Girl in the Walls

by A. J. Gnuse

  In church, they tell you of God and the Devil, and the keen difference between them, but when you’re a kid at home in a house that’s supposed to be empty, hearing a door somewhere close come open, what difference is there? There’s you, and there’s everything else. Every object and thought turns against you, and all you have is yourself and knowing.

  But once you know, know like the feeling of those fingernails pressing into your forearm, you can fight. You can resign yourself to the fact that you’ll die trying to find them. You can have that certainty. But when you don’t yet know—you’re alone, and nothing else helps you.

  I have gone a hundred lifetimes without knowing, seems like. I have gone longer than you will understand without holding them here in my hands. I want to see their face. I want to see a face and take it back with me to show everybody who didn’t believe. Everybody else who’s lived a hundred lifetimes without knowing.

  “Mr. Traust,” Eddie said from down the hallway, with his voice shrinking as he spoke. “This isn’t about us, is it?”

  “Boys,” Traust said. “Now. How’s about you go check the closets again.”

  She Must Move

  THE CLOCK IN THE FOYER TOLLED. THEY’D BEEN SEARCHING FOR OVER AN hour. Doors and cabinets opened and slammed shut, footsteps moving in all directions. The walls were not safe. Elise heard the click along the hallway, in the bedroom, against the wood of the stairs and the bare library wall after he took books from the shelves and stacked them on the floor. She wouldn’t have known what it was if she hadn’t heard the boys talking about it behind him. A stethoscope. Elise could hold her breath long enough. But she couldn’t stop her heart. The organ had become so loud now, throbbing in her chest, hammering in her ears, so loud she thought he’d hear it from another room, that he’d follow it, along the house’s ventricles to its source.

  In short spurts, as Elise found the opportunity, she shimmied through the walls to the other side of the house to the kitchen, working herself up and over doorframes, passing by the dim, warm light of the stained-glass window. Once there, she used the studs to wedge herself up to the top of the pantry to the access panel. She opened it and dangled her feet down onto the shelves, finding a place to stand between the boxes of cereal and rice. She closed the panel behind her. Elise descended the shelves and flattened herself against the ground, her cheek against the cool tile, to peek through the crack beneath the door. She rose to her haunches and touched her ear against the wood of the door to listen.

  Here—her opening.

  Elise turned the knob and crawled through the kitchen on her hands and knees, pausing at the doorway to the living room to ensure no one else was lurking there, silent. Then she turned the corner and slipped into the living room’s coat closet.

  They’d checked here already, hadn’t they? She parted the hanging jackets, grabbed hold of the metal coatrack, pulled herself up, swung her foot on the shelf above, and inched herself on top. The shelf was full with a collection of small boxes, picture frames, and flashlights, and Elise lifted herself up and over them. Once behind, she reached back through and, mindful of the squeak of metal hangers on the pole, pulled them back toward the center of the rack. In the narrow space behind the boxes and frames, she curled her shoulders forward, pressing her back and legs flush against the wall. She breathed.

  Elise realized now she’d nearly been discovered in this closet before, back during Eddie’s birthday party. Nearly. But she hadn’t been found. She didn’t know whether that meant this place was good or bad luck. She wished she had someone who could tell her. Her dad, her mom. Even Brody.

  Minutes later, Elise heard footsteps against the living room carpet. Was it the man? She grabbed one of the flashlights in front of her on the shelf. Metal, hefty, at least four or five pounds. Slippery in her sweaty palm. Elise figured if she saw those big hands come reaching at her, snatching at her, she might swing the flashlight down with enough force to stagger him away. She waited. Another set of footsteps entered the room from the foyer.

  “What’s he doing now?” Eddie asked, his slender voice.

  “He’s going through it all again,” Marshall said. “All the towels out of the linen closet, and in my room, he’s taken the sheets off my bed. Clothes out of my dressers. My CDs and textbooks are all over the floor.”

  “What about my room?”

  “I think he’s doing yours next.”

