A House With Good Bones

“The underground children. Heh. I hadn’t thought of that in years. Gran Mae’s personal answer to the boogeyman. The underground children got you if you swore, if you disrespected your elders.”

Sam recalls her grandmother threatening her with punishment from the underground children, which she initially believes to be a creepy childhood tale, meant to scare children into obedience. This is the first mention of the underground children, and it lays the groundwork for the ending plot twist.

“Gran Mae felt very, very strongly that the world was divided into those with class and those without. I can’t remember if she believed in the Rapture, but if she had, only the classy would be saved. I don’t know what happened to the non-classy in her cosmology. Possibly the underground children got them, or possibly they were just doomed to live out their days in a giant Walmart of the Damned.”

Because Gran Mae is dead at the beginning of the story, the author accomplishes much of her characterization through memories and commentary in Sam’s narration, as here. Gran Mae is a stereotypical white Southern woman: religious, racist, etiquette-obsessed, self-righteous, and controlling. Again, Sam mentions the underground children in her memories of Gran Mae, reinforcing their importance.

“No, it was all perfectly normal. Normal house. Normal everything. Normal colors on the walls, even. Gran Mae would have been pleased by that. She’d always wanted everything to be normal. ‘Nice and normal’ was one of her favorite phrases. When Mom came home from work late and asked how we had been, Gran Mae would say, ‘Nice and normal!’ every time.”

Gran Mae’s obsessive need for her life and family to be “normal” reflects the theme of The Illusion of Normalcy. Gran Mae bases her image of normalcy on the illusory fantasy portrayed in 1950s television shows. Though normalcy is merely a veneer used to cover up dark secrets, Gran Mae clings to it with abusive vehemence.

“They say you can’t go home again, but of course you can. It’s just that when you get there, somebody may have repainted and changed the fixtures around.”

While humorous in tone, Sam’s statement here suggests a nostalgia for her childhood and desire for a comfortable home that she recognizes. It also reiterates her concerns about Edith’s strange behavior in repainting and redecorating the house and hints toward her own anxieties about the many reminders of Gran Mae’s presence and emotional abuse.

“There were no insects in the garden. Yes, it’s impossible. I know it’s impossible. I am telling you this, knowing that it is impossible. The impossibility is the point. There were no honeybees rolling around in the golden sepals of the single rose blossoms, no flower longhorn beetles dusted in pollen, no aphids coating the stems.”

The lack of Insects in the garden is Sam’s first real clue that something strange is occurring in the house. Though Sam does not yet consider a magical cause, she knows that this absence should be impossible, setting up the Science Versus Magic theme. The fact of its impossibility is the very thing that marks this revelation as uncanny and possibly supernatural.

“The ladybug was unimpressed. It reached the edge of the rose and its carapace snapped open to reveal the delicate wings underneath. ‘Why aren’t there more of you?’ I said plaintively. It didn’t answer. I titled the rose, jabbed myself on a thorn, and cursed. The rose snapped back and the ladybug flew away while I was sucking on my finger and thinking dark thoughts.”

This moment becomes significant in retrospect, after the ladybugs swarm Sam’s bedroom. The incident is a clue, not only to the generally magical nature of the strange incidents in the house, but also to Sam’s own magical ability. Sam discovers this ability after Gran Mae explains to her that this incident caused the later ladybug swarm in her bedroom. Insects in general, and ladybugs specifically, appear several times as a motif in the story, often as part of a supernatural incident.

“Once I was over the initial shock, it was all perfectly understandable. Ladybugs do swarm, like I said. Seven-spotted ladybugs swarmed in Britain in 1976. One of my professors was from Kent and said it was like a Biblical plague.”

Just as ladybugs are as a clue toward the magical nature of the narrative, Sam’s reaction to them is also important. Sam’s insistence on a rational explanation emphasizes the theme of Science Versus Magic. This is a difficult internal conflict for Sam throughout the story, and she must resolve it in the final chapters.

“The thing moved up my shoulder. It couldn’t be a hand. Even though it seemed to have multiple fingers, it was too thin to be bone. My heart hammered against my ribs.

From my shoulder, it traced the side of my face and went into my hair. I could feel it sliding through like the teeth of a comb, catching on the curls. It came loose for an instant then slid back in. Then again.”

Though Sam believes she is experiencing sleep paralysis, the author suggests that this moment is literal and a precursor for the monsters to come. The scene increases the narrative tension, as Sam anxiously awaits a conclusion to the strange and horrifying experience. Eventually Sam understands the reality of this moment when she sees the thorny fingers of Gran Mae’s rose-puppet figure.

“‘Some things run in families,’ said Gail. ‘And other things skip generations. It’s odd, isn’t it?’”

