Twilight Workshop

The Pit Digger

Note: this is an automatic translation from the lithuanian original, performed by ChatGPT 5.5. Use the language switcher at the top right to find the original.

A faraway thunderclap woke Arnas from sleep.

The room was dark and stuffy. Grandmother’s clock on the wall showed two in the afternoon, but it always showed two — it had stopped maybe five years ago. Night was seeping into the room through the old wooden window frames — like blackcurrant jam. A black, warm June night, swollen with storm.

Arnas lay still for a while, listening. Somewhere beyond the fields, far between the clouds, thunder rumbled, the old house creaked in the little wind, and behind the wall Grandmother was sleeping. Then his belly reminded him why he had woken up. He needed the toilet. And fast.

The boy sat up in bed. His bare feet touched the warm floorboards. The worst thing was not the dark and not the storm. The worst thing was waking Grandmother, because she was strict even when the matter was this serious... In the morning she would surely say that a twelve-year-old boy had no business clattering around the house at night like a drunk horse.

And he had only just turned twelve. Aunt Roberta had said at his birthday that from now on he ought to be brave. Arnas had nodded then. Now he was not so very sure about that. Quietly, he went across the room, then down the corridor. He tried to put his feet where the boards did not squeak, but it seemed they all squeaked. The door hinges moaned so loudly that Arnas froze, but waiting was even worse — the boy gathered himself and opened the front door.

Grandmother did not wake. Arnas went out into the yard.

Outside it felt easier. The air was warm, damp, and full of the smell of coming rain. The lilac leaves rustled, and a wind rolled through the yard, full of the smell of meadows. Lightning lit up the fields, the trees, and the white stripe of the gravel road for a moment, then darkness returned.

The little outdoor toilet hut stood behind two old lilac bushes. Mossy stones led to it — it was fun to hop across them by day, but now there was no fun in it. The homestead itself, somewhere around Širvintos, had been there for maybe a hundred years already. Old trees grew around it, and beyond the fields the marshes began. Grandmother used to say it was better not to go there. Not because you would drown or get lost. Simply — better not to go. In the marshes there were snakes, leeches, deep holes under the water, and places where the ground looked firm only until you stepped on it.

About other things she did not speak, but Arnas always felt that when she talked about the marshes, she stopped before she had finished.

The toilet hut was old, but strong. The boards were greyed by time, dry, thick. Thicker than it seemed such a place should need. Inside hung rolls of paper, a few books lay on a little shelf, and on the floor there was a rug with a dog on it. Grandmother always kept the toilet clean. Too clean, in Arnas’s opinion, because she did not let him pee boy-style — she made him sit down.

“A great danger to the cleanliness of the hut,” she would say.

Arnas closed the door, hooked the latch, and lifted the lid.

Below was a black hole.

He never liked looking into it. By day it seemed unpleasant. By night — deep. Like a bottomless pit, or maybe even deeper. Down to the place where the world we live in ends and another one begins, the underground one.

Arnas sat down quickly, before he managed to scare himself.

Then lightning lit up the inside. Only for a moment. The cracks between the boards shone white. The books on the shelf, the paper on the wall, the dog on the rug — everything appeared and vanished.

A few seconds later the rain burst open. It came unwarned, as if someone had slit the sky. Heavy drops hammered the tin roof so loudly that at first Arnas even laughed. Everything became not so scary. The storm was strong, noisy, but familiar. A summer storm in the countryside. The kind after which, in the morning, the earth steams and smells of wet blackcurrant leaves.

“Maybe it’ll be short, I’ll wait it out here,” he thought. “Then I’ll go back.”

And then he heard footsteps.

He did not believe it at once. Rain could sound in all kinds of ways. Drops beat the roof, splashed from the lilacs, ran down the boards. But this sound was different.

A step.

A pause.

Another one.

Something was walking slowly, carefully through the wet grass, and you could hear the woody stems breaking. Arnas stopped breathing. The steps were coming from the field side. Not from the house. From the fields, from the marshes.

He sat still for a long time. Rain drummed on the roof, but inside him it became so quiet he could hear his own heart.

“Who’s there?” he finally asked. “Grandma?”

There was no answer.

Then something shifted by the door. A dry, crackling sound came, as if an old newspaper were being crumpled. Or as if something were very slowly bending a wet branch. It lasted a few seconds, then went silent.

“Yes, it’s me,” said a voice behind the door. “Open up. Let’s go home.”

It was Grandmother’s voice.

Almost.

