The Voice Beyond the Wallpaper

“Did you hold on to it?” I asked. “After Mark outgrew it, I mean. Did you tuck it away with his childhood things?”

“No,” Helen said, a sharpness entering her voice. “The doctor told me he didn’t need it anymore, so I threw the wretched thing out. I wasn’t going to keep a reminder of those years. Why?”

“I found a brace,” I said quietly. “It was inside the walls of our new house.”

The silence on the line grew so complete that I checked my screen to see if the call had ended.

“Helen?” I said.

“Where are you, Sarah?” Her voice had lost its familiar softness. It came out stiff, almost frightened.

“We’re in Pennsylvania. In a town called Blackwood.”

A breath caught harshly in her throat. I heard glass break somewhere near her, followed by a small, startled sound.

“Get out of that house,” she said. “Take Lily and leave. Go now, Sarah.”

“Why? What are you talking about? Did you live here? Mark told me he’d never been to Pennsylvania.”

“He lied.” Her voice wavered, as if she were fighting tears. “We lived in that house until he was seven. Arthur bought the Victorian.”

The kitchen seemed to tilt. I planted both palms on the granite to steady myself.

“Why would he lie about that?” I asked. My voice cracked. “And why is his brace hidden in the wall upstairs?”

“It wasn’t Mark’s,” Helen said, crying openly now. “He wore his until he was nearly ten, but when he outgrew it, I threw it away. I know what I did with his. That one in your wall belonged to someone else.”

I stared at the rusted metal on the island. “Then whose was it? Who’s behind that wall?”

“Arthur hid her,” Helen whispered. “He was cruel, Sarah. He kept her in a room and told the police she had never existed. But I knew she was there.”

“Who was she?” I pressed. My eyes had begun to sting. “Tell me.”

“Mark’s twin sister.” Helen’s words broke apart. “She was born with the same condition he had, only hers was worse. Arthur was ashamed of her. He shut her away. When I fled and called the police, the room was empty. Arthur swore she’d never been born. He had papers to make Mark seem like an only child. But I heard her crying at night. Mark used to talk to her through the walls.”

I went rigid, cold spreading through me.

Above my head, a steady pounding came from the bedroom. Mark was hammering at the damaged drywall, covering the opening again.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

He was closing it up.

As Arthur had.

“Helen,” I whispered, my mouth dry. “If the police searched and the room was empty, where did she go?”

“I don’t know.” Helen sobbed. “But listen to me. Mark has been fixated on that house since he was a teenager. He never got over it. He didn’t bring you there by chance. He chose that house and brought you with him.”

I opened my mouth to ask what she meant.

A hand struck the counter beside the brace with a heavy, sudden smack. The noise made me cry out. My phone slipped from my fingers and hit the floor, Helen’s voice still calling to me from its speaker.

I spun around.

Mark stood close behind me, his shoulders dusted gray. Sweat darkened his white tank top, and his chest rose and fell beneath it. His gaze moved from the phone on the tiles to the rusted brace on the island.

He didn’t shout. He didn’t flare into the anger I had seen the night before.

Instead, he bent, picked up my phone, and ended the call with one calm tap. Helen’s frightened voice vanished. He put the phone in his pocket.

Then he lifted the brace. Dust coated his hands as he turned it over, his thumb moving along the old leather strap with a softness that made my stomach knot.

Mark looked at me. His dark eyes seemed quiet, but there was nothing warm in them.

“I told you, Sarah. Nobody opens that wall.”

He lowered the brace into his pocket. Its metal fittings knocked lightly against his keys. He didn’t raise his voice or make a scene. In the bright kitchen, he stood with gray dust clinging to him like ash.

“I need to get a solid-core door and a deadbolt,” he said, matter-of-factly, as though he were planning a routine repair.

He started for the hall. I watched him move, unable to decide whether Helen’s warning had changed what I saw in him or only made the truth harder to ignore.

“Pack a bag for Lily,” he told me. “We’ll spend tonight at the Motor Lodge. The plaster dust upstairs isn’t safe for her.”

At the doorway, Mark paused and glanced back at me.

“Don’t go back upstairs,” he said.

Then he left, taking my phone and the brace with him.