Chapter 06 Trapped Inside a Tomb

Then, our hope was drowned in an ocean of pure, undiluted horror.

A shape blocked the faint light from the entrance. A head. A human child’s head, framed by the stone. He was peering down into the darkness.

His eyes, adjusting from the light outside to our gloomy cave, swept past the rocks, past the empty fire-pit—and landed directly on us.

On our circle of ashen, petrified faces, our eyes wide with a terror so profound it must have looked grotesque. For one endless second, there was no sound. Just the shared, silent realization of predator and prey, locked in a stare.

His face, curious and bored a moment before, transformed. His eyes bulged. His mouth dropped open. His features twisted into a mask of disgust and shock that mirrored our own terror.

He screamed.

"AAAAAAA! David! Goblins! Goblins! Disgusting freaks are here! They're here! HELP ME!"

His head vanished, yanked backward.

The spell of paralysis shattered into a million shards of pure, shrieking panic.

The hatchlings, jolted awake by the scream, erupted in a chorus of terrified, bleating squeals.

"Wreee! Wreeeeee! Muma! Dada! Scary!"

We adults broke. A scream of helpless, goblin fear filled the burrow, overlapping, echoing, amplifying.

"Reeeeeeee! WREEEEEEE! Eeeeeeeek! No-no-no!"

We didn't run. We didn't fight. We did the only thing our broken spirits knew: we scrambled towards each other, piling into a single, trembling mass of limbs, hugging, clutching, trying to physically press the terror out of one another. We were a screaming, weeping knot of despair.

Outside, the voices returned, shrill with their own panic.

"Goblins, David! I saw them! At least 7 of them! They're inside!"

"Calm down! I got my spear ready! I'll stab them if they try to get outside!"

"No, no, no! We need to get out of here! It's more of them than we thought! We can't deal with them! They're talking about real goblins here! It's just two of us! We need more help!"

"Damn it! What now, Erwin! What do we do now?"

"We... we... we block the hole! Trap them inside! Till morning! Yeah, we gather our gang, and, in the morning, we show these disgusting goblins what's up! Look over there! Hurry! Help me with the rock!"

The last thing we saw before the world went completely black was the entrance crack vanishing, blocked by something heavy scraping over it. The last sounds were the grunts of the human children shoving a stone over the entrance, sealing us in our own grave.

Human voices faded, swallowed by the night and their retreating footsteps. The screaming died down into sobs and whimpers. Then, movement.

Grub burst from our terrified huddle and lunged for the sealed entrance. We heard him slam his head against the rock above, his hands pushing with all of his meager might. His spindly legs trembled, the cords in his neck standing out like roots.

"Uunnngh…! Rock not move! too heavy! Can't push away!"

The sound was a strain of pure will against impossible weight. The rock didn’t budge. Not a whisper.

“Grub, I help!” I scrambled over, adding my own meager strength to his, pushing up with my back next to his. Nothing. My legs trembled instantly. It was like trying to lift the sky. 

Behind us, Snag, Grill, and the others were cooing and shushing, gathering the frightened hatchlings into their arms, trying to pour calm from their own terrified bodies into the little ones.

We hit the rock with our heads, pushed until our muscles burned, scraped at its edges with our miserable nails until our fingertips bled. We punched it. We licked it, as if our spit could melt it away. Grub actually begged it.

 "Please, rock, move! We be good! We go away! Please!"

We pushed until our muscles screamed and our vision spotted in the dark. We slumped down, panting.

My mind, feverish with claustrophobia, scrabbled for a solution.

 “The digging sticks! We wedge! Use like a lever! Move it little by little!”

It was a pathetic hope, we jammed them into the narrow gaps around the stone’s edge and pulled, pushed, pried.

One by one, the sticks splintered into useless kindling. The stone remained. 

“DIG!” I shouted, “We dig around! Dig under! Dig up! Dig anywhere! We dig till we are outside!”

I tore at the dirt, my bloody fingers finding only more hard soil, then the unyielding seam of bedrock that formed the burrow’s shell. Grub had chosen this place because it was hard to dig. Safe. Now, it was our prison walls.

A heavy hand landed on my shoulder, pulling me back. It was Grub.

“Hermit. Stop. Don’t waste your strength.”

“We have to—”

“We are trapped. This is it. We cannot move the stone. That is the only way out. This cave… We cleaned the dirt from it. Everything around us is stone. We have nothing to dig; it's nothing but a stone here. It’s over. Save your strength. Save it till they come back and remove the stone. That is our only chance. When the light comes, they will open the door. Then we run for it.”

He knelt, bringing his face closer to mine.

