I had been having nightmares.
These night-time visions, strangely calming, but waking me up with a jolt of fear, had been recurring for the last few weeks. I would get up with memories of most of the dream, but, most unsettlingly for me, not knowing why exactly I was so scared. Of course, when I went over the dream in my head, it seemed creepy, but not enough to actually scare me awake.
I remembered seeing a great mass of pale white flesh, slowly pulsating, like a massive heart.
I remembered the smell of damp earth, strong in my nose.
I remembered the unsettling sound of something chewing.
I would get up at night to stare into my neighbor’s backyard, opening the blinds just enough so that I could peer below them and see it framed between the windowsill and the lower blind, like looking at something through half-closed eyes.
I’m still not sure why I made it a habit. I felt strangely calm, however, staring out of the window, after having those nightmares. I felt like something was wrong, though, felt like something dangerous was happening, but I felt safer, somehow, when I looked at his yard.
One night, around the beginning of the summer, he started digging. If I hadn’t caught him doing it, I would have assumed that he had something else back there, some slowly growing object under the tarp, but his attempt at hiding it only brought it to the attention of my midnight awakenings.
Eventually, the hole got deep enough that he would disappear into it entirely. I could only tell how deep it went through the ever-expanding pile of dirt beside it. Eventually, he started having it hauled away, and I had to keep careful records to try to figure out how deep it was getting. I took pictures, made estimates, looked at all kinds of sources to figure out how to find how deep it must have been.
Midway through August, from my estimation, it must have been twenty feet deep, at least.
The dreams got worse.
I felt more and more uneasy each time, and they lasted longer and longer as well.
The white fleshy mass seemed closer, almost close enough to touch. The air still had that characteristic earthen tang, by now so familiar that I hardly noticed it.
What I did notice, however, was the sound.
For the last few weeks, the mass, pale in the dim dream-illumination, had been getting closer and closer, and that awful chewing sound, wet and crunchy and squelching like bones cracked and being sucked of marrow, had gotten louder and louder, till even in my waking hours I disliked the sound of chewing and had to eat lunch alone, away from my coworkers.
But now it was silent, and the mass, previously wobbling and rippling with a nauseating activity, had stilled, though it still occasionally pulsed, sending a shiver like a pond-wave across its soft flesh.
Now that it was quiet, I could hear the slow and methodical sounds of someone digging far above us, the careful rhythm of a shovel. I listened carefully, and the mass listened as well.
As I moved forwards, to get a little bit closer to the sound, head turned upwards to what I was beginning to realize was a dirt ceiling, I bumped into the mass.
It felt soft, very soft; it yielded beneath my finger easily when I decided to poke it, though it sprang back quickly.. It felt grimy, but underneath the moistness of the wet dirt the skin was waxy.
I shuddered
After that, I knew I had to investigate.
I called in sick from work that day, intending on checking the hole when he was gone. Luckily, he didn’t decide on taking a break as well, so I knew I had ample time to check.
I flung aside a part of the tarp, and moved forwards. I was wearing old clothes, because I didn’t want to get any good ones dirty, and I had brought a flashlight.
I began my descent.
He had done a good job digging it. From my judgment (though I didn’t actually measure it), it was something like 30 feet deep, and two feet wide, at least at the top. It narrowed slightly as I went down, which was fairly easy; the top of the tunnel had many handholds, and the sides were carefully reinforced so they wouldn’t collapse.
As I made my way down, I reached for my flashlight, and tried to flick it on. It fell out of my hand, and I grabbed at it in fear, losing my secure handhold on the tunnel wall. I fell, though not far, and I was cushioned by the soft earth.
In shock, I finally let out a soft gasp of mild pain, and moved my leg.
The tunnel collapses partly over me.
The acrid scent of dirt flooded my nostril stronger than ever before. I felt warm earth spill over me like water, closing in on a buried and drowned victim. I scrabbled at the dirt which blocked the tunnel, before realizing that the more I dug the more dirt fell to replace it. I was trapped.
I sat back, trying to relax, trying to hold my breath, trying not to think about suffocating deep beneath the earth, trying to be sparing with the loam-stinking air.
As I slowly began to lose consciousness, lungs burning and head spinning, I could feel a heartbeat. I knew that it wasn’t my own.
It beat slowly, and out of sync with my own; a soft and eerily familiar pulse.
As my air gave way, I fell unconscious, and thought of it no more.
I awoke in the sunlight, covered in dirt but alive. My neighbor stood over me, angry but relieved.
I looked about me- there was a shovel, covered in fresh dirt, to the side, and the side of the tarp flung aside where I had left it.
I apologized, weakly, though you can’t really apologize for sneaking into somebody’s yard and investigating the hole they had spent a couple months digging.
He never said anything about it, just sent me off. He was angry, certainly, but relieved that I hadn’t told anyone else, and knew that I wouldn’t risk getting a trespassing charge by telling someone.
He still dug at night, though. I think he thought that I didn’t know when he did it.
One night, when the dream had been louder and closer and more vivid than usual, he descended into the hole with several ropes and another tarp.
Over the course of half an hour, a large shape, swaddled in the plastic cloth like some huge baby, was lifted from the hole.
As he unwrapped it, I realized that it was an enormous, bloated grub, flesh pale and moon-lit, foul and fat, slightly longer than he was tall, but round and thick and swollen.
I went out to confront him, knife in hand.
He saw me, of course, heard me over the quiet dirge of cicadas, maybe already knew that I was going to come.
He held a shovel, not threateningly, but tightly enough for me to notice that he likely intended to use it.
“Kill it,” I pleaded.
He shook his head.
The grub turned its face, black and masklike, huge yet small compared to the rest of its bulk.
In a flash, I threw the knife and started running, knowing that I didn’t want to confront my neighbor about this or possibly have to fight him. I wasn’t prepared to kill him, and I certainly wasn’t prepared to die, which was honestly the more likely option.
I turned back, halting, not hearing my neighbor behind me.
The knife had hit, splitting the foul creature’s mask of a face. It slowly stopped shuddering and stilled.
From my bedroom window, I watched my neighbor move it back into the hole and bury it.
A week later, I decided to go on a walk in the park. I hadn’t gone in a while, and I thought that it might be good to go and calm my nerves.
In an open field, I saw hundreds of people digging hundreds upon hundreds of two-foot wide holes.