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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/brandonmeyers on 2026-05-31 02:30:07+00:00.

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I needed the money.

I stood there and cursed myself, staring at the five foot ladder and the three feet of dead space between the top of it and the attic access hole in the ceiling. I shook my head. The inspector was going to be here in two hours and I did not have time to drive an hour back across town to get a bigger ladder. And if this dump didn’t pass inspection today the buyer was going to pull out of the deal. And if that happened I wasn’t getting paid. The realtor selling this place had made that abundantly clear.

As this was one of my first self-employed handyman jobs, I did what I had to. I hoisted on my backpack full of tools and I started climbing.

When I was one rung away from the top I reached up and tested the access panel. Like most of them, it was rigid 5/8” drywall and it wiggled inside the frame. At least someone had the good sense not to have caulked it in place.

I lifted the panel up and into the attic, exposing a dark, still void in the ceiling. Using the frame to steady me I climbed fully atop the plastic cap of the ladder (the one that read DO NOT STAND OR SIT). It brought my neck even with the ceiling, and I prayed my aging shoulders would forgive me tomorrow for what happened next. I reached up into the attic, grabbed the 2x10 framing, and heaved myself up into the pitch black maw.

Fire shot through my neck and shoulder muscles, which hadn’t seen a pull up since high school gym class, now over a decade in the rearview. I slipped briefly when the bag caught on the opening and almost fell, but by sheer determination managed to pull it off and heave my body all the way up.

I found myself surrounded by thick shadows. The air was instantly twenty degrees hotter. The suddenness of it took my breath away and I reached up to click on the head lamp attached to my baseball cap. When it blinked on the seemingly still air in front of me exploded with previously invisible dust particles dancing across the beam. I quickly strapped up the rubber respirator mask hanging around my neck and slipped it over my mouth and nose. Jesus, I needed to start using mouthwash.

Looking around I was surprised at both the depth and height of the attic. It ran at least forty feet side to side and almost double that length-wise. There was no solid floor obviously, just exposed 2x4 joists almost fully covered by a layer of black fiberglass insulation. God bless the 1970’s, right? The ceiling was likewise a mess of framing and shadows, overhead. I was surprised at how high up the roof line stretched, given that this row of connected townhouses wasn’t all that big or fancy.

Already starting to sweat, I scanned the room, looking for the damaged drywall I knew was lurking on one of the walls. And there it was, about thirty feet away, at the base of the shared attic wall between this townhouse and the one next door. I could see torn brown paper and what looked like some kind of hole, probably made by a raccoon or something long ago. It looked exactly like the photo from the buyer’s inspector that my client had forwarded me last night. The lazy bastard hadn’t actually climbed up into the attic; he’d just taken the picture with his head poked up through the access door.

I stood up, using the angled, exposed wood framing coming down from the roof trusses to help me gently cross the dusty black sea beneath my boots.

This was going to be easy, I thought. In and out. Plug the hole and get the…

I stopped.

There, next to my left boot, something sat tucked into the insulation, protruding slightly and only noticeable by the dull manner that it reflected the light from my lamp. Had I not been focusing on where I was planting my feet I’d have never seen it. I squinted. It was some kind of whitish fabric. I reached down and tugged at it. It slipped free of the insulation, dropping little tufts of the stuff as I lifted it. I cocked my head, confused, when I saw that it was a woman’s bra. I tossed it aside. The sheer out-of-placeness of it had jarred me and, if I was being honest, it made me somewhat ill at ease.

I cast a glance behind me in that giant black box, and aside from the dim glow of my head lamp all I could see was the pillar of light climbing up into the darkness from the room below the attic access door. I could see nothing out of place, but my heart rate ticked up.

“Get it done,” I said. I turned again to see the task at hand. I was now halfway to the wall hole. I squinted. Those raccoons had done a hell of a job. I really hoped I had enough drywall chunks in the backpack to be able to piece this thing back together.

