The Dumbwaiter
As she parked her Corolla, looking up at the old, weathered house looming above her, Madeline wondered if she should have taken up her friend’s offer to smudge it with sage. The two-story construction had been a lucky find scouring HUD listings, at least according to her husband. She had let him be in charge of house-hunting while she had been busy in Minnesota helping her sister. She had been having trouble taking care of her family while her own husband had been in the hospital, but now that he was able to help again Madeline wasn’t worried for them anymore. Two months and two state lines later, here she was at what was going to be her home and goodness, should she have been involved. The price had been right and per the inspections the house was safe, but everything about it felt worn and rough, nestled next to the rocky hillside and surrounded by struggling patches of scrub emerging from the gravel where they could. She trusted Travis, but she definitely should have been there. At least everything was already moved in. She pulled out her cell phone, checking the messages as best she could despite the spotty signal this far outside of St. Louis. Following the instructions, she found the key hidden to the right of the front door and opened her way inside, taking in the smell of dust, wood and age wafting out from the tiled foyer. She moved inside with her travel bags and quickly locked the door before looking over her surroundings. The foyer connected to a living room on the right, a staircase to the bedrooms on the left and a tight hallway that led to the kitchen ahead of her. She wandered through the living room; Travis had done his best to set everything up but by the time he returned from his own business trip she would have this place in the state it should be. A knock on the door broke her out of her trance, making her jump. Who on earth would be knocking on the door of a formerly-abandoned country house half an hour away from the closest big city? She looked out a window to investigate, spotting a lanky young man with a loaded hiking backpack. She moved to the front door, making sure the chain was on before cracking it open. “Hello?” she asked. “Oh, hi, ma’am,” said the young man. “I’m Jason Foster. I spoke to your husband a few weeks back about doing some research on his property.” He brought up his cell phone, showing a picture of him standing next to her husband. “Mr. Delin said it would be okay, but I wanted to check with you as well.” She undid the chain, opening the door wider. This dorky little college kid looked like a strong breeze would blow him away. “What kind of research?” “Oh, I’m studying a local species of tritons,” he said, plopping down his backpack and shuffling through it. “Newts. There appears to be a species on your property and those surrounding that has not been discovered, or at least not fully researched. You and Mr. Delin are the first owners I’ve been able to track down. I promise I won’t get in the way. I’ll just be down by the streams that flow through the hills.” He unearthed some pictures, hoisting them up to reveal shots of gray, slimy amphibians as lanky as he was. She had thought newts to be colorful creatures, but these looked drab and lifeless, the only distinct break from the gray being two giant black spots that must be their eyes. They reminded her of deep-sea creatures. “Ugh.” She was going to have to deal with seeing these things as well? “Don’t worry, I’ve only located them down by the streams,” he said. “Is it okay if I continue my research? I haven’t been able to get far; the specimens I find are just efts, little babies that keep dying. I think they’re flowing from somewhere further upstream.” “It’s okay,” she said. “If it’s okay, though, I just got home.” “Oh, of course,” he said. “Bye, Mrs. Del–” She shut the door, struggling enough to cope with everything that’s changed all while her husband was off working. Thankfully someone she had been looking forward to seeing came from upstairs to welcome her. “Hey, Jester!” she called out, smiling as the gray tabby sauntered his way down the steps and sat right before her. He meowed loudly before getting back up, rubbing himself on her and proceeding to meow again. He had been alone for a day or two and wasn’t afraid to let her know his thoughts on it. She gave him some head scratches and he purred. “You been keeping the place safe while your humans were gone?” He chirped and moved away from her hand, heading down the hallway to the kitchen and looking back at her to make sure she was following. She obliged, smirking at the cat trying to lead her to his empty food bowl. But instead of continuing into the kitchen, he stopped at the end of the hall and looked up at a spot on the wall that would be just past the staircase. He got his paws up on the wall, looking upward and hissing before looking back at her. He let out the warning meow he gave to other cats and small children. “It’s a wall, Jester,” she said. Weird little cat. As she got closer, though, she thought she could see something. She got next to Jester, who moved out of the way as she ran her fingers across the surface, sensing a slight gap that had been covered over with paper and painted. Her fingers trailed around it, tracing the gap in a large square before stepping back and shuddering. Madeline dumped a can of food into Jester’s bowl, the cat scarfing the meal down at top speed while she punched numbers into her phone. Eventually she reached Travis. “Hey, love,” he said. “Everything okay? You get settled in?” “Hey, Travis,” she said. “Just looking around the house, and there’s a gap in the wall.” “Oh, I totally blanked on that,” he said. “This house used to have a dumbwaiter, but they sealed it when they closed off the root cellar and remodeled the second floor. It hasn’t been used in decades. I had just painted it over myself so it didn’t stick out or risk someone getting hurt messing with it.” “I really need to be part of the process when we go house hunting,” she said. “But it’s sealed off?” “Totally closed down,” he said. “There isn’t even a way to work it.” He sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this, Maddie. Just been so much going on lately.” “It’s fine,” she said. “Your business trip can’t be finished soon enough. I don’t want to be here alone.” “You have Jester, at least,” he said. “That cat attacked a dog four times his own size. He’ll keep you safe.” “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She was broken out of her rest by Jester jumping on her in the dead of night. She sat up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes before grabbing her glasses. Jester wandered around the bed, looking back at her. He always woke her up because Travis could sleep through a gas main exploding outside. “What is it?” she asked. “It’s nowhere near time for your breakfast, you stupid cat.” Thump. The room grew colder than it already was as she heard something come from downstairs. She threw the covers back, almost launching Jester off the bed with them as she got out and into her slippers. She reached under her husband’s side of the bed and grabbed the baseball bat he kept for precisely this situation. Thump. She could feel it right beneath her. One floor below. Thump. