When you’re buried by an avalanche, your body heat melts the snow around you just a little, which then refreezes. The compacted snow sets like concrete, trapping your limbs. Often a small air pocket forms around your head. You are stuck like a fly in a web, waiting in complete darkness for the air to run out.
This was the fate I very narrowly avoided, and only by facing an even worse horror, which I would never have voluntarily confronted.
In 2007 I received a substantial windfall in the form of a legacy from an uncle who had passed away. To tell the truth, he died screaming and insane in a secure psychiatric facility, but that’s another story. Before his mind had become unmoored, he had built up a little business, the precise nature of which was never clear to me, but evidently it was fairly lucrative.
I decided to use this money to pursue my fantasy of writing a novel while living alone in the countryside for a year.
In those days Britain was part of the EU, so there was no bar to me going and renting a place in the Alps, aside from the language barrier. I flew to Vienna then drove south in a hired car, and spent a month exploring the north of Italy and the south of Austria.
Eventually I found a place to rent, in a place called San Drogone, in Italy. San Drogone was nothing but a tiny village, with a small shop for groceries. The house I proposed to rent was two miles from the village itself; close enough that I could walk.
The road from the village to the house was covered in snow, and my rental car was unable to get up there. I soon turned around, left the car in the village, and trudged up the road through the snow.
The owner arrived on time in a four-wheel-drive jeep. She was a youngish woman by the name of Ilaria, with long blonde hair, as is common in those parts. She had come by the house the same way I’d acquired the money to rent it; via inheritance. She spoke a little English and I’d manage to learn a bit of Italian, and between the two of us we sorted out the rental agreement.
I thought her rather stand-offish at first, but I soon saw that she was not without a sense of humour, yet appeared weighed down by some unspeakable burden or other: I presumed the death of whomever had originally owned the house—I couldn’t quite understand who that was—or perhaps some long-standing illness.
The house was run-down but habitable, and soon I found myself alone in it, with only my laptop computer for company. There was no internet connection and no mobile signal, which was how I wanted it.
A funny thing about the house, was that it was positively plastered in crucifixes. It’s not uncommon to find a crucifix or at least a cross in an Italian house, as I later came to realise, but the quantity in that particular house was outlandish, especially since the owner was relatively young. The Italians are losing their religion like the rest of us Europeans, although the ebb of faith is perhaps less extreme there than in many other countries.
I counted a total of seven crosses on the outside of the house, and twelve inside, many featuring the suffering body of Jesus nailed to them, all rendered in cheap plastic.
My next major task was to get the hired car back to the nearest office of the hire company, which was in a place called Trento. Driving there was easy enough, but then to get back I had to take a train, and then a bus, and walk the final thirteen miles from the nearest bus stop. The route from the nearest town involved a badly-paved road, which turned by degrees into hardly more than a track. In Trento, which sits at an elevation of around two hundred metres, the weather at the end of February almost corresponded to a typical summer’s day in England, but by the time I was within a few miles of the village, I had stepped into conditions that more resembled a Scottish Highland winter, due to the increased altitude.
As I approached the village itself, a large dog came bounding towards me out of nowhere. I’m not especially afraid of dogs but this one was tough-looking and was making a bee-line for me. Just when I thought it was about to fasten its jaws on me, it jumped up at me wagging its tail, covering my coat in paw prints, and I realised it was simply very friendly.
This dog, I later discovered, was named Luca and was owned by a man who lived in the village.
I was about a mile from the village when some local, passing slowly in the other direction in a four-wheel-drive car, stopped and wound down his window.
I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying to me, but he seemed to be trying to tell me that I shouldn’t go any further, but should turn back. I couldn’t make him understand that I had rented a house up there, and had nowhere else to live. He seemed angry. Eventually he gave up and went on his way.
Luca followed me all the way to the village.
Once I’d passed the village and Luca had scampered off back to his owner, I walked the remaining two miles to my house through thick snow. The snow ploughs had only properly cleared the road as far as the village; after that I was on my own. After having already endured this hike the first time I’d arrived at the house, by then I had actually bought cheap crampons, with rubber straps that fixed over my boots, attaching metal teeth to the soles that dug into snow and ice. Snow shoes would have been a much better investment, and I’ve since learned that many people die in the Alps just for lack of them.