Gail’s statement to Sam foreshadows the final chapters, when Sam realizes that magic is behind the strange occurrences at Gran Mae’s house. It also foreshadows her epiphany that she inherited Gran Mae’s power. In this way, the quote reflects the theme of Family Lineage and Trauma, referring not only to physical inheritances, but also intangible ones, like trauma or power.

“There was a shape in the shadow of the rosebush that I’d never noticed before. A very odd but very distinct shape.

It looked exactly like a human hand, and I mean exactly. Five pale fingers curving over the roots of the rosebush, the thumb dappled with a splash of light through the leaves. A long white wrist vanishing into shadow.”

In this passage, Sam stares at a photo of herself on the wall and notices for the first time a hand coming out of the dirt beneath the roses. This is a moment of deep horror, and suggests that Gran Mae’s underground children might be more than just a story to scare children. Though Sam tries to convince herself she is imagining things, she quickly realizes the hand is real.

Be guided by the hard-won Wisdom of a Man who has made the great Experiment to his Sorrow. You will find that this proposed Childe will not Answer to your Hand, nor is there any Guarantee given that the Childe will take after you and not the Other part of Its Ancestry. All Golems and Homunculi must inevitably turn against their Masters, as all Children must rebel against their Parents. The greater your initial Success, the more Terrible your eventual Enemy will be.”

This passage is part of a letter Sam discovers online, part of an archive of letters from Elgar Mills. The letters reveal his background as a sorcerer and associate of Jack Parsons, explicitly revealing a family history of magic. This letter indicates that Elgar has created a magical child that he implies rebelled against him. His assertion that this is inevitable foreshadows both his daughter’s rebellion against him and Edith and Sam’s rebellion against Gran Mae. Therefore, this passage explicitly connects the underground children to the theme of Family Lineage and Trauma.

“I brushed the dirt off my find. An old-fashioned quart mason jar. Not unusual in the South. It was full of small bits of something yellow-white and shaped like lumpy pebbles. The lid was rusted shut but I didn’t need to open it. Any archaeologist worth their salt would have recognized the ivory-colored shapes. I was holding a jar of human teeth.”

The final line of Chapter 15 heightens the tension with a horrific discovery. Previously, while considering the image of a small white hand in her graduation photo, Sam considered the idea that Gran Mae was killing people and burying them in the backyard. Here, she again considers what horrible things Gran Mae might have done to collect so many human teeth. This moment reinforces Gran Mae’s brutality toward her family and creates the gap in Gran Mae’s barrier, allowing the underground children to escape.

“‘Gran Mae is dead,’ I said, very carefully.

‘I know that,’ Mom said, her misery tinged with exasperation. ‘I didn’t say she wasn’t dead. I said she wasn’t gone. She’s at the house. Haunting it, or whatever you want to call it. And she watches me. And I know you think I’m crazy.’”

In this passage, Sam and her mother speak candidly about Sam’s fears that Edith is experiencing mental health problems, which Edith acknowledges with the word “crazy,” suggesting that Sam is not taking her seriously. Though T. Kingfisher set up this revelation for the reader, it clearly shocks Sam, who continues to struggle with Science Versus Reality. Edith provides a full explanation of the many strange incidents in the house and her own odd behavior, reinforcing the truth of her revelation, though Sam continues to disbelieve her.

“Little piggy, hissed the voice, Look at the mess you’ve made, little piggy. Who’s going to clean this up?

I tried to turn away, but the owner of the voice had hold of me, pressing my face against cold glass. The white thing was on the other side, dark shadows moving under its skin. I thrashed helplessly, opening my mouth to yell, but dirt fell in and I woke, choking.”

This scene, whether it is a dream or reality, foreshadows the arrival of the underground children. The white things squirming in the dirt are the underground children, and the voice belongs to Gran Mae’s ghost. Gran Mae complains that she will need to clean up Sam’s mess, hinting at her forthcoming arrival to protect them from the underground children that Sam has unwittingly unleashed.

“‘The garden was only the surface. We belonged to two wildly different schools of thought when it came to the unseen world, and our practices were… very different.’

[…]

‘Practices?’ I asked weakly.

‘Magic, Sam,’ said Gail, and tossed Hermes another chunk of mouse.”

In this passage, Gail forces Sam to confront the possibility of magic head-on. Emphasizing the theme of Science Versus Reality, Sam still wants to cling to science and rational explanations, but they are failing her. Gail emphasizes the differences between their practices of magic, where Gail’s is based in harmony with nature and Gran Mae’s is a darker power that forces her will on the world. This connects the passage to The Illusion of Normalcy.

“‘The dead are easier to appease than the living,’ said Gail, ‘at least in most cases.’

[…]

‘Gran Mae couldn’t be appeased when she was alive,’ I said.

‘That hasn’t stopped Edie from trying, I think.’”

