When I got home from visiting my brother yesterday, I found the following note shoved into my pocket, scrawled hurriedly across several crumpled pages. He must’ve snuck it in there when he hugged me goodbye—during the few seconds we were allowed to have physical contact. I thought it was nonsense at first. I mean, most of what he writes or says these days is. But after tonight, I’m not so sure anymore.
--
There was a tapping in the walls.
I heard it for the first time in September. I don’t remember exactly when. But one night, there it was.
Tap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap. Tap.
Quiet, but lying in bed, I heard it. As if someone was inside the walls, trying to get my attention.
Pipes, I figured. The house was old; it wouldn’t be the first time I’d heard odd noises. Squeaks, creaks—those were the norm. Tapping was a little weirder than usual, but nothing to freak out over.
At first, anyway.
After a few nights, the taps worsened. Louder, more urgent, like someone wasn’t just in the walls, but was trying to get out.
Tap. Tap tap TAP. Tap TAP tap.
I was beginning to get annoyed, and kind of worried that I had an infestation of some kind. Did mice make noises like that? Did termites? Maybe I needed to call an exterminator.
A night or two of constant, increasingly manic tapping for hours at a time, and I was fed up. I called pest control.
They were a dead end, though. Looked around the foundation and the rooms and said there were no signs of any vermin. The only thing out of the ordinary, they said, were the dark red stains where the concrete met the ground. Rust, they wondered, or maybe dried blood from an animal that had killed prey nearby. Foxes are pretty common around the area, after all, and they’re plenty nasty; you can hear them screaming at night sometimes.
Still, the tapping only worsened. It was driving me mad. Within a few weeks, I was hardly sleeping at all anymore. I dragged through the days, heavy bags under my eyes, still hearing the echo of the dreaded TAP TAP TAP in my ears. And at night, I laid awake, unable to block it out.
It had gotten loud and incessant enough that earplugs were useless. I tried music, white noise. Nothing drowned out the constant tapping. It was like a drill in my head, on repeat for hours and hours, only ending when the sun rose. I tried moving to different rooms: sleeping on the couch, even in the basement in a sleeping bag. Didn’t matter. The tapping was everywhere, all the walls at once, throughout the house.
TAP. TAP TAP. TAP TAP TAP. TAP.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I hadn’t slept more than twenty minutes at a time in days. I could barely think straight between the taps at night and my memories of them during the day. If professionals couldn’t find anything in the walls, then I would.
That night, I waited until the taps started. It didn’t take long. I’d barely brushed my teeth when I heard them, angry and rapid, each tap like a gunshot through my brain.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
I grabbed the axe I’d left by my bed. I’d only used it once since buying it—when I’d built my shed—but I glad I had it now for a second use.
I never realized how easy it is to break a wall. A few swings, and I had a gaping hole by my closet door, chunks of plaster and flakes of paint across the carpet.
I put the axe down and peered inside. It looked like how I imagine most walls must. Crisscrossing beams, a narrow space—almost like a corridor—stretching into darkness. A narrow space just wide enough for me to squeeze into if I turned sideways.
I don’t know if it was desperation or curiosity that pushed me inside. All I know is that I didn’t even think twice. The tapping hadn’t stopped, and I was sick of it. Almost on autopilot, I just stepped over the jagged bottom of the hole and into the space within my walls.
Immediately, something crunched between my feet. I looked down, squinting to see in the dim light.
When I could make it out, my heart seized. Bones. I’m no expert, but they looked too big to be the tiny bones of rodents or birds. They looked more...human.
I didn’t even think to grab the axe again—I probably should have—but at least I’d had the sense to shove a flashlight into my pocket. I pulled it out, flicking it on to shine the thin beam down the passage in front of me. More bones, and dried stains that looked suspiciously red. Like the ones at the house’s foundation. My stomach churned. I was pretty sure these weren’t from foxes.
Still, I slid my feet, inching sideways through the wall. The tapping was still going; in fact, if anything, it was louder now. I was closer to the source. It was too late to turn back now. I had to know.
I reached what must have been the intersection of the bedroom wall with the hallway; passages branched off in two directions. The tapping seemed louder from the one ahead, toward the guest bedroom, though it was hard to tell for sure; it seemed to come from all around me. Heart racing, I continued to inch along, trying to ignore the crunch of bones with every step.
Suddenly, there was an overpowering, horrific smell; it was only by sheer luck that I didn’t empty my stomach right there. I gagged at the stench: death, a million times over. Like decay and rot and eggs left out in the sun for weeks. I had never smelled anything so terrible. Immediately, my eyes began to water.
At the same time, as I blinked away the tears and pulled my shirt up to cover my nose, trying to breathe through only my mouth, I realized something else. Up ahead, in the dim beam of the flashlight, I could see something poking out from around the comer. Something dark and solid—more than just remnants of blood and bone.
I was feeling genuinely nauseous now; the stench got stronger with every step. But I was so close. And despite the warning bells alarming in the back of my head, I needed to know. I needed to.
After all, I could still hear the tapping, relentless in its volume and rhythm. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP.
I was closer to its source now than I’d ever been. I was sure of it.
So I kept going. Still holding my shirt over my face with one hand and my flashlight with the other, I continued my sideways shuffle through the wall.
