So children, you want your grandpa to tell you a scary story, eh? Well, okay then. This is one of the last stories from by story book, I have not yet told you. From a time when the Nameless Town still had a name.

I was a young boy back then, only ten years old. The Nameless Town was then called… you know, I cannot even remember what it was called. But it was a center to a local parish now known Lost parish. The town was only a small township surrounded by 5 small villages.

I lived with my brothers and sisters in my fathers farm in West Village. Named such because it was located west of the Nameless Town. The village consisted of six or seven farms, ours was among them. My dad and grandpa had built the farm together. The land grandpa had received from the state as reward for “exemplary bravery in battle” in the War for Independence. Under my dad’s, the little farmstead became a large and rich farm with several cows, pigs and other animals in but a few years. We even had rabbits.

I can still remember the sight of that high roof across several versts of golden fields. Especially in midsummer high sun. I remember the green front yard and a room with blue walls, with an Estonian map on the wall. This was the room me and my three brothers slept in. I even remember the village church and the graveyard, which today nobody speaks of, because nobody believes that the West Village even existed.

There was five of us, me and my friends. I was Riho, from the West Village. My friend Agu was from the big South Village which lied near the Russian Border. Hanna was a small girl with blue eyes and copper hair, from the East Village. Lennart was form North Village and Roobert, who was a couple of years older than the rest of us, was originally from North-East Village, but a few years before, lightning had struck his farm and as he had been the only survivor, he was now living in the orphanage in the town.

I think we became friends the summer before school. I wanted ice cream but I did not have enough to buy it. Some of the other children had the same problem, while the store clerk had the problem of not having enough small change to give us back. Back then, a cent could buy a lot. However, some of the older village children wanted to take the money from us until Roobert stepped in. So we cut him in as well.

From that moment on were were nigh inseparable inside and outside the school, exploring the villages and the Nameless Town. But often one could find us on the border of East Village and South Village, sitting and playing on a milk stand. Also waiting to see the milk truck making its morning round.

In those times, cars in the countryside were a rare sight and a milk truck was an interesting thing to see, looking like a peculiar horseless carriage. Sometimes we even imagined a horse before it so it would not look so unusual.

On that particular day, of which I wanted to tell you, our little group was sitting on the milk stand waiting for a milk truck. The steel milk vat was already on the stand and we just played around it. Our milk stand stood on the grass path between the grazing lands and to us children is was quite a tall structure to sit on, offering a good view of everything around us.

In the landscape around us there was a weird place we had always tried to understand. And the grown-ups either evading answers or not answering at all only fueled our curiosity. Far away from the milk stand, a little off the grass carriage path, there was large dark arbor, which stood ominously in its place like an ant hill in the middle of a cabbage patch. To us it seemed curious yet weird. If the rest was a level grazing land, then why was this patch of trees left here? Usually these patches developed from piles of rock gathered from the fields. But there were no rocks here.

Of course Agu had several interesting things to say about this which kept us awake all night and had also brought him trouble when children saw nightmares due to his stories. Or refused to leave building at all because of his stories about strange creatures roaming the fields in broad daylight. Creatures who were only visible in direct sunlight and only from one side.

Agu with his long and straight dark hair, who was maybe a few months younger than me, was a talented storyteller. Nobody could tell more stories about things happening in and behind our world than him. Also I do not remember him ever repeating a story or changing the details, as if he was telling small stories of a larger world.

*

“My grandpa told me once that the place over there was once a church...” Agu spoke.

“Agu, please don’t speak of that!” Hanna shrieked.

“Okay, Hanna does not hear anything now.” Roobert placed his hands on the girl’s ears. “Now tell us.”

“There was a church.” Agu continued. “The church had a sacristan who always made trouble with children. So, one day, some of the braver boys sneaked around and added some henbane to the clergyman’s soup. Well, he lost his mind, ripped apart both the Bible and the book of hymns, climbed to the steeple and sawed off the cross and set the church on fire. He then danced in the flames naked and spoke in languages nobody could understand...”

“And then what happened...” I asked, having adjusted my suspenders.

“And then...” Agu looked around, Hanna removed Roobert’s hands from her ears. “...stories say that the sacristan read devilish verses which brought a star down from the sky and dropped it on his church!”

“That is not a scary story!” Hanna said with displeasure. “A stupid story is what it is! My dad said, that it is somebody’s old farmstead and there’s an old well many children have fallen into and died. That’s why we cannot go there!”

“Did you see it?”

Agu jumped, touching Lennart’s shoulder, forcing him as well to scan the grassland between the milk stand and the dark trees.

“Tell me you saw it!”

“Saw what?”

“That creature! You know, the one that is visible only from one side. Who gets mad and goes berserk if it notices anybody seeing it!”

“No I did not. What does it look like anyway?” Lennart asked, turning back to eyeing the tall grass. As did all of us.

“Like an old willow tree with the top cut off but the trunk full of new sprouts. But it moves, changes it’s shape and it has lots eyes of different sizes, all of which want to see everything and thus in each eye the pupil is constantly changing in size. It can move quickly but quietly. This milk stand is the only safe place, but in this grass, nobody can help you.”

“What does it do, when it catches you?” Hanna asked, rolling a birch switch between her fingers.

“First it regards you with its big eyes. Touches and pokes at you with its many worm-like tentacles which also have eyes on top of them.”

