What Goes On In The Walls At Night: Thirteen tales of disgust and delight

by Andrew Schrader

  We visited every specialist in a fifty-mile radius and then expanded outward from there. We received confused diagnoses and tried certain drugs hoping they would help. Nothing did.

  Work became a distant afterthought. Bills piled on bills.

  Meanwhile, Cory’s physical health improved. Little bastard. His crawl was apparently not a fluke; I noticed as I cared for him that a certain plumpness has returned to his legs, arms, and face. Ribs still protruded from his caved chest, but they were supplemented with muscle. His thighs quickly lost their veiny markings.

  His diet hadn’t changed. The paralyzed boy’s growing smile, returning strength, deepening vocals, the flexing of his fingers, toes and biceps, his catlike eyes and expanding jaw working up and down chewing on nothing, it all gave me the creeps.

  With his physical health came mental abilities the boy had never had. This was not a return to an old self, like a recovery from a stroke. No, Cory became the boy he never was, and the doctors could offer no explanation for his miracle.

  While the climb toward proper health continued for Cory, it plummeted for Sally. They were opposites. She collapsed more and more. She always tried to get around on her own and never listened to me.

  One night, I found her passed out on the kitchen floor. Cory was lying next to her, cradling her head.

  I knew Cory moved around more than he let on. He’d hide it. I could tell.

  Sometimes I’d be lying in bed, comforting Sally with a bear hug while she convulsed and tried to sleep, and I’d hear scuttling downstairs. I’d listen to the sounds of fingernails gripping the floor, making tiny tap-tapping noises.

  And, once, I could swear I heard what sounded like a body dragging itself up the stairs, pausing just outside our locked door, and then the soft, nasally breathing of a young boy with damaged lungs.

  I had nothing but bad feelings for Cory after that. I developed a strange fear of entering his room, sleeping for only a few hours a night. I couldn’t eat much. Normal creaks and groans in the house startled me and set my heart racing. I needed outside help, someone to tell me if there was something wrong with Cory or if I was going insane.

  The opportunity presented itself in the form of a coworker, Peter.

  Peter was a man of special training and intellect. I can’t say to which branch of the armed forces he belonged, but he was, way back when, trained in tracking and apprehending insurgents in foreign countries during the time of our country’s great fucked-up war. His combination of logic and intuition made him the perfect advisor.

  I figured it was best to invite him over, let him see Cory, and see what happened. If my intuition were right, he would pick up on something with Cory. Vibes? Bad mojo? Hopefully, I could see that he sensed something, and that would be enough to start a conversation—or at least validate my sanity.

  When Peter arrived, I showed him around the house, saving Cory’s room for last and explaining our family’s medical situation. He was genuinely interested and didn’t seem put off by any medical talk that provoked ickiness in most people.

  I opened the door to Cory’s room. Peter remained stoic—not a muscle moved. There was no surprised look or gaze that lingered a little too long. Nothing. Not even when we approached Cory’s bed and looked down on the sleeping boy with drool down his chin.

  Peter asked questions about the equipment. I answered them. That was all.

  Disappointing.

  “Peter,” I said, as I opened his car door for him later on, “can I ask you something? It’s a little weird.” He nodded. “Did you feel or notice anything odd about Cory? A feeling, maybe? When you went into his room? An emotion?”

  “A feeling?”

  I backtracked, rambling. “Yes. When we spoke once, you said you would get . . . in the Army, about people or places, when you went somewhere new . . . emotions, off of people. Shit, maybe I’m talking crazy or something.”

  He blinked. “You’re not crazy. I did say that.”

  “Well, did you feel anything strange? About Cory?”

  Silence. Peter’s brow wrinkled.

  I continued. “See, I’ve always had this feeling about him, but I can’t really explain it.” I pinched my nose. “Oh, hell, do you know what I’m trying to say?”

  I wanted him to know I was genuine, that I truly felt something fucked-up was happening at home, but what could I say?

  “The word you’re looking for,” he said, “is intuition.”

  “Of course!” I said. “Well, what does your intuition say about my home?”

