Girl in the Walls

by A. J. Gnuse

  And as the days beat on, what was lost wore on the parents. Their piano, their antique clock, their furniture, books. The wasted projects. The wainscoting in the dining room. The replaced tile and cabinets in the kitchen. New carpet in the living room. The floor and painting in the guest room. They’d lost a year here. To stay and rebuild would lose more. Mr. and Mrs. Mason silently counted the remainders of their lives.

  One day, while their boys continued the process of gathering things from the first floor and chucking them out into the front yard, the parents found themselves upstairs, together in their bedroom.

  They held each other. Forehead against shoulder. Face embraced by hair.

  How grateful to all be alive. All of them okay. Unhurt, and breathing.

  But it was still hard to lose things.

  Skeleton

  MONTHS LATER, IN THE FALL, WITH THE REST OF THE SEASON’S HURRICANES passed, workmen finished stripping the house bare. The gutted house compressed. Each room, or what remained of them, blended together, with the tawny wall studs seeming less like walls than vertical window blinds. The boys, in what had been their bedrooms, could see clear through to the guest room and office, to their parents’ bedroom, and what had been the inside of the linen closet. They could see downstairs, too, through holes in the floor that had been for electrical wiring and ventilation. They could see up into the attic. The whole world here lain out before them like a map. Nothing could hide anywhere.

  Their parents worked downstairs in the garage. A cold front had moved in through the past few days, and dry, fresh air bit through the fabric of their sweaters. Even inside, the faint suggestion of their breath clouded in front of their mouths. When a breeze blew, the blue plastic tarp that covered the holes in the roof flapped at its corners, like large wings.

  Eddie wondered, still, if she was all right.

  Pressure welled up inside him, and Eddie told his brother that he once knew the girl. Before it all began, before their search, and Mr. Traust, and the storm. Or, not knew really, but had an idea of her. Of what she was. He thought she hid sometimes behind the old armchair in his room. For a while, he’d wanted, he’d tried, to keep her hidden.

  Eddie told this to his brother, and as he spoke, he realized, in the hesitations between words, that he expected Marshall’s face to turn hard. For his brother to look him over and sneer. “Why?” Marshall would say, confused, and once he understood, he’d ask it again, appalled. Eddie was confessing betrayal.

  He finished saying what he felt he had to. He’d deal with whatever came. Marshall didn’t look him in the eyes. The older brother just stood there, in place. Pulled a hand from deep inside the front pockets of his sweatshirt and rubbed the bristles of his hair along the back of his head.

  “Really,” Marshall said. He fell quiet.

  Hard now to imagine the way the house had been, since the walls had been removed. Harder to remember how it had felt—thinking you’re alone in a room when something stirs outside the door. Because there were no doors anymore. The light through the windows was clear and white on the wooden floor. The house was no more than bones, stripped and silent.

  Marshall asked, “So, what was she like?”

  Outside, birds chirped. The boys had never known the names for them, but knew the calls—flute-like, soft trills, whistles—familiar as the contour of an old pillow. Their parents’ voices murmured below. Eddie wondered what, if anything, he could say.

  “She was,” Eddie said. Shook his head. There weren’t words for this. “I don’t know. She was . . . good at hiding.”

  Marshall snorted. Eddie had to smile at himself.

  What else was there to say? As absurd as describing a ghost.

  —No, not a ghost. A house. How could anyone summarize the patches of warmth, or lingering smells of food after a meal? What do you say about the placement of furniture, the depth of doorframes, and what it’s like to move around them, on instinct, when the lights have gone out?

  “For a lot of the time,” Eddie said, “I liked her.”

  The End

  SOMETIMES, WE WONDER IF SHE’S DEAD.

  Maybe. Or moved on to another home, her next home, somewhere else in the neighborhood, or across the country. A girl like her no longer can exist anywhere else, we think.

  As we grow older, there’s a temptation to believe that every sound heard in the near-empty of our own homes is her still revolving around us. So near, we imagine that if only we closed our eyes, and waited until we heard her, and reached out our hands—we’d feel her there, reaching out to us with her own.

  It’s a feeling that doesn’t leave us.

  Sometimes, we catch ourselves. We’re still listening—for what? We’ll know it, maybe, when we hear it. An attic door creaking open above. A sigh, like a miracle, under the floor.

  Come out!