I looked how Hanna held the switch near Lennart’s neck.

“It pushes the tentacles into your belly button, eyes, ears, nose and mouth. And then it’s body opens from a place you would not even guess, between the two biggest eyes. It then bites into your stomach with its thousands of teeth and sucks you empty like an egg. It is not interested in flesh, bone or marrow, only your guts and all that soft stuff.”

“What...” Roobert started, looking around nervously. “What is that thing called?”

“Tole.” Agu said with a cryptic tone. “It is called a tole.”

“A Tole?” Hanna asked. “That is the stupidest name I have ever heard!”

Her gaze fell back on the switch in her hand, which she used to tickle Lennart’s bare back peeking out between his shirt and pants.

“Help! A tole!” The boy jumped up and off the stand and then rushed to the stairs. “A tole at the milk stand!”

His gaze then fell on the girl and the branch in her hand. “Very funny.”

“Agu, I know I have asked this several times, but how do you know of all these things like toles and lion ants and all these other creatures who live in both darkness and light yet whom we rarely meet?” I asked.

“I just know.” The boy smiled. “And some of it is written in books as well. My uncle came for a visit from America and he had a book with him which had pictures of all these terrible things. So they certainly exist.”

“The milk truck is coming.” Hanna said.

This stopped our discussion, as we all leaned on the handrail of the milk stand and watched how first came the cloud of dust and then the noise started growing closer. Finally a black car with big bowls for headlights emerged from the dust.

“How is it possible that something is visible from one side anyway?” Roobert asked. “And that there is no danger that I run into something like that or that it gets run over by a tractor?”

“Because most of the time it is in a sideworld.”

“In a sideworld?” Lennart asked. “What does this mean?”

“What lies beyond the grave is a type of sideworld. There is no heaven or hell, just one singular beyond the grave. The place where the toles and the rest come from, is another sideworld. And there are many others. Ghosts come from their own sideworld, just like goblins. They are in our world only at the moment and for the duration that they are visible. In other times we cannot see them and they cannot damage us.”

“And they are only visible in sunlight?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe the professors working in town in that big building also have some secret knowledge.”

Milk truck with a green wooden bed rolled beside the milk stand. A man with long mustache stuck his head out of the side window.

“Well, children? Again guarding the milk keg, eh? I could almost tell time considering how regularly you’re here. Every Saturday morning!”

A man in a white uniform of thin fabric emerged from the truck. He lowered the wooden side of the bed, revealing several other milk kegs, tied up with ropes so they would not tumble over when traveling on bumpy and rutted roads.

“Hey milk man, are you from around here?” asked Roobert, the strongest and most confident among us.

“I am from North-East Village, as you Roobert. I knew your father. He was a hard worker.”

“Then you know what that tree cluster over there is?”

“That one… over there?”

The man with a mustache and a strong tan raised his hand to shade his eyes from the sun and looked towards the trees.

“Oh, I know that. That used to be...” he suddenly stopped. “I mean there fell a...” he stopped again, looking at me and my friends. “Children, you’ve been told to never ever go there, right?”

“Yes.” Hanna said. “But why?”

“What do you mean ‘why’?” The milk man asked. “Even grownups are not allowed… I mean they cannot go there! Just don’t go there! Don’t even think about it!”

He raised the side of the bed up again and locked it.

“And get off this milk stand anyway! Away!”

The milk man started to drive of us off. First lifting Hanna off the stand and then pushed us all off of it.

“Go away! Go find yourself some other milk stand to sit on! You don’t need to be here!”

“Why?”

“Do you want your parents to find out that you’re here discussing those ruins. Do you know what they would do!?”

“Ruins?” Agu asked.

“Off! If you don’t want that then off you go!”

“Agu, come on!” Roobert yelled, as he started off on a road going right past the tree cluster.

“Maybe it’s a nest of toles there!” Lennart asked. “Because those toles are only here and not elsewhere. Agu, how would a tole make smaller toles anyway?”

“Toles do not make smaller toles. All toles are born fully adult.” Agu said. “One tole is born from another when a tole finds a warm, wet and dark place, and then inside of it two smaller toles start to grow. When they are so big that they cannot fit anymore, then they eat themselves out the mother and the mother dies.”

“Gross-gross!” Hanna shrieked. “why did you have to tell us that!?”

Agu only smiled and pushed his hair off his eyes.

“But let us go and see what actually is there.” The fair-haired Roobert suggested. “I don’t believe that Agu’s toles are there but something has to be there if the milk man or anybody else doesn’t want us anywhere near there or even talk about it.”

“Are you sure it is a good idea?” I asked. “There might actually be a well where people fall in and die.”

“Did the milkman not say that these are ruins, that something fell in there?” Agu asked. “Even if it is just a well, we can still break the mystery and don’t have to wonder any more. The milk man has also left. Nobody will ever know.”

“And if we should meet tole over there?” Lennart asked in a cowardly voice.

“There are no toles.” Hanna said. “Agu made them up.”

“But if...” Lennart was still doubtful.

“By the time you see a tole, believing Agu, it will be too late.” I said with a grin. “That’s why should a tole catch you, the only thing you can do while it is eating your guts, is to scream and let us know that you’ve been caught!”

“There are five of us.” Roobert said. “There is but a small chance that the tole will eat only you. Are you coming or not?”

