Creepy - I Agreed to Help a Friend Renovate His New Place & Fencer Reflex

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

I agreed to help a friend renovate his new place and uncovered an unspeakable horror***Written by NS Lewis  and Narrated by Nate DuFort ***Fencer Reflex***Written by: Hy_Kwong and Narrated by: Cole Burkhardt***Content Warning: Animal Body Horror***Find our reward tiers and how to get your bonus magnet at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Title music by Alex Aldea 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.

Welcome to the bloody disgusting network. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastors and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of books. violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Creepy presents. I agreed to help a friend renovate his new place and uncovered an unspeakable horror. Written by N.S. Lewis. And narrated by Nate DuFort. Well, I can't sleep. So, I might as well tell you what happened in case you like hearing about it.

fucked up stuff. A few months back, a buddy of mine closed on a big house right on the outskirts of town. A multi-million dollar affair custom built in the 80s. We'd teepied it for Halloween one year, back when we were both kids from broke families. Now my friend is rich and buying it as a second home. I do carpentry, so he called me up to have a look around before he pulled the trigger. I walked around, inside and out, and told him, everything seemed to be in ship-shaped condition.

Not even a hint of mold or rot, and the guts were all nicely oiled. The old guy who'd lived and croaked there had kept up with every little detail. What about that one room? asked Evan. I knew what he was talking about without further elaboration. There were four bedrooms and four baths, not counting a finished basement, a kitchen, living room, study, laundry room, a bunch of closets, etc., etc. Everything you'd expect to find in a house like that, all with the highest levels of finishes. And then there was that one weird-ass room.

It was down at the end of the hall on the second floor. It seemed like maybe it was intended to be another bedroom, but once you went in there, you saw that it was tiled and white from floor to wall to ceiling. So then maybe you thought it was supposed to be like a spa room or something like that, but there were no fixtures or any place for fixtures. There was a single electrical outlet and a single small hole in one of the wall tiles. Well, I don't know what the hell that's about, I admitted. Never saw anything quite like it.

Yeah, it's bizarre. The guy's daughter said there was just like this machine in there with a two, tube going into the wall. They got rid of it before they listed the house. I wonder what it was all about. I shrugged. I can hardly keep up with shit these days. They've got refrigerators that you can watch TV on now.

Next, they'll have robots that sit submerged in your toilet and then pop up to wipe your ass when you're done shitting. So, who knows? Anyway, putting aside that crazy room, the place looks great. Literally, nothing needs to be done. unless you want new paint cabinets so forth, but honestly, everything looks very tastefully done. It's a real turnkey house, if you ask me. I agree, but that room just, I don't know.

I'd want to do something with it, so put that on your radar, because I think I'm going to pull the trigger on this and start brainstorming on what we can do with it. The answer we came up with was to knock down a wall and open up one of the smaller, bedrooms into a second master bedroom, adding a few windows along the way, since the room faced south. Working alone, I figured the project would take me a couple of months, and I like those kinds of projects where I could settle in and not have to constantly go from job to job, packing up my tools every day, and getting acquainted with a whole new site and a whole new set of headaches. Still, my enthusiasm died the first day on the job. There was just something got to

damn creepy about that room. With all those clean white tiles covering every square inch, it felt like something you'd see in an insane asylum instead of a house where people lived. My first order of business was to get rid of those tiles. It took a couple days to peel them off and haul them outside. Then the room started to feel more like a construction site than an unfathomable mystery. I had something I could work with. Breaking through the wall to the adjoining bedroom would

happened near the end of the project, so we could keep dust from spreading around the house as long as possible. Well, before that, I had to tear off all the old drywall, which wasn't worth salvaging after stripping the tiles, and take it down to the framing, then cut new openings for the windows and get those installed. I'll never forget the day I started tearing off the drywall for as long as I live and no matter how drunk I get.

I started with the exterior wall where the windows would go, Getting started was always fun. You just take your hammer and smash it wildly into the wall and start yanking. So, it's what I did, pulling off chunks of sheetrock and tossing him into the tarp in the middle of the room. I saw right away that the house was well insulated, spray foam. That would make it a bit of a hassle, adding outlets and whatnot, but it would save my buddy a hell of a lot in heating and cooling bills. Not that he was in rough shape, financially.

