The Voice Beyond the Wallpaper
“What did she tell you?” Mark asked again, almost soundlessly. He had both arms braced against the yellow paper, palms spread over its faded flowers, as though his weight could keep something from coming through.
Lily buried her face against my stomach. Her lashes trembled against my sweatshirt. She was frightened, and the fear in her small body was aimed not at the wall, but at her father.
“You can tell him,” I murmured, combing my fingers through her knotted brown hair. “You’re safe. Just say what the girl told you.”
She sniffed and turned toward Mark, showing him one wet blue eye. “She said her daddy was mad, too.”
The house went still around us. All afternoon, the old Victorian had sighed in the Pennsylvania wind, its boards and pipes answering every draft. Now nothing stirred. The silence seemed to fill the room.
Mark took his arms away from the wall. The angry color had drained from his face, leaving it gray and hollow-looking. He didn’t accuse Lily of making it up. He watched the crack, breathing in short, uneven pulls.
“We’re shutting this room,” he said, his voice stripped of feeling. “No one comes back in. Tomorrow I’ll get somebody to cover that wall with drywall.”
“You can’t mean that,” I said. My arms tightened around Lily. “You heard her. Something’s in there. A mouse, maybe a raccoon. We need to find out what it is.”
“No!” The shout burst from him. He jerked at the sound of it, which bounced off the tall plaster walls, then lowered his voice and glanced toward the vacant hall. “We are not tearing into anything, Sarah.”
“This place is old. It could be the house settling, or mice, or pigeons. I don’t know, and I’m done talking about it. Get her blankets. We’ll stay downstairs.”
He left before I could answer. His steps thudded away along the hall and down the wooden staircase, leaving me alone with Lily and the yellow wall.
I held her close and stared at the faded flowers. I knew that paper. For twenty-nine years, I had awakened shaking from the same dream: dusty air, a bay window set at a slant, and a child’s voice begging from somewhere out of sight.
“Tell Daddy I’m still here.”
I had shared the dream with Mark when we were first dating, on our third outing together. In a busy diner, I told him about the nightmares that had followed me since childhood.
He had taken my hand and listened kindly, then suggested the mind sometimes kept odd scraps of memory. For years the dream came less often, usually surfacing when I was under too much strain.
But yesterday, when the real estate agent opened this house, my stomach clenched. I climbed the stairs and saw the third bedroom at the far end of the corridor. My breath caught.
The slanted bay window. The yellow paper coming loose from the walls. Every detail matched what I had seen in my sleep. I had known the room before I had ever entered it.
I’d wanted to turn around. In the driveway, I pleaded with Mark to look elsewhere. The house cost far less than it should have; it was an estate sale, vacant for decades.
Mark had been eager to get away from rising city rent, and he’d already signed the papers. He said I was letting my nerves take over. To him, the house was only a lucky find.
Now I looked at the wall and couldn’t make myself believe him. I lifted Lily’s favorite stuffed rabbit from the floor, gathered her up, and headed for the doorway.
As I pulled the heavy oak door toward its frame, I glanced down at a rough split in the wall near the floor. The loose paper beside it caught my eye.
It wasn’t simply lifting away from the plaster. The edge pushed toward me, barely moving, as if a small hand were pressing from the darkness behind it.
I slammed the door, turned the lock, and hurried down the stairs with Lily in my arms.
Morning changed the house, but not what had happened. Sunlight made the night’s shadows look harmless. Mark stood at the kitchen sink, scouring a mug without speaking to me.
I settled Lily at the island with cereal, then went to him. “Mark, we have to talk about last night.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.” He kept his eyes on the mug as the sponge squealed across it. “I hired a contractor. Dave. He’ll be here at noon to patch things up and seal off that room. It’s an old house. Drafts shift the paper, and pipes make sounds. That’s all.”
“Lily heard someone, Mark,” I said. “She heard the very words I’ve heard in my dream.”