“I’m coming.” Lennart finally said.

“Me too.” Hanna added

“Riho?” Roobert asked.

“Yeah, let’s go.” I said. “Let’s break the mystery.”

“And most important of all,” Agu started in a cryptic half-whisper, pulling us all to sit down in the tall grass. “Whatever happens, whatever we find or see, we will not speak of this to anybody. We will also not discuss it among ourselves anywhere else than here in this tall grass or in that cluster.”

“It could become our secret place.” Hanna said in an apprehensive ardor. “Both now and in the future.”

“A real secret place the others are afraid of.” Roobert said in a reverent voice which caused shivers of cold in all of us.

“A real secret place which has its own shadow of death.” Agu said, and again we felt frightened excitement.

“Let’s go.” Roobert said.

We had this hallowed feeling when we walked those few dozens of steps through the tall grass towards the trees. To get under the giant firs, pines and oaks, which towered over the rest of the forest around it. Where golden yellow grass was replaced by a narrow patch of green grass and then springy blackened forest turf, grown through with roots of various size and dried tree needles.

The dark grove itself was located on a shallow hill. And although one could see cloudless blue summer sky above us, under the grouping of trees it was almost as dark as the night, requiring our eyes to get adjusted to it. Totally unlike a late morning of a Saturday. After our eyes got adjusted to it, it started to seem, that the cluster of tall black trees was much larger that it had seemed from the distance. Several times the area, in fact. And while from the distance one could see only thick trunks and tall crowns, here we could also see lower trees, bushes and shrubs. Peculiarly all of them were dark green, almost black in color, and it was not just the lack of natural light playing tricks.

Also, we could hear no sounds other than what me made, our steps, us breaking the branches as we passed. There were also no smells other than the faint aroma of dank decay. In addition, there was an unpleasantly humid chill in the air, which turned our breaths visible. As if the old folks in the village and the folk tales had it right, and there was only death here. More death than on graveyards, a place were nobody wanted to step to, and not because of something dangerous here but because of something eerie. The dark and the quiet.

“Carefully.” Agu said. “Carefully onward.”

We stepped along a track free of plants which seemed to be an old footpath.

“Is it me,” Roobert asked. “Or is that a small section of a wall over there?”

He stepped off the trail and towards a stone wall with heavy moss cover. It looked as it was made of granite stones that two or three grownups could lift together and bound by mortar. What made it curious was that it had a bendy shape, as if reaching for something. Or as a stone statue frozen in agony, about to fall and shatter at any moment. Looking at it’s shape, it could have been a top of an old buried archway.

“If that over there is a wall, then I found a staircase.” I called out a bit further. “And there’s also a well here.”

“There’s a pond here!” Hanna sounded out.

“Come here!” Agu yelled out.

“What did you find!?” Roobert asked.

“Just come here!”

Carefully, we left the various things we had found and headed back to the main trail snaking about these various features. Continuing onward on the track, we finally saw Agu standing on the precipice of something. That something was a carrion black circular hole about 10 meters wide. It had a thick collar of decorated moss-covered black stone around it, with perfectly seamless joints. It resembled a circular stone tower built into the ground. The thickness of the wall seemed to be far more than our height. We could see no bottom, only a pitch black darkness from which we could almost imagine rising all the horrors of which Agu had told us about.

“What’s that?” Hanna asked.

“A hole.” Agu said. “This has to be the reason nobody wants children here, as they might fall into this bottomless pit.”

“You think it is bottomless?” Roobert asked.

He found a small rock on the ground and threw it into the pit. A tense quiet fell all around us as we held our breaths and waited for the rock to hit something, be it stone or water. But there was nothing, no sound that the rock reached anywhere.

“It is not bottomless.” I said. “You see? Stairs.”

And indeed there was a spiral staircase on the inner surface of the circular pit. If and where it ended, I could not see. What I could see was inner surface of the hole was covered in strange stone carvings. Letters, signs and even larger drawings and reliefs in a strange language. Some of it had chips of stone gouged out of it, other parts were covered in dry black lichens. The latter did not allow me to see the exact surface of the structure but I had a feeling that it was far older than I could ever imagine or any of us had see on the few outing we had had to Reval, to Yuryev or to the fortifications of ancient Estonians.

I continued slowly. I started to go towards the staircase, wanting to see more of the wall. Maybe this wall had a story to tell like a picture book. A story which could trump anything and everything Agu had ever told us or could tell us.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Riho, wait.” Hanna stopped me. “Are you sure you want to do it?”

“We found a pit, and there is a staircase on the surface of it.” I said. “We could at least take a look how deep it is and what lies at the bottom of it. Or if nothing else then to see how far down the staircase goes. Who else is coming?”

“Well, I am not coming.” Hanna said.

“Me neither.” Lennart agreed. “There might be toles down there!”

“That was Agu’s joke!” Hanna said in an upset tone. “Do you really believe that any toles actually exist?!”

“There might be.”

“Us neither.” Agu and Roobert said. “We can watch as you go.”

“Fine then.”

I took the first step onto the stone stairs. Then a second. Then a third. Every step took me lower into the bottomless black pit, of which I could see no more than ten steps ahead of me. Worn steps overgrown with roots and branches jutting out of the inner surface of the wall like sticks of wood. Although my friends were still near me, every step I took moved me further way from them, farther than just a step away. Every step took me deeper into one of those sideworlds of which Agu had told me.