 “These are not adult humans. They are human kids. We have a chance. A small, stupid chance to escape them. We each carry a hatchling. When the stone moves, we do not wait. We run. Not together. In all directions. They cannot chase us all. Some of us… maybe get away. The hatchlings… maybe some survive.”

He put a hand on my chest, over my pounding, terrified heart.

 “We sleep. We rest well. Because tomorrow… tomorrow may be our last. And our last strength will be for running.”

He stood up and moved back toward the others. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, the cold of the stone seeping into my bones.

Panic had subsided, not into calm, but into a deep, exhausted resignation. The hatchlings, worn out from crying, were falling into a fitful sleep. The adults huddled around them, not speaking.

There were no more plans to make. No more clever ideas. We were prey in a trap, waiting for the trappers to return. The only thing left to do was to gather our warmth, whisper useless comforts to the young, and try to steal a few hours of sleep before the final, desperate, scattering run into the dawn.

----------------

The deep, rumbling snores of the adult goblins were the only sounds in the burrow. The fire was out. The darkness was complete, save for the faint, ghostly glow of the fungi on the wall.

In the nest, six pairs of milky eyes blinked open. They were not sleepy. They were hungry again. The food from hours ago was gone. Their little bellies, so round before, now felt like tiny, echoing caves.

The smallest one sat up, its nose twitching. It could smell it. The smell of more food. A wriggly, earthy smell. Its eyes, adjusting to the gloom, landed on the old, hollow log pushed against the far wall. The Worm Farm.

It poked the hatchling next to it.

 “Psst. Hungry… smell food nearby. In the log.”

Soon, all six were awake. They crept out of the nest on silent, tiny feet, moving past the mountain of sleeping goblins.

The largest hatchling led the charge. They scurried across the dirt, a tiny raiding party. The log was taller than they were. They climbed each other, a living ladder of green skin and tumbled over the rim into the log’s heart.

It was a world of wet, decaying wood and wriggling worms. Dozens of fat, pale worms, each as long and thick as a hatchling, writhed in a tangled mass. To an adult goblin, they were slippery protein. To the hatchlings, they were monsters.

The first hatchling lunged at the nearest worm. It bit down. The worm’s skin was tough and slick. The worm, surprised, didn’t flee. It struck. Its front end whipped around. It coiled around the hatchling’s throat, a living, squeezing noose.

The hatchling’s victory chomp turned into a choked gurgle. It dropped the worm’s tail, its tiny claws scrambling at the constricting band around its neck. Its eyes bulged. In seconds, the brave hatchling was at the center of a pale, throbbing knot. Worms coiled around its limbs, its torso, its throat, squeezing with a slow, relentless pressure. The hatchling’s eyes bulged. It made a tiny, choked gurk sound. It couldn't breathe. It was being hugged to death by dinner.

The second hatchling, trying to help, grabbed the worm’s other end. The worm, sensing new pressure, lashed out with its posterior, wrapping around the second hatchling’s midsection and squeezing the air out of it with an oof.

Nearby, the smallest hatchling had chosen a different worm. It tried to pounce on its back. The worm, feeling the weight, instinctively sought darkness and safety. It drove its pointed head straight into the only dark, warm, sheltered orifice it could find—the hatchling’s butt.

The hatchling froze, its eyes going wide with confusion. It felt a weird, full, wriggling pressure invading a place no pressure had ever been. It looked down, then behind itself, as if trying to understand this attack. Then, with a squeak of outrage, it chomped down on the worm’s body where it emerged from the log, biting through the tough skin. It began to chew and swallow, pulling the worm out of itself inch by invasive inch.

Next hatchling, meanwhile, had found a smaller worm. It had managed to get the worm in its mouth, but the creature was too long. It was a slippery, thrashing spaghetti, half-in, half-out. The hatchling was gagging, choking, its eyes streaming as it tried desperately to swallow or bite through. It stumbled backwards, the worm whipping around, and smacked into the log wall. The impact jolted the worm, and it snapped in two with a wet pop. The hatchling fell on its back, the severed half still in its mouth, the other half writhing away. It lay there, gulping air, chewing on its partial victory.

The burrow floor became a silent, horrific battlefield. Hatchlings rolled in the dirt, tangled in glistening coils, grunting as they wrestled food that fought back with constriction and invasion. 

By the time the first grey hint of dawn began to seep through the cracks around the entrance stone, the worm farm was a hollow, empty log. Five hatchlings lay in a scattered, bloated, exhausted heap in the middle of the log. They were covered in dirt, worm-juice, and a strange, peaceful satisfaction. Their bellies were distended, full of the wriggling victory.