Arnas had already been reaching for the latch when he understood it. Grandmother would never have said it like that. She would not have asked. She would have ordered. She would have knocked with her fist and growled that he should drag himself out at once, because all the house would get soaked while she was out here looking for him and keeping the door open. She would not have stood in the rain and... waited.

The handle moved. Very slowly, it bent downward.

The door opened a finger’s width. The latch tightened and gave a little squeak where it pressed into the eyelet.

“Open, Arnas,” said the voice.

Arnas pulled his hand away from the latch. Just then, somewhere from the very distant homesteads, a dog began barking. It was the dog of the nearest neighbours, living maybe a kilometre away, and the wind had carried its bark.

“Grandma,” he said, not himself understanding where the clever thought had come from, “why is Tobis barking?”

Behind the door there was silence.

Long.

Too long.

“Tobis only got frightened by the lightning,” the voice finally answered. “Open up. Let’s go home. We’ll calm him down.”

Arnas felt the skin on his arms turn to gooseflesh. There was no Tobis. There never had been. Grandmother had only a cat named Barbara, who disliked children, rain, and life in general.

The handle tugged again. This time harder.

Arnas slid off the seat and knelt by the door. He pressed his face so close to the crack that he smelled the rain. He waited for lightning.

When it flashed, Arnas saw feet.

Not Grandmother’s feet.

Only that.

He jumped back, hit the wall, and covered his mouth with his hand.

“Let me in, Arnas.”

The voice was still Grandmother’s, but as if something else were speaking together with it.

“Let me in.”

The handle tugged.

“Let me in.”

Arnas kept silent.

“I know you’re not Grandmother,” he said at last.

The voice behind the door went quiet. The handle went quiet too. After a few minutes the rain stopped, but the silence after it was worse than the noise.

Arnas could hear something breathing behind the door. Not a person. Or a person whose chest was full of water. The wheezing rose and fell. Slowly. Patiently.

He sat on the edge of the toilet and repeated in his mind: “I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.”

Grandmother’s house was only a dozen steps away. His real, safe, dry home was in Vilnius, forty kilometres away.

Suddenly there came a scraping, a scratching, stopping, catching where the knots were in the boards.

A long, slow dragging across the boards. “It’s scratching with a claw!” he thought. On one wall. Then another. Then behind his back. Something was walking around the hut and dragging a claw over every board. Looking for a weak place.

Arnas pressed his knees to his chest.

The boards held.

After a while more, the steps moved away.

He could not believe it. He sat in the dark for a long time. So long that his back began to hurt and his legs went numb. Only when the clouds parted and moonlight began to seep through the cracks in the boards did Arnas stand up.

He unhooked the latch.

The door squeaked.

The yard looked washed clean. The lilacs shone. The grass lay pressed down by rain. The stones to the house glimmered faintly, and farther off, beyond the ring of trees, the gravel road showed pale.

Arnas took the first step. A second. One more.

Then the sky split open again with lightning.

On the little hill, by the fields, in the tall grass, something grey was squatting. He saw only a silhouette. Bent. Too low for a person. Too long for an animal. Too ugly for an animal.

He understood in an instant — it was waiting.

Arnas ran.

Behind him the grasses hissed. Something sprang from its place. Fast. Too fast. The house was too far.

Arnas glanced over his shoulder and understood he would not make it.

The toilet was closer.

He turned around.

Now he was running back, into the same place he had just left. He ran so hard his chest burned and his feet slipped on the wet grass. The thing was rushing from the side, low, on four limbs.

Not legs.

Arms.

They were the colour of rotting bone. Each had two elbows. The fingers were long, bony, with claws that hooked into the ground and tore the turf. On a long neck, as if made of little segments, shook a head with black eyes. The mouth opened, and in it thin teeth gleamed.

Pike teeth. Or at least something like them.

The thing approached more quietly than such a thing should have.

Arnas jumped into the toilet. He smashed his shins painfully against the seat, fell, got up, and lunged for the latch. His fingers would not obey. They were wet and hurting.

The thing flew past the door, failing to stop in time.

For a moment their eyes met.

The eyes were black, deep in sunken sockets. They were full of hope, like the eyes of a dog rushing to eat the bone its master has thrown.

Arnas’s hand finally found the hook.

He latched it.

A second later the door shook from the blow.

Claws bit into the boards. The hut groaned. Arnas braced his shoulder against the door. On the other side something scratched, howled, panted. The boards bent, but did not break.

It seemed to him the whole world had shrunk down to the door, the latch, and his own body.

Then the scratching stopped.

The thing began running around the hut. One circle. A second. A third.