I stopped, looking down into the darkness, around which a spiral coiled. Then up, at my friends, still standing on the edge of the hole. Every step narrowed my field of view on that homely world, the world of daylight.

When I had descended to a depth of about double my height. I suddenly got scared and I stopped, resting my hand against the wall. At that very moment I felt pain in my hand, as if something had pricked me. I pull my hand away and as I did that, I lost my balance for a moment but could still avoid falling. There were several small puncture wounds on my palm and a few drops of blood as well.

I looked at the wall, trying to see the thing that had pricked me, but all I could see were dark roots jutting on and in between the drawings. And then. The roots… moved. My heart stopped. My blood froze. My mind petrified. I suddenly remembered all the stories Agu had ever told me. Toles in dark grass. Old Gods flying around in the dark of the night, looking like a cluster of snakes tied together by their tails. With circular sucker mouths with dozens of tiny teeth. Creatures which would much rather spend their time meditating somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, or gilding between faraway unknown nebula of deep space.

The branches moved again, more this time. Tying themselves in between the stones in the wall. Moments later the roots under my feet started moving as well. The surface of the roots sprung up in thorns and a dry broken root section right beside me twitched and then split apart, revealing what I thought was… an eye.

I lost my footing and fell with my back first into the darkness. I could only hear the screams of my friends.

“Oh my god! Riho!” I head Hanna scream.”Riho!? Riho!!”

Others joined her, calling out my name again and again. The only thing I could think of was that their voice could reach outside the dark patch we were in and later they would all be punished for coming in here.

I have no idea how long I had fallen or how deep. Or whether I was still falling or not. But there was a moment where I discovered that their voices were no longer growing more distant and the tunnel opening to the world I had been living in and from which I had discovered this realm of the dead was no longer receding from me.

I was lying on my back on a soft surface. Like a soft long-stemmed moss. Which I still could not see in this darkness. It had softened my fall. Without it I would have perished for sure, especially seeing the height I had fallen from. My travel through the air had been three or maybe four times the distance I had covered while descending the stairs.

So mystifying and strange was this experience that I did not even try to get up. I did not try to respond to the panicked cries of my friends, calling out my name. I could only see the circular tunnel into the light before me, with the spiral staircase and the carved walls. My eyes were slowly becoming adjusted to the darkness though. I could see the black carved walls of the hole. I could see the stairs. The stairs were half-buried in the mosses so it would seem the hole was filled in with dirt and had originally been even deeper. The coiling staircase as well, I could now see that in some places it had a step or two or three missing. Difficult, but nothing insurmountable.

However the way out fascinated me far less than the wall of the pit, to which my current position had provided a completely new perspective. Light from the external world revealed outlines for all the signs and images on the walls, no matter how broken or moss-covered they were. In some places the walls were full of strange vertical rows of signs, looking like a language nobody could possibly read due to the intricacies of the symbols.

The drawings which broke apart the rows of signs and symbols were even more interesting. Large images of cephalopods and jellyfish with many tentacles of various sizes and designs. Some of the more narrow tentacles had thicker offshoots. Carvings of strange plants which looked like bushes full of tentacles as described by Agu. Fish with tentacles and large scales which looked like flat stones. Ball-shaped many-eyed fish with spikes. Something I could not classify neither as an animal or plant. A small ball of long spikes. And a larger image of something which had the tail of a fish, but instead of an upper part of a man, there were tons of muscular tentacles.

“Hey, Riho!” Roobert sounded out. “Are you alive!?”

“Yes, I am!” I yelled back.

“Virgin Mary be thanked!” I heard Agu upstairs.

“I found something!” I said. “Come on down!”

At that moment, with a slight startle I found something else. Near the moss surface on my right side, I could feel a slight wind in that otherwise deathly stillness. A low dry rush of wind coming from somewhere and carrying the smell of dry stone. Slowly I got on my knees and crawled towards the draft finding something that assured my suspicions that the staircase had to descent further. I found a vault of a doorway, a capstone with a sign cut into it looking like that Russian bug-shaped letter. The capstone was in the wall and I could also see a few stones on either side of it, arching downwards.

Under this half-buried arch there was a low yet wide tunnel, where the draft emanated from. The opening had no more height than my fist, but the width matching my whole forearm.

“What did you find then?” Roobert asked when the others had reached the bottom of the pit.

“I found a lot of images.” I said. “If you care to look up.”

“Wow, that is quite a find!” Roobert said in an acknowledging tone.

“And there is also a buried doorway.”

“Doorway?” Agu asked.

He fell on his knees to examine it closer.

“Sure enough, there is a capstone here, there is a mark on it, and the draft is strong enough to put out a candle.”

He pushed his fingers into the dirt and started clawing away.

“What are you doing?” Lennart asked.

“The ground is soft.” Agu replied. “I think we could return with shovels and lanterns and uncover it. It would not take long.

“You want to get into the cave under the ruins?” Roobert asked.

“We came to this group of trees which everybody seem to be afraid of.” Agu said. “We might as well explore it in depth.”

“You know some many so horrible stories.” Hanna said. “Are these not enough?”

“These are never enough. That’s why I know so many. Maybe I can find some new stories here. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“What’s the plan then?” I asked. “We return tomorrow, on Sunday?”

