The Devil Below Us: Chapter One

Dante Down Below | (Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest — Matthew 11:28)

Chapt 10 | Contents | Chapt 2

ometimes things change for the better, sometimes for the worse. Sometimes things just change.

Twenty years ago the two streets of Upland and Downland Road were an idyllic little oasis you would be surprised to find close to its gritty city centre. Tourists who got lost would venture onto Upland Road and feel they had walked through an invisible portal that had transported them to a quaint little town in middle England. A lush line of green Hornbeam and red Maples stood silently guard on either side of the road to create an avenue of trees that led you down a gentle decline, which intersected with its neighbouring street of Downland.

The small red brick houses on Upland Road were clean in their uniformity, with well kept front gardens and well swept front steps. Its pavements were free of litter. If you happened to come by a neighbour pruning his hedgerows on a Saturday afternoon, he would nod politely to you, and even pass the time of day if you stopped to enquire about his garden and the fruits of his labour.

Continue to walk down the avenue with its tall trees and you would find yourself in Downland, similar in serenity to the picture first presented to the wayward visitor at the top of Upland. The only difference was instead of houses, there were maisonette flats. Built from the same red brick to resemble the houses in Upland Street, these were two-story, small but self-contained residential units with private entrances and open gardens. The well pruned trees continued all the way to the end of this neighbouring street, and its pavements and cobbled pathways cut clean, parallel lines alongside its grass verges.

The warmer months were always one of welcome. In the Spring, the green of the street would be dotted with dashes of yellow snd white; the warm season guests of daisies and buttercups returning home to herald the end of the colder months. The flat residents would come out of hibernation to put their daily laundry out to dry in the fresh air, children would play their games on the verges and quiet streets, as children will often do at the end of a school day. Their cries of excitement would intermingle with the idle chatter of adults, a blossom of locals, rejoicing in the return of a bright new season, facing towards a friendly sun, and going about their daily activities, as though they had left their cares behind with the cold.

There seemed to be an unspoken covenant between these two streets and the over populated city centre it was close to, where one did not encroach on the other. There was no demarcation line to speak of, no visible iron railing or fence that kept them apart, but for a while the urban realities of a city in constant change did not intrude on the serene, bucolic nature of Upland and Downland Street.

But things just change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

ver time, this agreement became forfeit.

Although Upland remained relatively the same, due to its proximity and situation, Downland Street changed because of the nature of the maisonettes. It was gradual at first, as all change that goes unnoticed is; elderly residents moved to more age appropriate housing, families requiring larger acommodation for their children located elsewhere, and the small flats, difficult to sell, began to stand empty and silent. Their dead carcasses were testament to the fact that brick and mortar need life to give soul to a home. A home with the sound of goodness within it, the scent of food cooking on a warm evening, of music playing a soundtrack to happy lives; tiny moments of love that become all the greater when shared with warmth and laughter.

In these later years, the local city council began to acquire the soulless, one bedroomed maisonettes to solve an influx of people coming to the city, and filled them with single residents less neighbourly. They were used as half-way houses for those recently out of prison, or on parole. These drug users invited drug dealers, or were dealers themselves. To these spots where the deals were made, dealers invited the homeless, hooked on substances that took them away from the painful realities of their existence.

When the darkness encroaches on light, there the shadows gather. These hooded, homeless shadows brought with them their own particular smell, smoke and flame of the pipe, perfumed with their sad stories of desperation. They began to loiter in the private communal hallways and on the steps of the little units, leaving their food litter and drug paraphernalia. They would beg the passing residents for food, cigarettes or very small sums of money to help them in their apparent plight, and they would remember the more generous and kind residents, and where they lived.

Another silent covenant began to be written in Downland Street, this time between the homeless and the new residents still unaware of Downland's own version of Christian charity. It would all begin with a gentle knock at the door. A vulnerable smile, a soft voice asking for a room for the night; and like the innkeeper at Bethlehem, a stable was often provided. The desperate without a home would enter the lonely, unloved spaces of their kind benefactor, to ask for some food and shelter. A place to sleep, the floor would do, by their bed. Some money to help them out. Or a hot shower to get cleaned up. They would be no trouble. They would quietly slip in and out and no one needed to ever know.

