Uncovering an Unspeakable Horror while helping a friend Renovate his new Place

Well, I can’t sleep, so I might as well tell you what happened, in case you like hearing about f*cked-up stuff.

A few months back, a buddy of mine closed on a big house right on the outskirts of town. A multimillion dollar affair, custom-built in the eighties. We’d TPed 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-shape 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 *ss 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 in 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 here, with a 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 *** 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 gonna 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 the south. Working alone, I figured the project would take me a couple of months, and I liked 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 with a whole new set of headaches.

Still, my enthusiasm died the first day on the job. There was just something goddamn creepy about that room. With all those clean white tiles covering every square inch, it felt like something that 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 happen 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. Then start yanking. So that’s what I did, pulling off chunks of sheetrock and tossing them onto 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 what not, 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 that 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 wondered. 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 beaded 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 twenty 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 f*cking Christ. Jesus f*cking Christ.”

Soon I found a second tube. This one didn’t have the brown coloring, but it did have a few droplets of clear liquid beaded 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 twenty ten human toes, complete with long, gnarly yellow toenails. They were half buried in insulation… sort of poking out.

Without realizing I had 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, then 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 – 4’ by 4’.

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 n*ked. I saw now where the tubes led. The stained one into her stomach, and the other one into her… private area.

Jesus f*cking Christ. One for p*ss and one for sh*t. But… what?!

I had my phone in my hand again. 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 and 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 open 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 f*ck 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, the nitty gritty. I think that poor woman was kept behind that wall for a long time. The tubes to carry her waste 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 that 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 the daughter – and don’t intend to – but she almost certainly didn’t know what the hell it was she had removed from the house. And if I’m right… that means the woman in the wall hadn’t had any food in months, unless by some chance an ant 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 owned 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 f*cking demon.

Assuming he was the one who 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 of that stuff up himself. He would have had to at least put the drywall up, if not the tile. Plus, the woman was half-encased in spray foam insulation, which isn’t usually a DIY project.

But I suppose if you’re 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 and my mind is starting to creep down all of 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 then. 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.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***