Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. The Crawlspace at 919 Willow Ave Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

THE CRAWLSPACE AT 919 WILLOW AVE

The only problem with the house really wasn’t a problem at all; it felt more like a solution. The crawlspace ceiling was six feet from the floor at the northern end, and four and a half feet at the southern end. It was an opportunity to put in some sweat, do something completely unlike anything he’d done in twenty years.

Martin Ridley had lived his entire life in Vancouver, and doubted he’d ever have moved if it wasn’t for the accident. He’d been on the recliner watching the tube. The Canucks were about to be put away by the Oilers, so Martin had ignored the ringing of his cellphone—the only people who called were scammers, political boosters, government officials announcing public forums, and his agent telling him about opportunities he wasn’t at all interested in taking—she’d email the details seconds after hanging up anyway.

But to hell with the phone, the score was close. On the edge of his seat, entire body tense, he kept one eye on the quickly dwindling clock with the other eye on the gameplay.

He fell back with a sigh when it was clear the game was ending with the Canucks on the wrong end of a tight, tight series…well, maybe not that tight; the Oilers’ starting goalie giftwrapped a pair of wins for the Canucks. As the players went through the handshake line, Martin remembered the call he’d missed, and almost instantly, his phone began ringing anew. An unwanted thought jumped to mind: his wife, glancing at his phone the moment an appointment reminder message landed, instantly knowing something he thought was beyond her knowledge.

“Tokyo Pharoah? That’s where you’re getting massages? That whorehouse on Kingsway?”

Martin had argued, haplessly, that it wasn’t a whorehouse. And he did get messages the two times he’d gone. He didn’t mention the extra service, but she knew and they both understood her disappointment in him would not be swayed by anything he said.

Martin shook the nasty thought away as he crossed the living room, into the kitchen, where his phone was plugged in. He looked at the display, saw the words Vancouver Health and hit the little green button.

“Hello?”

“Is this Martin Ridley?” The voice was effeminate, though stern.

“Yes.”

“Your wife and children…there’s been an accident.”

Martin scrunched his face. “Accident?” The word came out in a whine.

“You’d better come to Vancouver General. And you’d better hurry.”

A great, ragged gasp filled Martin’s chest with poison and sent it running through his veins. He didn’t say goodbye, didn’t turn off the TV, didn’t even put on shoes, just grabbed his keys and ran.

—

The home had belonged to his parents, so his childhood was all mixed up with his marriage, but the loss was too great to stay, the memories of his children outweighing anything from his own childhood. He’d never get a chance to apologize, to make it right, to be better.

The sale of the Vancouver home was enough to buy a small-town Victorian revival outright. It had been built in the ‘sixties, made to suit the rest of the street and the many true Victorians thereon. According to his realtor—a woman who looked very much like Dee Wallace, circa 1983—there’d been a small park on the three lots leading up to the corner before the city sold them off one at a time. Also, according to the Dee double, the house sat directly on stone, the foundation entirely natural aside for a section at the front where the plumbing, hydro, and telephone lines ran below about thirty inches of topsoil, connecting to the home.

If the circumstances were different, that the home’s foundation was stone would’ve been a headache. In this case, Martin needed space to think, and there was no better, safer way to get to the bottom of thought like heavy manual labor—aside, maybe, from smoking some really good pot. He wouldn’t need to earn money for years—maybe ever, if he was stingy and his investments paid out. Not that he would find much work that far up the coast and two ferry rides from anywhere that things happened, not in his line. Being a model and occasional actor, he’d have to live someplace bustling to find much of anything worth considering.

As a teenager, he’d worked construction during the summers, so it was a bit like a reunion when he switched on the jackhammer, the extreme vibration was like sinking into his teenhood—a safe space for memories; he didn’t meet Jacey until his fourth year of university. Though, often enough, his wife and children popped up, and rarely was it a positive memory. The tears he’d caused, he felt them tenfold now.

Martin shook his head vehemently as he shoveled stone chunks into a wheelbarrow. He’d been in the new place a week now. Most of his stuff was still in boxes, but this felt like it had to be done before the rest. The end goal was to have a basement. Nothing special, just something a little more conventional.

He picked the jackhammer up again. Dust flew, clinging to the instantaneous sweat that freckled his flesh from the first moments of switching on the weighty machine. Within minutes, he was freshly grey all over, something like a desaturated movie, only the flesh beneath his safety goggles remained in-color.

His eyes were far from clear, however.

No matter where he steered his mind, it came back to seeing his children, Roxy and Danny, dead on slabs, his wife, Cynthia, full of tubes, surrounded by machines that monitored how close to death she was. She hadn’t opened her eyes; for two days she refused this simple act until the machines quit beeping and grew momentarily frantic. Martin sobbed, torso draped over her suddenly chilling corpse, apologizing endlessly to unhearing ears.