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump. Small footsteps, almost like when they had heard animals scurrying in the walls of their previous apartment. But that wasn’t it either. These were much bigger. Yet they moved so quickly, so many rapid steps in quick succession. Was the burglar scuffling around, or was it a particularly large rat? Meanwhile her mighty hunter was upstairs with her instead of taking care of the intruder. She made her way out of the bedroom, listening again as she heard more of the rapid footsteps. It was in the kitchen now, stamping about near the cabinets. She gulped, checking for her phone before realizing she had left it downstairs in the corner of the living room she was turning into her workspace. Even if she had her phone she’d be lucky if the police got here in time. She moved down the staircase, choosing each step and putting as little pressure on the center as she could to avoid any creaks or groans. As she got lower she saw into the foyer, the front door wide open with a breeze blowing in from the pitch blackness. She could feel her hair standing up as she moved into the room, her valiant companion hot on her heels and puffed up like a furry feather duster. He stopped at the beginning of the hallway to the kitchen, arcing back and hissing as she looked straight ahead and turned on the light. Nothing. Nothing in the kitchen. She stepped ahead, moving in and looking around the space, then going into the living room from where it connected to the kitchen. Nothing. No evidence that anything had even been disturbed. She went back to the kitchen, but still couldn’t find anything. Not so much as one dish had been misplaced, not a single mark of dirt on the floor from whoever had come from outside. She returned to the foyer, spotting Jester standing guard in the center of the room. He looked up at her, still puffed up like he had gotten an electric shock. “I guess they left, buddy,” she said. “I must have forgotten to lock the front door.” She shut it and made sure the deadbolt and chain were on before turning off the light again. The rapid thumping came back, this time from above. Jester yelped and took off like a bullet, vanishing upstairs as the constant footsteps moved between the bedrooms. She froze. What was going on? How had it gotten upstairs without her knowing? She turned the light back on and the thumping stopped, somewhere in the room above the living room where it connected to the kitchen. The bat shook in her hands as she looked around, noticing something different in the kitchen hall. The paper that had covered the dumbwaiter had been torn off, lying in strips on the wooden flooring. That’s how this burglar had done it. It had to be a burglar if he could figure out a dumbwaiter was there and use it to get upstairs without her noticing. He must have used it to get onto the second floor. Why was he being so sneaky, though? She kept the light on, the dim bulb not doing as much to assuage her as she had hoped. She heard the rapid thumps again as the burglar scuffled his way through their bedroom and what was to be her husband’s office. Jester had run upstairs but she couldn’t hear him. She’d have thought he would be busy attacking the intruder with as much fury as a small cat could muster. She moved up the steps, eschewing silence for speed so she could catch the bastard in the act. Her heart beat louder than the creaking stairs as she flew up, bat at the ready to maim the burglar so she could bind him and have the police at the front door as fast as possible. She launched up several stairs at a time, the thumps coming to a stop, and arrived on the second floor. She barged into Travis’ office, weapon at the ready. Nothing. An empty room, an untouched desk without so much as a single thing misplaced. Even the ugly statue of the googly-eyed monster from those dark RPG’s he liked to play still stood watch over his possessions. She spotted Jester hiding under his desk, his gray fur not helping him blend in. He let out a pitiful meow. The thumps returned. She jumped. How on earth could it be downstairs again? There was no way. She moved back to the second floor landing and checked the section of wall that should have had the dumbwaiter, but there was nothing. No scraps of paper. No slight depression. The dumbwaiter had never gone to the second floor. The burglar had gotten past her, twice, without using it. Had he opened a window and climbed outside? But she had locked the door. Had she locked all the windows? But then why had the paper around the dumbwaiter been torn? Rapid thumps, again in the kitchen. She heard the refrigerator door open and a loud, wet slap as something was pulled out and onto the floor. Then more crashes as the rest of the contents of the fridge were yanked free with uncaring hurry. She still trembled, but after being led up and down these stairs the thought of slamming the bat into some vagrant grew more and more appealing. She rushed down the stairs, made the turn into the kitchen hallway so fast she nearly slipped and sailed past the dumbwaiter, bat ready. To nothing but a mess of food on the floor, the fridge door swinging in the cold air. She froze. This couldn’t be possible. It was just here. She had heard it making all that noise, yet it was nowhere to be seen. It hadn’t opened any windows, had it? She moved over to the fridge, shutting it, and as she did she felt a sickening squish under her hand. She looked at the handle of the fridge door. It was covered in a