Chapter 3

Of course, I would have been able to see none of this detail, if it weren’t for the fact that with finding this grave I had also found the mysterious source of illumination which I had passed off with a mundane explanation earlier.

             Around this grave was a ring of fire, dancing low above the ground, though it seemed to be leaving no mark on any of its surroundings, as if the fire were above the grass and stone from which it appeared to rise.  Dancing wistfully across the land, it proved to be the source of the odd, undulating shadows which I had encountered before, but having this knowledge come to me did nothing to waylay my fears.

            Still, those flames would have been terrifying enough to see, playing lazily where they should not have been, no reason having been giving for their presence to begin with, but the worst had not yet transpired. 

            My mind could hardly believe what my eyes were telling it, when I beheld what happened next.  First, just in front of the grave, I saw a great rift open in the earth, as flames poured violently from the fissure, dancing ever higher and brighter, to the point that I was forced to raise my arms to cover my face in defense, both from the inferno-like heat and blinding brilliance emanating from them.  Still, I could perceive when the flames were dampened by some outside force, and so I dropped my arms, pushed yet again by that curiosity which had held me all that forsaken night. 

            What I saw there still haunts me to this day, as I have said many times, but at the time I was more stricken with awe than anything, watching with my young inquisitive eyes, gazing upon this most unbelievable of events. 

       There were two forms drawing themselves up from the rift, their bony elbows being the only part to clear the surface when I had lowered my arms.  I could make out no detail beyond the basic shape, and what I saw appeared only to be the arms of a very skinny man, but in a moment the head had cleared the surface as well, and I became all too aware that this was no man that was rising up.

            Still I could make out no detail for the bright light resting behind the creatures, but the head was clearly inhuman, with long pointed ears rising from either side, and an elongated pointed jaw reaching far towards its chest.  The other creature, whose head had just cleared the surface was even more grotesque, with short, blunt horns rising from its forehead, and with impossibly large, round ears, and a face that looked oddly squashed in the middle, as an hourglass. 

            They rose quickly from here, pushing off of their arms and launching themselves to land atop the grave.  I saw now their whole bodies, and still wish that I might never have seen them at all, much less in such detail.

            The one which I had first seen, with the pointy ears and long jaw, was extraordinarily tall for how skinny it was, almost looking too lanky to be real.  It’s skin had the look of old wet leather, giving off a loose sheen, but looking, at the same time, awful and dirty.  It was all greenish in color, the green one associates with those dirty things like mold, swamps, and the such.  The whole thing was rather sickly in appearance, and it looked out upon the landscape with large, bulbous eyes that protruded from its skull and moved fully from one side to the other. 

            Somehow, though I still do not understand how, he never spotted me, or if he did made no note of it, as I never received hardly any attention from either of the creatures.

            Nevertheless, I saw that his jaw was so long not because of some unusual bone structure, but because it had an unnaturally long mouth full of horribly pointed teeth, jagged an inhuman.  As it opened those horrible mandibles, a long slender tongue arched out, and winded grossly through the open air, disgusting saliva dripping from the tip slowly and falling lazily to the ground. 

            At its side stood its counterpart, a shorter creature by more than a head, but sill unnaturally slender.  This one was even more horrible, it’s strange, pitch black, blunt horns sticking strangely from its forehead, above its eyes- or rather, where its eyes should have been- as there was instead wrapped a thin, blood-stained cloth that appeared eons old.  Frayed at the edges, it seemed to be peeling everywhere, and looked somehow both destroyed and completely coherent at the same time.

            I watched in horror when his body turned, and small flames would spit from his dull red skin, as it looked as though his skin were splitting and tearing with every little movement.  The mouth seemed to be set permanently set in a grimace of pain, contorted horribly, and looking even more so every time the creature turned and spit flames to wreath its body.  The whole creature was, to my eyes, a beast straight out of Hell.

            What perhaps scared me far more than their hellish appearance and the unmistakable feeling of ghoulishness which pervaded the air around them, was the action they took while at the surface.

            Their movements were fast, deliberate, and in a moment, they were done and gone from this world.  It might have appeared no more than a flash of furious actions to the casual observer, but I was so intent on watching, adrenaline pumping through my body, that I caught every movement of theirs.

            It started with each scanning the horizon, though I have no idea if the one could even see anything at all, or if it even had eyes at all.  Once they were convinced that they were unwatched, a thoroughly flawed belief, as my young eyes gazed upon their devilish work, they turned to the grave and swung their arms down, driving their long, slender, and knobby-knuckled hands into the hard stone.

            With sickening crunches, their blows each shattered the stone below it, and small cracks started to spread down the sides of the raised block.  With their grips firmly in place, each leaned back, and slowly the cracks began to widen.  All of this work was strangely silent to me, and all at once I felt a horrible air of discomfort come over me and I wanted no more than to run from that spot, and take up a hiding place in my house.  However, I could do no such thing, as the demons were still there, and surely would have lunged to grab me, dragging me to the deepest depths of Hell.

            So I watched, as the grave was split, and from the great stone poured a strange ethereal mist, flying loosely in every direction into the air above me.  As the mist dissipated above me, I heard a terrible scream, an agonized cry that pierced me so, that I finally broke my stillness and jumped to cover my ears in defense.  Wincing in pain, I closed my eyes and looked away, only for a moment, but when I looked back I saw the demons were gone, and the fiery fissure in the ground was sealing up.

            An instant later, I was alone on the top of the hill.

            I returned home after that, the journey home marked by nothing extraordinary, except for the speed which I exhibited on that run back, moving faster than I had ever before.  Still, for what I had seen that was to be expected, I feel.  I returned to my bed, exhausted, and fell into a deep slumber almost immediately.  With that, the night was over.

            The night never really left me, though, as the images still fill my nightmares to this day.

            Perhaps I will always be doomed to be haunted by that night, the night I encountered those grave imps!