It was over.

His family was no more.

Steel slammed against the stone like an oversized tattoo needle. As the stone came away in flakes, Martin discovered the first of several veins, rusty red gulleys begging to be attacked. Bigger chunks started coming off, revealing more veins in the rock, and taking him lower than he’d planned. His mind was too far gone, stuck in the old home where he had once known happiness and love, but had squandered it for—

Clang-clang-clang-clang!

“What the hell?” he whispered, switching off the jackhammer and letting it tip to the side of the fresh hole. He leaned in to inspect what he’d hit. “Just what in the hell?” he said again, now on his knees, hands brushing dust from the cool surface of the unusual shelf.

Was it copper? It looked something like copper, but unnatural, manmade in its perfection. He sought seams and brought his hands away as if to avoid a burn.

“Seams? This deep?” he whispered.

Buried in the rock as it was, it had to be old. He tried to think about types of rocks and just how long the local Indigenous People had been around. The maths didn’t match. Buried in a rock, it had to be millions of years old, right?

“What are you?”

He brushed away a two-foot patch of metal. The surface was clean and smooth in some places, blackened and bubbled as if burnt at an incredible temperature in others. A thought struck him, one he’d only voice alone.

“Like from entering Earth’s atmosphere.”

He’d said this absently, then stiffened, recognizing where his head was at—and where it wasn’t at. It was really the first time since the accident that he wasn’t thinking about what he’d lost. He needed more. Though he was almost directly beneath the south wall, he continued to jackhammer into the rusty veins. More chunks came away, and within an hour, he was pulling from beneath a metallic shelf, which went directly under his backyard.

By evening, there was more rock in the crawlspace than there had been to start, but he’d found edges. It was a six by four rectangle, and thick enough that he hadn’t reached its bottom. Crawling on top, back rubbing roughly against the stone ledge above him, he swept away debris, using a paintbrush he’d purchased new to makeover the main floor’s walls…once he got around to peeling away the hideous wallpaper.

After stopping to briefly refuel on mediocre pizza delivered to his door, Martin began attacking the bottom of the shape. Thanks to those rusty veins in the stone, within five more hours, he knew the depth of the object, and that it had four bulbous shapes rising from the underside. He couldn’t fully clean away beneath; given its size and sturdiness, the shape would surely drop heavily enough to crush every bone in his body.

“If that’s really the bottom.”

He climbed about the debris piles he’d made and exited the crawlspace. He was filthy, stinking, and all but out on his feet.

Inside the home, he stripped down to his underwear, scanned the boxes for the one marked linens, located a bedsheet, cocooned his body, then flopped onto his couch. He was too tired to shower, but not so tired that he wanted stone dust all over his couch, a little voice in the back of his head telling him that Cynthia would murder him if he did.

—

No groceries in the house, Martin went to Tim Hortons. Thinking ahead, he bought enough garbage food to hold him until supper. As he drove back across town, he scarfed down two breakfast sandwiches and a hashbrown. If asked, he wouldn’t have been able to say if he’d enjoyed either.

Aside from the first moments awaking, Martin did not think of his dead family. Now, back at the house, looking at the mess of stone dust and chunks he’d created, he thought only momentarily that he’d better get the place cleaned up or the kids would track the mess all over. He pushed the thought aside, but decided he’d best straighten the scene before he investigated any further.

The hours mounted slowly, but they did mount. By midday, the crawlspace was clean as it would get in its current state; Martin was sweaty and grey with dust, his hands speckled with weepy blisters. He stumbled forward, head bent though it was no longer necessary. His feet slipped down the stony path, into the hole he’d dug around two-thirds of the mysterious rectangle. He’d come to a conclusion, a conclusion he’d again never consider saying aloud within earshot of another human. The shape was undeniably alien, perhaps even a vessel.

Martin let free a heavy breath, then reached out, placing both palms on the flat surface. The pock marks were much more pronounced by touch than by sight. The sensation made him wonder about smell. He brought his face forward and inhaled. It smelled like dusty metal, just as his subconscious had expected.

“Do you do something?” he said, still brushing his hands over the surface as if trying to absorb a message in braille. He straightened his back, wincing as a blister caught on an edge, sending a pulse of pain up his arm. “Ouch, dammit!”

He jerked his left palm to his mouth, tasting his fluids and the stone dust. Unthinkingly, he spat, the contents misting over the shape. The hand went back to his mouth. As he sucked, he watched a section about the size of a commemorative coin at the edge of the shape began to vibrate, shooting up little geysers of something like fine sand.

