The Thing In The Walls
832 Words
The next morning crept in slow and grey, the kind of light that made everything look washed out and unsettling. Daniel barely slept—maybe an hour at most. His dreams were cluttered with fragments of Emily’s voice, the shadow in her room, and the way the whole house felt like it was holding its breath.
Jonah was already awake, sitting at the motel table with a cup of terrible coffee and his laptop open, brow furrowed like he’d been grinding through research all night.
“You look like death,” Daniel said.
“Good. It matches how I feel.” Jonah shoved the laptop toward him. “Found something.”
Daniel scanned the screen. Old newspaper scans, yellowed and distorted—stories about disappearances dating back almost fifty years. Kids, mostly. Always in the same area.
“You’re telling me this thing has been here half a century?”
“More like it wakes up every few years, takes someone, then goes quiet. Like it’s pacing itself.” Jonah leaned back in the chair. “Creepy little diet plan.”
Daniel’s jaw tensed. “Emily doesn’t have time for your jokes.”
“That wasn’t a joke,” Jonah muttered.
Daniel walked toward the door, grabbing his jacket.
“Come on. We need to talk to her dad again. He didn’t tell us everything yesterday.”
The Rogers house looked different in daylight—less haunted, more abandoned. The lawn hadn’t been cut in weeks, and the blinds were closed tight, as if the family wanted to block out the world. Daniel knocked, and after a long pause, Emily’s father cracked open the door.
He looked even worse than the night before—red eyes, trembling hands.
“What now?” he asked, voice drained.
“We need to see Emily’s room again,” Daniel said. “And we need to know if she mentioned anything strange before she disappeared.”
Mr. Rogers hesitated, chewing his lip. “I told you everything.”
“No,” Daniel said softly, “you told us what you could handle.”
That broke him. His shoulders slumped.
“She kept saying something was on the walls,” he whispered. “At night. Scratching. Whispering. I thought it was just nightmares.”
Jonah glanced at Daniel, eyes sharpening.
“Did she say what it looked like?”
Mr. Rogers shook his head. “She just said it… watched her.”
Daniel nodded. “We’ll take it from here.”
Emily’s room felt colder than the rest of the house, even with the daylight sneaking through half-open curtains. Jonah went straight to the wall where the photos had shown the shadow. He tapped his knuckles along the surface, listening carefully.
“Hollow,” he said. “Behind this section, at least.”
Daniel checked the small closet. The hanging clothes barely moved, but the air inside felt wrong—thick, heavy, like a basement after rain.
“She said it watched her,” Daniel murmured. “Something was here. Close to her.”
Jonah crouched and ran his fingers along the baseboard. He stopped when he touched something sticky and dried.
“… Blood?” he whispered.
Before Daniel could answer, a soft thump echoed inside the wall.
Both brothers froze.
Another thump. Not an animal. Not pipes.
It sounded like fists. Small ones.
Jonah backed up, eyes wide. “Tell me that’s not—”
The wall shuddered. Hard.
Daniel grabbed Jonah by the collar. “Move!”
They stumbled out of the room just as the wall cracked from the inside. Plaster splintered outward in a straight line, as if something was dragging claws through it, searching for a weak spot.
Daniel pulled his gun from his jacket.
“Whatever’s in there,” he said, “it’s not Emily.”
The thing behind the wall dragged its body downward, scraping deep, slow lines through the plaster. The sound was almost deliberate—like they wanted them to hear it.
Jonah swallowed, his voice barely audible.
“So… we’re dealing with what? A crawler demon? A shadow parasite?”
“Doesn’t matter what name it has,” Daniel said. “What matters is that it’s trying to get out.”
The scraping suddenly stopped.
Silence fell—thick and absolute.
Then a whisper slid through the c***k in the wall.
High. Fragile.
A girl’s voice.
“Help me…”
Jonah’s face went pale. “Daniel…”
“Yeah,” Daniel breathed. “I heard.”
The voice came again—this time lower, distorted.
“Open the wall.”
Daniel stepped back, raising the gun.
“That’s not a little girl.”
The wall bulged outward.
Once. Twice.
Then split open with a wet c***k.
Something began crawling through.
Something with fingers far too long.
Something wearing Emily’s voice like a mask.
Jonah whispered, “Oh, hell no—”
Daniel didn’t wait.
“Run!”
And the thing pulled itself out of the wall.
- Writer
