The Crawlspace Creeper Pt. 1

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Nathaniel's face was a look of disgruntlement as he looked around at the small box room that was his new bedroom. It had previously been a girl's bedroom, evidenced by the fact that the walls bore pink and white stripes with a rather odd yellow watermark adding a new colour to the mix by the window thanks to the still yet-to-be-repaired leak.

"Why does she always pick the shit holes?" Nathaniel angrily grumbled as he collapsed onto his single grey ottoman bed.

"Well, it's hard for her to pay an extortionate rent with her being a single mother and all." Nathanial's younger sister, Abigail, slinked into the doorway, sucking on a cola chupa chup lolly.

Nathanial raised his eyebrow in annoyance at hearing his sister's grating hoarse voice. "Well, I know that. I'm not dumb." He got to his elbows to look at his sister better. "It was a rhetorical question," he spat.

Abigail stuck her pudgy tongue out at him. "I mean, hey, at least you got a crawl space." She gestured at the white door at the farthest away left-hand corner. "I've got barely any storage space in my room!" Abigail planted herself beside Nathanial.

Nathanial hadn't even noticed the door. There was an evident breeze flowing through the space as the white door slowly pushed and retreated back into its hinges every so often. "Creepy," he said aloud, noticing a key missing from the door's keyhole.

"Should we check it out?" Abigail's perfectly arched eyebrow raised in mischief at Nathanial.

"Sure thing," Nathanial grinned back, jumping to his feet and pulling forcefully on the door's shining silver handle. A cool wind immediately greeted him like an old friend.

The pair had to hunch over to get through the doorway and into the darkness. Thankfully, in the entryway, there was a light switch. Nathanial flicked it on, and a bulb in the crawlspace's centre came to life.

The space was pretty uninteresting. It was home to old rugs, a smell of cheap cigarettes, some ugly pink wallpapering that Nathanial recognised, sun-damaged Halloween decorations and a large black mug with the words "Boss Man" printed on it.

Nathanial turned and sarcastically asked his sister, "You still wish you had a crawl space, then?"

She laughed but stopped once she caught sight of something behind Nathanial.

Nathanial noticed and turned to see what she was looking at. Not illuminated by the dim light of the bulb was a hole in the wall at the very bottom of the space. It was barely big enough for a person to fit through and lead directly into their neighbour's crawl space.

"Pass me your phone, Abigail." He held out a long hairy arm to her, never taking his eyes off the black hole.

Abigail reluctantly obliged, placing the cellular device in her brother's perspiration-covered hand.

"Thanking ya," Nathanial smiled as he duck-walked to the crawl space's end.

He turned on the phone's torch and was immediately filled with disappointment. It was only bright enough to illuminate the front of the space, filled with cotton candy-like insulation and long, thin, skewered-legged house spiders. Nathanial decided to push his head and phone-grasping arm through the hole, but he quickly retreated once more of the bricks began shifting under his body weight.

"Anything?" Abigail asked as her now dust-covered brother turned back to face her. She was half-curious, half-holding her breath at the prospect of there being some creepy cultist artefact inside.

"Nothing," Nathanial replied, passing his sister back her phone.

"Good, because this place is starting to give me the heebie-jeebies." Abigail's blazing bronze eyes briefly flitted around the space.

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