Ten more cautious steps. I thought I saw another oddity in the insulation along the way but I forced myself focus on getting this job done. I did not have time to be getting lost in distractions, nor the foreboding feeling of desolation that had begun to creep in around me from the blackened perimeters of the lonely attic.

When I reached the wall I stopped and shook my head in confusion. I kneeled down to inspect the hole.

“Holy shit,” I said. Again I felt my heart flutter. My breathing deepened, heavy puffs in and out of my nostrils, stifled by my face cup.

The hole itself was two feet wide and about a foot and a half tall, raggedly punched through, just at the base of the wall where it met the floor joists. There were no tiny claw marks. There was no evidence of biting or chewing or anything resembling the work of a rodent. What I saw as I shined my light further into the hole was that four layers of fire-rated sheetrock had been broken through from the other side of the wall. This was clear because the pile of discarded and broken drywall was pile there at my feet. I peered through the hole and into the depths of the other side and what I saw was an exact twin of the room I was currently in, though this one was fully dark. There was no open access hole leading down into the neighboring townhouse.

I looked closer at the edges of the hole and saw irregular, wide scrape marks along the perimeter, where the paper facing of the drywall did indeed look to have been clawed at, but by something that much larger than a raccoon. It definitely hadn’t been the work of a hand saw; there were no clean lines anywhere. Fire-rated 5/8” drywall was no joke to get through, especially four layers of it. And the only sane way to do it would be to use a router or a hand saw, unless you were trying to be quiet. Someone had dug their way through partially, apparently by hand, and then pushed or kicked the rest of the way. This hole was not made by any animal. And it was done in a way that made no sense.

I heard a soft thump from somewhere across the attic space.

I turned suddenly and let my headlamp wash through the inky blackness behind me. Nothing. There was nothing there. And yet, my heart did not believe my eyes. My hands were unsteady. Sweat dribbled down my forehead and ran down the edge of my mask. My mind shot to the discarded undergarment that I had found on my way across the attic. I glanced in that direction and found only muted stillness. I thought of the man-sized hole beside me and the rotten bra and tried not to make a connection. I was being an idiot. The hole was probably made by some jackass roofer who was too lazy to walk all the way down and out of one unit and up into the attic of the neighbor’s place while doing repairs or something. That had to be it. And he did it with his bare hands. Right.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Fix it,” I said aloud. “Fix the hole, Peter. Get out.”

I blinked a few times, turned back to the hole and plopped the backpack down next to me. I pulled out two little hunks of 2x4 that I had pre-cut for the job. I grabbed the Milwaukee driver and small container of screws. Even though the wood pieces were somewhat small I made it work. I tacked them to the edges and between the pieces of drywall in my backpack and the ones that had been left on the floor of the attic, I had enough to layer up the hole. I quickly ran fiberglass tape along the edge and rooted around in my bag for the six inch putty knife and the peanut butter jar full of drywall mud I’d packed in there this morning.

“Ow!” I jerked my hand back out of the bag. I’d grabbed too hastily and the drywall knife caught me by surprise. The cut wasn’t bad but I had put a hole in the palm of my left hand about a half inch wide. I squeezed the hand and winced. It was enough to be a bleeder.

Another dull, airy thump sounded from behind me. I turned and stared intently into the abyss. Nothing out of place. Though the light called softly to me from the attic access hole. It began to whisper the promise of safety, of escape from the silent unknown that currently surrounded me.

I remembered there was a handkerchief in the backpack. It probably wasn’t the cleanest thing but it would do the job for my hand. I looked more carefully this time and pulled it out. Once it was wrapped around my hand I opened the jar of white, pasty drywall mud and glommed some of it onto the knife that had done me wrong. I found I hadn’t done a good job of wiping the tool off as some of my blood made a crimson streak in the mud when I applied it to the edges of the hole.

Another pillowy thump from the depths behind me. I was sure of it this time.

I closed my eyes and willed my heart to slow. “Birds,” I reassured myself, knowing that pigeons nested along the eaves of all of these buildings. I’d even seen them when I parked. I was sure o...

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