I guess I just got satisfaction from seeing a tight, well-built house. It was right around the middle of that exterior wall, behind the drywall, where I found the first indication of the room's previous purpose. There was a small tube there, pressed against the insulation, running up towards the ceiling. It was a clear tube but stained dark inside. What the hell is that? I'd never encountered anything quite like it.

It looked like maybe somebody had been running motor oil through it or something like that. I didn't know. I figured the best way to get answers was to keep tearing the room apart. Soon I found a second tube. This one didn't have the brown coloring, but it did have a few droplets of clear liquid beat it up along its length. I knew without doubt that I was going to find something terrible. I don't know how to explain it other than pure animal instinct, but I had to know what it was.

I ripped off another chunk of the wall. There, less than a foot away from my face, were ten human toes, complete with long, gnarly yellow toenails. They were half buried in insulation, sort of poking out. I backed up and probably said something like, Jesus fucking Christ, Jesus fucking Christ,

without realizing I'd reached for it. I had my phone in my hand. Call the police. But then I hesitated. For some unspeakably stupid reason, I hesitated. I guess it was as simple as morbid curiosity. If I didn't peel back that wall myself, that I might never know what was really back there.

It was a human body, obviously. but whose and what were those tubes if I handed it over to the cops I'd be shut out of there while they did their work they would take off the rest of the wall maybe they wouldn't tell the public

what was back there for months or years or ever I had to know for whatever goddamn reason or non-reason I had to know I wiggled another section of drywall

loose, gently now, trying to take as big a piece as I could intact. I got about half a sheet loose, four by four. Now I knew a lot more, or maybe a lot less. I took off my respirator and puked. It was a woman. I could figure that much. She was naked. I saw now where the tubes lead, the stained one into her stomach, and the other one into her private area. Jesus fucking Christ, one for piss and one for shit. But what? I had my phone in my hand again, and then I dropped it because I was shaking so bad. The tubes, there were beads of water still in one of them, which means she's alive.

or was recently. I forgot the phone and frantically tore away the rest of the wall. It came apart in a mess of dust in small chunks because I was in a frenzy. Finally I made it up to her head. She had another tube stuck in her mouth, leading up towards the roof. Her flesh was sagging off her face, like it was sagging everywhere else, as if in a slow and desperate attempt to escape this world. Her eyes were wide away.

and milky white. She's dead, I thought. Then she blinked. And that friends is when I called the police and they took over. If you're wondering who the fuck that woman was and why she was in the wall, join the club. I'll tell you the rest of what I know or at least what I think for whatever good that'll do. First, than any gritty.

I think that poor woman was kept behind that wall for a long time. The tubes to carry her waist away probably ran down and joined the main sewer line. The tube leading outside, I figured this out by having a look around the house while the police were busy inside, hooked up to the gutter system. She drank when it rained. My best guess is that she was fed through that machine with the previous owner's daughter had removed. It must have ground up food and shot it through the tube going from the room into the wall or something like that.

I haven't spoken with a daughter and don't intend to, but she almost certainly didn't know what the hell it was she'd removed from the house. And if I'm right, that means the woman in the wall hadn't had any food for months, unless by some chance an aunt had crawled down her throat. As for the man who'd owned the house before my friend bought it? He was just some guy, a well-off guy, a guy who owns several businesses around town and was always a part of this and that event and the Chamber of Commerce and all that. Outwardly, a very respectable citizen.

But inwardly, a fucking demon, assuming he was the one that put the woman in the wall. I don't even know that part of it. If he did, then he would have had to hook all that. stuff up himself. Would have had to at least put the drywall up, if not the tile. Plus, the woman was half-en-cased in spray foam insulation, which isn't usually a DIY project. But, I suppose if you are going to be evil and crazy enough to do something like that in the first place, a few days worth of manual labor is the price you pay, even if you're rich.

Anyway, he had to at least know about it since. again, assuming I'm right about the machine, somebody had to keep feeding that woman, and it was his house. I don't know. I've been drinking in my mind starting to creep down all these alleyways. Starting to. Hell, I haven't stopped. It was a week ago I found the woman, and I guess I must have slept at some point since. And I just don't remember it. And now, you have it too. I guess the only thing to say at this point is, if you're able to wake up each morning and not find yourself literally trapped inside of a wall with tubes coming in and out of you, then consider yourself lucky. That's the thing I'm telling myself anyway. Thanks for listening.

