THE GIRL IN THE WALLS
1507 Words
Mara did not speak for hours after the dream.
She sat in the parlor, the windows closed, curtains drawn. The light outside was gray and stifling—like the sky itself was waiting for something to happen. The journal lay open on her lap, but she wasn’t reading anymore. She was remembering.
She could still hear the voice from her dream, hollow and damp, as if spoken through water:
You let me drown.
Her heart told her it wasn’t true. She had never drowned. She had never even been near that well.
But the newspaper clipping Elias had shown her said otherwise.
“Mara Ellison, age 12, found drowned in the Ellison house well.”
How could a life she didn’t remember be real?
Unless…
Unless the house wasn’t giving her memories—
It was taking them.
The tapping started again just after dusk.
A slow, irregular pattern. Like fingernails against wood.
But this time, it wasn’t coming from the door.
It was coming from inside the walls.
Mara pressed her ear to the paneling in the upstairs hallway. The sound was clearer there—close. Intimate. Something was crawling between the boards.
And then she heard it:
A girl’s voice. Whispering.
“Cold… so cold… where did you go…?”
Mara staggered back.
She grabbed her flashlight and followed the noise to the linen closet near June’s old room. The back of the closet was solid wood—but one board looked loose.
She pulled it free and shone the light inside.
Behind the wall, hidden in the narrow space between joists, was a crawlspace. Dust choked the air. Spiderwebs clung to her sleeves as she reached in.
And just beyond reach—a shoe.
Child-sized. Pink. Mud-stained.
Mara’s stomach twisted.
Then the whisper came again, louder now, directly in her ear.
“I remember you.”
She didn’t tell Elias. Not yet.
Instead, she went to the well.
It sat behind the house, half-buried under brambles, the stone dark with age. She hadn’t dared approach it until now.
The wood cover was rotting. The chain had snapped long ago.
Mara stared into the darkness, then dropped a rock. No splash. No sound.
Just silence.
Until—
A soft, wet cough echoed up from the depths.
She ran.
That night, the house felt smaller.
The walls pressed in. The shadows bled deeper into the floor. And when Mara passed the hallway mirror, her reflection didn’t follow her.
It stayed.
Staring.
Smiling.
She returned to June’s journal, desperate for guidance. One page, near the back, had been folded three times. When she opened it, she found a sketch of a girl—her face blank, her hair floating around her like seaweed. Underneath, June had written:
“The one in the walls is not a ghost. She is a kept thing. A consequence. Do not listen when she cries. Her grief is a trap.”
Mara tore the page out and carried it with her. She slept in the kitchen that night, as far from the upstairs walls as possible.
She dreamed of the door again.
Only this time, it was open.
And inside—herself, drowning.
The next morning, she found Elias waiting on the porch. He looked pale, unshaven, clutching a small leather-bound book.
“I remembered something,” he said. “About Silas. About the door.”
He placed the book on the table. It wasn’t a diary—it was a ledger.
“Silas Crowe didn’t come to town as a priest,” Elias explained. “He came as an archivist. Said he was gathering testimonies from people who had ‘seen the threshold.’”
Mara flipped through the pages. Dozens of names. Notes written in shorthand.
And symbols.
Circles within circles. Keys. Eyes. Knots.
One page stood out.
A drawing of the house.
And written beneath it:
“The door chooses its own version of you. Every time it opens, it remembers wrong.”
Mara whispered, “How do we stop it?”
Elias looked at her, and for the first time, she saw fear behind his eyes.
“You don’t stop a thing like this,” he said. “You survive it. If you’re lucky."
That afternoon, they tore up the floorboards in June’s room.
Following the sound.
The tapping had become constant now—methodical, rhythmic. Like someone trying to get out.
Beneath the floor, they found a tunnel.
Earthen, shallow, just wide enough to crawl through.
Mara dropped to her knees.
“I have to see,” she said.
