Then the image was gone, and a moment later the presence in the chamber struck the wall from behind. I heard it grunting with effort as it retreated and threw itself once more against the barrier. Dust descended upon me from the roof, and I thought I heard some of the stones in the wall shifting.

A claw appeared through the hole. Its fingers were long, impossibly so, and appeared to be jointed at least five or six times. Huge curved nails erupted from the ends, clouded with dirt. A gray scaling covered the bones, and thick, dark hairs protruded from cracks in the skin. It reached for me, and I felt its fury, its malevolence, its searing, desperate intelligence, and its absolute loneliness. It had been imprisoned here in the darkness for so long, until Mr. Fell had commenced his translation and begun to explore, moving rock from where it had fallen, clearing debris and restoring braces as he drew closer and closer to the mystery of this place.

The fingers were withdrawn, and the beast hurled itself again at the wall. A fine tracery of cracks shot out from the hole at its center, like threads on a spider’s web. I retreated, backing farther and farther away from it, until the tunnel grew wide enough that I felt that I could turn. For a moment, I thought that I had trapped myself in doing so, and found that I could go neither backward nor forward. Now the beast was howling, but in between its cries I thought I could discern words, although they were spoken in no language that I had ever heard.

With a final effort that tore my coat sleeve from my arm and ripped open a wound on my skin, I freed myself and ran. I heard stone falling behind me, and I knew that the creature was close to breaking through. Seconds later, my fears were realized, for I discerned the sound of its clawed feet upon the stones as it pursued me through the tunnel. I began to pray and cry at once, so terrified was I. My feet could not move fast enough, and the narrow, curving passageway arrested my pace. I could sense the thing growing nearer, could almost feel its breath on my neck.

I cried out, and considered using my lamp as a weapon, but I feared being trapped in darkness with the beast, and so I continued to run, never looking back, cutting my skin on the stones and stumbling twice on the uneven ground until I reached, once more, that ornate support, where I turned to face it at last. There came the sound of those talons scraping on the stone, moving faster and faster, as I groped for the ropes, found them, and pulled.

Nothing happened. I heard iron bolts falling, but no more. A clawed hand appeared at the edge of the tunnel, its nails scraping along the stones, and I prepared to die.

But as I closed my eyes, something rumbled above me, and I pushed myself back instinctively. The tunnel shook as the beast advanced, and a shower of rocks fell at my feet. I heard the thing roar, and suddenly it was lost from sight as the ceiling collapsed. Yet I thought that I could still hear it as the rocks descended, howling in rage and frustration as it retreated farther and farther in its efforts to escape burial beneath tons of rubble.

Then I too was running, until at last I was hauling myself up into the blessed calm of the chapel, and dust was belching from the hole, and the sound of stones falling seemed to go on forever.

I received my living. It is a small church, an old church. There is sunken ground nearby, and visitors sometimes stop and stare at this unexplained, and recent, phenomenon. Some damage to the floor of the chapel has been repaired and a new, larger stone set in the place where Mr. Fell began his excavations. That stone now marks his burial site. I have few parishioners, and fewer duties. I read. I write. I take long walks by the seashore. Sometimes I brood on Mr. Fell, and the great thirst for proof of the existence of the Divine that led him to begin his excavation, as though by finding its opposite he might somehow have banished all of his doubts. I light candles for him, and I pray for his soul.

The documents have been taken away and now, I suspect, they rest in the bishop’s safe, or in the care of his superiors. Perhaps their ashes lie in his fireplace, as he tamps tobacco into his pipe and lights its bowl in the darkness of his library. Where they were discovered, and how they came to be in Mr. Fell’s possession, remains a mystery. Their origins do not matter, and their confiscation does not trouble me. I do not need yellowed paper to recall the creature to mind. It stays with me, and it will always be thus.

For sometimes, when I am in the church alone at night, I believe that I can hear it digging, patiently and intently, moving tiny stone after tiny stone, its progress infinitesimally slow, yet still progress for all that.

It can wait.

After all, it has eternity.

The Erlking

How should I begin this story? “Once upon a time,” perhaps; but, no, that’s not right. That makes it a story of long ago and far away and it’s not that kind of story.

It’s not that kind of story at all.

Better, then, to begin the tale as I remember it. After all, it is my story: mine to tell, mine in experience. I am old now, but I am not foolish. I still bar the doors and lock the windows at night. I still check in the shadows before I sleep, and give the dogs free roam through the house, for they will smell him if he comes again, and I will be ready for him. The walls are stone, and we keep torches burning. There are always blades to hand, but it is fire that he fears the most.

He will take no one from my house. He will steal no child from under my roof.

My father was not such a careful man. He knew the old stories, for he told them to me when I was a boy: tales of the Sandman, who tears out the eyes of small boys who will not sleep; and of Baba Yaga, the demon witch, who rides in a chariot of old bones and rests her palms on the skulls of children; and of Scylla, the sea monster, who drags men into the depths and has an appetite that can never be appeased.

But he never spoke of the Erlking. All that my father would say was that I should not venture into the woods alone, and that I should never stay out beyond nightfall. There were things out there, he would say: wolves and worse-than-wolves.

There is myth and there is reality; one we tell and one we hide. We create monsters and hope that the lessons wrapped in their tales will serve to guide us when we encounter that which is most terrible in life. We give forged names to our fears, and pray that we may face nothing worse than what we ourselves have created.

We lie to protect our children, and in lying we expose them to the greatest of harms.

Our family lived in a small house, close to the edge of the forest at the northern end of our little village. At night, the moon would drench the trees, relieving the dark expanse of woodland and creating silver spire upon silver spire, receding into the distance like a convergence of churches. Beyond were mountains, and great cities, and lakes as wide as oceans, so that a man might stand on one side and be unable to see land on the other. In my child’s mind, I would picture myself passing through the barrier of the woods and into the great realm that they concealed from me. At other times, the trees would promise me shelter from the adult world, a cocoon of wood and leaves in which to hide myself, for such is the lure of dark places for a child.

I would sit at my bedroom window late at night and listen to the sounds of the forest. I learned to distinguish the hooting of owls, the flapping of bat wings, the panicked scurrying of small things seeking to eat without being consumed in their turn. All of these elements were familiar to me, and they lulled me to sleep. This was my world, and for a time there was nothing in it that was not known to me.