“Yes.” Agu said decisively. “After the church and going to the town. With shovels and lanterns. Is anybody opposed to this?” He looked around.

“I came here once, I can return.” Lennart said.

“Can we go home now?” Hanna asked. “This hole scares me more than the rest of the place.”

*

The next day after church and a walk in town with family, we were ready to dig and explore the tunnels.

Back then, the Nameless Town was different. You could meet happy people in there, once a week there were even masses of people, as walking about the town after church was a pastime for the country folk. Organ grinders cranking their boxes, hurdy-gurdy players were cranking their instruments, berries and other sweets were sold on street corners, the people on the market revealed their best stuff and the bar proprietors opened their Sunday vodkas.

Not even thunder and rain could not decrease the mass of people on the center square. The villagers kept on grilling and smoking meat and the sales of fair type goods actually increased while people waited for the rains to cease.

In one such sudden downpour, five children with lanterns and shovels were walking on a grass track between the fields. Wondering at the strong winds trying to bend the mid-summer grass towards the ground and twist the rain curtain above into knots, as the black collection of trees as background revealed the waves of rain in the sky.

I stopped, being the first to reach the fork in the road, leading straight to the arbor. It was wonderful to feel the warm summer rain soaking us, falling on top our heads and on our faces. I looked down to see the rain washing sand and grit from the little stones on the car path.

“Could we not go back and do this on some sunny day?” Hanna asked.

“So we would have to return the tools to the farm of Agu’s uncle without putting them to use?” Lennart asked, displeased, “in this rain?”

“We agreed to do this today.” Agu said. “Whatever happens. The rain is not a valid reason.”

“Hanna, if this is not agreeable to you, you can go home.” I said.

“Are you going digging even if I am not there?” Hanna asked.

“Yes.” Roobert said.

“Then I’m coming as well.” Hanna said in a confident tone.

“There is one thing of which I have to tell you, before we get to the hole.” I said, as we were trudging through the wet grass towards the grove.

“Of what then?” Agu asked.

“Of what happened in the hole.” I said.

“You fell...” Hanna started.

“Yes, I fell. But I fell because there were roots on the stairs and on the stone wall. And these roots moved as if tails of some snakes.”

“They moved?” Lennart stopped walking. “How?”

Wet sat in the tall grass. The fact that it was raining, that the wind was forcing the grass on the ground and made us cold and was generally unpleasant, made everything around us and what I had to tell them, only more hallowed. To feel each other’s body heat in this cold circle right next to the ominous forbidden arbor made everything more hallowed.

“I tripped and supported my hand against the wall. I think there was a section with thorns, as it cut me.”

I showed them my palm and two little black dots on it.

“First the branches started to move and revealed the thorns within them. Then the roots on the stairs started to move and slighter, erecting the long thorns on their surfaces. I could no longer stand on them and fell.”

“Are you sure?” Agu asked. “Because when we descended, there was no such thing. Perfectly ordinary black roots.” He fell silent for a moment. “You said that you were cut? You know what it means, don’t you?”

“What…?” Lennart asked.

“These roots, whatever it is living down there, tasted your blood. And obviously it liked it.”

“And what does that mean?” Lennart asked. “That we should not go there?”

“No, it does not mean that.” Agu said, getting up. “But we have to be careful. Let’s go.”

With reserved care we stepped into the twilight under the towering firs and oaks, which now, in the dark clouds of the thunder rain felt even more evil and ominous with it’s lack of light.

Every time the thunder rolled, it felt like it was coming not from the sky but rather from under our feet. It felt like at any moment the ground could open up with thunderous rumble and swallow us into the carrion blackness. What made it even more strange was that despite us standing in the grove under an open sky, no rain fell here. There weren’t even any grayish blue rain clouds, instead there was only clear blue sky, which gave off no daylight. Eventide was all around us but from between the trees we could see the rain beating down and the dusk of an afternoon rainstorm.

The lanterns Hanna and Robert had lit up were of no help. The flames behind the glass were potent but little light managed to reach beyond the glass. It did not light up neither the ground or the forest. It did not even reach a person’s face when they raised their face right next to it. In this fashion, the flame felt almost devilish. Offering little heat and no light, only solace being that it was aflame. Something to look at and to keep one’s thoughts on while darkness and the creatures within crept ever closer.

One after another, we descended along the stairs on the interior surface of the pit. It was strange that since stepping into the arbor, none of us had said a word. Even lighting the lanterns had happened without any exchange, as if there was a silent line of communication between all of us, which had no need to reach our consciousness.

Our descent into the darkness via the circular staircase went successfully when the last one of us managed to touch the final step half-buried int the ground. It was still dark. Still our eyes only perceived the mere outlines of anything visible. And still, the lanterns were of no use. The ground down here was also still as dry as it had been yesterday. A clear sign that although the hole was open to the sky, no drop of today’s rain had fallen here.

Going by his hands, Roobert found the capstone of the doorway near the ground and started to dig near it. The earth was soft and soon both Roobert and Agu were working in a knee deep wide ditch which was getting ever deeper. The other thing everybody noticed but nobody said anything about, was concerning the light of the lanterns. These were suddenly giving off light, but they only illuminated the ditch where the digging was done and the earth that had been removed. It was still not lighting up the walls of the pit, us or the stairs or that fluffy moss on the bottom ground we stood upon.

