Girl in the Walls

by A. J. Gnuse

  But, then again, she shouldn’t.

  Then again, he still might not know she was here.

  What if the reason he had told Mr. Nick and Marshall to leave the desk in the closet was just that, in the moment, he didn’t want it? As odd as he was, maybe he thought too many presents at a time was overwhelming. Or maybe he didn’t like the desk, wasn’t in any rush to look at it, run his hands across its top, feign excitement at opening its drawers? What if his saving her had just been a coincidence?

  And even now, he was only sitting there, looking out the window, motionless, oblivious to anything else around him. A shadow passed across the sun, turning the world gray.

  Through the open window, Elise heard the back door open, and Marshall speaking to his mother in the yard. Soon, the water cut out, and the car doors opened and shut. The engine started, and she drove him away to work. Downstairs, the saw buzzed intermittently, three or four more times. Then quiet. Mr. Nick had finished that stage of his work.

  With each passing minute, the world floated on. Elise closed her eyes, and listened.

  His Voice Woke Her

  ELISE WASN’T SURE HOW LONG SHE HAD BEEN ASLEEP. SHE STIRRED, her eyes still closed, as Eddie spoke nearby. She brought her hand to her face and rubbed the bridge of her nose. As the drowsiness bled away, she focused on the conversation, trying to figure who else was in the room.

  It was an odd thing, listening to him then, speaking in a voice so much lower and gruffer than she had ever heard from him before. His voice usually so much softer—not high-pitched or girlish, but less forceful and pushy, harder to hear, more yielding, uncertain. Eddie must have been talking to Marshall, because it sounded as though his voice had somehow merged with the older brother’s. Like how in an old cartoon she had seen, the hero’s love had been possessed by a warlock, and while everything still looked the same about her, the princess had taken on the villain’s gruff voice. Elise figured she must not be fully awake yet. Her mind was doing strange things, blending the sounds she heard, still in that blurry-gray gap between sleeping and waking.

  Who was he talking to?

  Elise tilted her head back as far as she could to look toward the doorframe. The door was still partially cracked open, but no one stood there. She rolled her head over, scuffing the tip of her nose against the bedsprings. The door to the shared bathroom was closed, so it wasn’t Marshall come back from work, picking a fight.

  Elise scanned as much of the room as she could see, lifting her chin to peer above her crossed legs, and risking the shift in her body to see if there was someone standing on the far side of the new desk. No one.

  “I’m too old for something like you,” Eddie said, in his grumbling, low voice. “I’m grown up now, and I have to act like it.”

  Elise saw he was standing, his bare toes pointed toward the bed, a few feet away. She looked at the neatly trimmed nails on his feet. Eddie wasn’t moving anywhere. He just stood there. It took her a few moments to realize that if he were speaking to someone sitting on top of the bed, she would have felt that person’s weight, sinking down through the bedsprings. But there was nothing above her. There wasn’t anyone there. Eddie was speaking to her.

  He stepped closer, his heel stomping into the carpet.

  “I don’t want you near me anymore. I don’t want you in here. I don’t want you reading my books. I don’t want you touching my stuff.”

  Elise couldn’t move. The impulse shot through her to twist and wrench her way out. But the bed was tight above her. She couldn’t move.

  “I want you to leave me alone,” Eddie said. He spoke now as if he were growling. “I want you to get out of here.”

  Elise inhaled, a small gasp. Too loud. Couldn’t help it. The muscles in her face gone taut. Fists clenched at her sides, fingernails digging into her palms. The bed was like a stone on top of her. For a second, Elise saw the muscles in his thin calves strain, and it looked as though he were about to drop to one knee, to lower himself and put his furious face right next to hers. Her eyes watered. She wanted to scream.

  But Eddie didn’t. He went to the window instead, to that same chair he had been sitting in before. He dropped down hard, so hard she thought the chair legs would snap under him.

  Facing the window, he said, “Get out.”