Creepy Presents Fencer Reflex Written by Haikuong and narrated by Huyang by Hibank. Nicole Burkart. Have you ever seen a newborn pose like an Olympic fencer? As a student going into pediatrics, I recently came across an opportunity to witness the textbook weirdness of a baby's growth up close. Unfortunately, this opportunity came because my brother is dead. His pregnant widow, Ariel, had essentially no one.

Having recently graduated, I decided to take a gap here before going abroad for graduate study. It was an easy decision, the least I could do for my brother and his unborn child. So I stayed in Hong Kong to work a part-time job in the city, while spending most after Arial's after Dale was born. Five days a week, I visited Ariel and helped her with anything, cooking a meal, cleaning the village house, or simply hanging out with the baby and the dog. The dog was an old neighbor of Ariel's,

a stray that patrols the village and eats and sleeps at God knows where. For people who left their doors ajar, the delightful gray mutt was a frequent visitor, entering homes and stores freely. At first, my presence in the village was met with strong, robust barks, fierce for an old dog. But as my visits and friends, increased in frequency, I was eventually welcomed with sniffs and licks. When I babysat, the dog

often lay next to the crib, her watchful blue eyes looking out the front door as the humid summer air breezed with cicada songs. The tranquility never lasted, though. As newborns are, with their underdeveloped circadian rhythm, Gale never slept more than a couple hours at a time, startling the dog and me with a cry. Every time I tried my best to calm her down, rocking him in the crib and letting him hold my finger in his tiny but uncontrollably insistent grip. Primitive reflexes are strange things. Here's a fun fact. When humans are born, our brains are wired to make us move a certain way involuntarily, like the knee-jerk reflex, in which a tap below the knee would send the lower leg,

kicking whether you liked it or not. Babies were born to have plenty of these reflexes to help them develop. As they grow up, these reflexes fade away, allowing them to move in a coordinated fashion as an adult. And if the reflexes stay past infancy, well, there are names for it. Cerebral palsy, developmental delay, etc. Unfortunate stuff. Other than the strangeness of a developing baby, the semi-wilderness of this dog also took a little getting used to. I found myself taking up the task of stray-spat-care as well, despite the dog not actually being ours. Once, I found the dog drinking from the dirty rainwater channels that ran through the village, and I made sure to keep a full water bowl near Ariel's door since.

One day, at dusk, I found Ariel, ever composed and reserved, squatted outside her front door, quietly talking to the dog and weeping while it ate from a takeout box. I bought the dog a bed as well and a collar with the name on it. Bandit. Bandit liked Gail a lot. Gail didn't mind. Even the morrow reflex in which all four limbs of a baby will flail up when startled, didn't kick off when Gail shows up to nose at him out of the blue.

It was funny because when I spoke or even slightly touched him, the reflex was often elicited. Every now and then, I check my uni notes on my phone and play around with Gail, noting how he simply cannot let go of my finger in his little death grip. Grip develops before release. When he slept, he often fell into ATNR, an asymmetrical tonic neck reflex, His head turned towards one arm outstretched, and the other arm hitched up, placing the hand next to his ear, like a tiny fencer ready to strike.

Tetspur staff. A couple of weeks after the arrangement, my roommate asked to bring someone home. So I stayed over at Ariel's. She tried not to show it, but she was very happy for my company. Of course, helping out with housework was great, but her grief for my mom. brother still lingers over her like a dark cloud. Despite never sharing any emotion with me, I knew the company was sufficient to keep dark thoughts at bay when the baby's cries reverberated around the walls of an empty house. At 9.30 p.m., the familiar sound of claws on the floorboard

came through the front doors. Bandit waltzed in, straight into the welcoming arms of Ariel, and sniffed at the baby and me. The final member of the family was home for the, the night. After locking up, Ariel walked into the kitchen and gave Bandit some dinner she saved for him, and the dog gratefully doubled it up and settled into bed. Bandit slept through the evening, her tired bones ignoring Ariel's struggle to get Dale to sleep. Ever so feisty in the wrong times, the baby thrashed around, despite the rocking and the lullabies. I tried my hand, for the better of an hour, to no avail. Finally, Ariel convinced me. me to try to, sleep. And by the time I'm all curled up on the couch to the newborn's wails,

