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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/DarksomePrairie on 2026-08-11 15:30:00+00:00.

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Alice creeped me out from the beginning.

But she paid well … really well.

I’d been a handyman for a decade with a great client list—clients who loved my work and kept me coming back. Plumbing, electrical, landscaping, painting … I could do it all. No job was too big or too small.

Alice called after finding my phone number online. She lived in a dilapidated one-story house in a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of town and had a home-project-to-do list that was three miles long.

She was very sweet when I visited her home to give her an initial quote on her project list. Alice was in her eighties, thin, soft-spoken, with piercing blue eyes and a warmth in her mannerisms. She moved slow and with a slight limp as she walked through her quaint house. A crisp purple tracksuit seemed to be her daily uniform.

“I’ll be honest with you, Alice,” I said, “I have so many clients at the moment, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to your projects anytime soon. Are you sure you don’t want to reach out to some other handymen in the area?”

Alice grinned. “I’d prefer you, honey. I’ve heard great things about your work. Whatever price you list in your quote—double it. I’ll pay cash.”

“Double it! Alice, that really isn’t—”

“I insist.”

I couldn’t say no, even though something struck me as odd about how Alice looked at me throughout the visit. As she showed me around the house and pointed out the various things that needed fixing, I would catch her staring at me and … licking her thin dry lips with a trembling swipe of her cracked tongue. This happened multiple times—I’d catch her doing it off to my side, while I inspected the work that needed done.

But as mentioned, I couldn’t say no. I needed the money. I shifted some other customer appointments around and got started at Alice’s house the next morning.

Three things happened in that first day of work that scared the hell out of me.

My first project was installing a new garbage disposal. I had removed everything under the kitchen sink—including the old disposal apparatus—and was laying on my back looking up through the now-open hole of the sink’s drain. Through the drain hole, I could see the kitchen’s old popcorn ceiling above.

I turned to my side to grab a tool, and when I laid back down and gazed up through the hole, my heart spasmed: Alice’s face was looking down at me through the open drain hole, a thick trickle of saliva dangling from the corner of her frowning mouth.

She looked hungry—no—starving.

“Jesus Christ!” I shrieked, banging my head on the bottom of the sink as I moved like hell to get out from under the cabinet. “Alice, what in the world are you—”

But she wasn’t there.

I was alone in the kitchen, and there was no way she had left the room that fast.

“Alice, are you there?” I called.

“In here,” came a shaky voice from the living room.

I walked into the cottage-themed room to find her watching a daytime soap opera on an ancient tv set.

“Did you need something, Alice? I saw you looking into the sink.”

“Wasn’t me, sweetheart. But I’m sure you’re doing great in there.” She smiled. “I wouldn’t dare miss a second of Mansard Canyon—it’s my favorite soap, though I could do without all the whores.”

“Oh … okay.” My confusion was palpable. I turned to go back to the kitchen.

“One more thing, hon.”

“Yes, Alice?”

“You won’t take the Lord’s name in vain again under my roof. Understood?”

Later in the day, outside with my ladder leaned above Alice’s bedroom window, I filled in the places where a woodpecker had damaged the house’s siding. The afternoon was dim with clouds, heavy with the anticipation of rain.

I was high enough on the ladder that my legs were at the same level as Alice’s window, with my upper body nearly to the roof as I smoothed the recently-filled holes with my putty knife.

Still shaken from the morning’s scare of Alice’s demented face staring down at me through the sink hole, I tried to enjoy being outside in the cool weather.

And I was starting to feel calm, until I felt bony-hard hands groping my calves and ankles through the rungs of the ladder. Along with this unwelcome massage, I could have sworn I heard a choking voice whispering:

“So strong … give me a taste … strong boy …”

I gave a small yelp and spasmed, nearly plummeting from where I stood on the high rung.

“What the fu—”

Tightening my grip and pulling myself into the ladder to prevent falling, my eyes shot down just in time to see two thin wrists—clothed in the sleeves of that purple tracksuit—disappear back into the window below me.

By the time I made it back to the ground, the window was shut and the curtains were drawn.

