The Crawlspace Above

My name is Elias, and when I was ten, my family moved to a farmhouse in the dusty heart of Saskatchewan. After years of cramped city apartments, the wide, wheat-filled horizon felt like freedom. The house itself was old, with creaking floorboards and a smell of aged wood and earth. My younger sister, Mabel, and I shared a room at the end of the hall, under the eaves, where the ceiling sloped down to meet the walls. We had twin beds pushed against opposite walls, our heads near the single window that looked out over the endless fields.

That first summer was golden. We ran through the tall grass, chased the barn cats, and listened to the wind whisper through the eaves at night. But as autumn set in, the whispers grew louder, more insistent. They seemed to come from a small, dark opening in the hallway ceiling—a crawlspace access we’d noticed but never thought much about. Dad said it was just the house settling, but Mabel swore she heard footsteps up there, slow and heavy, pacing the length of the hall.

I dismissed it as her imagination, but one night, I woke to a strange pressure in the room. A cold draft seeped from the ceiling vent, and I saw a faint, greyish shape drifting down from the grate—like a wisp of smoke, but with a terrible weight to it. It settled on Mabel’s chest, and her small body began to convulse. I screamed, and the shape vanished. When our parents rushed in, Mabel was pale and gasping, but she didn’t remember anything.

The disturbances grew more frequent. We’d find our books scattered, our toys arranged in odd patterns, and sometimes, late at night, we’d hear a low, guttural humming coming from the crawlspace. I tried to tell Dad, but he only frowned and said, ‘We don’t have a crawlspace up there, son. That attic is sealed solid.’ But I knew what I heard.

One evening, I was alone in the house, Mabel at a friend’s, and I finally decided to investigate. I dragged a chair into the hallway and pushed open the attic access. A musty, cold air rushed out, carrying the scent of dust and something rotten. I pulled myself up into a darkness so absolute it felt like a void. My flashlight cut through, revealing rough beams and scattered insulation. But in the center, there was a cot, a child’s diary, and a small, tarnished locket.

The diary was filled with the scrawled words of a boy named Arthur, who wrote about ‘the hungry thing’ that lived in the walls, how it would come out at night to press cold hands against his face. The last entry was dated sixty years ago. ‘It knows I’m here,’ he wrote. ‘It feeds on fear. I’m sorry, Mama.’ A sound behind me made me spin. The opening to the hallway was gone—smooth boards, no seam. I was trapped.

For what felt like hours, I searched for a way out, but the walls were solid. Then I heard the hum again, and it was right behind me. I turned, and in the beam of my dying flashlight, I saw a hunched, grey figure, its face featureless except for a gaping, needle-toothed mouth. It was the shape I’d seen over Mabel, but now it was solid, and it was hungry. I squeezed into a corner, praying, and then, as if in answer, the attic access slid open beneath me.

I tumbled out onto the hallway floor, the sound of furious scrabbling overhead. I slammed the panel shut just as something slammed against it from inside. The house went silent. I never told anyone the full truth, but that winter, we moved away. Yet even now, in my small apartment in the city, I hear that hum at night. And sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see that grey shape, patient and waiting, because it knows that fear is a door that never fully closes.