thick, viscous slime. She stepped back, her hand growing cold and almost tingly as she wiped off the slime on a kitchen towel. She could still move her fingers but her entire hand felt numb, like she had fallen asleep on her arm. What was going on? What could even do this? She heard a creak at the front door and had to shake herself free of her trance, forcing her steps out back into the hallway to look into the foyer. The chain had been left on the door but the deadbolt had been moved back, the door open to the darkness yet again. The trembling came back, nothing making sense to her as she did her best to hold her bat in her hand that wasn’t going numb. She re-entered the foyer yet again, but before she shut the door she looked at it. The knob and the lock for the deadbolt now glistened with a layer of the same mucus that had been on the fridge door’s handle. She pushed it shut in a dry area, wracking her mind as she looked around, then she noticed something in the living room. Nothing stood out of place, but a section that had previously been lit had been darkened. A shadow cast from the light of the foyer’s bulb. She stepped to the threshold between the foyer and living room, looking at the shadow, feeling a bulge grow in her throat, gripping her bat as tightly as she could as she traced where the shadow was coming from. Whatever was blocking the light had to be on the ceiling. She forced herself to turn around, but before she had made it all the way she saw the form that had blocked the light dart off, back down the hallway, accompanied by the rapid thumps as it crawled across the ceiling. Her heart sped up again as she tried to put the pieces together, still nothing making sense. She moved back into the foyer and looked up at where it had been, a glistening trail of mucus that she would have completely missed had she not known to look for it, a thin sheen that would have dried out and vanished before morning. She followed the trail with her eyes back into the kitchen. She moved down the hallway, each step making her wish the nightmare would end and she’d wake up with Jester sitting on her chest demanding his breakfast. She stepped into the kitchen, spotting no shadow on the other side of the room. She stopped, quieting herself as best she could, listening for something. Anything. In the silence not even disturbed by the usual nightly chorus, she heard a frenetic breathing just to her right. She leaped out into the kitchen and screamed as she swung her bat at the corner of the ceiling, then yelped and darted back before she could follow through. A glistening, six-foot monstrosity glared back at her before darting across the room, its tiny legs moving so fast it was like its streamlined gray body was flowing past the light. She recovered enough to get to the living room entrance it had been going for, landing a hit on its back with the bat as it tried to clear the doorway. The nasty thing landed on the floor in front of her but was back on its feet before she could get herself to strike it again, its rapid footsteps carrying it across the floor to the living room and up the wall. It stopped, facing its head toward her with two massive black dots cutting across its smooth face, a lipless mouth opening wide. It had a ridge of tiny fangs on the edges of its mouth, but her skin crawled as she saw columns of clustered teeth lining its palate and trailing all the way to the back of its throat. She yelped as it charged at her and she brought the bat down hitting its head with a loud crunch. She hit it again and again, screaming as she bashed and battered her assailant until its head had been caved in, dark blood leaking across the floor. It twitched in death as she stepped back, her numb hand growing colder. She couldn’t feel her fingers anymore. She was grabbing Jester and getting them both out of here. She turned her focus back to the door and saw it had been opened again. She hadn’t locked the deadbolt as it had been covered in more of that numbing slime. Her eyes bulged as another one of those hideous things darted into the foyer from outside, the tail of a raccoon sticking out its mouth as the rest made its way down its gullet. It shot to the nearest wall and crawled up, followed by another one of the things from outside that went up across from the first. A third came in from the blackness as well, staying on the floor just long enough to push the door shut with its head. Madeline stepped back into the living room, holding the bat with one hand as the other had completely become useless. The three things watched her, and as she stepped back she saw the wooden section over the dumbwaiter pop open, creaking wide as another one of the nasty, slimy creatures shot out onto the wall. They hadn’t come from outside, trying to get to the dumbwaiter. They had already been inside. She let out one last scream as all four barreled toward her. As the sun made its way further up the horizon, Jason pondered the flow of water making its way out of the hillside. This stream had been particularly fruitful for his research, but still he was only finding efts of this species of triton, and half-dead ones at that. The gray skin, the large eyes, this must be some sort of subterranean variety. Foster’s Triton, discovered by an up-and-coming student at UMSL. Maybe their school mascot would get a gray counterpart! If only he could get further upstream, but the water came from within the hillside. He’d need to figure out a way to access the caves within; that had to be their natural territory. He thought it over. Mrs. Delin seemed wary of him, but maybe he could win her over. A surprising number in houses in Missouri were connected to caves underneath them that were once used for storage. Maybe she’d let him in so he could try there? It was that or he’d have to break into one of the abandoned houses nearby and hope they had something. She had been home when he had arrived in the early morning; he had even seen an adorable gray tabby pawing at the window and had instantly wanted to pet it. He’d swing by, knock and ask if she knew anything about the caves. Before he could get up, though, something new flowed out of the stream from within the mountain, something that made him jump back. A torn, ragged nightshirt, covered in viscous slime and stained with blood. Credit: Justin Arthur Reddit Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.