But the requirements of charity slowly changed. Soon, the homeless no longer asked for food or shelter; they asked for money for their drug addiction, and weeping, would tell their innkeeper of their stories. Of how far they had travelled by their own dark star, which had led them to their door one night. The sums of money that were asked for, gradually grew. So, the offers of charity changed. In return for the drugs, the desperate began to provide nightly companionship; it was shelter of a different kind. They would be no trouble. They would quietly slip in and out and no one needed to ever know.

Sex laced with cannabis, cocaine or heroine. You paid your money, you took your choice. Better still, sometimes the guest could get their innkeeper to participate in their addiction, and then the stable door remained unlocked indefinitely. A gentle knock of a night, or a soft voice was no longer necessary. Shadows can roam completely unnoticed, when the darkness has overcome the light. With another customer procured for the local dealer, it gave the desperate a commission, and put them on the good side of a dealer who they were probably heavily indebted to, and had sent them there in the first place. Either way, their new benefactor would give them the money to procure their daily needs, in exchange to share the same bed for the night.

The trade was not merely in flesh, that had just kept the door of the stable open. Often, to cement the relationship, the homeless would bring stolen goods as gifts to the innkeeper, or offer to sell them at the right price; and the price was always right. These trade-offs, made in the secrecy and silence of the dark hours, also brought with it, its own shame. The more money, the more sex, the more stolen goods that were bartered for, the easier it was to acquire the host's silence should the guest cause a nuisance, inside or outside their home, making it less likely any affronted resident would call the police.

In this way, a symbiotic, if somewhat parasitic, relationship grew between the residents and the homeless. It began as one where often the guest relied on their hosts for survival, but the longer the close biological interactions went on, with each benefiting in some way by feeding off the other, the harder it was to tell who was being harmed by this manipulation. The change was slow, as all changed that goes unnoticed is; and eventually, the lines became as blurred as the lines of the unkempt grass verges and pavements.

The litter began to pile up. Residents no longer left their homes come rain or shine. Residents who didn't participate in these parasitic relationships looked the other way. They no longer kept their windows open, or their doors unlocked. They would tell themselves there were too many of them sitting on their steps, and walking their street. Their number was intimidating in itself. So, another unwritten covenant came to be that no one complained. No one called the authorities or the police. They saw no evil, heard no evil and so evil came creeping to Downland Street and spoke to them in the shadows of the night.

The city centre had finally come to Downland, giving its name a second meaning. Drugs had permeated the street. The once, empty soulless carcasses of the maisonettes, became even more so, because the inhabitants had not brought life to the brick and mortar, they had invited in poison and death.

Downland Street had changed, and it was into this changed street that Dante Rossi found himself moving to, as yet unaware of his own changes that were waiting for him there.

ante had always known he was different.

But he didn't realise how the way others perceived his differences would come to define him in his adult years. He wore those experiences like a crown of thorns on his head. He rested his long, black hair against the headrest of the back passenger seat of the car, and his skin prickled; he could almost feel his memories digging into the back of his neck.

He quickly dimissed them, as his Uber driver tried to make small talk, but he didn't feel like talking. He wasn't good at talking to strangers, so he just smiled and nodded politely back, and put his earbuds into his ears. His music came on, and he raised the volume to block out all sound, but the one he had chosen. It filled his mind. He closed his eyes. It was his way of saying he wanted to be left alone, to think of different things.

He wanted to remember the people who had always accepted his differences. He wanted to remember his parents. He had left Italy for England to forget, yet here he was wanting to remember.

Looking back, his childhood had been an idyllic oasis in his life. It was a lush timeline of sun and light, in which his Papa and Mama had stood guard on either side of his younger years, like tall trees creating a beautiful avenue of memory he always walked through when he was nervous. He picked one of those memories now, and as though an invisible portal had opened in his mind, he was transported back to his quaint little village that lay on the outskirts of Sicily.

