Creepy - Day 21 - The Crack in the Wall

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

It's more than a fixer-upper...***Written by Gemma Amor***See your donation rewards podcast at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3SrH_3fsROXFAjomKcUtw***Produced by Steve Blizin***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or not simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents the 31 Days of Horror, A-21. The crack in the wall, written by Gemma Amor. The crack in the wall started to show in the early days of winter, after the house had been rained on for it felt like months at a time.

The rain eventually stopped and the sun came out for a while, but then the first frost followed. Then the house, swollen and waterlogged, dried out, contracted, and the cold got in. And so, the crack appeared. It started in the wall in my bedroom. I noticed it when I opened my eyes one morning in December. It was a big one. A hairline crack running across the wall vertically from floor to ceiling. I've been due to decorate the room for a while anyway.

My wife had been bugging me about it. So I filled the crack with putty and gave the whole room a lick of fresh paint. Blue, in case you were wondering. Royal Navy Blue. My wife thought it was peaceful. Soothing. I thought it looked like the inside of my jean butt pocket, but I didn't tell her that. And when I woke up the next day, sore and aching from the labor of painting a whole room in the space of a few short hours, it was back again.

Only this time it was wider. Not a hairline, but not anything to worry about. Not yet. It's just a house settling. My neighbor Bill told me when I brought him over to have a look. He was a building contractor, and I knew I could trust his advice. These things appear in houses as old as ours. I'm afraid no amount of putty or paint will cover it up for long.

They always come back, like weeds in the yard. Best to just get used to it. I sighed, because I knew my wife wouldn't accept that. And sure enough, she didn't. I found myself back up the ladder the next day. skimming over the crack with more putty than a layer of fresh plaster to seal the deal. I would paint it once the plaster dried out by the end of the week, although I had a feeling the crack would make its presence known well before that.

Sure enough, the crack came back the next day. It was like it waited for me to sleep, then came out when I had my eyes closed, like it was nocturnal or something. I peered at it for a long time after waking. I went over, ran my hand along it. It felt cold, like a draft was coming in through it somehow. I could fit my thumbnail into the crack if I tried.

Over the next week, it grew to the width of my fingertip. When I could push my little finger all the way up inside, right up to the knucklebone, I called my neighbor back in. He blew out his cheeks when he saw it. Well, shit. It was all he could say. He took out a tape measure, measuring the gap the crack had exposed. He patted the wall all over, checking it like he was checking for loss change on the back of the couch.

Sounds hollow back there, he said, and he was right. It did sound hollow back there, which didn't make sense, because it wasn't drywall. It was brick under the plaster. solid Victorian brick, and had been for a hundred years or so. Well? Bill went on while I stood silently waiting, drew in the side of my thumbnail like I always did when I was thinking hard about something, or feeling nervous.

Well? Well, the fact that it runs top to bottom, not horizontal, means it's probably still a foundation thing rather than anything else. If it was horizontal, I'd be more concerned. horizontal cracks in concrete and brick walls mean pressure building up or something worse going on. But this is vertical, so I'm minded to say it's a stress crack still. It's an eighth of an inch wide at the moment, so not something I'd say you should worry about too much. It's an eighth of an inch now.

I replied heavily. But it's opening up real fast, Bill. That's worrying me enough as it is. Well? He said, blowing out his cheeks. He used that word a lot, I noticed. Keep an eye on it. If it gets any bigger, I've got a guy I might be able to help.

Structural engineer. Real reliable. If he's not too busy. He wrote a number down on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. I folded it up and put in my wallet for safekeeping. So what do I do? Just watch it get bigger? Bill scratched his head.

Well, I tell you what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't bother trying to cover it over anymore, not until the house is done dancing around. Waste of expensive pain, if you ask me. I laughed then. Expensive it had been. Blue fucking walls. Two days later, I noticed the fluid leaking out of the crack. It was wide enough for me to slide my hand into now, up to the palm where it got stuck.

Whatever the fluid was, it wasn't water. It was thicker. viscous and sticky to the touch. It had a strange odor to it, like rotting leaves, but not like it exactly. It was bright orange in color like Fanta bright orange. I was reminded of a fungus had seen growing on a tree once. Kind of sticky like this, the same shade of orange. My wife freaked out when she saw what was coming out of the crack

and ordered me to get someone in to deal with it. She said she wasn't going to wait around to be eaten by primordial ooze while I sat back on my ass and watched. And she packed a few things, and went to stay with her mom while I called the structural engineer. The structural engineer didn't answer the phone and went straight to voicemail. I hung up without leaving a message. I'd try again later. In the meantime, I was going to do some digging. I found an old crowbar in my garage and a mallet and a chisel.

If the crack wanted to be there so badly, then why didn't I help it along a little? See what I could find behind the crack. Because I was damn fuckety sure it wasn't brickwork. Not anymore. I felt along the crack to the place where the fluid seemed to come out the heaviest and inserted the tip of the shizzle under the crack, angling it so it wouldn't get swallowed up to the handle. Then I brought the mallet down. With a soft groan, a chunk of wall came away landed at my feet.

I did this again, and again, and again, until there was enough room for me to slide the crowbar in, get leverage, and start yanking away with my life depended on it. More and more the wall came away under the crowbar, and Bill had been right. It was hollow bombing the crack. A large, long shoe gradually became exposed, like an extra chimney breast had been covered over for some reason. Except it wasn't right for a chimney breast. They usually started out wider at the bottom, then angled up steeply to stop things falling down and getting stuck. Whatever the shoot was for, he ran deeper than the level of my bedroom.