Over the following few weeks most of the snow gradually melted away. I increasingly began to explore my surroundings.
I discovered the cave quite early on. It resembled a sort of crack or fissure in the rock, large enough to walk into upright. I started forwards, intending to walk just a little way in, but something stopped me.
It’s hard to describe the sensation that washed over me, quite unexpectedly. I can only describe it as a feeling that something deeply malevolent lurked within that dark crevice. But that hardly conveys it. There was a sensation of profound wrongness, as though I had stumbled upon something completely unnatural; something that shouldn’t exist.
My hair stood on end and I hurried away. Even the sky gave me the creeps after that experience; I became uncomfortably aware of the huge ocean of gasses above and around me, and of my lack of any real insulation from the vastness of the universe above. A kind of agoraphobia, I suppose you could call it, if you had to put a label on it, although I had never previously felt any such sensation.
The feeling persisted somewhat for several days. At night I became unsettled by the quantity of air in the room in which I lay, and I pulled my bedclothes tightly around my head.
Luca appeared periodically at the door of my rented house, scratching to be let in. I figured out that his owner was an old man who lived alone in the village, by the name of Marco. I’d feed Luca some scraps of food and sometimes he came on a little walk with me, happily following me around. Once I discovered who his owner was I’d take him back home after a bit.
He wasn’t neglected by any means, but he had a habit of escaping from the garden he was supposed to guard, and seeking out new friends.
On our second walk together we passed close by the cave, and that was the only time I had seen him frightened. He refused to go anywhere near the cave, and only barked at it with his hackles raised.
I had only been in my new place around a month when something extraordinarily bizarre and horrible happened.
I went out on a walk that was rather longer than usual, exploring the mountains a bit. At a certain point the weather turned, and soon a blizzard was blowing. On my way home I happened to almost pass the cave entrance, and by then the hour was around five and, what with the sun descending behind the mountains and the blizzard, I could hardly see where I was going.
I felt a shiver run down my spine at the sight of the cave entrance, which now struck me as curiously repulsive. Then I heard a bark.
I stopped and listened. Undoubtedly it was Luca, but where was he?
I strained my eyes and ears, trying to shield my face from the driving snow with one hand, and through the snow and mist I thought I saw something standing in front of the cave. Stealing my nerves, I began to make my way towards it.
Incredibly, there was a flimsy wooden cage in front of the cave entrance, and Luca was in it. He was overjoyed to see me. I quickly unfastened the cage door and let him out, and he jumped up and began licking my face.
Since the weather was absolutely horrible, I didn’t feel like taking him all the way home to Marco, and I was wondering if Marco was the one who’d locked him up there, and if so, why? So I took Luca back to my house.
Inside he ran around jumping on everything, creating a terrible mess. I cooked us both some sausages and then he calmed down a bit.
At night he slept peacefully, to my surprise, given his boisterous character.
Around three in the morning I awoke to find a bright light shining through a crack in the curtain. At first I thought a car had somehow got up on the hill and was shining its headlights directly at my window, but then I realised the light was a full moon, almost setting, which happened to have reached the correct position to shine through a gap in the curtains and directly into my face.
I opened the curtains a little and saw a landscape that was hauntingly beautiful. The mist and snow had completely cleared up, leaving a perfectly clear sky. The moon softly illuminated a still, snow-covered terrain, dotted with spruce trees and ending in the mountain range. I was so taken with it that I tried to photograph it before returning to sleep, but my camera wasn’t really up to the job.
The following morning I set out to return Luca to his owner. I can’t say that I really knew Marco, having only exchanged a handful of words with him, but he didn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d leave his dog in a cage on the hillside during a snowstorm. I hoped to extract some kind of explanation from him using my rudimentary Italian.
When I arrived at his house I knocked on the door but there was no response. I knocked again, thinking he must have gone out somewhere. Then I thought I heard a quiet sobbing. Luca heard it too and he happened to bark, then I heard the sound of Marco positively running to the door. He flung it open, and Luca jumped at him, barking and licking his face. Marco embraced the dog, actually crying.