“What the hell?”

Martin reached with his right hand, touching the lively oddity. The sandy stuff encircled the tips of his index and middle fingers. They then began dancing up the digits. Martin was too astonished to react beyond reeling his hand in closer to his face.

The geysers ceased and the sand began tumbling over itself in a controlled flow as it worked up to his wrist. Pain forgotten, he patted his pocket for his cellphone. Twisting, he used his left hand to slip the device from his right front pocket. Camera app open, red light telling him it was recording, he shot video of the impossible collection of sand—it had looked grey earlier, but now was more of a copper color, though clearly translucent. He turned the lens back to the shape after several seconds; there was a slight dip in the surface where the sand had come from.

“Weird,” he said, watching the stuff tumble up his arm, stopping in the crook of his elbow, seemingly exploring, perhaps seeking. “You hungry?” he said, looking around the space for the box of donuts he’d saved for lunch.

When his eyes returned to his arm, the sand stuff was gone…no, not gone, now on his shoulder.

—

Hope Fenton was last completely sober about five years ago. She was pretty, still, and smart, but that mattered almost nothing in the face of her addiction, in fact, the addiction relied heavily upon those attributes.

“Haven’t seen you in here before,” she said into the man’s ear who’d saddled up next to her at Tito’s Place—the fifth name of the bar in the last fourteen years; Tito being the third owner in that brief window.

“No,” Martin said, then turned to look at Hope dead on.

She stilled. She had recognized that he was handsome when he’d come in with that ball cap pulled low…she hadn’t expected TV handsome. In fact…

“Do I know you from somewhere?” she said, knowing she didn’t know know him, but that she did know him, somehow. “Are you on TV?”

A smiling bartender appeared before Martin, hands down by her sides. “What can I get ya?”

Martin turned, rubbing his stubbled cheek. “A Stella, and whatever she’s having,” he said, nodding once in Hope’s direction.

The bartender frowned, sighed, and turned away. Hope hated the bitch. She told every unfamiliar man beyond college age that Hope was the resident barfly. Truth notwithstanding, it was nobody’s business that she brushed against as many men as it took to scratch her itch.

“That’s kind of you,” Hope said, finding she wanted to press her scantily clad tits against his arm—a button pressed most commonly used to procure—despite that she already had a drink coming.

“Not really.” The drinks arrived. Martin held out a twenty and said, “Keep the change.”

The waitress’ smile was revived.

Hope found herself no longer annoyed by the bartender, her mind taking a strangely distant leap: a man like this, he was worth straightening out for—be honest with yourself, you drunk—he was maybe the one to straighten her out. She was twenty-nine going on fifty. For now, the youth was still plentiful, but every day she saw a little more of her grandmother in her face. Cancer had stolen her mother away when Hope was seventeen and she’d gone to live out the rest of her final school year and the summer preceding college with the stinking old drunk.

“It’s a disease,” Hope whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

“What’s that?” Martin said, gaze pinned to the Dodgers vs. Mets game on the tube above the wall of liquor offerings.

“Allergies,” Hope said, swiping a finger beneath each eye.

Martin frowned, turning his engulfing gaze upon her anew. “I think you’re lying. I think you need help.”

“What the fuck?” Hope said, defensive posture instantly engaged.

Martin reached over and put his firm hand on her knee. Dirt was caked beneath each nail. “Would you like to come back to my place?”

Sneering, Hope said, “What do I look like, some kind of whore?”

Martin leaned away some, then regarded her from hair to shoes and back again. “Yes. One that makes a careful distinction in her mind that says otherwise, but a whore, yes. Would you like to have your needs met?”

Hope huffed. “My needs, huh?”

Martin nodded slowly, peering into her.

Her ruse slipped away like a weepy bottle from the grip of a slobbering wino. “Yes, I would.”

Martin slid to stand from his stool, brushing his hands together. “Shall we then?”

Hope slugged back her cranberry and vodka, then looked to Martin’s bottle of Stella. It was only just down to the top of the label. Shamelessly—well, not quite, but incapable of stopping herself—Hope took the bottle and emptied it in four swallows.

—

Dominick Yakushin did not hear the vehicle pull up behind him, nor did the lights cause alarm—though it was only 5:58 AM, daylight had been upon the town for half an hour by then. Beats headphones pumping a track from Prof featuring Kevin Gates. His Nike-clad feet thumped heavily on the pitted asphalt.

