack said. “Whatever it was.”

I nodded, not entirely convinced but desperate to believe him. The darkness around the edges of the torchlight seemed thicker now, more watchful. As if it had tasted our fear and found it to its liking. As if it was merely retreating, regrouping, preparing for another approach.

The torch beam made a perfect circle on the ceiling, illuminating the rusted metal beams that crisscrossed above us like the ribs of some enormous beast. The light didn't reach the corners of the room. They remained in shadow, deep and impenetrable. Places where anything could hide.

“Maybe it was a kangaroo,” Mack suggested, his voice barely above a whisper. “Or a wallaby.”

“Do they come out at night?” I asked.

“Some do,” he said, though I could tell he wasn't sure. “Or maybe it was a possum. They're nocturnal.”

I tried to picture a possum, with its strange pointed face and grabby little hands, scratching at the walls of our building. It seemed too small to make that sound. Too insubstantial. The noise we'd heard had weight to it, purpose. It wasn't just an animal passing by.

Or maybe that's just what fear does. Makes everything bigger. Heavier. More dangerous.

I don't know how long we stayed like that. Ten minutes. An hour. Time felt strange — stretched, thinned out like chewing gum until it didn't mean anything anymore. The numbers on Mack's watch glowed faintly in the darkness—green digits that seemed to change randomly, without pattern or purpose. 11:38. 12:04. 12:27. They might as well have been in another language for all the meaning they held.

The torch beam gradually dimmed, the batteries weakening. The circle of light on the ceiling grew softer, less defined, the shadows at its edges creeping inward like a tide. Mack noticed it too. I saw his eyes flick to the torch, then back to the darkness, calculating. Measuring how much light we had left.

Eventually, he clicked it off to save the batteries. The blackness rushed in immediately, so complete it felt like a physical thing pressing against my eyes. A weight on my chest. An absence so profound it became a presence.

I rested my head on Mack's shoulder.

He let me.

In the daylight, he might have shrugged me off, made some comment about me being a baby or too clingy. But here, in this forgotten place, those rules didn't apply anymore. Here, we were just two kids alone in the dark.

His shoulder was bony but warm through his clothes. I could feel him breathing, the steady rise and fall a comfort in the stillness. His heartbeat pulsed faintly where my cheek pressed against him, a quiet reminder that we were still alive, still here, still together.

And we stayed there, two kids in a forgotten building, hiding from something we couldn't name.

“Do you think Grandma's okay?” I whispered after a long silence.

Mack didn't answer immediately. “Yeah,” he said finally, but the word remained unconvincing.

“What about Grandpa?”

Another hesitation. “I don't know.”

The honesty hurt more than a lie would have. At least lies had hope in them, no matter how false. Truth was just... truth. Hard and unforgiving as the concrete beneath us.

Neither of us mentioned the bang we'd heard back at the house. The sound that had split the morning in two. The dividing line between before and after. Between safety and this.

It sat between us, unspoken but unmissable. Like a third person in the darkness.

Trying to pretend we weren't afraid.

But we were.

Not loud, screaming fear.

The quiet kind.

The deep kind.

The kind that lives under your ribs and in the back of your throat. That turns your stomach to water and your legs to stone. That makes you want to run and hide at the same time.

I’d been scared before, of course. Scared of spiders with their too-many legs. Scared of the dark cupboard at Grandma’s house. Scared when Mum and Dad argued — voices too loud, words too fast, like a storm building in the living room with no way to stop it.

But this was different. This wasn't a fear you could name or point to or draw a picture of. This was being afraid of everything at once. Of the darkness and what might be in it. Of the sounds outside and what might be making them. Of tomorrow and what it might bring. Of never seeing home again. Of being forgotten.

It was the kind you don't cry about yet, because you're still waiting for someone to tell you it's over.

For Mum to call your name. For Dad to open the door. For Grandma to come back with a smile and say it was all a mistake, time to go home now.

But no one does.

So you just wait.

In the dark.

Holding your breath.

Counting seconds that feel like hours.

Wondering if this is what grown-ups mean when they say “forever”.