The Drywall and the Broken Light

The house on Meridian Lane had a smell my stepfather called ‘old money’ and my sister called ‘dead flowers.’ I called it a warning, though I didn’t know it then. My stepfather, a man of blunt hands and louder opinions, was already at work in the living room, his crowbar prying at the plaster like a dentist at a stubborn tooth. My twin brother, Leo, and my younger sister, Maya, were eager to explore. It wasn’t a duplex in the usual sense; it was a single-story ranch with a door at the back that led to a mirror-image unit, abandoned and sealed. We were only allowed in our half, but kid rules bend like willow.

Hide-and-seek was Maya’s idea. Leo counted, his voice muffled by his hands, while I dragged Maya to the hallway closet. ‘No, too obvious,’ she whispered, already wriggling. We dashed to the kitchen, then through the breakfast nook, until we found a pantry with a sliding door partially blocked by boxes. We crouched behind dusty cans, stifling giggles. Leo’s footsteps padded past, and I held my breath. But then I spotted a crack in the back of the pantry, a seam where the wall met the frame, and a cool draft seeped through. I whispered to Maya to stay put, and I slipped out, tiptoeing to the master bedroom.

The room was bare except for a queen mattress on the floor and a broken ceiling fan. The window was painted shut, and the light trickled in through a grimy film. I ducked behind the door, the one way in and out, pressing my back to the cold wall. Leo’s footsteps grew closer, and I saw his shadow pass the doorway. He didn’t look in, and I exhaled, a soft sound. Then I heard Maya’s shrill giggle from the kitchen, and Leo bounded off. I decided to move, to find a better hiding spot in the living room, near the exposed studs my stepfather had created. He was on a ladder, hammering, and I squeezed between the drywall panels and the frame of a new doorway he was constructing. The space was tight, smelling of gypsum and old sawdust.

I crouched there, trying to be still. Then something shifted.

It wasn’t in the room; it was inside the wall. A faint scratching, like fingernails on paper, coming from the other side of the drywall I leaned against. I froze, thinking maybe a rat, but the sound was rhythmic, almost like a heartbeat. I put my ear to the wall and heard a muffled voice, not Leo’s, not Maya’s. It was a woman’s voice, but hollow, as if filtered through insulation. It said, in a singsong whisper, ‘I count to three, and you hide. One… two…’

I jolted back, my heart slamming. My stepfather, from his ladder, looked down. ‘You alright, kid?’ I nodded, too scared to speak, and scrambled out of the alcove. I ran to the living room and saw Leo and Maya emerging from the kitchen, looking confused. ‘You were supposed to count,’ Leo said. ‘I did. But I found this.’ He held up a child’s toy, a faded plastic rabbit with a missing ear, covered in dust. ‘It was behind the fridge.’ My stepfather grunted, ‘Junk. Throw it out.’

But the toy felt wrong. Couldn’t put my finger on it, but the rabbit’s painted eyes seemed to follow me. I put it on the windowsill and we continued playing, but the game lost its charm. I found myself glancing at the drywall my stepfather had cut. The opening to the room he was expanding was still just studs and a gaping hole, covered by a tarp. The scratching had stopped, but I felt a presence, like when you’re being watched, but you can’t see who.

That night, back at our old apartment, I couldn’t sleep. The rental car’s engine had left a hum in my head, and the image of the toy rabbit nudged at me. I got up for water and passed my brother’s room. He was snoring, but the door was cracked, and from the hallway, I saw a light flickering under his door. I pushed it open. He was asleep, but the rabbit toy was on his nightstand, staring at the ceiling. I hadn’t put it there. I had thrown it away in the kitchen trash before we left. I felt the cold dread creep up my spine.

I took the rabbit and hid it in the garage, under a pile of old newspapers. I didn’t sleep much that night.

A week later, we moved in. My stepdad had finished the wall, closing off that hidden space, and the duplex felt bigger. We each had a room, and Maya’s was the one with the newly painted walls. I got the master, because I was the oldest by ten minutes, as I liked to remind everyone. The first night, I heard tapping on my window. I thought it was a branch, but we had no trees near that window. The tapping came in a pattern: three knocks, a pause, two knocks. My heart pounded as I pulled the curtain back. Nothing. Just the black reflection of the yard, and the glow of the neighbor’s porch light. I closed the blind and lay back down. Then the tapping started on the wall beside my bed. I froze, my breath catching.