He was home. Aged seven. In his parent's yellow bricked casa. It was a bright, hot Summer's day. Still drowsy from his siesta, he had followed the soft mumur of his Mama's voice to the veranda in their small garden out in the back. His Papa was climbing up an old, creaky, wooden ladder to get to his grape vines, with pruning scissors in large, dark sunkissed hands. His Mama was looking up at his Papa, one hand covering her eyes from the bright sun, while pointing out the grapes she wanted cut down.

Dante's love of nature had grown in that small garden, amongst his Papa's olive and fig trees. His Papa had been a master gardener, growing all varieties of fruit and vegetables in the plot of earth God had graced them with. He would proudly show dinner guests his trees, or the blush red tomatoes and Padron peppers, and tell them to take some home with them. But he was most proud of his Nero d'Avola grapes. They were distinct to their region; purplish red, large heads that bled their sweetness into your mouth as you bit into them.

On that particular day, feeling the soft fur of their black cat Luna across his ankles, he had picked her up and sat down on the warm stone steps to watch them work. Haloed by the sunlight, they looked like the angels he had seen in picture books. He could still hear the soft creak of wood, feel Luna's warm purring breath against his arms as he cradled her, and the happiness he had felt as his parents greeted him, with their shining dark eyes, filled with so much light, rushed back to him now.

His Mama's smile widened. "Did we wake you, amore mio? Are you hungry? Shall I fix you something?"

"No, thank you, Mama."

His Papa beamed down at him. "Leave him alone tesoro mio. If he wants something, he will say. He is a big boy now, aren't you, son?"

"Yes, Papa. But I am only so because I am the son of a big man." He had said it quietly. It had always been his way, to say simply and with sincerity what was in his heart to say.

His parents had stared at each other for a moment, their eyes shining wet.

"You hear the things this boy says, Mama? Bless you woman, for giving me such a son, that is like you in every way."

"And I thank God every day for both my boys. Now, Papa, that one!" Directing her husband with a more serious tone of voice, they went back to the task in hand. "There!"

His Mama. A shadow cast over his happiness. He remembered how her rotund, generous figure had diminished after the death of his beloved Papa. She became a frail imitation of the woman who had raised him, as an unspeakable disease slowly took hold of her. It took Dante over, too. For he had cared for her during her illness, and in two short years, he watched while everything he had ever cared for, and had cared for him, had slowly slipped through his fingers. One day she was gone, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The futility of it still hurt.

He was transported to her suddenly, on her deathbed. He could still feel her hand in his, still feel the warmth that would soon cool. He could see her dark, shining eyes, shine on him one last time, as she spoke to him softly, her syllables dispersing into whispers.

"My son, I thank you for all you have done for me. If ever sons are in debt to their mothers, you have paid yours in full."

He bowed his head into her lap. "Don't talk like that, Mama."

"We both know my time is near, and I am glad. I miss Papa so much, my longing hurts more than this pain."

"I know. I miss him, too. What will I do without you both?"

"Look at me, my son." For the tiniest moment, that sweet, strong voice he remembered from his childhood, returned laced with seriousness. "Now, listen to me well."

He raised his head, and once again, as he did as a child, he saw her haloed by the sunlight. "Yes, Mama?"

"You need to let me go, son. Both of us. But never, do you hear me, never let go of who you are. Wherever your Papa and I are, we will be proud of you, and we will always be with you."

Always be with you. Her words had resonanted in his ears as deep as the peal of the Church's funeral bell had, the day he laid her to rest beside his Papa. Something changed in Dante that day. He couldn't walk on the ground his parents lay under now. The places of his childhood, his village, their home, his father's garden, once so bright in his memories, were now darkened by their absence. Instead of providing comfort, they seemed to mock him. It constantly reminded him of his loss. Even Luna had taken a stroll one day, and never came back. He took his cat's disappearance as a sign. He had to get away. As far away as he could.

"-nearly there, mate." His Uber driver's shout across the music in his ears, hurtled him back to the present day.

Dante took his earbuds out. "Sorry, what did you say?"

"I said, we are nearly there. Downland Street, right?"

Dante nodded. His nervousness returned. He looked out of the window, as the car drove down Upland Street's gentle decline into the depths of Downland and its red brick maisonettes.

He had arrived at his new home in the hope of a new life.

Published 20 April, 2026

The Devil Below Us >>