I tried to explain, in Italian, that I’d found his dog in a cage. He seemed to understand, although I couldn’t be completely sure. Then he showed me his wrists. They had livid red marks on them, as though he’d been tied up. He pulled up the legs of his trousers and there were marks there too, on his ankles.
Needless to say, I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about whatever was happening in this village. He tried to explain but there were too many words I didn’t know. Finally he took my arm and pulled me outside, where he pointed at a house. I understood he wanted me to go there and knock on the door. Feeling as though I was in some sort of weird dream, I did as he bade me.
The house he’d indicated stood near the top of the hill, and was smaller than Marco’s. I trudged up the hill in the snow, let myself in through a little gate, and knocked.
Soon the door was answered by yet another old man. The village seemed to be full of old men living alone, although I had definitely seen women there, and even a few younger people.
This particular man was gaunt and hollow-cheeked, and had a haunted look about him. He spoke to me in Italian and I pointed at Marco’s house and tried to say that Marco had sent me.
When he heard my accent he switched to English, which he spoke with a faint accent that I couldn’t quite place.
“I understand.” he said. “Come in.”
Inside, the house was unlike anything I have ever seen, before or since. The walls were adorned with curious demonic masks, animal skulls, maps, diagrams, and what looked like reproductions of pages from old books, many of them framed behind glass.
“You’ve got yourself in a bit of trouble, I think.” he said, motioning me to site down at a table.
“What do you mean?”
He watched me steadily, apparently trying to decide how much to tell me.
“There are people here who follow ancient superstitions.” he said. “Things that don’t belong in the modern age. The dog was intended as a sacrifice to L’Entità. Now you have saved him. They already suspect. You were seen on the hillside last night. There are some who feel you should be sacrificed instead. Only, they weren’t sure if you had really saved the dog. Now they will know.”
“They wanted to sacrifice Luca?” I said, unable to believe my ears.
“Precisely.”
“To what?”
“To the thing that lives in that cave.”
“What lives in the cave?”
“That, my friend, is a long story.” he said.
We sat in silence for some moments. He didn’t seem keen to tell me much else.
“They tied Marco up to keep him from rescuing his dog.” I said.
He sighed.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. You mustn’t be harsh on them. It’s either an animal, or their sons and daughters. They believe the creature must eat every full moon.”
“Why don’t they give it a chicken or something? Or even better, a mouse?”
“Usually, they do, but L’Entità has been getting restless recently. A girl disappeared. They believe she was consumed. It is no longer satisfied with chickens.”
“What is it? A bear? Why don’t they kill it?”
“I came here fifteen years ago.” he said, apparently ignoring my question. “For forty years I taught at the University of Bologna. I taught myth, legend and folklore. This place has always fascinated me. Nowhere else is such a strong, persistent and definitive myth found. For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, people have believed that something evil lives in that cave. I have uncovered evidence that even the Romans and the Goths knew of it, and feared it.”
“Nothing can live so long.” I said.
“No ordinary biological organism, no. The thing that lives in that cave is not of this Earth. Or if it is, then it was here long before spiritual entities ever took corporeal form and took up residence here.”
I laughed, openly scoffing at his words.
“The universe is larger than you might imagine.” he continued. “Things exist that are incomprehensible to the limited human mind. We are only hairless primates, and we can form only limited conceptions of the world around us.”
“You’re telling me some sort of demon lives in that cave?”
“Ancient peoples would have conceptualised it as such. I believe it is of natural origin, but it has no bodily form.”
“If it doesn’t have any bodily form then how does it eat people?”
The slight smile dropped from his face and his expression took on a grave and serious aspect.
“It consumes them spiritually,” he said. “leaving behind only a useless husk, which it secretes somewhere in the depths of the cave system.”
“This is the most absurd pile of nonsense I’ve ever heard.” I told him.
“Perhaps, but the locals believe it. I suggest you leave here immediately, before they all realise what you’ve done.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Certainly not. I’m a scholar, not a thug. Think of my words as representing important advice in dealing with a somewhat primitive and rather ancient tribe of which you have no real knowledge.”