I came around the comer. My blood turned to ice as I took in the sight and realized several things at once: 1) the object I’d seen was a foot, and that foot belonged to a decaying corpse; 2) that corpse was only one of many, the bottom in a pyramid of bodies stacked high in the space between my walls; and 3) the most recent bodies—those at the top, above even my head—were fresh. Wet blood still dripped from their skin, trickling down the pile to the floor below, puddling into pools of red. Pools that would probably soak through the foundation and dry into dark red stains, like the ones the exterminator had pointed out.
With this third realization came another growing horror: these last few bodies were newly dead. Whoever or whatever had killed them had to be nearby. And it had probably been hiding here, killing its victims, for weeks. Was I inadvertently harboring a fugitive? A monster? Was it coming for me eventually?
In my fear, my breaths turned shallow, fast, afraid. And with those lighter breaths, something sounded different. It took a few seconds to realize what it was: the tapping had finally stopped.
After weeks of increasing in volume and urgency and frequency, upon my discovery, it had stopped just like that. The dusty space around me was deathly silent except for the quiet drip of blood onto the floor.
I had to get out of there. I turned my head, intending to shuffle sideways back the way I’d come—but I never got the chance.
Someone—something—was blocking my way. I didn’t get a good look at it, because as soon as I swung my flashlight towards it, the thing gave me a wide smile, filled with pointy teeth, and flicked the flashlight from my hand as easily as if it was swatting a fly. I was plunged into darkness.
I panicked. I didn’t know if the thing was still in the way or not, but I had no choice. I shuffled sideways as quickly as I could, nearly tripping over bones. I could see the lights of my bedroom ahead, all the way at the end of the godforsaken tunnel. I just had to make it to them.
I’m not religious, but as the tapping started again—rapid and furious, seeming to follow me down the walls—I prayed. I prayed that if there was a God, that He helped me make it to that light.
TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP.
Nearly there. I could feel a presence just behind me—the tapping surrounded me, coming from all directions at once—my heart could explode at any moment—something cold and spidery began to close around my wrist—
—and, gasping for breath, I threw myself out of the hole in the wall, tumbling onto the floor of my bedroom. I had never been more grateful to see the glow of my bedside lamp.
Immediately, I twisted around to look at the hole, but there was nothing out of the ordinary beyond it. Just the narrow space in the wall, stretching into darkness.
It didn’t matter, though. I knew what I’d seen. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight when I called the police, but was I was supposed to do? There was a pile of bodies in my wall.
Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to describe the thing, though. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the tapping, or how the glimpse I’d seen had looked more like some kind of demon than a man: a face made of shadow, with two pupil-less eyes sunk deep into its dark face, and a wide, sharp-toothed smile, jagged and sinister. Maybe it would’ve been better if I hadn’t described the eager, dark presence I’d felt chase me in the walls, the tapping louder and more furious than it had ever been as the thing nearly caught me.
But I wasn’t thinking straight. I did describe all those things. I did mention the tapping I’d been hearing for weeks. And when the police broke down my walls and found no sign of any inhuman thing and no one’s fingerprints but mine near the bodies, what were they supposed to think? I couldn’t really blame them for believing I went insane and killed all those people. I mean, it’s more believable than the truth.
Honestly, I was okay with it. At least in a hospital or a prison, I figured, I’d be safe. Far from whatever that thing in my walls was, far from whatever it almost did to me. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt its cold touch around my wrist again, saw its smile in the darkness. And I was glad to be far, far away from it, even if it meant the confines of a mental institution.
After a while, I even began to believe them. The doctors, I mean. Was it so hard to think that I’d gone mad? Maybe I had. Maybe the meds I was shot up with had made me better again.
But then, two days ago, I heard it. So quiet at first I thought I’d imagined it.
Tap TAP. Tap TAP tap. Tap.
I screamed for the nurses. Told them what I heard. All they did was up my dosage. But last night the tapping was back, and it was worse.
TAP TAP. TAP TAP TAP.
I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what the thing is or why the tapping accompanies it. I do know that a patient disappeared yesterday, and no one believed me when I said that they should check the walls.
I think it’s coming back for me. And there won’t be anyone to save me.
I don’t want to end up in the walls.
--
Those were the pages stuffed in my pocket, scrawled in my brother’s handwriting. I didn’t think it was real, of course; he’s never been the same since his mental break and the horrible things he did afterwards. He doesn’t even remember committing those murders.
It made me worried, though. He’s only recently started to show some progress: admitting that his imagined monster had only been in his head, and that he’d killed all those people in his wall. Writing this note was backsliding. Backsliding far. And I didn’t want to let that happen when he was finally coming out of his dream world. Plus, if he was really this paranoid, I was scared of what might happen. What if he killed people again, or hurt himself?
So I called the institution this morning. Line busy. I tried again at lunch. Line out of service. That made me uneasy. I was sure I had the number right; I’d called there at least once a week since he’d been admitted.
It’s the evening now. I tried again to call when I got home from work; all I heard was a dial tone before I was automatically disconnected.
I resolved to go visit tomorrow, figure out what’s going on. Called out of work and everything.
But maybe you remember what I said at the very beginning: how I’m not so sure my brother’s words are nonsense anymore.
That’s because I tried to go to bed an hour ago. And I heard it. As I lay here typing this out, it’s still going. And it’s only getting louder.
Tap tap. Tap tap TAP. Tap TAP. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP.
And I’m terrified.