  The boys were quiet for a moment. Someone sat down on the reclining chair. From the foyer, the cardinal called out the midpoint of the afternoon. The sound of the birds surprised Elise. As if she’d expected the painted birds to have taken flight and fled.

  “He was talking about putting trip wire up there,” Marshall said. “He was actually going to nail it into the doorframes.”

  “To nail it?”

  “I told him he had to use tape instead. Masking tape, so it wouldn’t leave the goop behind.”

  “Are we going to be able to clean this all up before Mom and Dad get back?”

  “We’re going to have to.”

  “I don’t want him here,” Eddie said. “I want him gone.”

  “Yeah,” Marshall said. “Me too.” He sounded tired. “I’m thinking the sooner he finds someone, the sooner he’ll be out of here. But we can’t forget what this is all about. He said he thinks we’re close. And . . . after all this—I mean could you even imagine after all this still not finding anything? Still having whoever in our house? Eddie, we can’t live the rest of our lives scared of the fucking dark.”

  “I wish we told Mom and Dad.”

  “No,” Marshall said. “Seriously?” There was frustration now in his voice. Elise could picture him there, standing in the center of the room in front of his seated brother, eyes squeezed shut, fingers rising to his brow, shaking his head. “Eddie, they wouldn’t have believed us. Why is that so hard to get through? Something that’s been stolen, they’d say we lost. Something like the footprint, they’d say we imagined. Something we heard, they’d say was only the house. You’re not dumb, so please, quit acting like it. Do I have to say this? That either, one night, that person will finally slit our throats in our sleep, or else—I don’t know—we’ll both go insane.”

  “Like him?”

  “Eddie,” Marshall said. “What the hell? Don’t you think someone who sneaks around, who steals our shit—a knife!—isn’t more of a problem? If not, well, then you actually have gone insane, or else you’re more stupid than I even thought you were. This guy comes in, and you just cringe, and complain, and hardly even look. I mean, I don’t like him, either, but you’re not making this go any faster. All you’ve done is whimper and sniffle behind me. Tiptoeing around. Barefoot. You’re making the guy think we’re both just little fucking kids. We don’t need that.”

  Marshall went across the room and began tearing the cushions from the sofa and tossing them on the floor. “Get up!” he said to his brother, and Elise heard him pull the cushion from the recliner where Eddie was sitting. “Go look in the garage, or something. Just go, man, and do something.”

  And the younger brother left.

  In a Corner

  AFTER MARSHALL SEARCHED THE LIVING ROOM, THE CLOSET DOOR opened and light expanded into the room. He stepped in. The crown of his head was just an arm’s reach below her; she saw the short, stray bristles of his hair in a crack between two small boxes. Marshall parted the hanging coats and jackets to see behind them.

  The muscles of Elise’s arm tensed, and she lifted the flashlight above her, as high as the ceiling would allow. If he looked up, if the balls of his eyes rose in their sockets, she couldn’t even give him the chance. She pictured the globe of his skull sprouting hairline cracks from the impact. She’d push the boxes and frames between them down and hit him as many times as she could manage before his knees buckled.

  If she didn’t, Marshall would hold her there, under his bony knuckles, calling for Traust to come down. The big man would be there in seconds.

  Marsha
ll closed the part in the hanging coats. Elise waited for him to look up and see her. She thought to herself that this was something she could do, wasn’t it?

  Marshall’s eyes rose. They skimmed over the picture frames and boxes. Only a flutter of the eyes, but she made out the deep brown of his irises. Elise didn’t move. Couldn’t.

  He turned and closed the closet door behind him.

  Keep Moving

  OUTSIDE, THE TREE LINE OF THE WOODS WAS A WALL. THE DOMED sky a ceiling. The steep, grassed levee a wall. On the other side of the levee, the river was a constant, silent force. Removed from her view for months now, but alive and streaming.