Dominick had moved from Ukraine to Canada in the fall of 2019 to play junior hockey for the Victoria Royals of the WHL. He was drafted into the NHL in 2021 at age eighteen by the Arizona Coyotes. He was traded a week later to the Canucks, and had played for Vancouver’s farm team since. For two summers in a row now, he’d taken a ferry from the island to what was technically mainland and trained in utter anonymity. Not that fans were beating down his door to hear from him but being away from the city had done nothing for him but good. He knew if he tightened up in a few spots, quickened his pace and cleared his head, he’d make it through the preseason to land on next year’s active roster.

Knew it.

The rusty head of a sand rake appeared between his feet, launching him forward onto his suddenly road-rashed palms. He dropped to a shoulder then, wincing, turning, attempting to regain his footing without putting his hurt palms down. He was halfway up when his gaze locked with the eyes of a man in his late thirties, early forties. The man wore an old Vancouver Grizzlies ballcap and held a large, ovular rock in his right hand.

“Wait,” Dominick said, the pain in his palms forgotten as he brought them up in a defensive posture.

Martin lashed out in a chopping motion, stone in both hands, slamming through Dominick’s guard and grazing the felled man’s forehead. Dominick swung a massive fist, striking Martin hard enough in the bicep that his left arm went limp. One-handed now, Martin avoided the guard altogether and threw a right hook, rock filling his crusty palm. The strike was fantastic, solid, debilitating.

At that time of day, the road was deserted. The closest house was a quarter mile away. Martin could’ve taken his time, though didn’t. He had to get back with his quarry, immediately.

—

Cass Nilan hurried back toward her rust-on-pink 1998 Plymouth Neon with a nearly full box of mediocre Purdy’s chocolate bars in hand. The twins were going to Europe on a school trip; the chocolate bar sales were intended to curb some of the costs.

“Nobody worried if I got to go to fucking London and Paris, and see the fucking Mona Lisa,” she said under her breath. She was just tired; she was wildly excited for them that they were seeing more than she’d ever see.

Across the street, Dylan stepped along a walkway and waved. “I’m a do the rest of these ones,” he said, pointing to a seemingly endless string of middle-income homes.

Behind her, Tie jogged her way, waving another empty chocolate bar box. Some kids developed a chip on their shoulders when they discovered they were growing up in a lower-income home—something a child typically learned in a difficult and public manner—the twins did not. They both worked. They both helped around the house. They only backtalked their mother when she deserved it.

“Great, grab some more and finish up to the corner. I’ll hit the rest of Manager’s Row.” Cass unlocked the door and reached in to press the trunk button in the glove box.

“Any luck so far?” Tie asked, his smile fading into a subtle grimace.

Cass huffed. A month ago, she’d knocked on the door of a big Victorian across town and the little old lady inside bought two boxes full of bars—$100 into the kitty—but since then, she’d been unable to convince anyone with lots of dough to part with more than enough to buy a single bar. Most told her no, some told her the bars were expensive, one suggested if her twins wanted to see Europe, they should join the army, and one simply pulled a face as he assessed her apparel—after shift waitress couture—and obviously found it unacceptable for his porch.

“Not yet,” she said and pulled the door closed behind her.

She started the car, the little engine light glowing perpetually like an Olympic torch from hell. On the radio, a nasally voice was talking about someone who’d gone missing that morning and—she parked and killed the engine, immediately silencing the radio. She opened the door, grabbed the box of chocolate bars she had on the go, then hit the lock button—fobs were optional way back when, and the original owner hadn’t coughed up for the minor luxury. She closed the door behind her and hurried to the last Victorian in the row.

The yard was dusty and chunks of rock freckled the grey grass like a sea of acne bulging beneath the surface, ready to breakout. She stepped up the porch stairs. Moving boxes and vacuum-sealed bags of clothing covered the floor space, aside from the path to the door. Cass lifted her hand to knock and stopped.

“Help me.”

She tipped her left ear to an open window.

“Help me.”

“Hello?” she said, thinking the sound came from the direction she was pointed, but not really from anywhere through the cracked window.

“Help me!”

“Is someone there?” she said, retreating to the walkway so that she could look up at the home’s uncovered windows—no curtains, no blinds, no nothing.

“Help me!”

Her head jerked to the right and the little door that appeared to lead to a crawlspace in the foundation of the huge home. She glanced back, seeing both Dylan and Tie talking to people on their doorsteps.

“Can anybody hear me?”

Cass reached her hand down to her side for her purse. Her purse was in the car, as was her phone.

“Somebody, please! They’re coming back!”

Cass took two steps closer to the home. The clear words became screaming. She gasped, her flight or fight response kicking in, and broke for the little wooden door. She stumbled down the three steps and kicked the door when it refused to open with a shove.

“Dylan! Tie!” she shouted, still kicking.