When the ditch had become eve deeper, so that it reached the belt of us boys, Agu suddenly hit something solid. Some time later when all five of us were working, we discovered that it was not the bottom of the pit, only a large field stone. It looked as if somebody had tried to seal up the tunnel with large field stones and earth, so that nobody would ever know that there was anything down in this pit.

Soon we were working in a single file crouched under the flat ceiling of the tunnel, which seemed to be made of a single solid piece. Having widened the ditch we were in, we found more walls, so that we had ourselves a trapezoid opening to work in. It took us some more time to dig when finally Hanna’s shovel was the first to break through. As if to convince us of the fact, a strong gust of foul dank air hit us all, making us cough.

Despite that we continued to work, and soon we walked down the hill of dirt into the tunnel with our lanterns in front of us to try and discern the darkness. It was useless though, the only thing our eyes could see was that the cave was much higher than we had thought at first. There maybe even four times our height, and it was not trapezoid but hexagonal.

Lennart took a few steps forward, keeping the lantern ahead of him, trying to see anything in the darkness. It was of no use because instead of seeing anything he slipped and fell onto the floor of the tunnel, with the lantern staying upright but a few steps away from him.

A moment later one could hear a blood-curdling scream coming from his direction. It was even more frightening that we could not see what had scared him, only how he had moved towards us in crab walk, having knocked his lantern over with his foot, so that it rolled towards the wall and fell into some shallow gutter. We could tell it was shallow since we could see still see the glow of the lantern by the wall.

“What is it?” Roobert asked.

“What did you see?” I asked.

“A-a-a…! A skull!” he finally screamed, pointing into the darkness. “I saw a human skull!”

“A skull you say?” Roobert asked with interest.

With a slow pace he walk into the darkness, keeping the lantern near the ground where it seemed to cast the most light. Having taken some time to reach the glow by the wall, he finally stopped.

“There are skulls here!” He shouted. “Lots of skull and other ones. Ribs, hipbones, vertebrae and shinbones. Even some old lanterns.”

“What kind of place is this anyway?” Hanna asked, shivering.

“This...” Agu stated with a shallow reverence. “...is a place where a long time ago, people who had turned away from Christianity worshiped very ancient and alien false gods and carried out human sacrifices to them. The sacrifices were left into this tunnel, where they believed the old gods congregated and carried out their affairs. These gods had to be gods of fertility and harvest who, in exchange for human sacrifice, ensured bountiful crops and all sort of riches gathered a long time ago in honor of the false gods by people long since gone.”

“Hey, there is another passage here!” Roobert shouted from even further away, having continued while Agu was talking.”

Lennart got up again, and despite her objections, grabbed Hanna’s lantern and went after Roobert. Hanna sighed and crawled towards the glow by the wall to fish out Lennart’s lantern.

Agu also followed Roobert and Lennart while I stayed somewhere in between, keeping my eye on Hanna who was still trying to reach Lennart’s lantern and had her hand quite deep inside the hole.

“Do you need help?” I asked.

“No.” The girl replied. “It is within the reach of my fingers. I will get it at once.”

“Do you mind if I go and see what they’re doing up there?”

“No, go ahead. I will follow as soon as I get my hand on that lantern. A dammit!”

I left Hanna behind and headed towards the others, standing at the edge of a forking passage. I bowed for a moment grabbing a small piece of rib to bring along.

“What did you find?”

“This passage here is even darker than the one you’re in!” Roobert shouted. “I think I will explore that one.”

“Wait!” I shouted, quickening my steps. “It may not be a tunnel!”

“What?” Roobert asked.

“It may not be a passage.” I repeated as I reached them.

I showed them the piece of bone and threw it into the darkness. A long and tense silence followed, as we could not hear the bone hitting the floor. Maybe a faint splash of the bone hitting water very far below.

“What the hell…?” Roobeet asked, raising the lantern and trying to see into the darkness.

“It’s a trap, not a passage.” Agu said.

“Hey, there’s something in this tunnel I can see!” Lennart shouted from a different direction. “A faint purplish glow!”

“A purplish glow?” Agu shouted back. “What is it?”

“I don’t know! I will get to it in a minute!”

I looked around. Roobert was no longer with us. I bumped Agu’s shoulder to get his attention.

“Hey, where did Roobert go?”

“Hey, I don’t know.” Agu said, starting to look around.

“Hey Lennart! Did Roobert come towards you?”

“Roobert? No!” Lennart shouted back in the distance.

I turned around and crouched down, sliding my hand along the floor as far as I could. I then moved forward to where my hand was. I slid my hand forward again, hearing how Agu was calling for Hanna. The I found the thing I could not see and the lantern would not illuminate. A black edge. And looking over it I could see nothing, only darkness.

“No Roobert did not come here!” Hanna shouted back. “And I think My hand is stuck in this hole here!”

I got up and walked back towards the opening of the tunnel and Hanna.

“I’ll be right there!” I shouted to encourage her.

“Hey, Lennart!” Agu shouted into the darkness. “Did you find anything?”

“Nothing!” A voice replied, being not as distant as before. “The glow disappeardd and I am now walking back! Where did Roobert go to?”

“Don’t know!”

“Is your hand still in there?” I asked.

“Yes.” Hanna replied. “I got the lantern but now my hand is stuck in here and I cannot get it out.”