it's 11.30 p.m. Somewhere around midnight, the baby finally quieted. As I drifted off to sleep, I prayed that the baby would not wake me at night. A fumbling noise. I didn't know what time it was, but it had been at least an hour. My dreamless sleep was broken by Bandit shifting around in bed. I closed my eyes again, but the sound got more intense by the minute. It was as if the dog was being strangled, that she was struggling to escape the hands of this cruel being. I peered through my covers and saw nobody. Bandit was lying on her back, belly up, thrashing around, and now let it a whine.

A nightmare? A whisper yelled as quietly as I could. "'Sh, Bandit, back to sleep!' She stilled for a moment. Then she continued shifting around, without the wine. Seems like she got the idea. I dozed off. Somewhere in the middle of the night,

I awoke again by the sound of Bandit thrashing around. I was just about to yell at her again, but she beat me to it by giving a loud cough. I froze. I had never heard that. this sound from an old dog. Typically, when dogs make a noise, the sound ends with their mouths closed, like a growl at the end of a bark. This noise was different. In the dark, I saw Bandit's mouth hanging open,

her snout of V-shape from the moonlight-backed shadow, like a person who let their tongue hang limply on the edge of their mouth after a cough. The struggle continued in the dogbed, The thrashing and fumbling were so frustrating. I knew I wouldn't be able to fall asleep with that. I braved myself to speak in my normal volume. Go to sleep! An immediate shudder, then quiet. The silence now scared me.

Bandit was awake, but she stopped shifting around in bed. She lay on her back, limbs folded on her chest. How else did she position them before? "'listening to my thrumming heart and bandit's soft paws, "'I don't remember how I fell asleep. "'Did you hear anything last night?' "'Aryl looked at me, puzzled. "'No, I sleep like the dead,' she replied.

"'You know, especially with my men's,' she tensed. "'Gale woke up crying?' "'Ah, no, not that,' I said. "'She'd probably miss sounds out in the living room. Bandit had a nightmare last night I was worried I woke you up when I told her to shut up Ariel relaxed

Oh, good No, I heard nothing I smiled politely Awkward silence hung in the air I dot up and let the radio play Why aren't you scared of me Why do you care for me When we all fall asleep

Where do we know As if on cue, Bandits strode into the house with her usual spirits, calm and collected and having finished whatever she was up to outside. She came to me for a sniff, her blue eyes looking at my bagel expectantly. I broke up a piece and fed it to her. She did not cough or choke. Maybe it was a dream. I don't know what drove me. Perhaps it was curiosity or it was an eagerness to prove that whatever happened, happened last night was not real. I slept over again next night. A thrashing woke me up in the middle of the night again. The cough, bark, came, this time throatier with a nasal noise. I checked my

phone. It's 3.30 a.m. Sleep deprived from last night's ordeal, I felt braver. No, more reckless. By the bright moonlight, I got up and strode to the dogbed with frustration. What is her problem? What I saw made my blood run pulled. Bandit lay on her back, with her neck twisted unnaturally to the left. Snout pointed at her painfully extended left paw. The other front paw, and how is this anatomically possible, slapped over her forehand. head like a lady with a fever in a period piece. Her elbow flexed in a tight, acute angle.

Her dark eyes rolled to meet mine with a blank stare. She shuddered uncontrollably like the beginning of an epileptic fit. In my fear, the tension in her muscles made it look like a struggle of a painful spirit possession. Her chest puffed up towards the ceiling, back arched, two front paws curling backward. It felt longer, but in a second her paws were back to the front of her chest. She panted, tongue out, eyes on me with the same lack of recognition. I wanted to say something, whisper her name, sob, laugh anything, but terror had me standing still in my spot, observing. I forgot what happened afterward. I remembered standing still, staring at the dog,