I marched back into the house to confront Alice—to tell her how unwanted that behavior was—but she was at her kitchen table, sipping a steaming cup of tea and flipping through a tabloid.

There was no way in hell she had moved from her bedroom to the kitchen that fast.

What the fuck was going on?

“Everything okay, Mr. Handyman?” she asked, wiping a thin smear of lipstick off the rim of her teacup.

“Everything’s fine, Alice. Thanks.”

The third and final occurrence of that first day of work disturbed me most of all.

The late afternoon found me again in the kitchen, this time preparing to do minor repairs on some of the kitchen appliances. As I prepared my tools, I realized I should find the breaker box and shut off the power to the appliances before I worked on them. After all, were I to electrocute myself in Alice’s house, I wasn’t convinced her trembling fingers could call 911 fast enough to get me help.

Before approaching the door to the basement to locate the breaker box and turn off the power to the kitchen, I figured I’d better tell Alice what I was doing. I had a lot of elderly customers, and giving them a heads up of where you were going in their house—and why—was never a bad idea to keep everything above board.

But Alice was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t in the kitchen, the living room, outside on the patio, or in the room she had designated for “crafting.” Realizing she was likely in her bedroom, perhaps taking a nap, I approached and quietly tapped on the door.

“Alice?”

To my discomfort the door was not latched and swung open at my touch.

Within, the dark bedroom appeared dense with fog and reeked of mildew. Though I wasn’t sure, the pitch-black ceiling seemed speckled with pin-point starlights from a cruel and distant galaxy. A faint groan emanated from a human shape sitting atop the bed, a thick and tattered quilt—adorned with strange symbols—covering every inch of the writhing being.

Yeah … no.

I quickly closed the door.

I made a decision. I would go to the basement. Turn off the breaker. Finish my work. Get paid. Get the fuck out. And I wouldn’t be coming back to Alice’s house once I was done.

Locating the basement door, I turned the knob and made to go down the unsteady wooden staircase into the dark unfinished cellar that reeked of old water.

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!?”

I turned. Alice was shaking with fury behind me, drool pouring from the corners of her mouth, tiny hands balled into fists. Her eyes wide, spasming, bloodshot, animal-like.

“Alice … I have to click off the breaker for—”

“How would you like it if I came to your house and snooped around, eh? How would you feel about that, Mr. Handyman? Do you have no sense of privacy? What if I took a look around your basement or your bedroom—see where you and your whores sleep? Would you like that!”

I tried my best to remain calm. “I’m so sorry, Alice. I didn’t mean to—”

She let out a chuckle mixed with a gag and wiped the thick slime from her lips.

“Oh, honey,” she crooned.

There was a total and immediate shift of Alice’s body and voice then, as if the monster had turned back to human. The gentle old woman stood before me once more.

“I meant to ask earlier, sweetheart. Would you like some tea?”

No amount of money was worth this shit.

Without a word I grabbed my toolbox and left.

***

Alice called me early the next morning: “Hello there, Mr. Handyman. Thank you so much for all of the quality work you did here yesterday. But, you silly boy, you forgot to let me pay you. I have plenty of cash ready-to-go, so please swing by later this morning.”

I knew I should just drop it. Be done with Alice. Be done with that house. Forgo payment. But it was a lot of cash—double payment—the creepy old woman was more than happy to pay.

Against my gut instinct I drove to Alice’s house and knocked on the door, and same as the bedroom incident, it swung open at my touch.

“Alice?”

No response.

I walked into the house. Announcing myself loud and frequently, I wandered through the rooms calling Alice’s name.

Finding her nowhere, I made my way back to the front door. But my blood turned to ice when I noticed the open and yawning black mouth of the open basement door …

Nope. Fuck that.

But I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Yes, Alice was creepy. Yes, I didn’t feel fully safe in that strange house. But what if she was hurt? What if she had fallen down the treacherous cellar stairs and broken a leg? What if she needed my help?

Against my twisting gut that screamed at me to leave, I went through the basement door and down the stairs, softly calling out the old woman’s name.

“Alice, are you down here? Are you okay?”

The cellar had a hard-packed dirt floor and was dimly lit by cracked and f...

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