Kate looks at him half surprised, “Wait, what do you mean there was a hole there?”

“I MEAN there was a hole here,” he knocks on the wall causing a dull, hollow sound to echo on the other side. “It’s gone now. Yep, someone must’ve patched it right up.”

“Well, that’s impossible!” Kate exclaims, half chuckling and half trying to tell if he’s pulling her leg, “I mean, I keep hearing freaky shit coming out of this wall. Like, I don’t know. Voices, or something. I don’t think the building next door is like, being used by anybody or anything like that.”

“Just ‘cause the hole is gone in the wall don’t mean it’s gone on the other side of it! I figure your landlord just put the wall up and wanted to deal with this little problem himself. Prolly got some animals making noises, or druggies or some shit.” He lets out a raspy belly laugh, before coughing hard into his fist.

Kate rubs her temples. Of COURSE it was her landlord’s fault. Half the stuff when she got this place barely worked. This is the fifth time she’s had to call her landlord in the past month because her landlord isn’t returning her plumbing, heat, electrical, and now mysterious un-filled hole-related problems. “Okay, okay. Can you at least fill it in or something? I don’t want any raccoons tearing into my wall while I’m in the shower.”

“Erm, sure.” He sighs and scratches his head. “I mean, we need ta’ get a permit from the city which will take a few days. I know a few people in the city ‘cause of my drywall business, so they should be able ta’ give us ‘special permission,’” he says with air quotes. “I also own the building next door, been meaning ta’ make it into a rental. I’ll swing by with some tools and start filling it in maybe… in a week or so?”

Kate starts to complain, groaning and smacking her forehead with the palm of her hand, “Well, thanks Ed. I wish it could be done sooner but the fact you’re doing this for free is really helping me out so… yeah.”

Ed shrugs, “Hey, what’re friends for, huh? See ya next week, and try not to have that ‘hole’ thing stress you out too much, okay? ‘S the middle of the summer, so it’s not like any of those pests over there are tryin’ ta’ get warm. It’ll be fixed in no time.”

Kate wishes she could believe him, and as the days go by she’s able to ignore the gnawing anxiety in the back of her mind that something is going to go wrong with that damn hole in her bathroom. Her one saving grace is that it’s being covered by the wall.

That is, until she woke up one Saturday morning. She partied after work the night before, so she was hungover and exhausted as she groggily stumbles into her bathroom. She washes her face with cold water trying to shake the night away, and was halfway through brushing her teeth when she notices it: There’s a large hole— large enough for a person to easily crawl through— in her wall where the landlord knocked.

Kate peers into the hole with her brow furrowed and toothbrush still in her mouth. Toothpaste starts to drip from her mouth and onto her outdated bathroom tiles, but she’s so taken aback by the sudden appearance that doesn’t even notice. The hole in the wall seems to go on for a while, and it’s dark. Too dark for Kate to see the end of it, even when she shines her phone flashlight into it. She spits her toothpaste out and calls her landlord as she cleans her toothpaste mess up.

He doesn’t pick up the first couple of calls, but on the third try Kate finally gets through to him. He sounds groggy, and angry that she’s calling him.

“Geez o’ petes Kate! Y’know it’s my day off, right? What the hell’s going on?”

Kate’s voice wavers, still shaken from the hole that seemingly apprared in her wall, “L-listen, do you remember that hole in my wall that was ‘gone?’ I-it’s back.”

The landlord sighs, “Shit, uh, whaddya mean it’s back? Like, sum animal tore its way in ta’ your bathroom?”

Kate shakes her head and looks at the hole, “No, it’s like… I don’t know. It’s almost grafted into the wall. Like it’s always been there, or maybe like the wall itself just opened up.” The landlord chuckles, causing Kate’s nostrils to flare and her brows to furrow.

“Listen hun, I know yer stressed about this whole thing-“

“Don’t fucking call me ‘hun,’ Ed. I know what I’m looking at.” She runs her finger along the edge of the hole as she says this, trying to see there were any gaps indicating it had been added to the wall in some way. Instead it seemlessly blends from white drywall to a strange brownish-gray cement with ridges every inch or so. “Just get your ass over here, PLEASE. I CANNOT go the rest of the weekend thinking I’ll be jumped by some raccoons.”

Ed starts to say something just as a sound emanates from the hole, causing Kate to jump. It’s a strange, strained noise coming from deep in the hole. It starts out low, and Kate tells Ed to stop talking so she could hear it better. After a second, she realizes it’s a voice. It’s strained and weak, like someone is standing on their chest.

“Kkkkhhhhhh- khhhaaaaa….aaaatttttttteeeee,” says the voice. “Khhh-Kaaaaattttteeee, hhhhheelp me… help me, _please_!” The voice sounds feminine—slightly deep and distorted as well. Maybe she’s saying it through the hole on the other side of the wall, or maybe she’s stuck in there, either way Kate goes through a paroxysm of shock. The last thing she expects from noises coming out of a hole is a woman pleading for help.