“Mom?”

She wasn’t sure which boy called to her; she was too busy trying to—the door burst inward. She smelled the putrescence before she saw what made it. The contents of her lunch were riding a wave up her throat, and she bent forward, gagging, then vomiting a deluge of bile, coffee, and strawberry bits onto the rocky floor.

“Heeelp meee,” a voice hissed, barely there.

Cass lifted her face and looked at the hideous conglomeration of bone, sinew, and flesh. Chunks of body parts lay strewn about, most with the flesh removed. There were also several cat corpses, one dog corpse, and a bald eagle, only its wings and beakless head remaining. Amidst the clutter of gore, little mounds of sand moved about the flesh and bone. She watched as the white of two bones was suddenly fused together after one of the mounds shuffled away.

Then she saw the face.

It looked like a child, but given the five o’clock shadow, it had to be a man, at least a teen. He looked hopelessly defeated, hopelessly entwined with the structure. They made brief eye-contact.

“Kiiill meee.”

Cass swallowed. How could she deny someone that small humanity? She bent to gather a chunk of stone—one with more than a little vomit on it—and started toward the man and the sand mounds.

“Don’t get close,” a voice said.

Cass turned. There, halfway up the stairs, was a man. He might’ve been handsome if it wasn’t for the massive bulge rising from the center of his forehead.

“What is this?” she said.

“One got in my head. They’re so much smarter than they look,” Martin Ridley said, gingerly fingering the bump. “They know things. They know how to make us hurt.”

“Mom?” Dylan said, leaning around the door and drinking in the carnage.

“Get back!” Cass screamed.

“Take your own advice,” Martin said, rising and stepping slowly into the dug out crawlspace. “If they get in, they will find where you went wrong and show you, over and over and over…and they can’t be killed or stopped.”

Cass took several more steps back, almost to the door. “Dylan, get your brother and call the police.”

“What are those?” Dylan said.

“Get!” Cass said.

“Not so loud,” Martin said, wincing. “I think they—”

As if shot from behind with a silent round, the front of Martin’s forehead burst outward, flesh, bone, and snot launching across the space, Rorschaching a blotch on the dusty white wall. Martin dropped to his knees, then flopped forward. One of the piles tumbled out of the hole in his head and made for the gory conglomeration.

“Pleeeaaase.”

Cass looked at the rock in her hand and decided to go for it. She wound up and pitched it at the head, missing horribly, clanging it heavily against the stone floor. As if they were waiting for her cue, the little mounds of translucent sand—now more brown hued—hurried into the strange…thing. A high-pitched squeal began, sending puffs of foul-smelling air about the room. Cass gagged again, stumbling in reverse until the backs of her knees struck cement stairs and she dropped onto her butt, feet outside the crawlspace door.

“What the fuck?” Tie said, coming to her side.

The man began to scream anew, his eyes bulging far enough to droop, cracks forming in the flesh of his forehead, lumps rising and falling beneath his short hair. Along the bottom, nine hearts, arranged that the smallest were in the middle and the largest at the edges, began pumping at tremendous speed.

“Back,” Cass said, Tie helping to pull her up off the step.

The conglomeration of mammalian and avian innards floated a foot off the ground, then shifted sideways to scoot out the door, grazing the frame along the way. Bodily fluids dripped steadily as the thing continued to rise. Once it reached eight feet, it paused there, hovering. Bones cranked and clanked. At the center, guarded by countless ribs, was the alien rectangle collective.

“What the fuck?” Tie said again.

Cass and the twins were struck immobile by the scene. The 911 operator could be heard, vaguely, calling out for Dylan, asking if he was safe. Neighbors stood in yards, on porches and decks, looked out windows.

The cranking, clacking sounds ceased and for five seconds, the thing was silent but for those gushy hearts. The bang that came next was loud enough that everyone within shouting distance convulsed around a wince. The conglomeration blasted away on a trail of aftershock that brushed hair and disturbed dust, a nightmare come to life and gone again.

“What the fuck?” Tie said, gripping her arm like Linus van Pelt to his blanket.

“Tie, enough of that,” Cass said.

“Yeah, but, what the fuck, Mom?” Dylan said.

Cass looked around. All who had come from their homes were searching the sky or gawking toward the approaching sirens. She leaned to her right to peer through the little door. Bits of viscera dripped from around the frame.

She let out a sigh after seeing the box of chocolate bars she’d apparently dropped in the mess of human goop. About $40 down the drain.

“Boys, don’t get too close, but snap some shots. Might be worth enough to pay for Europe.”

Without pause, the twins pressed in a foot from the little door, shoulder to chest, phones held at the ends of reaching arms.

XX