Elias grabbed her wrist. “You don’t. You really don’t.”
But she was already crawling.
The tunnel twisted, dipped, narrowed. Roots tangled through the walls like veins. The air smelled of decay and damp cloth.
Then—an opening.
A chamber, hollowed out beneath the house.
Mara shone her flashlight.
And saw them.
Dolls.
Hundreds. Maybe more.
All stacked in corners, slumped against walls.
All with faces that resembled her.
Some smiling.
Some crying.
Some with eyes gouged out.
She turned to leave—and saw, scratched into the dirt behind her:
DO NOT FORGET HER
And below it—
A handprint.
Small. Childlike.
Pressed into stone.
Still wet.
Mara emerged gasping, shaking, filthy. Elias pulled her out and wrapped her in a blanket. She said nothing until they returned to the kitchen.
Then:
“She’s me.”
Elias shook his head. “No. She’s someone you could have been. Someone the door remembered wrong. You didn’t drown in this timeline. But maybe… you did in another.”
“And the house…”
“Remembers every version.”
That night, they heard the door again.
Only now—it was in the kitchen.
Standing against the far wall, humming softly.
Mara approached it slowly.
This time, there was no keyhole.
Only a mirror set into the wood.
She looked inside.
And saw herself.
Soaking wet.
Skin pale.
Mouth open in a silent scream.
And behind her—a dozen other Maras, pressed together like corpses waiting to speak.
She turned away.
And the door spoke.
“You can’t leave until you choose which version of you gets to stay.”
Elias came down the stairs carrying a crowbar.
“I’ll break the damn thing,” he growled.
But the door moved.
Shifted to the left.
Avoiding him.
Elias stopped. “It’s… learning.”
Mara stepped forward. “Let me try something.”
She pressed her hand to the mirror.
The reflection didn’t mimic her.
Instead, it whispered: “Let me out. You don’t belong."
At midnight, Silas returned.
He entered without knocking.
“I brought something,” he said, placing a heavy object on the table.
A key.
Iron. Ornate. Rusted.
“It doesn’t open the door,” he said. “But it chooses who the door remembers.”
He looked at Mara. “You’re getting too close to the version that drowned. That one wants to come back. If she takes your place, you’ll fade. You’ll be remembered wrong.”
“What do I do?”
“You go inside.”
Mara stared.
Silas continued: “The door opens only for the one it remembers best. That’s you. But you have to take something back.”
“Take what?”
Silas handed her a small mirror. Old. Cracked. “Your reflection. That’s how you remind the house who you are. Without it, you’re just another possibility.”
The next morning, the door stood waiting.
No longer in the kitchen. Now, it had taken root in the center of the hallway, stretching ceiling to floor, humming low and steady like breath.
Mara stood before it.
The key in one hand.
The mirror in the other.
Elias and Silas watched in silence.
She stepped forward.
The door opened.
And she stepped through.
---
Inside, it was darkness.
But not empty.
It was filled with versions of herself.
Crying.
Screaming.
Laughing.
One was on fire. Another covered in moths. One blind. One still twelve years old, lips blue and skin bloated from the well.
They circled her.
Whispering.
“Let me wear your name…”
“Let me be remembered…”
“You don’t deserve to exist.”
And at the center of it all—
The girl in the walls.
Still dripping.
Still reaching.
Mara held up the mirror.
“This is me,” she said.
The girl lunged.
Mara turned the glass toward her.
It shattered.
The girl screamed—
—and all the others with her.
Then silence.
And light.
Mara opened her eyes.
She was back in the hallway.
Elias rushed forward. “You’re here. You didn’t change.”
Silas stared at the shattered mirror in her hand. “You ended her.”
“No,” Mara said. “I just reminded the house. Who I am.”
That night, the door was gone.
No trace of it remained.
But Mara knew better.
It would be back.
When the house remembered wrong again.
And next time, it might not be her it wanted.
It might be you.
- Writer
