Chapter 2: The Pipe-less Shower

Chapter 2: The Pipe-less Shower

Sleep offered no escape. Leo spent the night on a mattress thrown on the downstairs floor, the silence from upstairs feeling heavier and more menacing than any noise. Every creak of the house was the radio shifting its weight; every sigh of the wind was a prelude to another impossible event. He dreamt of spidery handwriting crawling across his skin and the echo of a phantom crash that never came.

By morning, raw-nerved and underslept, he forced himself into a semblance of his rational self. He made coffee on a camping stove, the hiss and percolate a comforting sound of normalcy. The radio was just a thing. A weird, inexplicable thing, but still just a thing. Maybe the previous owner had left it, and in his exhaustion, he’d simply missed it. It was a flimsy theory, and he knew it, but it was all he had.

He had to get back to work. He had to impose order. His new plan was simple: ignore the master bedroom entirely. Seal the door if he had to. Focus on the tangible, solvable problems. The bathroom was next on his list. The shower dripped with a maddening, irregular rhythm, and a dark, mildewy stain was creeping out from beneath the vinyl flooring. A simple plumbing issue. Something a man with a wrench and a YouTube tutorial could fix.

He went to the front door to grab his toolbox from the porch, and that’s when he saw it.

Tucked into the handle of the screen door, folded into a neat, tight square, was another piece of yellowed paper. His stomach clenched. It was the same ancient, brittle-looking paper as the first note. His hand shook as he took it. This one hadn’t come from the mailbox. It had been placed here. Deliberately.

He unfolded it. The same frantic, inky scrawl. But this time, it wasn't a cryptic warning. It was a command.

FIX THE SHOWER. IT SEES YOU.

Leo’s breath hitched. It sees you. The words felt like a violation, a confirmation of the creeping paranoia that had taken root in his mind. He glanced back into the house, half-expecting to see a pair of eyes looking out from the shadows of the hallway. He saw nothing, but the feeling of being watched was suddenly, suffocatingly real. The dripping shower wasn't just a leak; it was an eye. The house wasn't just broken; it was observing him through its wounds.

He crumpled the note, his knuckles white. The first note, still a wadded ball in the pocket of yesterday's jeans, suddenly felt like a friendly suggestion compared to this. This was an ultimatum.

Fine. He would fix the damned shower. But he wouldn’t do it the house’s way. He would do it his way. With professionals. With logic.

He pulled out his phone, his fingers stabbing at the screen as he searched for a local plumber. The first number he called went to an automated message. The second rang for a full minute before a gruff voice answered. “Yeah?”

“Hello, my name is Leo Vance. I just moved into a house on Wallace Street and I need a plumber to take a look at a leak in the upstairs shower.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Wallace Street? One of the old Levittowns?”

“That’s right,” Leo said, relieved. “The shower seems to have a persistent—”

“Son,” the man cut him off, his voice laced with a weary sort of pity. “Save your money. We don’t take calls for Wallace Street.”

“What? Why not? It’s just a leak.”

“Look, I’ve been plumbing in this county for forty years. I’ve seen the blueprints. Those houses, the original models? The upstairs bathrooms don’t have any pipes.”

Leo’s blood ran cold. “What are you talking about? Of course they have pipes. There’s a showerhead. A faucet. Water comes out.”

“I’m not saying they don’t have water. I’m saying they don’t have pipes. Not traditional copper or PVC. It was some experimental post-war thing. A ‘wet-room’ system. Integrated drainage. The town records are a mess, but they were all supposed to be disconnected from the mains back in the eighties. Considered a biohazard, I heard. Whatever you’ve got going on in there, it ain’t a job for a wrench. It’s a job for a bulldozer.” The man grunted. “Good luck, kid. You’re gonna need it.”

The line went dead.

Leo stood in the driveway, the phone still pressed to his ear, the sun feeling unnaturally cold on his skin. No pipes. The words echoed the impossible reality of the radio. This house wasn't just old; it was fundamentally wrong. It operated on a set of rules he didn’t understand.

His frustration curdled into a kind of defiant terror. He wasn’t going to be scared out of his own home by phantom radios and pipe-less showers. He had poured his life into this place. He would not be defeated. The note had said to fix it. Fine. He would fix it.

He stormed back inside, grabbing the crowbar. The bathroom was small and claustrophobic, the air thick with the smell of damp. The vinyl floor squelched slightly under his feet. The shower faucet dripped, a dark, viscous-looking bead of water forming and dropping onto the stained basin. Plink. Plonk. It wasn't the sound from the first note, but it was close enough to make the hair on his arms stand up.

It sees you.

He stared at the tiled wall behind the faucet, a cheap, plastic-looking tile popular in the seventies, probably installed long after the house was built. If there were no pipes, what was behind it? Where was the water coming from?

With a guttural yell, he slammed the pointed end of the crowbar into the wall.

The tile shattered with a brittle crack, revealing yellowed plaster underneath. He jabbed again, and a chunk of plaster fell away. He worked with a feverish intensity, tearing at the wall, the sounds of destruction a counter-chant to the house’s oppressive silence. Plaster dust filled his lungs, but he didn’t stop. He was going to drag this house’s secrets into the light.

Finally, he pried away a large section of drywall. He shone his phone’s flashlight into the dark cavity, expecting to see wood studs and insulation. Expecting to prove the plumber wrong.

He saw neither.

The space behind the wall was filled with a dense, tangled network of what looked like thick, black hoses. They weren't rigid like pipes; they were coiled and layered over one another, slick with a dark, oily fluid that smelled faintly of iron and earth. As he watched, one of the tubes constricted and then relaxed, a slow, rhythmic pulsation, like a sleeping muscle.

He reached a trembling hand into the wall, his rational mind screaming at him to stop. His fingers brushed against one of the tubes. It was warm. Pliable and vaguely yielding, like skin.

These weren't pipes. They were veins.

Leo scrambled backward, falling out of the bathroom and into the hall, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. He stared at the hole in the wall, the crowbar lying on the floor where he’d dropped it. He had followed the house’s command. He had performed the requested surgery. And in doing so, he had confirmed his deepest, most unspeakable fear.

His house was alive.