“Leave the lantern then, we can figure out later who will be punished the least for losing the lantern.”

“Okay then.” The girl pulled her hand slightly and then screamed.

“Ow! Something grabbed my hand!”

“Some thing?” I asked, looking how Hanna was trying to extract her hand form the opening.

“Yes! It has sharp teeth and it is dragging my hand deeper!”

She was then pulled with the whole body against the floor of the tunnel.

“What’s going on?” Lennart shouted from the distance. “Did you find Roobert?”

“No.” Agu said. “I think the purple glow you saw is back, and it is coming towards us.”

Both I and Hanna could see a purple moving glow rising further down in the passage, as if the sources of light were constantly moving around, sometimes coming closer, sometimes going further. Suddenly Hanna screamed and started to cry.

“What is it?” I asked.

“This something is squeezing tighter and I think it has...” she stopped taking and started screaming as if being tied to a wheel.

A dark splurge of some black viscous fluid emerged from the hole and Hanna was thrown to the side, still crying. Moments later her screams drowned out everything else in my hearing. I stepped closer to see what was going on. The light of the lantern found a pool of blood first and then Hanna’s dress soaked in blood. And then a gaping black wound right near her shoulder.

At first I could not tell where the wound was exactly. But then I got it. The wound and the blood were where her shoulder had been.

“Hey, Riho! What happened?!”

“Some… thing… bit Hanna’s arm clean off!”

“Wait… what!?” I could hear a voice from the darkness, the glow in the passage started receding.

Agu’s lantern started to jump around but then stopped.

“Agu?” I heard Lennart’s voice on the verge of crying.

“Yeah? What is is it?” Agu sounded out.

“Agu!” Lennart now shouted in a deathly frightened tone. “I can see it! It is looking! It is regarding me!”

“What!?” The boy shouted back.

“A tole!” Lennart shouted out.

A second later the purple glow turned into a bright flame and in the tunnel I saw both Agu running fowards as as well as Lennart who was further back, standing before the origin of the purple flame with Hanna’s lantern. The source of the purple light was globular semi-transparent slimy mass which took up the full width and height of the tunnel. On top of the surface of the thing, various glowing purple spots moved around constantly, dividing and uniting, with their sizes and shapes in constant flux.

A moment after that, if fell on top of Lennart as if it was a bag of gut half-filled with water. The two ends of the bag wrapping around him then enlarged and met merging into one and swallowing him whole, lantern and all. Then the ball turned opaque, being filled with a red color which spread uniformly around within its body. The strong glow then disappeared leaving behind only faint flashes swimming in the darkness.

“Come, let’s go!”

I helped Hanna up and as fast as we could, I ran up the dirt mound that filled the opening of the tunnel. The dusk visible from there was pure and safe daylight compared to the pitch black darkness and the monster glowing within, sure to save us from it.

I helped Hanna out first, then followed and grabbed Agu’s hand to pull him out after me.

“Pull me out!” Agu shouted. “It is right behind me!”

As I grabbed his hands, his mouth suddenly sprayed a huge amount of blood in my face, hands and clothes. I pulled, feeling relived that it was not as hard as I had thought it would be. As I got up, however, I saw that something was amiss. Agu was dead. Only his top half had emerged from the opening, everything from the waist down, his butt and legs were gone, ripped off. And something in the tunnel was putting tension on the pale intestines, pulling the upper part of him slowly back into the darkness.

Again, I helped Hanna up. Due to the blood loss she could no longer tell where we were or what was real and what was not. We ran up the spiral staircase as fast as we could and then straightest way out of the black arbor and towards the closest farm a few versts away.

*

At that same night in that same farm where I had ran to, a meeting took place in the shed between the old men of the five villages and the Nameless Town. A car was called for and Hanna was taken to the hospital, after which all men went into the shed in a single file and closed the door. For a moment I could listen in what they were talking about before the mother of the house found me and with the help of the daughters captured me and pulled me back into the house.

“The girl he escaped that place with, she is dead.” An unfamiliar man said. “You all know what this means. We have to burn her body before the night is over. Those hexagonal passages...”

“Didn’t our fathers say that our strength may not be enough?” And old man now spoke. “It did not help that we simply closed the place and forbade anybody from going there! It is still calling people to it. Especially children. There are no options left, we have to call the minister and let the army get to it.”

“The army?” Somebody asked. “What are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking about the same thing I thought about fifty years ago when both czars named Alexander told me to go pound sand and take my books with me. I thinking that we should use that explosive sawdust of Alfred Nobel to collapse the walls of that Devil’s Well and raze the grove so in the future, nobody would know where it was nor know to even look for it. My institute has enough power, so that if our army will not take care of it, then the Russians, Germans, Finns, Swedes or even Latvians will.”

“And the boy..?”

“I don’t know...”

This was the last thing I heard as the farm wife grabbed my collar and started to drag me away. However, before I reached the house, I fainted.

*

I woke up in my own home. In a bed. In a room where two of my sisters usually slept. The first thing I noticed in this room bright with mid-summer sun was that the hand that been pricked by the thorn on the wall of the pit was now in bandages and also shorted than the other hand.

“Hey!” I shouted. “What happened? What happened to my hand?”

It seems somebody heard my screams, because soon my sister Agnes opened the door for a bit and peeked for second before stepping in.

