R/Nosleep (Get Spooked)

It Came From The Hole Above My Shower

By: u/ainsleyeadams

We all get anxious sometimes. I get anxious at bedtime when the lights are out and the darkness is my only bedfellow. And lately, things have been getting scary at night, in a way I don't like to talk about. But my therapist told me, "John, you should write it out, maybe it'll help you process what's real and what isn't." She doesn't believe me that it's all real, all very, very real.

It was something small, at first, as it always is. I noticed a hole above my shower, so I called my landlord, Maggie, and got her to get a plumber in there. He cut a giant hole above my shower. It being quarantine and all, well, it's been hard to find someone who is willing to spend the time patching it up, so it's just stayed there. So every time I take a shower, I get to stare right up into the pipes. So that's made me nervous, closing my eyes to shampoo and all that. I've always been the sort of guy that I get anxious every time I close my eyes under the water—surely there's a demon that'll pop out one day, right?

Then the scratching started. It would always happen at the same time, around 3 in the morning. I use this app called Sleep Cycle or something, and it plays an airplane cabin noise so I can go to sleep, but it only plays for a few hours, so when the witching hour comes about, it's easy to wake me up, especially if I've had wine, which I usually have. I woke up like four nights in a row to this scratching. I texted my neighbor and he said he'd heard it too, so I wasn't being crazy; that was a small consolation.

I emailed my landlord, told her all about it. Said she'd get someone to look at it. Then said they'd caught a rat. I know that's bullshit because I found the rat in my shower. Dead on the floor. But it wasn't just dead, it was eviscerated. I've watched a lot of horror movies, sure, but nothing preps you for seeing a rat's guts spilled out in your shower. That took more bleach than I care to talk about.

But the scratching kept on, day five, six, seven, eight, until I found the raccoon. At this point, it just felt absurd. A dead raccoon? In my shower? Just lying there, insides becoming outsides, spilling into the drain. More bleach. More nights of waking up. I emailed the landlord again. She was confused, a little worried about me and my mental state. She sent someone out again and they didn't find any more raccoons, or even where it could have gotten in.

And again it came, scratching in the walls, above the shower, everywhere, it felt. 3 am. Always. I was getting tired of it, so I decided, like a dumbass, warm-blooded monkey-brained male, to investigate. I pull my covers off, letting all that beautiful heat escape, and my feet hit the carpet, toes curling. I'm already shaking just at the thought of all that scratching. Mind you, I haven't slept well in almost a week. Always afraid to go to bed, leaving the lights on, whatever. I just haven't slept well at all.

So I creep out of my bedroom and peer around the door into my bathroom, and the scratching is definitely coming from that damned hole. I knew I should've taped something to it, but I had been lazy. I flip the lights on and immediately it stops, the scratching, that is. And I'm left standing, naked in my bathroom, staring into that hole. What's a man to do? Obviously, go the fuck back to bed. I curled back up under my heated blanket and just fell right back asleep, let the night take me away. Slept like a babe in a way I hadn't all week. I woke up feeling refreshed.

But there was one slight hiccup. My app records my snoring and sleep talking and weird noises in the night, pretty cool, but also mainly useless. I'm not much of a sleep talker, so when I saw that my analysis for the night had sleep talking in it, I decided to listen to it.

And because of that, I now don't live there anymore. I won't go there anymore. I won't even name the place.

At first, it was just static. The quiet hum of life itself. But then the scratching started, only now it was scratching on my walls, not in them. I could hear it in my room, hear it moving around. It was making a noise like a dying cat, but soft, this strange cry, coming out of its mouth—I assume it had a mouth. And I could hear it crawling on the bed, breathing next to my phone, next to my head. And it whispered to me, whispered for so long the app took two recordings.

"You look so delicious in the water, John, so wet and delicate and fleshy under the hole. Thank you for letting me out. Thank you. It is so nice to feel a body again, to hold one, can you feel me? Can you hear me? Can you feed me?"

I had not, while sleeping, heard or felt this creature, but once I threw the covers off of me in horror, I noticed the scratches on the walls made by long, blackened nails, bits of which were stuck in the holes it had created. On the carpet was a wet slime, all gray and black like those bits of nails. And in my bed, next to me, was more of it. A whole heap of it, undulating as I moved off the bed and onto the carpet, near crying. I don't pride myself on being a brave man, but my reaction to that was downright unholy.

So I bolted, leaving behind that goo and those scratches and that whispering voice. I'm in a new apartment now, hoping that I'll just be able to forget about it, forget about what it's done to me, how I can't sleep anymore, how I'm going mad every time I hear my neighbors move like that beast is awakening again. Worst of all, I don't even know what it looked like, just what it left behind. And I'm one of those things. I've been left behind. Left behind to think about it, to wonder, to question, to ask myself: what did it mean when it asked "to feel a body again?" or "can you feed me?" How many holes had it been in before?

How many other holes will it find its way into?