  She was still.

  “Get out.”

  So she did.

  Elise pulled herself free from beneath the bed, and she stood up. Her legs weak beneath her. He didn’t move. She stepped backward toward the door, watching him the entire time, ready to break into a run the second he turned back from looking out the window to see her—but he never did. Eddie only looked down at the backyard. She squeezed through the narrow space between the door and the frame, and her spine brushed against the doorknob. The hinges let out a soft moan.

  “I can’t believe in you,” he said. “You don’t exist.”

  She watched as Eddie, his back still turned, lifted his hands to his ears and covered them.

  She turned down the hallway, her pulse thumping loud as heavy footsteps in her ears.

  Elise kept going. Every doorway gaping. She looked back over her shoulder down the hallway’s length. Her calves tense beneath her, ready to sprint.

  But he wasn’t following her.

  Elise turned the corner. Lost, for a moment. Not sure where to go.

  The attic door creaked open, but no one heard. The stairs leading up were dark. With the overhead bulb left off, there was no seeing where they began and ended.

  She didn’t exist.

  Elise brought the door closed behind her.

  She couldn’t.

  She Left a Trail

  SHE WAITED IN THE ATTIC UNTIL SHE HEARD THE SQUEAK OF THE pipes below—Eddie in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. She went into his bedroom once more, her heart beating in her throat, and she stole each of the books off his shelf she had loved.

  The Myths of Ancient Greece, Hans Christian Andersen: The Little Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales, a three-book anthology from The Chronicles of Narnia, and others, as many as she could fit into the small purple book bag she had brought with her when she had first returned to the home. She left, and waited until later, when the family was asleep. Then she went downstairs into the library and opened the side door into the night.

  Not the best plan, but if Eddie were to tell anyone else about her, he would have to tell them that she was now gone.

  The next morning, before their alarm clocks rang, Mr. Nick thundered into the boys’ bedrooms, shouting loud enough for the whole house to hear, wanting to know who had last used that door. Who had left it open? Mosquitoes inside—there was a goddamn toad on the coffee table! Anyone could have come along the levee, down into the yard, and strolled right into their house. Right inside! Growing up meant growing responsibility, and responsibility meant closing the damn doors behind you.

  Elise heard the fear in the father’s voice. For him, it had to have been one of his boys who had done it. The idea of someone else opening the door and moving around their house in the dark—Mr. Nick insisted it must have been someone from the inside, who made a mistake.

  “If I used it,” Marshall said, “I think I would have remembered to close it.”

  Eddie, though, was quiet.

  “What were you even using that door for?” Mr. Nick said to him.

  Elise listened with her ear tight against the attic floor. She could picture him there, still lying in bed, trying to think.

  Eddie took his father’s anger in silence. Like any other Sunday, they readied themselves for church. Eddie, in the yard, brushing his shoes off with the back of his hand before climbing into the back seat and closing the door. Whatever Eddie thought she was, he hadn’t bothered to explain her to the others. Maybe he thought she was not something he could explain.

  Was it enough? Would he still listen for her?

  Would he hear her?

  And with that thought, Elise realized what she had been doing. Some part
inside her—slowly growing—had wanted to be heard.

  Now that she knew, Elise would muffle it.

  Make Yourself Less

  GIRLS EAT THREE TIMES A DAY. ELISE DIDN’T NEED THAT. SHE COULD do two: a breakfast when everyone had left for school and work, and a dinner in the attic, something cold that wouldn’t smell or go bad during the day, like dry cereal or baked beans in a Ziploc bag. Lunch was too close to the time she might expect someone home. She readjusted the meaning of the bird clock calls, her afternoon limit for being outside the walls sliding back from cardinal to great horned owl, its solemn hoot in the early afternoon now ominous, threatening.