  We say it, when we can’t take it anymore. When we’ve had enough.

  But each time, when we think she’s really at her nearest, our eyes are always shut.

  In the Morning

  A THOUGHT AS SHE WAKES. A MEMORY NAGGING HER. SOME CHILDHOOD thing left undone, unacknowledged. And the feeling of embarrassment with it, as if it happened only the day before. Odd how those feelings can still bite at you. Or warm you, depending. Some hardly seem to fade at all. Lying in bed in the early morning dark, her mind tumbling, she knows she won’t be going back to sleep.

  She finds herself, phone in her hand, typing a name into the browser. She tries again, realizing the need to amend it. Because, of course, he’s grown. A man now. An “Edward,” as strange as that name sounds. She smiles, not without a little shame, in recognition that now she’s the one searching.

  There isn’t much to be found. The near absence of anything reminds her she’s tried this before.

  But, eventually, as her bedroom window grows pink, with City Park trees taking shape in its frame, she finds on a page an address. He still lives in town. Across the river from the old home they shared. Not so far from her now.

  She gets up and readies herself for work. Eats breakfast on the front porch in air that’s still cool from a storm the night before. Across the street, a stark-white egret bends in the shallow water of the park’s roadside ditch. Beyond, the empty play equipment seems almost solemn in the early morning gloom, but it will be filled that afternoon. Parents will perch on the benches. Young children, crying out, will hop across the playground after one another, will pull themselves into dangling swings and take flight. She’s lived in other states, with a grandfather, and then with an aunt. She’s made homes elsewhere. But now she is here in this city again, like a bird returning to an old nest with the change of a season. A planet in a stable orbit. A home always is yours, even after you’ve gone and made others.

  That morning, before she leaves, she opens her nightstand drawer and sifts past books, a sketchpad, postcards, and other kept things. She finds what she’s looking for and brings it to her desk. Tucks it in an envelope. Gets in her car and drives.

  She’s not on her way to work. Not yet.

  When she arrives in the neighborhood, Uptown, where the river bends, she parks her car several blocks away. Old houses, painted in bright pastels, press tight against restaurants and storefronts. Oak branches form a dense canopy. Rainwater drips intermittently from gutters and branches, and softly plops along the roof of her car. She sits with the door open, unwraps a peppermint from the cupholder, and pops it in her cheek. Grabs her bag and goes. Her heels tap across sidewalk pavement that has buckled over tree roots. The extra walk will likely make her late to work, but it’s fine. To break the boundaries of routine on occasion, she figures, just means you’re a living being.

  Safer this way, too. No car means no license plate. No identifying feature. No possibility of being found. On either side of the street, windows stare blankly out. The houses seem pensive, as if sleeping.

  She walks, and sunlight glints through gaps in wooden fences. A squirrel scuttles through trees above her. Th
e breeze blows cool against her arms.

  And, like anywhere else she’s been, she senses they’re here.

  Just out of sight, but close.

  Somewhere, an old plywood board is in the garage, being re-painted. A sprinkler in the garden has just been turned on. Somewhere, a child sprawls across a speckled, plastic tarp, drawing while she waits for her parents to finish up their day’s work.

  All three, still up to something. Wherever it is people go.

  A mom, a dad, a girl.

  And, every day, she holds them with her. In her.

  Like a home.

  Memento

  OUTSIDE, DRIVERS HAVE BEGUN THEIR MORNING COMMUTE. Through the narrow streets, their engines hum, their tires splashing through the puddles in the worn asphalt. In his bedroom, he knots his tie, carefully, in the mirror. He hears the wind through the oak trees and every car that passes. He hears birds chirping and each creak and cry of his own, old house.

  He’s always been sensitive to sounds. Always, he’ll be listening.

  As he readies himself to teach, he goes to his bedroom window. Opens it to the smell of rain still lingering. Checks the sill for termites, for little golden bodies remaining from the night before. His habit, for a long time now. He stands in the frame and watches the neighborhood wake.

  Down the block, a pair of wrens land on the awning of a small bike shop. Fallen twigs, still plump with their leaves, lay scattered across the roadside. In the house across from his, the outline of a neighbor’s cat sits in a gray window. Not far off, a woman crosses into the road. She strides across the pavement with the gentle urgency of an errand.

