An elderly woman was picking mushrooms in the forest when she accidentally fell into a huge pit: she desperately tried to climb out until she noticed something terrifying in the soil 

The woman’s pension was small, and to avoid starving, she came up with a modest way to earn money — every morning she went into the forest to pick mushrooms, brought home several buckets full, sold part of them at the market, and dried or fried the rest for herself.

That day was warm and sunny, and after the rain, mushrooms were expected to be plentiful. The woman walked along a familiar path, toward the same places her late husband had once shown her. Her basket quickly filled with firm porcini mushrooms, and she felt lighter at heart. The smell of damp moss, the song of the birds — everything around her reminded her of her youth.

Lost in thought, she wandered deeper into the woods, beneath an old, wide spruce tree, where she spotted a huge white mushroom. She stepped toward it, but suddenly her foot sank — the ground gave way beneath her, there was a crunching sound, and the woman fell down. The fall was short but harsh — the impact with the damp earth knocked the wind out of her.

She found herself in a deep pit, its walls crumbling with loose soil. She tried to shout, but her voice was swallowed by the forest silence. She tried to climb out — but the walls were slippery, and each time she grabbed a root or a clump of grass, it tore away in her hands. Then, in the wet soil, she saw something horrifying and screamed in terror 
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Perhaps ten minutes passed before she noticed that one side of the pit looked different — the soil there was darker, denser, as if it had been packed down.

The woman crawled closer and suddenly saw something white in the earth. At first, she thought it was a stone. She brushed her finger across it and jerked her hand back: it was a bone. A human bone.

Her heart started pounding. With trembling hands, she began scraping away the soil — and from beneath the damp layer, a face appeared. A man’s face, deathly pale, with sunken eye sockets.

The hair had almost decayed, but the collar of a shirt and a rusty button were still visible — familiar somehow.

The woman screamed and stumbled backward. It was the face of her neighbor — the man who had gone missing a year ago. The whole village had searched for him, but never found him. Back then, people said he had left for the city, abandoning his wife.

Now she understood — he had been here all along, buried beneath the ground. And the pit she had fallen into had formed because the earth above his body had slowly caved in over time.

The woman froze, unable to scream or move. The surrounding forest had grown eerily silent.