through the night , stray tendrils of nightmare threaded their way into his brain ; he was suffocating , buried alive in damp smothering earth ; he was fighting in the dark , hearing voices , feeling bodies , not knowing where to turn or who was his enemy ; he was in the cave of the oracle with tanaquil , but she turned into a huge snake with a woman 's face , coiling around him , crushing him ; he was squeezing through a tiny crevice , knowing there was something or someone behind him that he needed to escape , but he was stuck , could n't get through , knew his fate was approaching ; he was in the dark , and his mother had left him .