  Elise listened to the men in her home, tracked their movements, projecting and extrapolating them in her mind, as the clock in the foyer tolled on the quarter, and then on the half-hour. When she felt it was safe, she dripped, like a single bulb of water, down from the shelf. She left the living room closet, darting behind the piano, now dragged into the center of the dining room. She waited, the pressure of standing still in the open room welling within her, as steps crossed through the foyer, into the living room, then into the kitchen. Marshall saying something to his brother, who was still in the attached garage. Elise rose up the curving stairs, quiet. Traust in the parents’ bedroom, but she passed the doorway as little more than the flicker of a ghost. The rooms around her in disarray, like the furniture had come alive into open revolt. Laundry hampers spilled. Drawers emptied on the beds. Clothes taken down from their hangers. Towels covering the hallway floor beneath her feet. They were taking apart their home to find her.

  Keep moving. This was her home, too.

  The river on the other side of the levee rises and falls. Swells and recedes.

  Elise, the river. A current outside of sight.

  Poison the Well

  BY LATE AFTERNOON, MR. TRAUST HAD GONE OUT INTO THE YARD. EDDIE had caught a glimpse of him there, the dark shape of his head passing the first-floor windows in the bronzing sunlight. Soon, Eddie heard him below the house. At first, Eddie thought it might have been the other, the hidden one, but he heard the man’s grunting, involuntary and beast-like, and the thick weight of his body bumping against the house’s foundations. That wasn’t their intruder—theirs was quiet, almost imperceptible, even delicate. Mr. Traust’s noises made Eddie realize for the first time how small this person must be. Below, something began to hiss.

  “What the hell is he doing down there?” Marshall said, from the staircase.

  Eddie shook his head.

  “You’re going to want to step outside,” said Mr. Traust’s muffled voice, calling up from below.

  The boys met him at the crawl space behind the azaleas. It was a shock to see his flushed, strained face in the dark rectangle in the house’s siding—Eddie would have never guessed he could fit through there in the first place—and he emerged coughing, wriggling himself free, his face and shirt streaked with gray dirt. Halfway out on the grass, he covered his mouth with a handkerchief. He thrust up the other hand for Marshall to grab hold. Trails of thin smoke twisted from the hole behind him. The man’s eyes had turned watery and pink.

  “Fumigation,” Mr. Traust said, getting to his feet. He didn’t compose himself long, and motioned with two fingers for the boys to follow him back around the house. While he walked, he gave an animal attention to the windows—his body partly facing them, but his boots falling directly in front of one another. He reached his truck and pulled three mouth masks from the bed. He tossed two to Marshall, who wasn’t expecting it. Marshall dropped one and had to bend and pick it up.

  “So,” Marshall said. “What is this? Are you poisoning our house now?” There was resignation in his voice. “I said our parents are getting home tomorrow. We don’t have time to wash every dish and bedsheet—”

  “Your house is too big,” Mr. Traust said. “We don’t have enough eyes to pin it all down at once. Besides, I only set ’em off beneath the house. The foggers’ smoke goes up, but it’s going exactly where I want it. The spaces between. Only there. Just those spots our friend has to hide. Get it?”

  “You sure?”

  The man locked eyes with Marshall. Pursed his lips.

  Marshall handed Eddie a mask, while Mr. Traust grabbed his toolkit from the side of the house and went back inside.

  “Put it on,” Marshall said. He avoided Eddie’s gaze as he handed it to him. Instead, he looked back toward the crawl space, where wisps of smoke twined.

  The Body Cries Out

  IN THE FOYER, THEY STOOD AND WAITED FOR THE HISS OF THE FOGGERS beneath them to cut out.

  Mr. Traust looked around at the walls. He placed his toolkit down and stepped into the living room, his head cocked to the side, one ear turned up like a dog. The boys didn’t know what else to do but follow. The man stopped abruptly and frowned when he turned to find them in his way. The boys backed into the foyer, and then followed him into the library.

  “How many of those things did you put down there?” Marshall asked.

  “Shh,” Mr. Traust said. He brought a finger to his lips. He looked around, then he pointed at the floor as if to say, “Wait here.” He went on through the laundry room and disappeared around the corner into the back porch.