“I’m not leaving. I have nowhere else to go.”
“Then I suggest you arm yourself.”
Only after I left this man’s house did I realise that I hadn’t got his name, and could have taken the opportunity to at least ask a little more about these local legends. The entire conversation had quickly become so unsettling that I hadn’t really maintained a clear head.
I trudged back to my house through the snow, which was still stubbornly clinging to the mountainside on account of the altitude.
The snow seemed to me to provide a natural defence. I would easily spot any marauding villagers making their way up the track that led there in the kind of large cars that can handle those conditions. The other possibility was that they could walk up, but I’d easily see them coming and it would take them a while. Unless they had snowmobiles I didn’t see how they could possibly reach me quickly.
I still needed groceries. I had to eat. About a week later I made my way nervously down to the village shop, trying to pick a time when I thought it would be relatively empty.
When I opened the door, causing a little bell to ring that alerted them to customers, both the woman who ran the shop and its only customer, an elderly woman, stopped what they were doing and turned to look at me, gawping as though I had three heads.
I gathered up the few things that I needed as quickly as possible. The elderly woman hurried out. The cashier watched me curiously, but pretended to be busy with something every time I almost caught her eye.
When I went to pay it seemed like everything was going to go smoothly, but just as I turned to leave, she caught my wrist and began jabbering at me in a mixture of standard Italian and the local dialect. I couldn’t understand much of it, but it seemed like she was trying to warn me. Her eyes were moist and her tone was imploring. I think she was grateful that I had saved the dog, and afraid for my life. I caught only a few words, like “mostro” (monster) and “sacrificio”. She also used a lot of religious terms: I distinctly heard “Dio” and “Santa Maria”.
I pulled my arm away, telling her “grazie” since I didn’t know what else to say. When I exited through the door she was still half-crying, and imploring me, probably to leave and save myself, in that tone of voice you hear a lot on Radio Maria.
A few weeks passed by uneventfully. I worked on my novel, a gothic horror about werewolves which in the end I was too embarrassed to publish, gazing at the mountains out of the window while I worked.
Then one night I was again awakened by a bright light shining between a gap in my curtains. This time I got out of bed in a great hurry, again thinking the moon was a car headlight and this time thinking the villagers had come for me. Then I calmed down a lot as I realised it was just the moon.
But then a new concern entered my mind. The full moon—wasn’t that when they believed their monster had to be fed? I hurried to the window at the other side of the house and my worst fears were realised. Five or six vehicles were making their way towards the house.
I quickly dressed and gathered together a few things in a rucksack. I would have to temporarily flee into the night until it was safe to return. At least, if there were to be a break in, I’d have cause to call the police.
Unfortunately I misjudged the business. I ran out of the front door, thinking I’d just get out in time, and found myself staring down the barrel of a shotgun, wielded by a flint-faced old codger from the village.
More of them arrived while I tried to reason with him in my poor Italian. Soon I was surrounded by eight old men. They tied my hands behind my back and forced me to walk towards the cave. With a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach, I saw that two of them were carrying the same cage from which I’d rescued Luca. Considering the smallness of it, even being locked in that thing would be quite the punishment, monster or no monster.
They marched me to the cave through the deep snow. I kept falling on my face but they yanked me roughly to my feet, jabbing me with the barrels of their guns. They wouldn’t listen to anything I said to them.
There was a brisk wind blowing and snow began to fall again as we walked.
At the mouth of the cave we stopped and they put the cage down a couple of metres from it. Again I felt that odd sensation, as if staring into something wholly unnatural and perverse.
They opened the cage and stuffed me in. The front of it was only secured by a flimsy catch, but with my hands tied, I had little hope of being able to unlock it. I could only hope that once they left me alone I’d be able to roll the cage and smash it open.
But they didn’t leave me alone. They stood back and waited, staring expectantly into the ominous dark depths of that wretched crevice.
I can’t explain what happened next. I became seized with an unspeakable terror, like nothing I’ve ever felt. I had an awful feeling that something truly repugnant was slowly approaching, stumbling and scratching its way towards me inside the inky blackness of the cave. Some inchoate entity of indescribable evil.