It ran all the way down to the bottom of the house by the looks of it, and had iron rungs hammered into the side of it, headed downwards towards what I had no clue. It was a ladder. The orange liquid was all over the chute, lubricating it nicely. so of course I started to climb down. By this point I was aware that I was acting strangely, turning off my cell phone all secretive like and closing all the curtains before I went.

But I didn't care that I was behaving like a crazy person. I just cared about what was at the bottom of the ladder. And so, I climbed down. Rung by rum, feet scraping against the rusted iron, echoing around as shoot as I went. Once or twice I slipped on the orange slime but managed to hang on at the last minute, grabbing at the ladder for dear life, swinging into the walls painfully instead of breaking my neck and falling to the bottom of the shoe.

It did occur to me as I went that I was climbing down a mystery ladder set inside the walls of my house, crawling around with a spider in the house I've lived in for many years with no problems, no strange occurrences, nothing, until the crack. I knew this shoe wasn't in the plans of the house. house. I'd looked at those good and hard when we first bought the place, and I would remember it something like this. And yet, I didn't feel afraid. Despite everything, despite the strange absurdity in my situation, despite me climbing down a mysterious ladder through a dark crawl space not much wider than my body, where the air was stale and the walls were wet, I didn't

feel afraid. What I felt was compelled. As if something more calling me, soft and subtle from the bottom of the chute. And I was just answering the call. I had climbed for it felt like years, down and down. The air grew hotter and thicker, and the slime grew thicker and more prolific. And I realized I was soaked with the stuff. I had to toe on it, creeping through my clothes, seeping into my skin, getting into my mouth and under my tongue, behind my teeth.

But I didn't care. I didn't care about anything but getting to the bottom. And eventually I did. I understood when my feet hit something there wasn't ladder, that I was far beneath the ground level of my house now. Far beneath, and this definitely wasn't Kansas anymore, Toto. Because I was surrounded by ancient stone foundations that certainly didn't belong to my Queen Anne-style row house.

They were covered in this region. rich green moss and lichen. Of course, the weird, wet, orange stuff. Only down here it was thicker, stringier, covering everything had touched and spreading out like a network of veins. If I look closely, I could see a pulsing ever so slightly. A steady rhythm, like the beat of a man's heart.

The foundations opened out into a round chamber, like an ancient well, damp and huge. In the middle of that chamber, there stood a man's massive old iron box like a coffin casket, only taller, more square. It had once had chains wrapped around it, but the chains had rusted with time and crumbled so that they lay on the floor. A massive old padlock also lay on the ground. The shank snapped clean off from rust, and the iron box had split in multiple places. The orange stuff was thickest here. It came out of the box and thick, nasty ropes, sprawling around like it was blind and feeling for something in the

dark. And I realized then, as I got too close, that it was feeling around for something. And that something was me. I think maybe it's a god, although I can't be sure, because I've never seen one before. Or a demon. Or something else. It doesn't much matter anyway. All I know is that it is feeding on me. There are these stringy, clear tubes running into my body, sticking out all over like squishy porcupine quills. And I can see my blood coming out of some of them,

like milkshake sucked through a straw and orange stuff going into me through others. The orange liquid burns, but it has a distant. feeling like having a dead leg or arm after sleeping funny. The thing is feeding on me, taking my body apart piece by piece, and replacing what it takes with a part of itself. It feels like a great experiment in recycling, out with the old and with the new.

Whatever the new is. Curious, I watch my body decompose in slow motion. My clothes slough off like dead skin. My hair follows, curling up and dying. The hair on my head sliding right down my face like a slug over lettuce. And I can see the skin on my arms and legs and chest and belly bubbling up, like damp getting under wallpaper. It doesn't hurt.

Or at least if it does, I don't feel it. Something is wrapped around my brain, something warm and sticky and alive, and it acts like an anesthetic as my skin dissolves next. I can see my muscles working and twitching. I can see a network of veins and capillaries and arteries all carrying this bright orange liquid around my circulatory system. I'm thinking. Think about whether or not I did a good enough job of being a little. man, being a husband, being a son, being a brother, because I'm not going to be any of those things for much longer, because it's mixed up in the consciousness of the thing that's eating me.

There are other consciousnesses there, too, floating around, and I can see that this thing's been praying on those who lives in the house ever since it was first built. A small child, an elderly gentleman who used to like watching the same. stars at night. I can see the constellations burned into his mind, which is now my mind. Orion and Scorpius and Ursa Major, an unlucky cat, a chimney sweep who went down in the wrong hole until someone covered it up with bricks and mortar when he failed to come out. All these people and more, going back into time further than I can understand, it is an a god or a demon. It's a predator, a hunter, a very old, very sophisticated one. My genital shrivel up

melt away. And I guess I'm not a man anymore. I guess I don't know what I am anymore. It certainly isn't human. It's not a being who worries about things like cracks in the wall, about a wife who won't let him be, about the color. I can feel myself getting hungry. As my limbs are absorbed into the large orange mass that lives in the iron box, I can feel above all else at the center of whatever I am that I'm still hungry. And after this, after my body is completely gone, I think it will be time to leave my place under the house, why I've slept for so long. and I think I will use my new strength for I have just eaten and now I feel renewed

to climb back up that ladder and out through the crack in the wall which is real nice and big now these cracks get over time and I think I'll roll on out into the world and see what I can find a feast on because there's always room for more

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