The door creaked open, revealing a long-forgotten hallway. Dust and cobwebs filled the musky space. A foul odor wafted from the passage way on a stale wind, kicking dust up into Kevin’s eyes. He coughed and fanned the air, turning back to the rest of his remodel crew.

“This certainly wasn’t on the master floor plans,” his coworker Ralph remarked.

“No shit,” Kevin quipped, turning on the light of his headlamp and stepped through the precipice.

“It’s no wonder the previous owners reported sounds of scratching from within the house but could never find the source.”

“Right,” Kevin trained his eyes on the space his lamp illuminated. He scanned the hallway for rats or mice, or any of the trappings that they may be nearby. He didn’t see the tell-tale signs of their droppings or their dead—anything. But he did see something that gave him a start. There were scratch marks. But too big to be rats. Far too big. “Must have been some big rats.”

“You’re not going in there are you?” Ralph said, still standing at the precipice.

“We’re being paid to remodel. You don’t think our contractors would want to know about this hallway? I mean, its going to completely fuck the entire plan.”

“I dunno, I just get a bad feeling.”

Kevin laughed. He never took Ralph as a coward. He was a big dude—muscle in places Kevin didn’t know muscle could be. And yet he was scared. Kevin shook his head to himself. “If you’re not coming along, then do something useful and start mappping out the rest of the house. Recheck everything. If this was hiding behind the wallpaper, who knows what else might be.

Ralph nodded and ran back into the house, out of sight. Kevin took out his phone and started to snap photos in the light of the headlamp, documenting the path as he went. It was a rough hallway. In fact, calling it a hallway at all might be a bit of a stretch. It went straight for a short while, just a rickety construction between two walls. Plywood and wooden supports that were laid as the bones of the house before the drywall was applied stuck out and twisted to the right and headed beyond, tracing the wall that they had thought was the exterior wall before they discovered this passage. Like behind, ahead was covered head to toe in cobwebs and spider webs, the eight legged creatures dangling from webs and some staring down from above as Kevin made his way forward. It was quiet—so quiet Kevin could hear so very intently the sound of his own breathing, the beating of his own heart.

And then the hallway did something Kevin couldn’t have predicted. It went_ down_. Down. Kevin scratched his head. How could it possibly go _down_. This wasn’t mapped in the basement. There was only a small storage space as a basement. But they didn’t see any signs of any other passage ways or spaces down there. The air grew more stale and Kevin found himself having a harder time breathing as he carefully followed the slope downward. His headlight caught on more and more of those scratching marks. They were larger. Deeper. And the walls that were rough wood work turned into dirt…no, not dirt. Clay. The scratch marks were deep in the hard clay walls. The floor was nothing more than well-worn dirt patches. Something that had Kevin’s breath catching in his throat. It was well worn. Something came down here. Often.

Kevin was all but about to turn heel and walk back the way he came, but when he turned, his nose collided with a rough surface. His hard hat collided against the wall and managed to come loose from upon his head, falling onto the rough dirt floor. He squinted his eyes to acclimate to the darkness. The path he’d come down was gone. There was just a hard clay wall. Then he heard it. A rattling. A rough rattling breath. It was coming from behind him.

The headlamp on the ground flickered on and off, the thing damaged from the fall. He turned and ducked down, trying to grab the hat, but in the flickering light he saw it. Something—a figure—on the other side of the hall. The hallway continued to narrow and in the flickering light, hunched down where the path ended abruptly was a paper thin figure. Its skin pulled taught over its emaciated body. Its bones poking out at odd angles. And the eyes—the glowing eyes. Kevin felt himself succumb to fear. Felt his heart pounding in his ears. Sweat trickled down his brow and he tried, and failed, to stop the shaking of his hands.

Then his headlamp went out. And he was alone. In the dark. And all he could hear was the rattling, rattling rough breathing of the thing across from it. As it got closer. And closer. Until he could feel its hot breath against his neck.