Then — digging.

Not boards.

Earth.

Arnas slowly turned his head toward the toilet hole. From below came a dull spilling of soil. He shone his flashlight.

The bottom of the pit could, after all, be seen quite clearly. Wet, dark, disgusting. In the side, where there should have been only earth, a crack had opened. Fingers were coming through it.

The same whitish, horrible fingers.

The thing pushed its arms through the hole and began pulling itself inward, into the toilet pit.

Arnas watched without moving until, with a wet plop, it fell in. It happened so fast. The boy dropped the lid and climbed on top of it.

Sounds came from below. Scratching. Gargling. A terrible howling. Something was battering the seat from underneath. The lid rose and fell beneath his foot.

“Arnas!”

A voice outside.

A real voice.

“Arnas, run!”

Grandmother.

Arnas jumped off the lid, unhooked the door, and burst outside. Behind him the lid lifted. Something unpleasant and large slapped against the wood as it climbed out of the hole.

Grandmother stood by the lilacs. She was wearing her nightdress, with an old sweater thrown over her shoulders. Her hair was stuck together from the rain. Her face was white with anger.

In her hand she held a burning bottle.

“Here!” she shouted.

Arnas rushed to her. Grandmother grabbed him with one hand and threw the bottle with the other.

It flew slowly. At least that is how it seemed to Arnas.

In the toilet doorway the monster was already climbing out. Bent, wet, grey, with too long a neck and too many elbows. Half human, half insect, half corpse, or at least that is how it looked to him.

The bottle shattered, fire took the scarecrow’s body, and it howled in an inhuman voice.

That scream echoed across the meadows, across the marshes between the damp alder groves. It cut into Arnas’s ears and stayed there for a long time, maybe for life. The fire spread to the toilet boards, to the door, to the roof. The hut burned, and inside it something howled and thrashed.

Grandmother dragged Arnas into the house.

Inside, she shot the bolt and braced the door with her back. Arnas sat on the floor beside her. For a while the two of them sat saying nothing, only listening.

Outside, the monster was still screaming. Then the voice ceased.

Only then did Grandmother sigh.

“Took a long time dying, the filthy thing,” she said.

The storm returned before dawn. The rain put out what was left of the toilet. Grandmother lit the fireplace, wrapped Arnas in a blanket on the bench, and sat beside him. When he fell asleep, she still had her hand on his shoulder.

In the morning everything seemed like a dream.

The sun warmed the windowsill. The kitchen smelled of porridge. Outside the window, butterflies flew above the wet grass, as if nothing in the world had happened and nothing ever could happen.

Arnas sat at the table and looked at Grandmother.

“What was that?”

Grandmother was silent for a long time.

“My grandmother called it the pit digger.”

She set a bowl down in front of Arnas.

“A rare creature. It comes out of the marshes only on nights like that. Hot. Wet. When the earth is soft and people are sleeping.”

“Does it eat people?”

Grandmother sat down. Her face was tired.

“First it stings with its poisonous teeth. A person can’t move anymore, it paralyses them. Then it eats. They say the one being eaten feels everything.”

Arnas pushed the porridge away.

“Had you seen it before?”

“Once. When I was about your age. It was squatting by the marshes. I managed to run back. My mother sat by the door with an axe until morning.”

Grandmother looked through the window.

“Since then I myself keep an axe by the door and a bottle of diesel. Thought maybe I’d never need them.”

“What if there are more of them?”

Grandmother did not answer at once.

“Things like that are rarely alone. That is why we don’t go into the marshes.”

Outside the window, in the meadow, lay the blackened boards of the toilet.

“Maybe we should go to the city,” Arnas said quietly.

Grandmother looked at him, and for the first time that morning there appeared something almost like a smile on her face.

“No, little grandson. If we ran from home because of every monster, then we never would have conquered the earth, never sown the fields. It will not drive us out. We will drive it out.”

She pushed the porridge closer.

“Eat.”

They rebuilt the toilet after a week. The boards were new, thick, nailed double. The latch was bigger than the old one. Grandmother also ordered hooks to be made by the door for holding an axe.

Strangely, after that night, Arnas was no longer afraid to go to the outdoor toilet. It was a similar feeling, but not fear. Caution, watchfulness, but not fear. That June of 2026, Arnas grew up more than a twelve-year-old should.

And the Širvintos marshes remained where they had been.

Silent.

Green.

Deep and full of holes, in which no one knows what may be making nests.

Translated from the Lithuanian original at https://sutemudirbtuves.lt