The Crawlspace Visitor

When I was ten, my family moved into an old farmhouse on the edge of a dried-up lake. The house had been vacant for years, and the realtor warned us about the dampness and the creaky floorboards, but my parents were desperate for a cheap place after my father’s business failed. I remember the first night I spent in my new room, feeling like the walls were pressing in on me. I was always a nervous kid, afraid of the dark and of being alone, but this was different. It was as if the room itself was holding its breath, waiting for me to let my guard down.

A few weeks after we settled in, my parents started arguing about money, and I began to dread going to bed. My room was at the end of a long hallway, and at night, the darkness there was so thick it felt like a solid thing. I would lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling, convinced that something was watching me from the corner. My mother, tired of my nightly trips to her room, made me a deal: if I could sleep in my own bed for a week, she would buy me the video game I wanted. Desperate for a distraction, I agreed.

The first few nights were a torment of shadows and sounds. The house groaned and whispered, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw shapes forming in the blackness. On the fourth night, I woke at 2:17 a.m., according to the red digits of my alarm clock. The house was silent, but I felt a pressure in the air, like the moment before a thunderstorm. My heart pounded in my ears. I tried to go back to sleep, but my body was rigid, and my eyes kept darting to the wardrobe in the corner, where the shadows seemed to congregate. Finally, I pulled my blanket up over my head, leaving a small gap to breathe through, just like I used to do as a little kid.

Under the blanket, the world disappeared, and I started to calm down. I could hear my own breathing, and my heartbeat slowly steadied. But then I heard something else: a faint, wet sound, like something being dragged across the floor. It was coming from the direction of my closet. The sound stopped, and then I felt a presence right outside my blanket, just inches from my face. I held my breath, praying it would go away. But then, the blanket was pulled back just enough, and I saw it.

It was a face, but not a human face. It was the color of a bruise, purple and mottled, with deep wrinkles that looked like cracks in dried earth. It had no eyes, but two empty sockets that seemed to look right through me. Its mouth was open, showing long, yellowed fangs, and its breath was a cold, fetid wind that smelled of rot and old pennies. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. It stared at me for what felt like an eternity, then slowly retreated back into the shadows. I didn’t move until dawn, and when the sun finally rose, I saw there were weird, moist marks on my floor, leading from the closet to my bed.

I never told my parents about the face. I was too scared they would think I was crazy. Instead, I started sleeping with a flashlight and a baseball bat under my pillow. But the face came back every night, always at 2:17 a.m. It would appear at my blanket, its empty eyes boring into me, its mouth opening as if to speak, but no sound ever came. I grew thin and hollow-eyed, and my parents thought I was just going through a phase. But then, one night, I decided to fight back. I threw off the blanket and flicked on the flashlight, aiming it at the creature. It recoiled, hissing like a punctured tire, and I saw it fully for the first time. It was small, no bigger than a child, with long, twisted limbs and a tattered, gray robe. Its face was even more grotesque in the light, and I noticed it had a long, pointed tongue that flicked out like a snake’s.

That night, I chased it out of my room, down the hallway, and into the kitchen, where it squeezed through a crack in the floorboards under the sink. I knelt down, shining the light into the gap, and saw a crawlspace beneath the house. I had never thought to look there before. The smell of mildew and decay wafted up, and I heard a chittering sound, like a thousand insects. I knew I had to go down there, to face whatever was hiding. I fetched a crowbar and a heavy-duty flashlight from the garage, and with my heart racing, I pried up the boards and lowered myself into the dark hole.

The crawlspace was not the typical dirt-floored, spider-webbed space I expected. It was oddly clean, and the walls were lined with old, yellowed papers, covered in symbols I didn’t recognize. The air was cold, and I saw small bones scattered on the ground, ones I hoped were animal. In the center of the room was a small, child-sized coffin, ornately decorated with carvings of weeping angles. The chittering grew louder as I approached, and I knew the creature was somewhere nearby. I lifted the lid of the coffin, and inside lay a withered, mummified thing, its purple skin stretched tight over its bones, its face frozen with a gaping, toothy mouth. It was wearing a tiny, moldy dress, and around its neck was a tarnished locket. I pried the locket open with trembling fingers. Inside was a faded photograph of a little girl, and behind her, the same farmhouse, but in an era long past. On the back of the photo was a name and a date: ‘Martha, 1887.’

Suddenly, the chittering stopped, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. I froze, afraid to turn around. Then a voice, dry as falling leaves, whispered in my ear, ‘You found me at last. Now you can be my playmate forever.’ I spun around, but there was nothing there. The coffin was empty, and the symbols on the walls began to glow with a sickly light. I scrambled back up to the surface, but as I emerged into the kitchen, the floorboards snapped shut, as if the house itself had swallowed the secret. I ran to my parents’ room and screamed until they woke up. I told them everything, but when they went to the kitchen, there was no crack, no crawlspace, no sign of the coffin. My father pulled up the linoleum, but underneath was solid concrete.

To this day, I don’t know if I imagined it or if it was real. But every night, at exactly 2:17, I hear that chittering sound, coming from beneath the bed, or inside the walls, or maybe from the back of my closet. I’ve moved three times since then, but the sound follows me. And sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see a face reflected behind mine, a face with no eyes and a mouth full of fangs. I’ve started leaving my own offerings: a locket with a picture of me, a lock of hair, a child’s doll. I don’t know if it’s enough, but I’m too afraid to stop. Because I know one thing now: the dead don’t stay dead, and sometimes, they want to play.