  He looked at his feet and pretended to fix his watch. “Me? What do you mean?”

  “You told me stories of being in the jungle, having a sense about a particular place and all. And . . .” I went ahead and told him about the bad vibes around the house, my wife’s sickness, Cory acting strangely.

  “I don’t know,” I pretended to laugh. “Sometimes, I think our house is cursed . . .”

  He paused and then said, “I don’t want to offend you.”

  “Don’t worry, you won’t.”

  Peter breathed in deep through his nose and looked around. “Something’s off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The kid. I’m sure he’s well behaved and all, and I know he has a medical condition. Ah, hell.” Peter bit his thumbnail and frowned. “I can’t be sure. It’s intuition, not science. Still . . .” He cocked his head to one side, debating with himself. “It’s not usually wrong.”

  He paused again, unsure whether to continue. “The boy feels like he’s sucking the life out of you.”

  The air hung still. Peter understood my hesitation, looked back out the windshield, nodded, and continued.

  “The impression I got from being in that room was that the boy is feeding off you and your wife. That’s where he’s getting his strength. In a normal environment, the same is true—the child always receives its strength from the parents. But this is different. Let me ask you something. Your wife. She’s gotten worse since Cory came? And he’s gotten better?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I were you,” Peter said, “I would put the boy back in the home. Whatever it costs. But do it quickly.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he knows we’re talking about him. And he doesn’t like it.”

  He motioned with his head toward my upstairs window and then zoomed off. As the exhaust from his truck cleared, I turned and looked upward.

  Something shadowy stood in the foggy moonlight. It had the shape of a hunchbacked boy with a huge head and bug eyes.

  Three weeks later, Sally passed unexpectedly, her muscles having weakened to the point of disintegration. Her heart, being one big muscle, simply stopped working.

  The funeral was hot, sunny, and miserable. Only a few distant relatives came—my immediate family was all gone. Sally’s family was sparse, too, having thinned out over the years.

  Cory stayed home. I broke the news to him as soft and gentle as I could. I swear he smiled a little.

  That night, I checked his oxygen (which he didn’t seem to need anymore) and head brace (which he also hardly needed). I went out and lit a candle for Sally, and I resolved to keep it burning each night for one year.

  Then I had a drink that lasted three weeks.

  Soon after my binge, I awoke one morning with a pain in my neck. Nothing more. It was one of those sharp pains that burned whenever I turned my head. I could only keep my head straight up and down. All day, I felt like a skeleton. When I turned to grab something or speak to a coworker, the needlepoint pain jabbed in tiny spears up and down my back from my shoulders to the bottom of my spine.

  My head throbbed. I couldn’t see much because my eyes were watering, and my vision had turned cloudy. I could only drive with a hand over one eye. Each red or green light caused brain-shocked agony.

  The next morning, the vicious pain had dulled to a constant pounding. I checked on Cory, who looked wet. Sweaty. Maybe the temperature had been turned up in the
night, and he’d been baking. I looked, but the heat was fine.

  Cory’s temperature was normal, but his concave forehead was fiery to the touch and his breathing more rapid than usual. His eyes had moist droplets surrounding them, and his orbs were moving rapidly underneath the spotty lids.

  As I changed his shirt, my left calf muscle seized and stiffened up. So did the whole left side of my body. I fell, caught myself on Cory’s bedside bar, and shifted my weight.

  The pain was intense. Just like a charley horse, it got tighter the more I tried to move. Nothing I did could dislodge the knot inside me, not even jamming my fist deep into the muscle tissues of my leg until I thought I felt bone.

  Cory’s big, brown eyes opened. He stared at me sideways. His half-cracked smile seemed to be conveying some joke only he understood. Crusty white flecks dotted his lips. His tongue, covered in white bacteria, lolled around haphazardly. I shrank in disgust at his splotchy skin and his flaking forehead and eyebrows caked in dandruff. Some of it fell into his open mouth when he moved. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  He threw his head back in what I think was laughter, head rolling around on its own in an elongated circular motion. A fresh round of pain shot up the left side of my body up into my face, and the muscles began to droop and hang.