  Girls move through a home; they take up space. They move on whims, compelled by light, by the gathering of voices down the hall. She didn’t need to move as much as she had before. Trips outside the walls through the rooms, when others were still home, were extravagant and unnecessary. She had been giving in before. She’d been surrendering to things that only little girls feel. Elise wasn’t one anymore.

  The Masons moved through the house below her. And while they did, she would lie on her back each day, all day. The smallest movements, that’s all she needed.

  Hardly alive. Not alive. Hardly breathing.

  Part 2

  Sounding Board

  Once, when I was coming home from work, pulling into the driveway, I’m certain I saw the upstairs lights flick off. My husband swears I’m imagining things. I had to stop mentioning it to him. I’m not sure what to do. I’d tell a shrink, but I don’t need a diagnosis. I’m not looking for Proloxin.

  Sometimes I’m hearing my heating ducts tapping above me. But it’s more than just metal warming or whatever I’ve heard it’s supposed to be. The ducts are too small for anything like this but the sound is like someone crawling on all fours up there. I can sit and read a book but each fiber of my body’s pulsing like someone’s watching me through the cracks in the vent.

  Each day and night is hard and I’ve done everything I can. It’s like I’m drowning. How does anyone do this on their own?

  Will someone else come here and look?

  ive been hearing that sound too. are any of your things missing? like food from your pantry? fridge?

  Been trying lately to switch them out in my head. Imagine whoever’s hiding here as having the face of a person I remember. Somebody I’ve lost. Not always very easy but I think it helps.

  SUBJECT: I HEAR THEM TOO

  I know how hard it is to find someone else who believes.

  Not easy to expose yourself as afraid. And seem like a child. Scared of the little bumps in the night.

  You have to be careful about who you tell. People will write you off. Say it is your paranoia. Your anxiety.

  Just make-believe.

  Can you believe that? As if it were just our imaginations. Gone berserk!

  But no matter what they say we still will see signs of them. We hear them bumping and stepping all around us. First thing before the sun is fully up. Through the dead afternoon. All night.

  You know I see signs of them even in other homes. I pass down the road and notice a light on late in a downstairs room. Or a television glowing when the driveway is empty. Or else hard to say why but so clear they are there. Sometimes I have to pull up on the curb. Cut the engine and watch. Do they see me through the window blinds? Does no one else really have any idea?

  And then sometimes I get out of my truck. I circle around as much of the house as I can. Look into each of the windows. Study all the narrow slices that show.

  Eventually it will happen. A closet door will unlatch and glide a little open. A head of hair will show around the edge. They will step out into the room and arch their back. Stretch their skinny arms and legs.

  Look.

  When finally you find them you got to drag them out. Man or woman or child by their ankles or their hair.

  Pin them beneath you and feel their skin beneath your hands. Feel the relief to have them there.

  One day when I hold them I will look into their eyes. Hold so they cannot turn away. They will understand I have known the whole time. They have hardly been hiding at all.

  I want you to know I am out here.

  Let me know when you find them. I want to help. I need to see them too.

  J.T.

  Termite Season

  IT BEGAN MOTHER’S DAY’S NIGHT, NOT LONG AFTER THE MASONS had returned home from dinner downtown. The gravel churned in the driveway, and weather stripping shushed across the foyer’s tiles. The Masons weaved through the rooms of the house—bees through honeycomb. The lights, flipped on, bled out through the windows onto a lawn where insects teemed and blades of grass cast their own slender, black shadows.

  Eddie’s father poured a pair of glasses of wine in the kitchen. His mother curled up in front of the television to watch a recording of The West Wing they had missed that week while they finished the guest room’s floor. Marshall was upstairs, and already the ceiling pounded beneath him. A set of clapping pushups likely, the way the ceiling in the dining room shook in rhythm—Marshall would be on the floor of his bedroom, forcing himself up just enough to slap his hands together.

  Thump.

  The veins of his long forearms would be bulging. The window open for the breeze.

  Thump.

  Or was it jumping jacks?

