Huge Claw Marks on Rooftop
It was summer time when I started, hot as hell everyday, and we were roofing houses a lot. We did two big roof jobs back to back. The reason we were there was because (obviously) the woman needed her roof fixed, but why she needed it fixed was the weird part. The roof she had was relatively new, save for three huge gashes going down the front side of her roof. These "gashes" or dig marks would have looked like animal claws if they hadn't been a foot apart from each other and they were so deep, they went through the shingles, the felt paper and the roof decking. If the slashes had been going the opposite way, I think they would have tore right through the rafters as well.
Sam said he had never seen anything like it and it took us a couple of days to repair the damage and re-shingle it completely. The woman who hired us said she wasn't home when it happened, but she noticed the slashes when she came back from a three day business trip. She asked us what could do that, and the only answer Sam could come up with was that maybe a tree being blown around by a storm had somehow grazed her roof.
I lived not far from that area at the time and it had been dryer than a popcorn fart for the last month. I had my doubts about Sam's theory, but the storm story seemed to comfort the woman, who lived alone, so I kept my mouth shut.
Cloud In An Attic
About six months into my handyman career. I was still a novice, but I'd learned a lot from Sam, who just so happened to be off that day. An elderly man called the office and made an appointment for someone to come and open up his attic. His house was older, built in the 1920's, and he had a lot of extra stuff that he needed to store somewhere, but he couldn't get into the attic.
I went on the call by myself thinking that the work order would be a piece of cake. When I got there, he shuffled down the upstairs hall and opened a closet door that hid another set of more rickety stairs. The rickety stairs led to the attic door, which was boarded over really well. I took a look at it and realized I was going to need a crowbar if the old man wanted into his attic.
The homeowner said he wanted the door open, he said his daughter and her family were coming and he needed to stow his extra stuff as soon as possible so that they would have both of his spare bedrooms for the holidays. He told me to tear it down, so I did. At first, I thought the cloud was just dust that had been disturbed from the door being destroyed, but it wasn't. It was an honest to god cloud. Like the fluffy white clouds in the sky. It just hovered in his attic.
I told the old man we could use a fan, if he had one, to try and suck it out the window, because, well... it was kind of disturbing. Clouds don't belong in attics. The old man said it would be great if I could get rid of it. So I set the fan up in front of the tiny attic window, only the cloud wouldn't be moved.
The customer and I couldn’t wrap our heads around what the hell was going on with his attic. Finally, seeing that the cloud wasn’t going anywhere, and it wasn’t actually hurting anyone, the old man decided that he would ignore it and move his extra stuff up anyway. I offered to help him and I even offered to assemble a replacement door for free, but he said he would be fine with no door to his attic.
I remember thinking that there would be no way in hell I wouldn’t re-bolt that door if it was me, because obviously something weird was going on with his attic, and there was probably a reason the previous owners boarded the thing up in the first place.
Finger In The Gutter
The cloud creeped me out, but it wasn’t enough to make me quit or anything. This job pays pretty good and even better when you’re really good at what you do. That was my goal. To be as good at being handy as Sam is one day. I know it probably seems like a stupid dream, but, like I said, I love my job. I love working with my hands. Instant gratification, to watch your own hands fix a problem right in front of your eyes. Call me simple, but for me, it’s hog heaven.
David, a new guy, and me were cleaning out gutters for this older couple on the edge of town, when David found a human finger sticking up out of the muck. David picked up the finger to inspect it (he later said he thought it was made of rubber), when he lost his balance, fell backwards off the ladder and started screaming. He stopped screaming before he even hit the ground. At the time, I remember thinking that was weird.
I was terrified he was dead. He fell a long way down. I ran to his side as fast as I could and tried to see if he was still breathing or not. He was moving. I thought he just had the wind knocked out of him, but it was more than that. When he got his bearings again, he went to take a breath and started clawing at his throat. (I didn’t know about the finger at that point.)
I rolled him over on his side and popped his back hard with an open hand, thinking he must have swallowed some hard candy when he fell. Well, he did swallow something and...you guessed it, it was the finger. I’ve never seen someone so happy to throw up in my life. When he lost his balance, he flung the finger he had been holding in a panic, it flew into the air and landed in his mouth (because he was screaming). The finger just happened to be pointing towards the back of his throat. When David hit the ground, it drove the finger even farther back into his throat and nearly choked him before he could cough it up, which he did with my help.
David quit that same day. I don’t blame him. I probably would have quit too. Especially due to the fact that that finger was not fake. It was 100% the real deal.
Honestly, I have read somewhere that this is not that strange, because birds have been known to fly off with things and stow them in gutters and in trees etc. But, that brings me to another realization- somewhere out there, there is a dead body, maybe even a murder victim who is unburied just waiting to be found, and he’s missing a finger…
If you read my original post, you will know that these weird ass stories of handyman horror were included the first time around. I had to do some editing before re-posting the first “Have Tools, Will Travel…” on r/nosleep. It occurred to me later that someone may want to read the other, shorter accounts of my first few months as a handyman, so I put them here.
I hope I will be able to move forward from here with Sam’s stories along with a few more of my own, just keep in mind, I’m no writer.
I’m a handyman.
-Conner
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