“What happened?” I asked. “Why is my hand like that?” I asked, raising the bandaged stump. “Where… is my hand!?”

“I’m sorry, Riho. You had blood poisoning and...”

She started to cry and ran out of the room.

Some time passed until my father stepped into the room. He had his boots and a heavy black felt coat on. In his hand he held a double-barrel shotgun. He closed the door quietly and then broke the gun open, loading it with two shells. He then set it in the corner by the door.

“Son.” He said with an apprehensive yet cold voice. “How are you feeling?”

He grabbed a chair and sat down.

“Father, what happened to my hand?” I asked.

“You got blood poisoning. The doctors had to cut it off. I’m sorry.”

“How a blood poisoning? In that grove I only leaned on the...”

“Son!” He stopped me in a cold tone. “We have to have a talk of what happened to you and your friends.”

“I understand.” I sighed. “I know we should not have done that. But we went to the grove and we found...”

“Riho!” father stopped me again. “We have to talk about what happened. Do you understand?”

“No. No I don’t.” I said.

“Riho.” He started in a grave tone. “It happened that you and your friends… after the church you went to play by the milk stand and fell asleep in midday sun. The farmer came to mow the lawn with his tractor, he could not see you and drove over you. Agu, Lennart and Roobert died right away, you helped Hanna get to a nearby farm and she later died in the hospital. You had only minor injuries but you had blood poisoning. You had three weeks of high fevers and due to gangrene you lost your hand.”

“Dad!” I said. “It wasn’t like that! We went to the grove, down the pit and dug the tunnel open..”

“Riho!” Dad raised his voice. “He have already investigated the events, determined the culprit and tomorrow the guilty party will be punished. Now, if you insist on this lie you want to tell me then in the end it would look like you would be the true culprit. You went down the pit first, did you not?”

“Yes dad, but...”

“No buts, Riho.”

He sighed again, then grabbed the shotgun from the corner and sat down again, with the gun across his legs.

“Only this once will I tell you something and we will never speak of this again. Repeating it or asking about it before the next time I or somebody else talk to you concerning it will very likely get you killed.”

“Okay.” I swallowed and steeled my will.

“Once a long time ago, when the land was still young, an ancient evil walked the lands. It was evil, because it was death itself. It poisoned the land, it poisoned the air, it poisoned time and space, even trees and animals. It twisted them all and imbued them with grotesque alien spirits both in body and mind. The place you went to has been a scourge on our land for a long time. It wants to be revealed, to be known by people. It entices them. It may even possess their minds with terrible and wondrous knowledge. There is an agreement in place that we do our best to ignore it. We keep away from it. Anybody who does not follow the agreement, should they survive their encounter, has to be destroyed.”

“So what about me?” I asked, shivering, still looking at the gun.

“You were lucky.” Father said. “We saw the state of your hand. By cutting it off, the infection of the flesh would be stopped. If you had not been infected you would not be here right now. However, your trial is not yet over. We stopped the poison in your body, but it is possible your mind too is affected. From now own you will be watched very closely. If a suspicion should arise that your mind has be poisoned, I nor any of the other village adults will not hesitate to to do what needs to be done.”

“What about the place?” I asked.

“You needn’t worry about that. A decision has been made. By this time next week it will be as if never even existed.”

“So who is the true culprit?” I asked. “It is not Kalev, is it whose field this was?”

“No. It is Peeter, the milk truck driver.” Father said. “We could overlook the fact that he did not detain you all and bring you away by force. But what we cannot overlook is the fact that he did not notify us of you asking questions about it. Whether it was because he did not consider the possibility of you going there or because his mind had already been affected, there is not much difference between the two. So he will have to make atonements.”

“How?” I asked.

“You need not worry about that.” Father said. “You’ll see. The only thing you need to worry about is that should you discuss this matter in any way after I leave this room, you will have to do similar penance.”

After saying those words, he got up and left, taking the gun with him.

*

A few days later I was told that Peeter who had driven the milk truck had been found near the milk stand we used to play at, dead. His remains were cremated and spread into the Devil’s Bog.

I did not go to school that year. I was not let off the farm either. The next year I was sent to a boarding school in St. Petersburg where I stayed for 7 years.

When I finally returned in 1938, I could no longer find any sign of the grove, nor the hillock it had been on top of. It was all uniform grassland full golden hay ready to be cut.

In the end, I did not heed to my father’s warning. After the war and after my father and all the old men had died, I started to look into the matter. By that time, nobody could tell me more about the events that summer. The were all adamant about the lie of us being run over by a tractor. By that time, despite the words my father had said when I was recovering, nobody ever came to tell me more of that ancient evil still buried there.

I also learned that the old man I had seen in the shed who proposed dynamiting the pit had been a high-ranking elder of the Institute. My father had also been a member, albeit a lower one. This high-ranking elder had indeed met with both Alexander the Second and the Third, which meant that at that time he had already been well over 80 years in age, and probably very experienced in these matters.

Despite it all happening nearly 80 years ago, I can still remember it, as if it was only yesterday. Of the events that day only two pieces of evidence remain that day. An old photo my father had, with him, the old man and the rest of the village elders standing before the shed of the farm I took Hanna to. And a memorial standing near the officer’s village in remembrance of the lie told about that day. Although I am pretty sure now that the memorial was moved after the war when the old officer’s village was first built.