  Eddie, at his place at the table, squinted into the overhead light of the small, quivering chandelier. He could hear the chandelier: the squeak of the chain as Marshall exercised, each of its bulbs emitting the softest hum, like the buzz of a wasp trapped between windowpanes. He could hear it—or at least he imagined so—above the sounds his teeth and tongue made chewing through mouthfuls of lukewarm jambalaya. In the next room, a commercial played, and his father pressed the fast-forward button on the remote. Eddie hadn’t paid attention to the show, but he could always tell when the commercials came on—their volume just a little louder, even if he couldn’t understand what was said. Sometimes when watching television himself, he preferred to lie down on the sofa and tuck his head beneath a pillow when the commercials came. Their colors always too bright, too sudden and loud, as if someone had kicked in the front door to shout at him. He ate the rice from the black Styrofoam box the waiter had packed, and cupped a palm over an ear.

  There were no windows in the dining room. It was part of the reason he enjoyed it. He’d eaten each of his meals there alone since they had moved in. He needed space from his family when they ate—their chewing, smacking that awful wet sound. Eddie saw the teeth in his mind, saliva stretching in thin strands between the mouth’s roof and the brown, soft mass of food on the tongue. The miniature hairs of a chin, rising and falling. At Brennan’s this evening, his parents didn’t need to ask him—they knew the routine: three meals for here, one to-go, to be eaten later at home. While his family ate, he tucked his head between his arms on the table.

  The dining room always gave him distance. The evening buzz of cicadas was subdued here more than anywhere else, and rain, when it came, was softened to a whisper. The room even looked gentle, with the light green paint and an ivy-patterned wallpaper border that ran around the base of the ceiling. The piano’s wood glistened as if oiled, and the large oak china cabinet with a glass front revealed clean, white plates with gray birds around their rims. The room had been his favorite in the new house, maybe even more than his own.

  But since the week of his birthday, Eddie had become aware of something new about the dining room. It was positioned in the middle of the house, surrounded on all sides by more rooms, more house. Maybe once that had seemed comforting as a warm, weighted blanket on his chest. Now? Suffocating.

  While Eddie ate the meal, listening as he always did, unable to ignore the sound of one of the dying, half-deflated balloons, blown by the living room’s fan blades and dragging along the wall; unable to stop listening to the rooms around him as if any moment someone unrecognized might appear in the doorway—hearing so many things in the heart of
the house. Yet, he couldn’t hear them, the insects. That night, with as many as there were, taking flight from between the blades of grass in the lawn, and floating up, drawn by honey-colored light—it was odd to Eddie, later, that he hadn’t heard them at all. Later, in bed, he had to remind himself that the sounds he remembered were ones he had imagined: the fluttering of two thousand small, golden wings against the windowpane.

  “Termites!” Eddie’s mom called out from the living room.

  “Oh, no,” his father said, followed by the smack of a palm against the leather armchair. “Shit! Yeah, they’re in here, all right.”

  His mom cried, “Boys, cut the lights!”

  A stumbling over furniture, and the doorway to the living room went dark. Eddie’s father appeared in the frame, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Without apology, he reached over and flipped the switch to the dining room, sending Eddie and the remainder of his meal into darkness.

  “Marshall, cut the lights up there!”

  The television in the living room gave a dim blue glow, and when Eddie leaned over in his chair, he saw the shapes of his parents passing one another as they moved to separate rooms. The sound of his father thumping up the staircase.

  Eddie blinked. He nudged his chair back from the table and felt his way into the living room, a hand placed on the corner of the piano, then the doorframe. One of his parents, before they left the room, had pressed stop on the remote to the VCR. Eddie watched a small insect crawl across the television screen. They were drawn even to the blue light. Eddie’s face was close enough to the set to feel static on his cheeks. Two other bugs appeared on the glass.

  His father and brother shouted upstairs, arguing about a window.

  “Seriously? How couldn’t you notice? It’s wide open! They’re flooding in!”