IT LIVES INSIDE THE WALLS

IT LIVES INSIDE THE WALLS

“If you get this.. I’m alone at my mom’s place cleaning up. I’ll be back by morning. I miss you.”

The dial tone clicked and hissed, the reception crackly this far into the woods. The red evening light had faded into black, a light rain beating against the glass. The shadows of the building had taken on a strange intensity, a gloom thick enough to obscure all details. The young woman struck a match, lighting a scented candle on the dining room table. A warm orange glow lit the low ceilinged house, the plaster of the walls rotting and old. Holes in the foundations peered at her like dark open mouths, the mold covered gaps whistling in the gale. It was once her late mother’s home, left to her daughter in the will, a two story shack on the edge of Applewood, Pennsylvania. A cluster of trees obscured the ruin from the road, giving the estate the quality of a dirty secret; an abandoned place hidden away from prying eyes. It was the one place she hated to be alone.

Her dead mother, once wealthy, had needed privacy, a place where she could be alone with her collection of porcelain dolls, her magazines and her troubled thoughts. She was a dark and unsociable old crone, prone to bouts of hysteric screaming and crying. The family knew she had gone mad long ago, leaving her to her delusions. She would complain of strange visitors to the house, men who did not exist. She would sing to people who were not there, talk to the holes in the ceiling. It was a miracle she had not been put in an asylum. Her family had tried to visit, but were mostly banished, seeing her only through cracks in the curtains. She had refused the help of care workers, existing only on tinned apricots and the water of a rusted tank. Now she was gone, buried faraway in an overgrown cemetery.

Stacks of old newspapers littered the floor, the daughter stacking them in cardboard crates. Dolls heads and cookie jars rattled into the containers, useless junk shoved in beside perfumed nightgowns, everything stained with the musk of old age. The daughter felt vulnerable, tired, more alone than she had been in years. She could not weep for her mother - the one she had known had died long ago. But that shell of her parent, that skinny husk that was left, rotting away in that rocking chair – she wept for that poor thing, who had been found only weeks ago. The death had been considered an act of nature, accidental, the passing of a disturbed mind.

The old lady had been eaten by rats and cockroaches, her face unrecognizable, no eyes or lips but a great gaping hole of bone and sinew. The grease from her body had drenched the armchair, giving the house a putrid odor. The young woman sighed and sniffled, shivering in the cold – it would all be over so soon. All she had to do was pack a few of her mom’s things away and she could drive back into town, back to the warmth of her hotel room. The house would be sold and time could move on, her mother’s body laid to rest. She had wished her boyfriend was with her, but he had left days ago for a business trip,

Once the living room was packed up, the young woman crept up the winding staircase of the house, floorboards creaking underfoot. The sound of buzzing flies met her ears, the candle in her hand illuminating the peeling wallpaper. The wind rushed through the holes in the house, quivering the flame. Her mother’s bedroom stood out from the others, its red walls blackened by burnt tobacco, the windows covered in newspaper. Inside the many dolls watched the daughter movements, their dusty eyes reflecting the light. With a large box she began stacking them, pulling the toys in by their lifeless legs, thinking of who on earth might ever want them. It was then, in the absolute silence of the room that she first heard the sound. The sound of deep, pressured breath, a wheezing that made her blood run cold. The dark hole above the bed began to whisper, the mold around it dripping with rain.

She thought suddenly of the ghosts her mother had talked about, of the people who lived within the walls. The noise became louder, a scraping like that of flesh on metal, the heavy breathing becoming hoarse. The wallpaper in the corner began to flop down, dripping and slopping into a damp pile. Before she could turn around the figure had appeared, its body thin, boned and pale. Her eyes opened wider than ever, a noise piercing her ears. It seemed to pulse in the flickering light, strange limbs visible and angular, taller than most men. Its shadows seemed to dance in the candlelight, the young woman screaming, as its hunched back reached the walls. It was the man who had spoken to her dead mother, the one that had whispered in the dark.

The slits in its skin seemed to look at her, observing the young woman as she scrambled to the door. It dragged her slowly, softly by the roots of her hair, its long fingernails bent and sharp as knives. It grabbed and pulled, her scalp bleeding. She struggled, her voice muffled by flesh and bone, as her teeth screeched against the floorboards. She hang on for dear life, tears flooding from her eyes, the hole in the wall engulfing her. Soon the room was empty, save for the crawling of cockroaches, her cries deafened. Her eyes peered through the holes in the wall, staring at the bedroom of her mother, the creature feeding on the flesh of her face. As her blood gushed from the cracks, the candlelight flickered into nothing, the darkness wrapped around her. She was no longer alone.

IT LIVES INSIDE THE WALLS