*"Tonight, we journey beneath the earth... to a place where ancient things have been waiting. Welcome to The Enchanted Quill. This is — The Harvest Below."* The Granger farm had been abandoned for nearly twenty years before Walter Kincaid bought it. Locals said the land was cursed — that strange lights floated over the fields at night and livestock went missing long before the Grangers packed up and vanished. Walter didn’t put much stock in rumors. He just wanted cheap land where he and his dog, Rusty, could live in peace. For a while, it was exactly that. Until the night he found the tunnels. It started with Rusty barking furiously at something near the old well. When Walter went to investigate, he noticed the ground around it had sunk in, as if the earth was deflating. A hole the size of a man’s head yawned open near the stones. Walter, curious and foolish, widened it with his shovel. A gust of warm, damp air rushed up to meet him, carrying with it a smell he couldn’t place — wet moss and something sweeter, almost metallic. He aimed his flashlight down into the darkness. There, beneath his farm, was a tunnel — perfectly round, smooth, and descending at a sharp angle like the throat of some enormous beast. Most men might have stopped there. Called someone. Sealed it up. Walter tied a rope around a fence post and lowered himself down. The tunnel walls were oddly soft to the touch, covered in a thin, pale membrane. Every few feet, black roots or tendrils snaked through the walls, pulsing slightly as if breathing. Walter swallowed his fear and pressed on. About thirty feet down, the tunnel leveled out, branching into a wide chamber. That's when he saw them. They looked like pods — hundreds of them, nestled into the walls and floor. Each pod was the size of a large pumpkin, with a translucent, veined surface that shimmered under his flashlight. Inside each one... something moved. Walter stumbled back, bile rising in his throat. Some of the pods twitched in response to his light, a sluggish ripple rolling through the room. He realized, horrified, that they weren’t reacting to the light — they were reacting to him. Then he heard it. A low, chittering sound, like a chorus of insects whispering from deeper in the tunnels. Rusty barked frantically up above, his voice barely reaching Walter through the thick, oozing air. He turned and scrambled back the way he came, slipping in the soft muck. The pods shivered around him, as if agitated by his retreat. A thin crack appeared on the surface of the nearest one, and something slick and white began pushing through. Walter didn’t wait to see more. He pulled himself up the rope with strength he didn’t know he had, collapsing onto the grass as Rusty licked his face frantically. That night, he barely slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the shifting shapes inside the pods, the tendrils writhing in the walls. The next morning, he made a decision. He would burn the fields. Whatever was growing beneath his land, he was going to destroy it. Walter doused the ground around the well with gasoline, soaking the earth until the fumes made him dizzy. He struck a match, watched it flicker, and tossed it down. For a moment, there was nothing. Then the ground screamed. The sound was inhuman, a high, keening wail that rattled Walter’s teeth. The fire roared down into the tunnel, and for a brief, terrible instant, he saw shadows writhing just beneath the soil — long, spindly limbs clawing at the burning earth. The ground shuddered violently. Cracks spiderwebbed across the fields as something massive moved beneath him. Rusty barked and whimpered, darting in frantic circles. Walter grabbed the dog and ran. Behind him, the farm collapsed inward, the earth folding like crumpled paper. Dust and ash billowed into the sky. He didn’t stop running until he reached the road. When he finally dared to look back, the Granger farm was gone — swallowed by a smoking crater. And for a while, Walter thought he had succeeded. The dreams started a few nights later. He would wake up soaked in sweat, heart hammering, the echo of that terrible chittering in his ears. In the dreams, he wandered endless tunnels lined with the pulsing pods, feeling something unseen following him just beyond the edge of his flashlight. Sometimes he could hear it breathing. Sometimes he could feel it thinking. During the day, things weren’t much better. He found strange marks on his skin — small, circular bruises that moved from one place to another. Rusty, once a fearless companion, refused to go outside and stared for hours at the scorched horizon where the farm used to be. Walter tried to tell himself it was guilt, stress, imagination. But deep down, he knew. He hadn’t killed them. He had only woken them up. Three weeks after the fire, Walter heard a knock at his door. It was past midnight. Whoever it was, they were persistent — knocking softly but insistently, over and over. Rusty whimpered and hid under the bed. Walter grabbed his shotgun and approached the door. “Who’s there?” he barked. No answer. The knocking continued, soft and rhythmic, like fingers drumming against wood. He flung the door open. No one was there. Only the fields stretching empty under the moonlight. Walter’s breath frosted in the air. He stepped outside, peering into the darkness. That’s when he saw it. A figure, pale and hunched, crouching near the edge of his porch. It was hairless, its skin slick and glistening like something freshly hatched. Its limbs were too long, ending in sharp, digging claws. Its eyes were huge and black, reflecting the stars. It stared at him, head tilting unnaturally. Walter raised the shotgun and fired. The blast illuminated the night for a heartbeat. The thing was gone. But the ground at the edge of the porch bulged and writhed, as if something underneath was stirring. Walter backed into the house, bolted the door, and didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. By dawn, there were more of them. He could see their shapes moving through the mist, circling his house. The ground beneath the house trembled. They weren’t just coming for him. They were harvesting. Walter lasted two more nights, barricaded in his house. On the third night, the walls cracked, and the floorboards split. Tendrils, slick and black, slithered through the gaps. The last thing Walter saw before the house collapsed inward was a hundred eyes blinking open in the mist, watching hungrily. Locals say the Granger farm is cursed. That sometimes, on quiet nights, you can hear the faint sound of knocking, coming from deep underground. And if you’re foolish enough to follow it, you might find a tunnel. Perfectly round. Perfectly smooth. Leading down. Where the harvest below waits. Growing. Waiting. And very, very hungry.