Chapter 24: The Underground Children Attack
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
Sam sees a small white hand with dirt under its fingernails pressing against the glass door of the house. She realizes it is one of the underground children—Elgar's other children, her own aunts and uncles. She lunges to lock the door just in time. The creature’s hands manipulate the latch. Mom checks the kitchen window and finds another child there. Phil runs to the front door, which is wide open with dirt pouring in. A hand reaches around the doorframe, and a second child surfaces. Gail orders the creatures back, reciting a warding, but the first child launches at her and bites her arm. Gail sprays it with weed killer, and Phil kicks it dead. The remaining creatures begin to feed on the corpse. Sam, Mom, Gail, and Phil retreat upstairs, barricading themselves as one child follows onto the first step.
Key Events
- Sam spots a white hand on the glass door and identifies the threat as the underground children.
- She locks the door, but other creatures appear at the kitchen window and the front door.
- Phil finds the front door open with dirt flooding in; he tries to dig it out.
- Gail attempts a supernatural warding but fails; a child bites her arm.
- Gail uses weed killer to kill the first attacker; Phil kicks it.
- The surviving children begin cannibalizing the dead one.
- The group retreats upstairs as one child starts climbing the steps.
Character Development
Sam acts on instinct, locking doors and shouting warnings. She remains focused despite terror, supporting her injured mother and coordinating the retreat. Her casual “our aunts and uncles” comment shows she is beginning to accept the monstrous reality of her family history.
Mom (unnamed) shows resilience, limping to check windows and obeying orders. She voices confusion (“What?”) but does not freeze, contributing to the group’s survival.
Gail steps into a leadership role, taking charge of the situation even though she has never seen these creatures. Her willingness to use a household chemical as a weapon and her immediate pain tolerance after being bitten demonstrate her pragmatism and toughness.
Phil learns to trust Sam’s warnings—he dives away from the hand at the doorframe rather than ignoring her. He also helps Gail by kicking the creature and assists Mom up the stairs.
The underground children are revealed as partially human, with grub-like segmented bodies, tiny toothless mouths, and skinned-over eyes. Their feeding behavior (biting neat circles into the dead one) reinforces their alien, predatory nature.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
The family curse manifesting as physical horror. The underground children are literal blood relatives—Elgar’s other children—making the family’s dark past materialize as monsters that attack their own kin.
The failure of traditional protection. Gail’s attempted warding (“Go back, unclean things…”) does not stop the creature; it attacks immediately. This suggests supernatural knowledge alone is insufficient against the family’s specific evil.
The use of mundane weapons. Weed killer and kicking are the only effective countermeasures, reinforcing the idea that ordinary objects can disrupt supernatural threats in this world.
Cannibalism as a cycle. The creatures eat their dead without hesitation, indicating a biological imperative that mirrors the family’s internal self-destruction.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 24 is the climax of the siege on the house. It confirms that the “underground children” are real, physical aggressors, not mere hallucinations or folklore. The attack forces the characters to abandon the ground floor and retreat upstairs, symbolically losing control of the home. It also deepens the horror by revealing the monsters are family, connecting Sam’s personal inheritance to an immediate life-or-death struggle. The chapter sets up the next phase: the group is now trapped upstairs with limited options.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does Sam call the underground children “our aunts and uncles”?
She has just realized they are the offspring of her great-grandfather Elgar, making them literal relatives. This ties the family’s hidden history to the present threat and personalizes the horror.
2. What makes the weed killer effective against the underground child?
The chapter does not explain the mechanism, but the chemical burns or disrupts the creature’s biology, causing it to drop. Gail uses it on impulse, and it works, suggesting that simple household chemicals may be a weakness for these creatures.
3. Why do the surviving children start eating the dead one immediately after it is killed?
Their feeding is instinctual and opportunistic. The text describes a “happy mew” and “peristaltic motion,” showing they are driven by hunger and have no compunction about cannibalism. This behavior also distracts them, giving the humans time to escape upstairs.