was centered.
But the crawl space was all Tangina needed: the remnants of the floor provided an adequate roof for her; she carved out a few nesting placed in the earth beneath it, lined her grottos with tarp, rug, and blanket, and moved in.
She became a creature of the night. She was, as noted, afraid to sleep during the time of shadows, in any case; but in addition, she felt it was the best time to explore the haunted site, to chase down the spirits that stalked her slumber. So at night she dug and she wandered.
She dug directly between the Freeling foundation posts, enlarging the crawl space she was inhabiting, burrowing tunnels straight down or sloping away beneath the concrete. She dug initially with a small hand shovel, wherever her instincts led her, creating an ever more intricate series of shafts, caves, and connecting tunnels. As if she were mining for ghosts.
And she shored up her subterranean excavations with scrap wood, pipes, paint cans . . .
That’s how her wandering started.
She needed materials to reinforce her tunnels, so she began raiding the garages and backyards of Cuesta Verde Estates by night. She garnered many useful items this way: children’s swing sets furnished good structural supports, as did short lengths of outdoor water pipes; table-tops made good underground archways; workbenches provided useful tools, including hammers for chipping away at bedrock and pipe wrenches for liberating the plumbing that shored up the earth so well.
Of course, neighbors were less than pleased to wake up any given morning to find a favorite trellis dismantled, its struts missing; or a major water leak in the back shed, where a four-foot length of three-inch pipe had simply disappeared.
They connected the disturbances, of course, with the poltergeist that was said to have been the curse of the Freeling household; and some, quick to take warning, put their houses up for sale. Others, more worldly, believing less supernatural forces to be the likely culprits, merely increased security measures: they build fences, bought dogs, installed burglar alarms, hired private patrols.
None of these steps took adequate account of the determination and cunning of a desperate, sleep-deprived, psychic, achondropiastic dwarf.
The vandalism (so-called) and pilfering increased. Furthermore, people were beginning to see things—shadowy forms scampering across the lawn at night—and reports of elves, trolls, hants, and goblins flooded the local police department. Arrests were made, but nothing ever stood up in court; and, in any case, the “disturbances” continued.
More houses went up for sale.
Tangina, on her part, was becoming more gaunt and more driven. By day, she fitfully half slept in her kingdom of catacombs; by night, she tunneled and gathered. Her tunnels led her under adjoining houses, across streets, into natural caverns, into tombs and graves. And the conversations she had with these withered corpses—both in the moment and in her sparse, fragmented dreams—led her further still into obsession, toward madness.
She would go for days without food, then break into someone’s kitchen and gobble up whatever was in the refrigerator—cold hot dogs, ginger, ale, milk, Velveeta cheese, beer, carrots—and skulk off again into the starlight to steal furnishings for her dreamland-beneath-the-surface. It went on for months like this before she discovered the first petroglyph.
It was etched on the rock face at the entrance to a natural cavern. It was Indian in origin, and she didn’t know what it meant, exactly, except that its psychic impact was so great that it hurled her across the floor and against another wall. She was unconscious for many hours.
When she awoke she knew only that this was the beginning of the portal she’d sought for so long—the entrance to the place that haunted her dreams and distorted her visions. Trembling, she approached the cave drawing and stared at it: it was the likeness of a man
But the crawl space was all Tangina needed: the remnants of the floor provided an adequate roof for her; she carved out a few nesting placed in the earth beneath it, lined her grottos with tarp, rug, and blanket, and moved in.
She became a creature of the night. She was, as noted, afraid to sleep during the time of shadows, in any case; but in addition, she felt it was the best time to explore the haunted site, to chase down the spirits that stalked her slumber. So at night she dug and she wandered.
She dug directly between the Freeling foundation posts, enlarging the crawl space she was inhabiting, burrowing tunnels straight down or sloping away beneath the concrete. She dug initially with a small hand shovel, wherever her instincts led her, creating an ever more intricate series of shafts, caves, and connecting tunnels. As if she were mining for ghosts.
And she shored up her subterranean excavations with scrap wood, pipes, paint cans . . .
That’s how her wandering started.
She needed materials to reinforce her tunnels, so she began raiding the garages and backyards of Cuesta Verde Estates by night. She garnered many useful items this way: children’s swing sets furnished good structural supports, as did short lengths of outdoor water pipes; table-tops made good underground archways; workbenches provided useful tools, including hammers for chipping away at bedrock and pipe wrenches for liberating the plumbing that shored up the earth so well.
Of course, neighbors were less than pleased to wake up any given morning to find a favorite trellis dismantled, its struts missing; or a major water leak in the back shed, where a four-foot length of three-inch pipe had simply disappeared.
They connected the disturbances, of course, with the poltergeist that was said to have been the curse of the Freeling household; and some, quick to take warning, put their houses up for sale. Others, more worldly, believing less supernatural forces to be the likely culprits, merely increased security measures: they build fences, bought dogs, installed burglar alarms, hired private patrols.
None of these steps took adequate account of the determination and cunning of a desperate, sleep-deprived, psychic, achondropiastic dwarf.
The vandalism (so-called) and pilfering increased. Furthermore, people were beginning to see things—shadowy forms scampering across the lawn at night—and reports of elves, trolls, hants, and goblins flooded the local police department. Arrests were made, but nothing ever stood up in court; and, in any case, the “disturbances” continued.
More houses went up for sale.
Tangina, on her part, was becoming more gaunt and more driven. By day, she fitfully half slept in her kingdom of catacombs; by night, she tunneled and gathered. Her tunnels led her under adjoining houses, across streets, into natural caverns, into tombs and graves. And the conversations she had with these withered corpses—both in the moment and in her sparse, fragmented dreams—led her further still into obsession, toward madness.
She would go for days without food, then break into someone’s kitchen and gobble up whatever was in the refrigerator—cold hot dogs, ginger, ale, milk, Velveeta cheese, beer, carrots—and skulk off again into the starlight to steal furnishings for her dreamland-beneath-the-surface. It went on for months like this before she discovered the first petroglyph.
It was etched on the rock face at the entrance to a natural cavern. It was Indian in origin, and she didn’t know what it meant, exactly, except that its psychic impact was so great that it hurled her across the floor and against another wall. She was unconscious for many hours.
When she awoke she knew only that this was the beginning of the portal she’d sought for so long—the entrance to the place that haunted her dreams and distorted her visions. Trembling, she approached the cave drawing and stared at it: it was the likeness of a man
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