  The boys waited in the library beside the books that had been pulled and stacked in short towers, beside the rolled-up rug and the sofa pulled perpendicular to the wall. The sun was dipping in the sky and the lamp cast soft shadows across the floor.

  One minute. Two minutes, and the hissing beneath them went quiet. The ghosts of smoke rose up from the floor vent—hard to tell whether Eddie was actually seeing it. A car passed on the road, its windows down, country music warped by speed. The house around them was still.

  The smoke rose through the house’s insides. Eddie could imagine it just on the other side of the wall, twisting in the dark around the studs and beams. Tendrils, gray worms in black mud, around them on every side. Eddie’s breath felt hot in his mask. Sweat gathered on his upper lip. Mr. Traust was now standing, silhouetted by the windows in the back porch. His big legs splayed, arms raised, elbows jutting, his hands covering his eyes. He was listening. The lights of every room gently hummed.

  And then, finally, finally above them, through the ceiling, somewhere from the empty rooms overhead, they heard someone cough.

  Storm’s Beginning

  MR. TRAUST THUNDERED THROUGH THE HOUSE. PASSING THE BOYS in the library, he kicked the books on the floor out of his way, whole stacks crumbling before his shins. The boys pressed themselves against the shelves to let him by. Up the stairs, three at a time, his boots so loud it seemed like he might break through the wood. So loud, halfway up, he needed to stop. Couldn’t hear the sound. The boys came after, paused at the foot of the stairs, and watched as he listened, watched his big hands white-knuckled on the banister, his chest rising and rising. Anxious, ready, but somehow his face didn’t seem to belong to the rest of him. Its brows pinched, its lips stretched back, he held an expression they’d expect from a boy who was afraid. It took a moment for Eddie to realize Marshall was gripping his shoulder.

  Then there it was again, the coughing—hacking now—and Mr. Traust was after it. They ran up behind him and saw the rug in the hallway catch air under his boots. Outside the parents’ bedroom, he stopped and listened, moved on, the sharp tip of his nose turning up at the spaces above each doorframe. He went past the guest room and the office, began trotting down the hall to the end, the boys still behind him, to where their rooms were. The man threw open the door to Eddie’s bedroom as if it were barricaded and entered. The coughing was coming from here, so loud now, it seemed, the boys barely noticed Mr. Traust drag the desk across the floor to the other wall.

  They watched as he climbed, with one large step then another, up on the desk. He seemed so huge now, the top of his head grazing the ceiling. He stretched his arms wide and felt the wall with the tips of his thick fingers, laid his head against it, as someone was coughing right there, just on
the other side. Then Mr. Traust stepped back, heels hanging off the edge of the desk, cocked his elbow back, and brought one meaty fist against the plaster.

  Her screaming. The house itself might have been screaming.

  The wall’s blue paint cracked white around the small black hole. Whatever was inside now scrambled and kicked at the walls like a bird trapped in a box.

  Mr. Traust gripped the knuckles of his hand. They might have been bleeding. “What the fuck are y’all kids doing?” he shouted. “Get my damn toolkit—my hammer—go!”

  As Marshall turned and ran, Mr. Traust threw an elbow into the plaster.

  He Takes Hold

  EDDIE WATCHED HIM FROM THE CENTER OF HIS ROOM. HE FELT ALMOST as if he’d never been here before. The man leaping from his desk to rip the alarm clock from its socket, to bring it back up and beat the clock against the plaster. This place could not have been his. This room, not his. The man left impacts like the craters of rectangular meteors. Green and gold stress marks—wall colors from different coats of paint—shot out of each blow like jagged lightning.

  Eddie listened to her—it was a her, now; all that uncertainty of what she might have been narrowing, tightening focus. Young, younger than he was, and inside the walls, fumbling and scratching, trying to pull herself away. She was crying. Mr. Traust brought the plastic clock again against the wall, its power cord whipping behind him, until it snapped into two pieces, its red and green wires exposed. A hole in the wall opened, and he focused on widening it. Something fluttered past in the shadow—did Mr. Traust see it?—and Eddie realized that the girl was someone physical, real, whose body took up space, whose skin had texture.