It is a lovely two-story house in a nice part of town… except for the noises. There’s the sound of something scratching in the walls. Always just at the edge of hearing, only loud when you sleep when it becomes an all-consuming cacophony until you spring awake, ears ringing in the silence. Something is in the walls, always seeming to be just out of reach and below. Below.

Into the basement the sounds bring us, where they cannot be any further below, right? The scratching, like a snake across rough wood, or perhaps just the scaly tail of a rat… Or many.

A small hole in the wall in the back room of the basement – a place for storing those things which are old, broken, scruffy, or simply forgotten. The hole leads behind the wall, a hollow between…