The Crying Walls

My name is Clara Vance, and I’ve been living in the same duplex in the outskirts of Austin, Texas for the past six years. It’s a modest place, with a red brick facade and a small, overgrown backyard. My husband, Mark, and I moved in right before our wedding, and we’ve made it our home. We have two boys, Ethan (6) and Leo (2), and our third child is due in about five months. We’ve always joked that this house has a ‘personality’, but lately, that personality has turned dark.

At first, it was just the usual quirks you might attribute to an older home. The light in the hallway would flicker, even with new bulbs. The bathroom sink would sometimes run on its own, a thin trickle that we’d find in the morning. The smoke detector would beep at 3 AM for no reason, with no smoke or dust to explain it. We had a handyman check everything, the wiring, the pipes, the alarm system, all of it. He said the place was clean as a whistle.

Then, the incidents started to escalate. One night, I was putting Ethan to bed, and I heard a faint, rhythmic tapping from inside the wall. It sounded like a finger tapping, three times, then a pause, then three more. I pressed my ear to the cold plaster, but the sound stopped. I blamed it on the pipes. But it happened again the next night, and the night after that. Mark thought I was imagining things until he heard it too.

One afternoon, I was in the kitchen, and the radio, which was off, suddenly blared to life. But it wasn’t music. It was a low, guttural voice, speaking in a language I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Spanish or any other language I’d heard in Austin. It sent chills down my spine. Mark ran in and turned it off, but we both knew something was wrong.

Our sons started acting strangely. Ethan began drawing the same picture over and over: a stick figure with hollow eyes, standing in a field of black flowers. Leo, who was just learning to speak, would sometimes point at the wall and say ‘the man is sleeping’. We tried to dismiss it as a child’s imagination, but then we found scratches on the inside of the closet door. Deep, angry gouges, as if something had been trapped inside.

One night, I woke up to the sound of crying. It wasn’t Ethan or Leo. It was a woman’s sobbing, muffled, as if it were coming from behind the headboard. I woke Mark, but by the time we sat up, the sound had faded. He told me I was having a nightmare. But I saw a faint, ghostly impression on the pillow next to me, a slight depression as if someone had been lying there.

The final straw came last week. I was taking a bath, trying to relax, when I felt a cold breath on the back of my neck. I spun around, but there was nothing. Then, the water in the tub turned ice cold and began to drain, as if some invisible hand had pulled the plug. I scrambled out, and as I stood there dripping, I noticed the mirror was fogged up. On its surface, written in the condensation, was a single word: ‘LEAVE’.

We decided to stay with my parents for a few days. As we packed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something watched us. When we returned, the first thing I noticed was that all the light bulbs in the ceiling fixtures were shattered, as if from an explosion. The smell of burnt sulfur hung in the air. In the kitchen, the refrigerator door was wide open, and all the food was on the floor, arranged in a circle. In the center of that circle was a single black rose.

I don’t know what entity has taken up residence in our walls, but I know we can’t stay here. Last night, as I was lying in bed, I felt a cold pressure on my stomach, right where my baby grows. A deep voice whispered in my ear, ‘You cannot leave. The seed is planted.’ I’m terrified. I don’t know what will happen when my baby is born. And I know, with a certainty that chills my blood, that whatever dwells here will not let us go without a fight.