barely daring to breathe. I remembered standing until my back hurts. I remembered the dog's floating stare, looking around pointlessly, and then suddenly noticing me again and startling herself. I remembered insisting not to let my guard down. Yet I won't. I won't. up on the couch next morning. My tired bones confirming what had happened was not a dream. I promised myself not to sleep over again. Ariel did not need to know. This thing, this haunting, probably happened every night, and she had the fortune to sleep through it. There was no need for her to add dodgy demonic possession into her list of troubles. Hell, even the newborn slept through it. There was no issue. In the months after, I only helped out during the day. Bandit never

showed signs of anything wrong again. I thought it would terrify me to be alone with the dog on the daily, but I was not scared at all, and nothing wrong ever happened again. It was as if my subconscious to differentiate between regular Bandit and the late-night stranger. What exactly went on? I found out nine months later. An atypical rainstorm occurred in the winter. The winds were tolerable, but the rain was relentless. The news told of roads being too flooded for vehicles, and in the countryside, some ground floor dwellings required evacuation. Buses stopped services without my notice, and I was rained in at Ariel's place. Gail grew up in good health. Gail grew up in good reaching every milestone with spirited fervor.

Like the little demon he was, he'd grabbed at anything he'd reach and shoved it into his mouth, exploring the world one mouthful at a time. His tantrums also grew, much to his mother's dismay. Six months ago, he learned to differentiate his mother, me, and stranger danger.

And when my mother drops by to visit, he could not bear to be alone with his mother. grandma. Separation anxiety. He thrashed like a kidnapped child until grandma let go in good sport, and Gail crept around the cold floor in search of mommy. Bandit, wolf-like, and patient, always led the way for her fellow four-lated friend. Forearms pressing onto the side of the bed, the baby made his best efforts to stand up, tall enough to reach his mother. Ariel's naps, however coma-like, never lasted long. At midnight, the wind howled as I lay awake with dread.

This time, I was determined not to sleep. Yet sleep was insistent, and in the gentle lull of the muted rainstorm outside, I fought for my consciousness at the limbo between sleep and awake, dreams and reality. The two nights I spent in this exact spot, turned in my head. Hypnagogic hallucinations and unroyhin thromen.

Sleep decided for me. Children of the idle brain. Come, said sleep. Fall. I slipped and awoke with a start. Shit. I dreamt of falling. I turned around on the couch to check the time on my phone,

but it fell to the ground with a clack. The dog woke. I stilled. Heart racing, mind-blank, frozen inside and out. Lying on her back, bandit's hind limbs curiously give a few kicks in the air. In the silhouette, her ears stick up in alertness, but her tail lay limp, draped on the dog bed. Her neck twisted left and right, looking around,

taken in the darkness and the room. Five long seconds of quiet. Clear as day. This was not a dog's voice. Too high, too throaty. It came from the dog, but that was not bandit. Panting. Then the durdling sound of saliva at the throat.

A nasal grunt. The dog looked around for a response, but I gave it nothing. I didn't want anything to do with this. My skin crawled, but I remained still and quiet. Quiet. The dog was quiet, too. Far too long, far too unsettling. I gasped, despite myself, and it turned to look at it.

me. Glint sharp in its eyes, ears up straight, body slowly rolling over and ready for action. For the first time, I saw the thing move. A front limb flailed out of the dogbed unprornatedly and smacked onto the floorboard. Its trunk whittled forward, and then the other front limb flailed forward with a similar lack of grace. It was as if it suffered. It was as if it suffered. some sort of spinal damage that fucked up the neural connections of the body. The hind limbs kicked uselessly behind it, spread open onto the floor, and propelled the thing forward with little efficiency. Riddle. Smack. Riddle. The being riddled with effort, but the red glint of the eyes was

never off the prize. Me. I put the covers over my face and closed my eyes. This was a hallucination. Sleep must take me. Sleep must bring me to safety and indifference as it did Ariel through all nine months of this nightly haunting. Nothing could hurt me in sleep. Comatose, in a sleep as sweet as death. The sounds stopped, but warm breath brought goose bumps to my neck when something dipped the couch right next to my face, so I opened my eyes. My nephew's brown eyes were fixated onto mine, happy with delight and recognition of his aunt, unbothered by the fact that they were housed in the skull of a dog. It was panting and grinning, black lips pulled back in a grimace from the effort and achievement.

hands off the couch, Dale, I remembered. Let's watch to Mommy. I shrieked and a robust bark sounded from Dale and his mother's room. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative common share-a-like licensing or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.