  My lips. My cheeks. I touched my face. I felt nothing. Numb.

  Then, Cory’s leg—his left leg—shot out from under the covers. The blanket peeled back, and out came his knobby knee and emaciated limb.

  The muscles grew. The calf seemed to generate meat and mass from nowhere, veins and tendons and joints popping up like popcorn.

  I looked at my leg. Felt it. It was shrinking. Muscles were vanishing.

  I hobbled to the dresser drawer on the opposite side of the room and grabbed four bungee cords from the bottom drawer.

  I swung one cord around Cory’s left arm and tightened it. I snaked both ends around him, hooking them together so they connected behind the gurney. I pulled them tight to hold him in place.

  He didn’t like being constrained and tried to rise from the bed. But the cord did its job, and Cory couldn’t budge. Instead, he turned his head and bellowed a wave of rank breath that poured down my throat.

  I nearly vomited, but kept myself composed long enough to strap down Cory’s other arm and doubly secure his torso against the bed. I stumbled to the other side of Cory’s bed with a third bungee, positioned myself against his strong leg, and hooked one end of the cord under the gurney. I wrapped it twice around his leg.

  I yanked the cord tight. The veins in his leg bulged. Cory tried to buck wildly, but the restraints worked.

  A minute passed. The flesh turned purple.

  Sally, were you watching? Did you believe that your son was some kind of inhuman parasite? That he’d sapped our strength, sucked it right out of us and into him? Or was I insane?

  I pulled harder. Cory’s leg bulged and pulsed as red liquid tried to pump through his ever-shrinking blood vessels.

  Stop! A voice cried out from deep inside me. You’re torturing a small boy! He’s helpless!

  Cory had maybe another minute before he permanently lost oxygen flow. His leg would be useless.

  But—

  My toes! As blood in Cory’s leg dammed up, blood cascaded through mine like a rushing river from my hip to my soles.

  I stood, the feeling restored in the left side of my body. My face tightened. My jaw worked again.

  Cory’s lips were tight and eyes wide, his face still in a semi-paralyzed state. He didn’t have the strength to escape the bungees. From his darting glances from the cords to me, I could tell he was aware of his situation and that he was frightened.

  He frowned and pouted. Air came in short, rapid bursts from his nostrils. His leg turned dark purple, the color of desert sunsets. His eyes watered in fright and pain.

  He begged me to stop with muted grunts, pleading with me as best he could. Something like words sputtered out, but I wasn’t listening. I leaned back, blood running from cuts the bungee cord had left on my hands. I didn’t care. My leg had come back completely.

  Suddenly, the boy’s groaning stopped, and he stopped resisting the bungees.

  I didn’t see it in time. Somehow he’d gotten his left arm out from under the cord.

  Cory grabbed the heart monitor and yanked it toward him. The stand fell. Cory held onto the device. His lips moved as he whispered under his breath.

  His arm shook and his eyes closed.

  Everything went quiet.

  A humming. A flash of light. From the heart monitor. Elevating in pitch and intensity.

  Cory’s body vibrated with energy, faster and faster.

  Something was whistling inside of him, moving rapidly under his skin. I caught a whiff of smoke, as if someone had lit a match. The smell grew stronger. I looked down. Small wisps of smoke billowed out between the buttons on his shirt and grew cloudy.

  His body vibrated still faster. The smoke grew thicker and whiter. It came out of his pores like fog rising from a lake.

  Fire shone through the skin on his face. His body turned red and orange. Tongues of yellow darted out of his skin, caught his clothing on fire, and singed his flesh. His lips curled around his gritted teeth in a sick, lopsided smile.

  I leapt back and lunged for the door. When I turned around, the fire had already consumed Cory’s body and the bed.

  A massive pyre burned to the ceiling. Flames grabbed at the drapes and then swallowed them completely. Cory’s eyeballs caught fire, melted, oozing from their sockets and dripping to the floor where they sat like mushy coals and lit the carpet aflame.

