The Night of the Ghouls

Up and up the rough-hewn steps tramp the wormy feet of countless dark denizens. They move in silence through the earth’s bowels with a singular purpose. Stirred from restless sleep and unholy dreams. Stirred from aimless wriggling and horrid scavenging. Stirred by the voice of their beloved mother, vast and terrible. She bids them rise, and rise they do. None shall disobey their doting matriarch. And so, they rise the ancient steps and forgotten causeways. Passing through slimy tunnels filled with a fetid stew flowing from unseen waterways. Their steps faintly echo before being devoured by the yawning darkness of countless pits.

Their hunched forms move through the dark with a seemingly awkward gait. Yet none of them stumble or move with any hesitancy. They glide like phantoms in the darkness, their stomachs rumbling with sinister intent. Milky eyes gleam dimly in the gloom. Mist escapes their flat nostrils as they breathe. The air is thick with a cold humidity. A rotten stink hangs heavily in the darkness. A smell of death and decay, of unnatural evil. They do not speak to each other. They knew where to go and what to do; Mother had already told them.

Time in the subterranean black has no meaning. How long they had been trekking was irrelevant to them. Indeed, time itself was a foreign concept to these ageless things. They did not care how long the trek would take. But it may have taken a very long time or a very short time. Maybe hours or maybe minutes. The journey may have even eclipsed lifetimes, and they would never know it. But eventually, the long walk came to an end, they had reached the door. An ancient door made of a strong and unearthly alloy. It was dented and scuffed, held to an ageless stone arch by hinges made of a similar material. The door could never be opened except when they wanted it to open. And tonight, it would open.

They streamed from the open portal like blood flowing from an open wound. They found themselves in the dank darkness of an ancient mausoleum. The decrepit crypt belonged to a once-prominent and noble family now long forgotten. Six generations slept in their coffins and chambers. Night vermin retreated before the unclean horde. Without pause, they pried open coffins and ripped stone doors open, revealing the rotten bones within. The older family members were nothing but dry skin stretched over dusty bones, while some of the younger ones still had some substance to them. None of the sleepers would escape their fate. Wide mouths with ragged teeth set within blackened gums cracked open bones and slurped them down. Fresher corpses were scooped up and greedily devoured. The ghosts of the sleepers awoke and cried out in horror as their rotten tabernacles were desecrated by the tide of evil.

It didn’t take long for the horde to consume everything in that tomb, and they moved up and out into the frigid night. Out into a crumbling graveyard, they spread among the tombs and graves in search of sustenance. And they found it in droves. Their shovel-like paws dug at the wormy earth and cracked open coffins like nuts. Green, melted flesh and black, rotten blood poured down unnatural throats. Putrid rot ran in fetid rivulets down bony cheeks. Howls of triumph and cries of glee fill the night air. Countless graves are desecrated as the bodies of the dead are exhumed and then consumed.

Thin, bony bodies crawl over graves and into holes like maggots wriggling in festering wounds. The black night and dull, blinking stars bear witness to a feast of horror and death. Body after body was dug up and ripped apart. Body after body was fought over by things lesser than even the most debased forms of life. Torn open, peeled apart, squeezed dry, and consumed mindlessly. The Earth itself is not safe from the horrid hunger of the horde. Scoops of wormy earth are consumed with glee. Rabbits, rats, and bats are swept up in the tide of death and messily devoured. Even fellow horrors are not safe from the uncaring hunger of their peers. Weaker and smaller creatures are seized and eaten alive. Their stinking blood is imbibed, and stringy meat is stripped from bones. Cries of horror are entangled with shouts of jubilation.

Blood-stained claws are raised in the air like a choir of worshippers. Red blood dribbles down thin fingers. Green flesh drips and falls like unwholesome rain. Musty bone dust fills the air, and unholy cries of satisfaction fill the night. Spirits and banshees wail in terror at the sight of their mangled bodies. Wights and rotten shambling horrors flee from open graves. Sprites and fairies laugh at the misery of long-dead mortals. While unknown, ancient intelligences watch the chaotic scene across unfathomable gulfs of time and space. And then it’s over.

Their hunger satiated for now, the horde of flesh eaters moves back down into the now empty mausoleum. Silently they move back through the door and down into the earth. The door closes behind them without so much as a creak. Slowly they move deeper and deeper into the deep dark of the earth. Back down into their filthy warrens. One by one they separate and go their separate ways into individual dens. Sleep will soon overtake them, but first obeisance is made to their Mother. Blood, bits of flesh and gore are shaken off and left at the entrances of each den. Offerings of sustenance for Mother and her eternal brood. And then unnaturally deep sleep overtakes them. They lay still, still like the corpses they had violated. And they dream, they dream of Mother. Vast and terrible. Infinitely loving, infinitely cruel and as inescapable as the very air they breathed.