  He turns back to his room to pick a pair of socks from the armoire. His bedsprings squeak as he sits to pull them on. But something, like breath on the back of his neck, stops him.

  He gets up and returns to the window, and he sees her there, standing at the knee-high fence of his yard. She’s stopped to dig in her handbag. She pulls free an envelope and tucks it into his mailbox. Her hair bound in a loose bun. Face like anyone else’s.

  He thinks of the very small chance that he would be right here to see her do this.

  He watches her cross the road. Then he leaves his bedroom and goes out the front door.

  He steps barefoot across the paving stones and opens his mailbox. The letter is bulky, bent, unmarked. He looks up to see her beneath the bike shop’s awning. She’s paused, for a moment, to catch a drop of water in her open palm.

  He breaks the seal of the letter with his finger. Empties its contents into his hand.

  An old Lego figure. A little plastic witch.

  The wind is blowing, and wet leaves cling tight to the pavement.

  And she goes, quick as she’s always been. Stepping down from the curb, around a rippled manhole cover, checking for coming cars out the side of her eye. A woman now, he realizes.

  A car passes between them. Shadow and light stipple across her beneath the branches. She turns the corner. The hem of her dress is the last trailing thing he sees. She’s gone.

  And so, there he is.

  Lucky to have seen her.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a book is a communal act. I owe a great deal of gratitude.

  Thank you to my parents, who have kept me more secure than any house ever could. Thanks to my brother for the mischief, and to my sister, for the best conscience. Thanks to my Georgia family, and to Grammy, for her home away from home and her bird feeders. Thank you, Aunt Dot and Uncle Virg, for getting me here.

  Thank you, Susan Armstrong, for being brilliant in the million things you do for me. To Amelia Atlas, I’m grateful for all your knowledge and care.

  To my editors, the Helens—Garnons-Williams and Atsma—your creativity and insight have left me in awe. Thanks for your generosity and precision, and for telling me, “Actually, you don’t need to cut that.” Thank you to the wonderful teams at 4th Estate and Ecco.

  Thank you to Nina de Gramont, who was with this project since it was no more than a sketch on a whiteboard. I’m grateful for your encouragement, wisdom, and support. And my deepest gratitude to so many others at UNC Wilmington. Rebecca Lee and Philip Gerard. David Gessner and Clyde Edgerton. To my novel-writing cohort for your stories and brilliance. To the Sports Crew for keeping us all in high spirits, even when each of you were injured, by me (sorry). And to those talented, young writers at Roland Grise Middle—I’m just trying to keep up.

  Thank you to Brad Richard, for a decade and a half (and going) of mentorship. To Donald Secreast, for your care with this novel and your shared delight in sentences. To friends in New Orleans, and Georgia, and Saint Louis, and North Carolina, who’ve treated me like a sibling. Thanks to Jake Nesbit, for also listening.

  And, of course, to those sounds from another room. To however the attic latch came open. To whatever was there, if anything, those times I couldn’t help but think—

  And to Donnie: my evacuee partner, who I come home to. You kind, patient, total bombshell—writing’s always easier with you.

  Thanks everyone.

  About the Author

  A native of New Orleans, A. J. GNUSE received an MFA in fiction from UNC Wilmington and was a Kenyon Review Peter Taylor Fellow. His short stories have been published in Gulf Coast, Guernica, the Los Angeles Review, Passages North, Potomac Review, and other magazines. Girl in the Walls is his first novel. He lives in Texas.

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  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  GIRL IN THE WALLS. Copyright © 2021 by Adam Gnuse. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Cover design and illustration by Elizabeth Yaffe

  Tree illustrations by Elizabeth Yaffe

  Originally published in Great Britain in 2021 by 4th Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Ecco® and HarperCollins® are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.

  FIRST U.S. EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Gnuse, A. J., 1990- author.

  Title: Girl in the walls : a novel / A. J. Gnuse.

  Description: First U.S. edition. | New York, NY : Ecco, [2021] | Originally published in Great Britain in 2021 by 4th Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021002237 (print) | LCCN 2021002238 (ebook) | ISBN 9780063031807 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780063031821 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Orphans—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Bildungsromans.

  Classification: LCC PS3607.N87 G57 2021 (print) | LCC PS3607.N87 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021002237

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021002238

  Digital Edition MAY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-303182-1

  Version 03202021

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-303180-7

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