Horrible images flashed through my mind; the beaks of repulsive squid-like beasts, surrounded by fleshy tentacles covered in suckers; loathsome half-formed mouths filled with needle-like teeth dripping with blood; disgusting blobs of sentient pus; all lurching and crawling in my direction from the very depths of hell itself, eager to feast on my horror-stricken psyche.
And then I realised, with a sudden terrible shock, that the cage itself was inching slowly towards the mouth of the cave. The snow underneath and around me was gradually being drawn into the cave, like syrup flowing from an overturned jar but in reverse.
The wind reached a terrible howling intensity. I began to shout and scream at the assembled men, forgetting that probably none of them spoke English, begging them to set me free, pleading for mercy. I no longer even knew what I was saying; I only knew that I was scared out of my wits.
As the cage gradually fell into the cave, borne on the unnatural tide of snow and ice, darkness began to close around me. The men moved in closer to observe my fate.
Then there was a terrible and awesome sound, somewhat reminiscent of thunder but far deeper and with a grating, squealing edge on top of it. I saw the men look up in terror. They turned and tried to flee, but a vast slab of snow, sliding down the mountain, buried them in the blink of an eye, simultaneously cutting off what little moonlight still connected me to the ordinary world.
A moment later all was silent; I could hear only my own breathing, and the beating of my own heart. My eyes strained for the faintest glimmer of light. Then I saw it: two yellowish pinpricks in the darkness; two inhuman malevolent eyes.
“Please!” I whispered, my throat so constricted with fear that I was unable to even scream.
It stopped; I could make out nothing of it but those horrid eyes, watching me.
And then I experienced a new and wholly unexpected sensation; one of indescribable relief. The eyes distinctly began to retreat again into the darkness. I can only describe the feeling as one of forgiveness, as if I had committed some awful crime, but a lenient and merciful judge had decided that I was fundamentally of good heart and character, and should be freed rather than hung.
I began to pound at the cage with my back and feet, every which way I could manage in the restricted space, and soon I succeeded in smashing the door open.
For perhaps an hour I remained there, shivering and muttering to myself, yet somehow the worst of the fear had passed. Whatever was in there, it didn’t want me.
Again I heard the curious creaking, rumbling sound that had presaged the avalanche, and a slab of snow fell away from the entrance of the cave, revealing a dim reflection of moonlight on the snow. If my eyes hadn’t been adjusted to profound darkness, I probably wouldn’t have seen it at all.
I stumbled towards it and manage to worm my way out by degrees, slithering out onto the snowfall outside the cave.
How happy I was to be free! I believe that, even after the creature had retreated, I had accepted death, powerless as I thought myself to be, to escape the darkness.
I staggered back to the house through a vicious blizzard, falling over and over again but always staggering back onto my feet.
Once home I was able to cut the ropes that held my wrists with a kitchen knife.
I was deathly cold. I ran a hot bath and sank myself into it as a matter of urgency.
Only when I’d warmed myself up did it occur to me that I should probably contact emergency services, but up there I had no phone signal. A ferocious blizzard was blowing outside and either the moon had set or storm clouds had obscured it.
Nothing could be done until the morning.
I fell asleep in my bed, exhausted.
When I awoke the following morning, bright sunshine illuminated the snow. Rescue teams were already combing the hillside. Someone else must have alerted them.
In the end they made no progress. The bodies of the eight men weren’t found until two weeks later, when the snow had largely melted in the warmth of the spring.
I didn’t go up there again until all the snow had gone. Although I had strangely lost my fear of the cave, having faced the worst and survived, I was nevertheless happy to discover that the mouth of it had collapsed. The cave had disappeared, buried beneath the rocks.
I stayed there for another two years, working on my book. Luca’s owner let me take him for walks in the hills.
There were no more sacrifices.
As for the retired academic, I later discovered his name was Conrad Grohman, and he was an Austrian, having been born just across the border. Soon after the collapse of the cave he left to live in more hospitable climes, somewhere near Treviso.
I’ve tried to find the ancient writings he spoke of, alluding to the thing that lived in the cave, but with no success.
Perhaps it’s for the best.
