Ornamirus

Goolmadon: A troll that lives in the Totacumba. Totacumba is a network of caves and tunnels spread over the globe. It has at least six gates (passages to Ineha – the world on the other side). The Tarians believe that he use the gates to pass between the two worlds.

The testimony of Alexander Kornoy

This happened in the fourth year of my stay in Vorkuta. I worked at the Severnaya coal mine at the time.

That day the foreman Petrovich took us to the bell, it’s a circular chamber at the western end of the mine that was abandoned because no coal was found there. He placed his hand on the west wall and said. Continue from here, west, in a straight line. The geologist believes there is a large coal deposit here.

We started to carve with our pickaxes. The wall was made of soft white limestone. We moved quickly. There were four of us: Sergey Damarin, Mikhail Geradin, Oleg Komarsky and me. Every day we advanced a meter or so. After a week of work, a tunnel was created that is about 7 meters long, but we still haven’t found any coal. Petrovich told us to keep moving forward another three meters and so we did. On the tenth working day we found a small amount of coal. Petrovich ordered us to continue.

We worked day after day and the tunnel got deeper and deeper. We drove the coal in a cart to the bell chamber. There it was piled up in a cone-shaped heap.

In the third week, Petrovich informed us that he had been promoted to the position of logistics manager and that his replacement, Igor Kurdonov, would arrive tomorrow to check how the work was progressing. Oleg, who was the oldest and most experienced among us, told Petrovich that the tunnel was unstable, that it could collapse at any moment. He asked him to send constructors to build supports that would prevent the danger. Petrovich assured him that he would pass this matter on to Kordonov.

Kurdonov never came, we must have been forgotten. At first we were a little worried that no one knew about us, but after a while we got used to the situation and even found advantages in it. Every day we would go down to the mine and head to the bell chamber, no one was interested in us, and no one asked us where we were going. We worked slowly. No one rushed us.

One day our pickaxes sound changed. Oleg was the first to notice this. He suddenly stopped and shouted: Silence!!! We all stopped working. He picked up a stone from the floor and hit the wall in front of us, waited a few seconds, and then said: I think there is a space in front of us, if we work quickly we will reach it today. We started working again, this time faster. Curiosity gave us strength. At the end of the workday, we found ourselves in a large space. We did not know its shape and dimensions yet.

In the following days, we tried to better understand the space we discovered. Slowly the picture became clearer. It was a very large space. Much bigger than the bell chamber at the beginning of the tunnel we dug. A narrow stream crossed it along its length. The water of the stream was clean and drinkable. This place was actually a section of tunnel that widened. It seemed not to have been created by man, but by a process of erosion over millions of years.

In the first few days after our discovery we tried to investigate where the tunnel led and how long it was, but after a while we gave up, it seemed to be endless.

Only Sergey who was the youngest among us and apparently the most curious continued to tour the tunnel and explore it. We played cards. The light was provided by a small gas lamp that we smuggled inside.

One day Sergey came to us and excitedly said: I found a strange sign, you must see it. I went with him to see it. Oleg and Mikhail stayed to play cards.

On a white rock wall, approximately two meters high, four short streaks of faded crimson were visible. as if someone had smeared them with their fingers. Strange, I said to Sergey, it looks like someone painted the wall with his four fingers, but it’s more likely a mineral residue of some kind, I said confidently. We returned to the entrance. Oleg and Michael were still playing cards.

After about a week, Sergey came to us again. This time he was really scared. I saw a monster, he told us in a whisper as he trembled all over. A terrible monster with long arms and a huge mouth. We must not be here, he added. We have to get out of here, we can’t stay. Let’s get out of here he begged us. We laughed at him. Oleg told him he was drinking too much vodka. Mikhail said he didn’t seem to have enough hours of sleep. And I told him that his imagination was working too hard. Since that day he stopped exploring the tunnel.

On November 23, the tunnel we dug collapsed and was blocked. We were captured. We couldn’t go out. We left our pickaxes in the bell chamber and now we couldn’t reach them. We were left without our tools. We tried to open the tunnel with our bare hands. But there were heavy stones there that we could not break or move. After 24 hours without food, I became very weak, and the realization slowly dawned on me that we would not be able to get out of there. Desperation conquered me. I fell asleep.

I don’t know how many hours I slept. I woke up when someone touched my forehead. When I opened my eyes I saw him. He had round generous eyes and a very large mouth. Long black hair flowed from his head over his shoulders and back. After seeing that I woke up he took a few steps back. The pale light of the gas lamp that was still burning allowed me to see him even from a distance. He had long and thin hands and legs. His palms were large, and so were his feet. He had a big, swollen belly, but he was skinny. His ribs were clearly visible under his gray skin. The vertebrae of his spine protruded from his back. His posture was stooped, but even though he was stooped he looked very tall.

He turned to the tunnel entrance that was blocked by dirt and stones and began to clear it with his bare hands. First, he removed the dirt and small stones, and then he pulled out the large stones. I woke up Sergey and Mikhail. Oleg was already awake, he woke up from the noise. We looked at him in wonder and joy. He worked nonstop for about two hours until the tunnel reopened. We went out into the bell chamber exhausted. Sergei fell to his knees and cried. We were saved, said Oleg quietly. Thank you very much I said to this great and kind-hearted creature. He seemed to understand what I meant. He looked at me and smiled and then turned back and disappeared into the dark tunnel.