“The Crawlspace” They told Clara the house was abandoned. A good deal. No neighbors. Peace and quiet. They didn’t say why it sat empty for twenty years. The first night, she heard scratching beneath the floorboards. “Rats,” she muttered, pulling the covers tighter. But then came the whispering. Voices that didn’t belong to the living. By day three, the walls bled. Not a leak. Not rust. Blood. Thick and slow, like the house was weeping. Clara touched it. Warm. Her reflection in the hallway mirror smiled—but she wasn’t smiling. It waved when she didn’t. She smashed it, only to find another behind it, already grinning. She searched the house. Found the crawlspace door behind the fridge—hidden. Locked. Until that night. At 3:33 AM, the trapdoor creaked open on its own. The stairs led into choking darkness. The air pulsed like a heartbeat. Her flashlight flickered, catching glimpses: hooks hanging from the ceiling. Bones wired together like chandeliers. Symbols carved into the floor with fingernails. In the center: a skinned body. Still breathing. Its eyes rolled to her. “Help me…” Then it laughed. Hands erupted from the floor—mottled, clawed, wet—dragging Clara down. She kicked, screamed, but the walls grew mouths, biting, swallowing her whole. Above her, something crawled from the shadows. A creature made of limbs, stitched from other victims. Its face was a patchwork of screams. “Don’t worry,” it hissed. “You’ll fit right in.” Clara’s final scream echoed through the crawlspace as her skin peeled from her bones—neatly, like wrapping paper on Christmas morning. The trapdoor shut. By morning, the blood on the walls had dried. And Clara was part of the house now. Waiting. Listening. Smiling through a mirror someone else will look into.
