The Voice Beyond the Wallpaper

“Lily invents things, and she has a habit of listening at doors when she thinks no one notices,” Mark said sharply. At last, he turned off the tap.

His hands clamped around the sink’s rim. The whiteness in his knuckles looked almost painful. “I’m heading to the hardware store. Keep her downstairs till Dave shows up.”

He snatched his keys from the counter and went out through the back. The screen door banged behind him hard enough to shiver in its frame.

I remained by the sink, a chill tightening low in my belly. Mark could be infuriatingly stubborn, and he trusted practical explanations more than anyone I knew.

But he had never struck me as a coward. What I’d seen in his face the night before wasn’t irritation. It was unhidden terror.

He was afraid of that bedroom. Worse, he seemed determined to cover up whatever had frightened him.

At noon on the dot, a battered white van crunched up the gravel drive. Its driver climbed out: a broad man in his fifties, gray beard, tools buckled around his waist.

“You folks called about plaster coming loose?” he asked, brushing the dirt from his boots on the porch mat.

“Yes,” I replied, arranging my mouth into something like a smile. “It’s upstairs. The third room, on the left.”

I led the way up, careful to leave space between us. Lily was below, occupied with cartoons, just as I’d been told to keep her.

At the landing, I opened the heavy oak door. The bedroom’s cold met me at once, as if the heat had never reached it.

Dave stepped inside and let a thick canvas kit fall onto the boards. He studied the wall beneath the yellow paper, shifting the brim of his cap.

He traced the split with a blunt, weather-roughened thumb. “Your husband said you wanted a quick patch and paint,” he said.

Then he rapped the plaster with his knuckles. The sound was dense and dull. Nothing seemed wrong there.

He shifted a couple of feet along the wall and tapped again. This time, the note changed.

Hollow.

Dave’s brow creased. He tried a second knock. A low, empty sound answered, seeming to carry into some hidden space beyond the surface.

“That could explain the cold air,” he said, taking a crowbar from his tool belt. “There’s a cavity back here. Maybe an old flue, maybe a closet they closed up.”

He looked at the damaged patch. “I need to inspect the support before I cover it. Otherwise, this’ll split open again before long.”

“Mark doesn’t want anyone opening the wall,” I said. My pulse was striking hard against my ribs.

Dave glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow lifting. “I’m required to look for mold or rot before I seal a hollow space.”

He held up the crowbar. “I’ll make a small opening, point my light inside, and check the wood. It won’t take a minute.”

I drew breath to object. Before I could get the words out, he fitted the bar into the crack and pulled back with his weight.

The plaster gave way with a sharp, ugly snap. A broad piece of it dropped to the floor, bringing strips of yellow wallpaper with it.

Gray dust rolled through the room. The gap was far wider than the little inspection hole he’d promised, almost a foot across.

Behind it, dark wooden laths showed through. A rush of frigid air washed over my face, carrying a smell that twisted my stomach.

It wasn’t the stink of rot, or anything dead. What reached me was lavender soap, old and faint, mixed with dust.

Dave coughed and fanned the cloud away. He unhooked a heavy flashlight, switched it on, and bent toward the black opening.

The beam disappeared into the space behind the wall. He stayed bent there, utterly motionless.

Five seconds passed. Then more. The quiet stretched until I couldn’t bear it.

“Dave?” My voice shook. “What did you find? What’s back there?”

He eased away from the hole and clicked off the light. His face had drained of color; his jaw hung slightly open.

The easy confidence he’d carried into the room was gone. His shoulders looked stiff, as though he’d forgotten how to move.

“Ma’am,” he murmured, barely louder than the room’s silence. “Where’s your husband?”

“He went to the hardware store.” I stepped away from him. “Why are you asking?”

Dave gave no answer. Slowly, he put his thick hand through the opening and felt around in the darkness.

His shoulder tightened as he reached farther. After a moment, he drew his arm out again, and the blood seemed to leave my body.

A small, corroded metal clasp rested in his dusty fingers. Fastened to it was a little leather shoe, badly decayed—a child’s shoe.

My knees nearly buckled. I couldn’t pull in enough air, and the room seemed to tilt around me.

The leather was crumbling, the metal dark with age. I stared at what Dave held, my chest constricting as my sight blurred.

Then I saw the clasp properly: an unusual, old-fashioned fastening, part of a custom orthopedic brace. Its shape was unmistakable.

I knew that brace. It was like the one Mark had worn when he was a boy, the one I’d seen in his childhood photographs.

I fixed my eyes on the brace in Dave’s hand and understood, with a cold certainty, that it matched Mark’s childhood brace.