  I ran haphazardly out of the inferno, slamming the door behind me. I remember racing down the stairs and out of the house, but I don’t remember driving away.

  I’m here now in a small motel near Livermore. It’s been a month or so. I’ll be here awhile. Last week, I left work for good. It seemed like a good time to start over.

  The insurance companies still haven’t determined what caused the heart monitor to malfunction.

  There’s not much to do here except catch up on my reading, sit by the pool, and smell the cows.

  But today, I’m scrawling this story on hotel stationery because I got some news recently.

  After their sweep of the rubble, the police said they’d found no evidence of another body. “Yes,” the detective had said, “in very hot fires, the body will burn to almost nothing, but we invariably find teeth or parts of the heart. In this case, we’ve found nothing. It doesn’t rule out that he’s gone. We just can’t prove it.”

  I haven’t left the room in days. I keep the blinds drawn. I don’t let the cleaners in.

  Maybe I’m insane. I don’t care.

  Three days ago, my left leg began to cramp, and I woke up the next morning with a familiar stiffness in my neck that ran from the base of my head to the bottom of my spine.

  I sit here now, propped up in my chair at the hotel dessk. Ive lost feeling in my body. i just have the muscles in my fingertips, scribbling words as best i can. My fingers ar cramped. I cant turn my head or even look down at what imwriting. i only see the wall. this will be where they find me.

  i dont want to make a sound. even the scratching fo my pen is too much. everything is shutting down now. i can feel it ahppening. i hope someone finds this.

  i can hear him breathing. scratching.

  hes int he room.

  help me

  2081

  The year was 2081, and the stock market stood at a historic 67,821. The stock market used to be called things like the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

  Its new name was the Freedom Index.

  The government had long ago realized that freedom was strongly correlated to economic growth, and had finally enough sense to bind them together. Since then, both freedom and economic growth had been booming.

  Peering down on the city of Libertas were 27,491 cameras. Not one was mounted in the
open. Most were hidden in the mechanical clouds hanging overhead and in the robotic birds zooming above and between the buildings. Camera vision blanketed the city, not one square inch missed.

  Herman Shute stepped out of his apartment building and onto the street, set his cane firmly with one hand, adjusted his hat and the vest of his custom three-piece suit, and began strolling the city to see the celebration. The afternoon sun hung high and beamed love upon everything.

  The giant banner on the street proclaimed this day the twenty-seventh anniversary of the Market Exclusion Act, the annual Market Appreciation Day. In order to preserve maximum freedom and economic growth, the act decreed that no exchanges could be made outside of Market Forces. No trading, no bartering, no unauthorized monies.

  Herman rounded the corner onto Adam Smith Lane. He moved slower than other festivalgoers, due to his age of 71, but his smile was bigger and thus propelled him at a higher joy-to-movement ratio.

  The street was blocked off by official-looking signs and ribbons. Dozens of vendors lined the streets, selling official J.B. Clinton–approved hats, clothing, and electronics with invisible cameras inside.

  Only two companies existed under the Market Exclusion Act and were permitted to sell within Market guidelines:

  J.B. Clinton ran the financial, economic, and consumer goods services.

  Homeland Security ran freedom.

  Herman moved along the sidewalk, gracefully stepping aside for other festivalgoers. He waved them on with his hat, bowing from time to time, and always with a smile. He hadn’t climbed the ladder at J.B. Clinton steadily for thirty years by being standoffish.

  Halfway down the street, the lines of vendors split on either side, and in the middle Lorraine Rousseau gave her yearly sermon. One hundred or so Libertans gathered around her. She was dressed in a flowered skirt. She had nice arms, plastic black hair, and glasses with large frames.

  “We are gathered here to celebrate the Market,” she proclaimed to loud cheers. “Decades ago, we lived like animals, each of us buying and selling based on our own selfish desires. We never asked the Market what it needed to grow. Not once did we truly align our wills with the Market’s. As a result, we had stock market dips, crashes, tidal waves, tsunamis. We did not recognize the divine in Market Forces.