The Chalk Dust and the Crying Wall

I lost my mother in the spring of 2019, when I was fifteen, to a sudden heart failure. My father and I moved into a cramped flat in the city, and the silence of our new home was broken only by the ticking of a clock that had belonged to her. That November, I was chosen for the regional inter-school mathematics olympiad. Our mathematics teacher, Mr. Vardanyan, decided to hold extra coaching sessions for the select few. Among us was a boy from my batch named Arman. We hit it off immediately, our minds working in sync, solving equations as if they were simple riddles. But there was one thing we fiercely disagreed on: Arman believed in ghosts, in the supernatural, in things that went bump in the night. I, a pragmatic soul, scoffed at such notions. That was until we started our sessions at the old Karapetyan house.

The Karapetyans, a wealthy family, had purchased the sprawling, two-story house on the outskirts of town but had not yet moved in. They had furnished it with heavy, antique furniture, but the place was cold and hollow. Mr. Vardanyan thought it would be a good change of scenery, a quiet place for focused study. The first time I stepped through the wrought-iron gate, a sharp pain shot through my temples. I dismissed it as a tension headache. But as we settled into the mahogany-paneled study, the discomfort grew, a throbbing behind my eyes that wouldn’t quit. I noticed Arman rubbing his forehead, a grimace on his face. After our first session, we walked out together, and he confessed, ‘I get a headache every time I enter that house. It’s like the air is wrong, you know?’ I was startled. I had felt the exact same thing. That was the first crack in my disbelief.

The second session, I noticed the chalk. We used an old blackboard that leaned against one wall. After Mr. Vardanyan left to answer a call, Arman and I continued practicing. I looked at the board and saw, beneath the scrawled equations, faint traces of other writing, erased but still visible. It looked like a string of numbers: 7, 13, 21, 34. I pointed it out to Arman. ‘Could be from a previous owner,’ he said, but his voice was uneasy. We tried to ignore it, but the numbers seemed to follow us. During our next session, Mr. Vardanyan wrote a sequence on the board: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34. Arman gasped. The hidden numbers were exactly the tail end of the Fibonacci sequence. ‘It’s a coincidence,’ I said, but my voice was flat. Arman shook his head. ‘No, it’s a message. Someone left it for us.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the house, the headaches, the numbers. An eerie feeling crept over me, as if a pair of eyes were watching from the darkened corners of my new flat. I decided to find out more about the Karapetyan house. A quick internet search revealed its history: it had been built in the 1970s by a reclusive mathematics professor, Hovhannes Karapetyan, who had died in a house fire in 1985. His wife and daughter perished with him. The cause of the fire was never determined. The house had been empty for decades before the current Karapetyans bought it. I felt a chill run down my spine. A mathematician who died in that house. The numbers were probably his work, or maybe they were the last thing he scrawled before the fire.

The next session, I was determined to ignore the creepy feeling, but I couldn’t. We were solving a complex problem on the blackboard when I noticed a new set of faint marks next to our equations. It was a single word: ‘HELP’. I froze. Arman saw it too. ‘Did you write that?’ he asked. ‘No, did you?’ I replied. We both knew neither of us had. Mr. Vardanyan, seeing our pale faces, asked what was wrong. We showed him the word. He laughed it off. ‘Probably left over from some prank. Don’t let your imagination run wild.’ But the word was there, freshly etched, as if someone had just written it in chalk that had been wiped too hard.

After that, we refused to go back to the house. Mr. Vardanyan reluctantly moved the classes back to the school. But the damage was done. The headaches persisted, sometimes even at school. I would see the Fibonacci numbers everywhere, in the grain of the wood, in the pattern of the floor tiles. Arman started having nightmares, he told me, of a figure in a dark suit, whispering numbers. I had strange dreams of a locked room in my flat, a room that I knew didn’t exist. I would wake up with the sensation of chalk dust on my fingers.

One evening, about a week later, Arman called me, his voice shaking. ‘I went back to the house,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t let it go. I had to see… I found something in the study. Under a floorboard. A diary.’ He read me a passage: ‘November 17, 1985. The numbers are speaking. The sequence is the key. I must show them the way. The house is the gate. If I can just finish the equation…’ The date of the fire was November 19. The date of our last session at the house was November 17. My heart pounded. ‘Arman, that’s today. The anniversary of the professor’s diary entry.’

We decided to go back to the house together, that night, to find out more. The house was dark and foreboding. The air was thick, heavy, as if the house itself was breathing. The headache hit me as soon as we crossed the threshold, stronger than ever. We went to the study, which was now covered in a thin layer of dust, as if the house had been abandoned for years. The blackboard was still there. On it, in glowing chalk, was our equation, but the numbers had been rearranged. It read: 34, 21, 13, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1, 0. And below it: ‘THE WAY OUT IS BACKWARDS.’ A sound came from the wall behind the board, like a low moan. I looked at Arman. His eyes were wide. ‘The wall is crying,’ he whispered.

We approached the wall. It was covered in a floral wallpaper, peeling at the edges. Arman touched it, and his hand came away wet. The moan grew louder, turning into a child’s sobbing. I pressed my ear to the wall. I could hear a faint voice, repeating, ‘Help us, help us.’ I stumbled back, knocking over a chair. The sobbing stopped, and the room went silent. Then the chalk on the blackboard moved on its own, scribbling furiously: ‘THEY ARE IN THE WALL. LET THEM OUT.’ I looked at the wall, noticing a faint crack in the plaster, shaped like a door. Arman found a crowbar in the corner, and we started prying at the crack. The plaster gave way, revealing a space behind the wall. Inside, we found three skeletons, huddled together. On the central skeleton’s chest was a rotten notebook, its pages fused together. I managed to open it. The final page had a sequence written in a frantic hand, and beneath it: ‘THE FIRE WAS THEIR ESCAPE. BUT THEY COULDN’T. NOW THEY ARE TRAPPED. 34-21-13-8-5-3-2-1-1-0 = 0. THE REVERSE OF CREATION. RETURN THEM.’

We called the police. The skeletons were identified as the Karapetyan family, who had supposedly died in the fire, but their bodies were never found. They had been sealed in the wall, murdered. The case reopened. The current Karapetyans, who had bought the house, turned out to be distant relatives, and there was speculation about a family feud. As the police dug deeper, they found evidence of a hidden room in the basement, filled with mathematical equations and a book on occult numerology, linking the original professor to a secret society that believed in mathematical spirits. The professor had tried to create a portal, but his family paid the price.

In the weeks that followed, the headaches stopped. Arman and I never spoke about what we saw that night. We both knew we would never fully escape the feeling that the wall was there, watching, waiting for the next sequence to be completed. I still see the numbers sometimes, in my dreams. And I remember the crying wall, weeping for those who were never given a proper goodbye. I never was the same after that, my disbelief shattered like the plaster we had broken through. And deep down, I know that the chalk dust and the crying will never truly leave me. They are etched into my memory, a permanent reminder that some puzzles are better left unsolved.