“I woke up in the middle of the night because I thought I heard something. I just moved to a new house and I guess I’m not quite used to the sounds it makes. I chalked it up to mice, made a mental note to call the exterminator when I woke up in the morning.

“When I woke up, I did call the exterminator, who had just had a cancellation and informed me he would be over in 20 minutes. When he came, he promptly went over the downstairs looking for whatever it is that exterminators look for. After a while he came to find me in my study, where I was working.

“He asked me about upstairs and I told him it’s just the attic. He said he needed to go there just the same and if there weren’t any lights there, I would need to go with him to hold the torch. So off we went. He rooted around for a while and talked about mice droppings and whatnot and suddenly he just whistled. He showed me where to point the torch and what I saw was simply gross. There were grey pustules or something all over the floor, I don’t know maybe twenty or thirty. And the thing is, every last one of them was bigger than a soccer ball. As we were watching a hole appeared in one of them.

“At first nothing happened, but then some sort of bug, maybe a spider came through. It was no bigger than my thumb, but another one came after it and then another and the hole just got bigger. They headed straight for us. The exterminator guy stomped as fast as he could but some of them got through anyway. I think I screamed. They just kept coming. I think one or two more of the pustules opened as well. The exterminator told me to run. I thought he was right behind me, but when I turned around at the exit from the attic, I saw he was on the ground, covered in those things. I’m not proud of it but I panicked and just ran out, clear out of the house.

“Please detective, you have to help me. You have to believe me, I didn’t kill him, but those things… You have to get rid of them. Please.”