THE WALLS HAVE VOICES

Chapter 4: The Walls Close In

Two weeks. Two weeks of games, of torment, of slowly losing our minds. The police had stopped coming—they thought we were crazy, making it all up for attention or insurance fraud. We'd called pest control, contractors, even a structural engineer. Everyone said the same thing: there was nowhere for someone to hide. The walls were solid. The spaces between floors were too small for a person. It was impossible.

But impossible things were happening every day.

Mia had stopped eating. She just sat in corners, staring at walls, occasionally whispering "he's there" and pointing at nothing. Mom had brought in a priest despite Dad's protests. Father McKenzie had blessed the house, sprinkled holy water, said prayers in Latin. The voice in the walls had laughed through the whole thing and sung a mocking hymn when the priest left.

Dad had started drinking. I'd find him in the garage at odd hours, staring at the walls with a hammer in his hand, like he was working up the courage to tear the whole house down.

And me? I'd become obsessed. I spent every free moment studying the house, measuring, calculating, trying to figure out where he was hiding. I'd found some inconsistencies—a gap of about three feet between my room and Mia's that didn't seem to be accounted for, a section of the basement ceiling that was lower than it should be. But I couldn't find any way to access these spaces. No hidden doors, no loose panels, nothing.

The games had gotten worse. More personal. More cruel.

He'd started leaving us "presents." Dead birds arranged in patterns on our doorsteps. Our family photos, torn and rearranged into disturbing collages. Once, I found a doll that looked like Mia hanging from a string in the hallway. Mom had screamed for an hour.

But the worst game started on a Thursday night.

We were all in the living room—we'd taken to staying together as much as possible—when the lights went out. All of them, all at once. Dad checked the breaker box, but everything was fine. The power was on. The lights just wouldn't turn on.

Then we heard his voice, louder than ever before, coming from every direction at once:

"New game, family Boldhed, listen well,

I'm going to tell you a little tale,

About a man who lost his mind,

And the family he left behind."

"Stop it!" Mom screamed. "Leave us alone!"

But he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow filled the entire house:

"He lived in walls, he lived in floors,

He watched them through the cracks in doors,

He learned their fears, he learned their names,

And then he started playing games."

"Dad, do something!" I shouted.

Dad was already moving, grabbing his flashlight, heading for the basement. "I'm going to find you. I'm going to end this."

"Gregor, no!" Mom tried to grab him, but he shook her off.

"Stay here with the kids. I'm finishing this tonight."

I watched him disappear down the basement stairs, and something in my gut told me this was wrong, this was exactly what the thing in the walls wanted. But before I could follow, I heard Mia gasp.

She was pointing at the wall behind the TV. Words were appearing, written in something that glowed faintly in the darkness:

"DADDY'S GOING TO FIND ME

BUT WHAT WILL HE SEE?

A MIRROR OF MADNESS

A REFLECTION OF ME"

"Dad!" I screamed, running for the basement. "Dad, come back!"

I heard him shouting from below, his voice echoing up the stairs. "There's a door down here! There's a door I've never seen before!"

"Don't open it!" I was halfway down the stairs when I heard the creak of hinges, and then my father's scream—not of fear, but of rage and horror combined.

I found him standing in front of a section of wall that had swung open, revealing a narrow passage behind it. His flashlight illuminated what was inside, and I felt my stomach turn.

The passage was lined with photographs. Hundreds of them. Pictures of our family—some taken from our old house, some taken here, some taken through windows, some taken from inside our rooms while we slept. There were drawings too, crude sketches of us with X's over our eyes, with our mouths sewn shut, with worse things I couldn't bear to look at.

And there were other things. Clothes that didn't belong to us. Old newspapers with headlines about missing families. A collection of driver's licenses, none of them ours, all of them showing different people, different families.

"Oh God," Dad whispered. "Oh God, how many?"

A voice came from deeper in the passage, from somewhere in the darkness beyond our flashlight's reach:

"Seventeen families came before,

Each one played, each one swore,

They'd catch me, stop me, make me pay,

But I'm still here, and where are they?"

Dad lunged forward into the passage, but I grabbed him. "Dad, no! That's what he wants!"

"Let me go, Benjamin! I'm going to kill him!"

"He's playing with us! Can't you see? He wants you to chase him!"

But Dad was beyond reason. He tore free from my grip and ran into the passage. I heard his footsteps echoing, heard him shouting, heard him getting farther and farther away. Then I heard something else—a sound like a door slamming, and then silence.

"Dad?" I called into the darkness. "Dad!"

Nothing.

I ran back upstairs to get Mom and Mia. We had to call the police, had to get help, had to find Dad. But when I reached the living room, I found Mom on her knees, praying frantically, and Mia standing at the window.

"Mia, we have to—"

She turned to look at me, and her eyes were different. Distant. She raised one small hand and pointed out the window, and when she spoke, her voice was clearer than I'd ever heard it:

"He's not in the walls, Benjamin. He is the walls. He is the house. And the house is hungry."

The lights came back on, all at once, blindingly bright. And from somewhere deep below us, I heard my father screaming.

The games weren't just beginning anymore. We were in the endgame now.

And I had no idea how to win.