She was silent for a while, ears almost ringing as she stares at the hole in a horrified silence. After a second, she realizes that she still has her phone in her hand. Ed is still talking, asking Kate where she is. She puts the phone to her ear.

“Ed… _Ed!” _She says, interrupting him with a wavering tone. “I think there’s someone inside the _fucking hole._” Ed is silent for a second, which seems like an eternity for Kate with the continuous pleading from the woman in the hole. Finally, Ed just laughs.

“Kate, what- what’re ya talking about?” There is a sense of nervousness in his voice.

“Listen!” Kate places her phone up to the hole, allowing Ed to hear the pained wails. After a second, she puts her phone back to her ear. “Do you believe me now?” She says, half smug and half impatient. “_Please, _you gotta swing by. I’m gonna call 911 and crawl in there, or something.”

Kate could hear a quiet “_Fuck,_” come from Ed. Then, he said in a surprisingly stern voice, “Kate listen to me. Do NOT go into that hole and do NOT call the cops. I’ll be over there in an hour. If anythin’, lock yer bathroom door. Better yet, leave yer apartment. I’ll be there soon.”

Before she had a chance to protest, Ed hangs up. It was her turn to cuss, since the idea of just hanging back while this woman was in possible pain wasn’t one that she wanted to entertain. Especially since the cries from the woman seem to be growing louder and louder. Kate wonders if anyone else in the building can hear it.

_Screw Ed, _she thinks. _This hole is more than big enough to crawl through. If Ed’s going to take that long to lug his ass over here, I might as well just crawl in myself._

Kate rumages through her kitchen drawers until she finds her flashlight, not wanting to take her phone into a cramped place. She shines the flashlight down the hole and it hits the darkness as though it ran into a wall fifteen feet away. She sighs, and shakes her hands to amp herself up before putting her flashlight into her mouth and crawling head first into the hole in her wall.

She crawls into the darkness. The ridges every inch give good fingerholds as she crawls on her hands and knees into the darkness, and are also strangely warm to the touch. She realizes that she’s been crawling for a while— _much_ longer than what should’ve been the space between buildings. She tries to turn around to see how far from her bathroom she had crawled so far, but is unable to from the size of the hole. In fact, she’s just realized that the hole itself seemed to have shrunk since she went in, now closing around her shoulders and hips. She tries to back up, but it’s almost as though something is forcing her to continue into the hole. Whether it’s controlling her or the hole is physically pressing her deeper and deeper into it, she can’t tell. Eventually, after what feels like half an hour of crawling she ends up on her stomach, dragging herself— or maybe, _being_ dragged, even— along the warm concrete ridges of the hole. It’s getting tighter, it’s constricting her and making it harder to breathe. The air is stale, and her lungs are being crushed by the walls of the hole. Even if she wanted to turn around, or push herself backwards, she couldn’t. Her arms are to her side, and her head barely has enough space to look forward. Eventually, her flashlight goes out, and she’s left in the darkness.

***

Ed unlocks Kate’s door with his skeleton key for the building. He’s pissed at her, and rightfully so, he feels. The bitch who’s been ringing his phone nonstop since she moved in can’t seem to answer hers the one time Ed needs her to. Of course she had to keep him locked out, too! Ungrateful fucking tennants.

“Kate! I’m ‘ere ta’ fix that dammed hole ya keep yammering about!” He stands in the doorway of her apartment. The lights are all still off except for the bathroom. The light seeps out of the doorway, slightly brighter than the glow of the afternoon sun. Ed shifts uneasily when Kate doesn’t respond. “Aight, well… I’m comin’ in! Don’t call the cops on me, or nothin’.”

He mutters under his breath as he walks into the bathroom, complaining about how much of a bitch Kate is. He stops in his tracks, though, when he sees the hole in the wall— and no sign of Kate. It’s not until he peers into the hole that he hears her. She’s sobbing, calling out to him.

“Eeeeehhhh…. Eeeeeeeeehhhhhddddd,” Her voice calls between choked sobs. “Eeeeehhhhhddwaarrddd… Heeellp me… Help me _PLEASE!_”

Ed swears under his breath. Then, he says to the hole, “Fuckin’… this is the fourth one this year you piece of shit!” He kicks the wall underneath the hole out of frustration, putting another hole into the wall from his steel toe boot. “Great, now I need ta’ find _another _tennant and fill_ another fuckin’ hole!_”

Ed starts to plaster over his foothole, quickly patching the hole in the drywall. He looks into the hole, the uneasy darkness seems to reach out to him. Kate continues to scream his name between rhaspy sobs, but he shrugs it off. He knows that isn’t Kate.

He plugs up the hole after an hour of work, goes home, and puts up a new ad for the apartment:

“Wonderful one-bedroom apartment in downtown Lansing. Rent is $2,500 a month. Fully furnished and rececntly retouched after sudden departure of previous tennant. There was a hole in the bathroom wall, it’s gone now.”