In this conversation, Sam realizes that Edith is trying to appease Gran Mae, not so much to keep her happy—which is likely impossible—but merely to keep her from becoming so angry that she is dangerous to others. Gran Mae’s being dead, however, makes this appeasement much more difficult, as she cannot be directly addressed. This connects to the theme of Family Lineage and Trauma.

“She was made of roses. Her skin was rose petals layered together, white and rose and blush pink, and when she cocked her head, the petals shifted slightly. The edges overlapped like the scales of an enormous serpent.

She blinked at me, and I saw that the irises of her eyes were the tight swirl of tiny rosebuds. When she spoke, her tongue was a seething mass of ladybugs.”

Sam describes the rose puppet of Gran Mae who has come for Sunday dinner. This figure makes explicit the roses’ symbolic link to Gran Mae and her power. It also brings back the ladybugs of earlier scenes, which once answered to Sam’s summoning but now seem once again under Gran Mae’s control. The ladybugs’ presence foreshadows Sam’s own magical awakening.

“The afternoon light blazed through the sliding glass door. It made her shine like an avenging angel. Against the wall behind her, etched starkly against the pale paint, I saw the shadow of a hooked beak and mighty wings.”

Sam likens Gail to an avenging angel, reinforcing her role as the archetypal good witch in opposition to Gran Mae, the archetypal evil witch. The image of a vulture, recurring throughout the story, arrives again in Gail’s shadow, shifting the vulture’s symbolic meaning from bad omen to the arrival of protection and the way to safety.

“Its head was shaped like a monstrous fetus, the skull squared off, eyes set far down on the sides. White skin covered everything, transparent enough to make out dark shapes underneath. It turned its head so that an eye faced me and I watched the edge of the flashlight catch it and the misshapen blue bruise beneath suddenly shrank as the pupil contracted beneath the skin.”

This passage describes the first up-close look at the underground children that have lurked just beneath the surface of the house and the narrative. They are classic horror monsters: grotesque, mindless, hungry, and unrelenting. However, they are also a symbol of Family Lineage and Trauma: Sam and Gran Mae both call them Elgar’s other children, and Sam then introduces them to Edith as “our aunts and uncles” (212). Their resemblance to fetuses further reinforces the connection as another generation of the Mills family.

“‘A circle of protection,’ said Gail, leaning against the wall. […] ‘The roses and the teeth. It was to keep them out. The roses said, stay away. And she poured everything she had into the roses.’ Her laugh was barely more than a gasp. ‘So much power that it kept going long after she was dead. And I’d watched her do it for years, and had no idea.’”

In this passage, Gail realizes the implications of Gran Mae’s actions over the years, finally understanding that Gran Mae poured all her power into the roses to keep the underground children away. Gran Mae’s connection to the roses explains how she was able to linger and haunt the house and how her banishment allowed the underground children to break in.

“I cut my finger on a thorn, and then I’d said to the ladybug…There should be a lot more of you.

And more had come. Hundreds. Crawling into the bedroom and up the sink, trying to get closer to me, to the person who had demanded them.

Had it been the roses responding to me?

But why? How? I wasn’t a witch. I didn’t know the first thing about ritual magic. I was…

…the granddaughter of a sorcerer, and the great-granddaughter of the Mad Wizard of Boone.

Some things run in families.”

This passage describes the moment that Sam pulls together the important incidents and statements of the last few days, synthesizing them into a coherent understanding. She understands that she has inherited Gran Mae’s power, even inadvertently using it. She, like Gran Mae, can use magic to banish the underground children.

“In the end, she had turned to the roses. She had poured everything she was into them, and they had wrapped around her and kept her alive, a ghost of root and stem, flower and thorn.

And here I was now, gripping the rose stems with blood-slicked hands, and the roselight was all around me, vivid green. I stood at the heart of the roses and my grandmother’s power filled me, and all I had to do was utter a command.”

In order to use the power of the roses, Sam must confront her grandmother’s past, acknowledging the trauma she endured as well as the trauma she inflicted. From this understanding, Sam draws on Gran Mae’s power and uses it to protect her family in a way Gran Mae never could because Sam has come to grips with her generational trauma.

“Gran Mae had believed in Family, with a capital F. She had believed in us all as a reflection on her, not as the people we actually were. […] She might have planned to teach me, but she hadn’t felt any qualms about letting us all get devoured when Mom and Gail had banished her. Family, like roses, were something she had planted and something she’d yank out again when it didn’t do what she wanted.”

Gran Mae’s role in shielding her family from the danger of the underground children complicates her position as the antagonist of the story. She used a great deal of her considerable power to build the rose garden as protection, demonstrating a level of care for her family. However, she viewed her family as extensions of herself rather than autonomous individuals and was willing to let them die when she lost control of them. Thus, Gran Mae embodies the complexities and contradictions of evil in humanity, a common trope in the Southern Gothic tradition.