The Voice Beyond the Wallpaper

For a moment, speech wouldn’t come. I gave Mark a small nod and leaned against the granite island, its chill seeping through my shirt.

The front door swung open. Mark went onto the porch, then glanced back at me. His eyes held no expression at all.

“Stay out of the upstairs rooms, Sarah,” he said, almost kindly.

The thick door settled into its frame with a click. Outside, his truck started. Gravel crackled beneath its tires, and then the engine dwindled along the silent neighborhood street.

I counted one full minute.

When the house finally seemed empty of every sound, I pushed away from the island and hurried into the living room. I snatched Lily’s iPad and placed it in her hands.

“Put your movie on, sweetheart,” I told her. My voice shook; I had to swallow before I could continue. “I have a little mess to take care of. Stay right here on the rug, okay?”

I left before she could ask anything. The stairs blurred beneath me as I climbed, one hand sliding along the banister. At the top, I shoved open the oak door to the third bedroom. Cold, stale air washed over me, carrying that strong scent of old lavender soap.

Mark had covered the opening in a hurry. A square of clean white drywall sat crooked over the hole, its edges buried beneath glistening gray compound. He hadn’t tried to make the surface neat. It looked like a repair made by someone who couldn’t afford to wait.

I knelt and picked up the metal putty knife he’d abandoned on the boards. Then I drove its edge into the soft compound.

The noise didn’t matter anymore. I forced the blade behind the panel and leaned back, pulling hard with all my weight. The mud gave with a wet, sucking pop. The drywall tore loose and dropped across my legs, spattering them with gray paste.

Once more, the ragged darkness inside the wall stared back at me.

I took my phone from my sweatpants and switched on its light. Then I crawled toward the opening until the wall enclosed my shoulders.

A bitter stream of air brushed my face. Dave had been right: this wasn’t a chimney space. A cramped passage, scarcely three feet across, extended behind the bedroom wall.

I aimed the beam toward the left-hand corner.

There, far inside the passage, lay the rusted frame of a child’s bed. It had no mattress, only bare iron springs, orange with corrosion and sagging close to the dusty floor. A little tin pail rested beneath it.

I forgot to breathe. Slowly, I turned the light the other way.

A small square door stood at the passage’s far end, its wooden face closed. At first it reminded me of a laundry chute, shut from the outside. But the door itself wasn’t what turned my stomach.

The narrow frame around it was torn to pieces.

The pine was scored all over, marked by countless deep cuts that crossed and crowded one another. Those weren’t the tidy lines of a tool. They were jagged, frantic, and desperate.

Scratches made by fingernails. So many of them. Someone had clawed at that wood while swallowed by darkness.

I jerked backward out of the opening and scrambled across the bedroom until my back struck the opposite wall. I clamped both hands over my mouth, fighting the scream rising in my throat. My lungs dragged at the air.

Arthur hadn’t merely kept Mark’s twin sister out of sight. He had shut a child inside a lightless box.

I got upright, brushing the wet compound from my pants, and bolted downstairs. I caught Lily’s hand and pulled her off the rug.

“But my show’s still on, Mommy,” she protested, stumbling as I hurried her toward the entrance.

“We’re going to the library, darling,” I said. My voice felt scraped raw. “We need to leave now.”

Ten minutes later, I pulled up crookedly outside the Blackwood Free Library, a modest brick building near the town center. I brought Lily inside almost in my arms, then settled her at a low table in the children’s area with several coloring books.

I went straight to the reference counter. An older librarian peered at me over narrow glasses, silver hair wispy around her face.

“Could I look at the local papers and police records from November 1996?” I asked quietly. “I’m searching for anything about Arthur and Helen Vance.”

Something changed in her face. The practiced smile disappeared, replaced by a guarded, uneasy look. She didn’t question me. She got up, vanished through a back doorway, and came back several minutes later carrying a thick folder made of beige cardboard.

“Most of the nineties are online now,” she murmured as she set it in front of me. “We saved paper copies of the cases that drew a lot of attention. People come asking about that house every few years.”

I carried the folder to a desk tucked in the corner. From there, I could keep watch on Lily. My fingers trembled as I worked at the string tied around it.

There were three newspaper clippings inside, along with a photocopy of the public police logs.

I looked at the headline on the first article, and the blood seemed to drain from my face: “LOCAL CARPENTER INVESTIGATED AFTER WIFE FLEES STATE, CLAIMS CHILD HELD CAPTIVE.”