I remembered my ability, the one I never told anyone about, the one I could only access when I wasn’t trying. I closed my eyes and let my mind drift, thinking about nothing. Then I saw it, superimposed over the darkness: a woman with long black hair, her face obscured, standing in the corner of my room. She was whispering, but I couldn’t catch the words. I snapped my eyes open, and she was gone.

I told Leo the next day. He laughed, but his eyes were nervous. ‘It’s just the house settling,’ he said. ‘We should play hide-and-seek again in the backyard.’ But he didn’t sound convincing.

Days passed, and the presence grew. Objects would move: my toothbrush would be in the shower, the TV remote on the kitchen counter. Maya started having nightmares, wailing about a lady with no eyes. I tried to activate my third eye, but it wasn’t until I was sitting in the living room, watching the drywall where my stepfather had cut, that I slipped into that state. I wasn’t focusing, just staring at the wall, and then I saw the outline of a woman embedded in the plaster, like a relief. She was pressing against the wall from inside, reaching out. Her fingers were long, too long, and her eyes were hollow, and she was singing, ‘I count to three, and you hide. One… two…’

I snapped out of it, gasping. My stepfather walked in, holding a cup of coffee. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ he joked. I couldn’t laugh.

That night, I decided to investigate the hidden area. I knew the layout of the duplex; the sealed door in the back led to a mirror unit. At midnight, I took a flashlight and pried open the lock with a screwdriver. The door opened into a dark hallway, identical to ours but colder. The air was stale, and the floorboards creaked. I saw a child’s shoe, a lone teddy bear, and on the wall, scratched into the paint, were pairs of eyes, dozens, all drawn in a shaky hand.

I walked to the wall that would correspond to my room, and I saw a bulge in the drywall, as if something was pushing from inside. I touched it, and the bulge moved. I stumbled back. Then I heard a voice from behind me: ‘You found me.’

I turned, and there she was, the woman from my vision, but solid, a sallow-skinned figure in a tattered nightgown, her black hair hanging over a face that had no eyes, just smooth skin except for a mouth that smiled too wide, full of needle teeth. She reached out a long, pale hand, and I scrambled out of there, slamming the door.

I locked it, but something slammed against it from the other side, shaking the frame. I ran to my parents’ room, but they were asleep. I woke Leo, and we sat in the hallway, listening. The slamming stopped. Then we heard a child’s voice in my mother’s room, singing, ‘One… two… three. Ready or not, here I come.’

We burst in. The room was quiet, but on the ceiling, scrawled in black marker, was a message: ‘I see you. And I am always hiding.’

The next morning, my stepfather tried to open the back door, but it was as if it had been sealed forever, the paint fused. He shrugged and said he’d call a locksmith. I didn’t tell him what I saw. I knew it was real. The woman was bound to that house, and she had chosen me. I could feel her eyes even if she had none, watching me from the attic vents, from the reflections in the window, from the dark spaces between furniture.

One night, I woke to find Maya standing at the foot of my bed, her eyes closed, chanting in a hollow voice: ‘She says the hidden one is the seeker now. The seeker must find her, or she will hide forever in us.’

Then she collapsed. I caught her and screamed for help. My stepfather rushed in, and we took Maya to the hospital, but she was fine. The doctors said night terror. But I knew it was her.

When we came home, I went to the spot where my stepfather had cut the drywall, the piece he had taken out. He had used it to patch a hole in the garage, but something compelled me to go there. I lifted the plywood leaning against the wall, and there it was: the cut-out of the drywall, with a message scratched into the white side, where it had faced the hidden space. It read: ‘I was trapped in the dark, but you freed me. Now I will preserve your name in my eternal game.’ Below it, in shaky letters, was my full name: ‘JASON MERRIWETHER.’

I retreated, but the walls began to thrum with a low hum. Behind me, the door to the back unit creaked open. I didn’t want to look, but I did. There, in the shadows, the eyeless woman was standing, holding the toy rabbit, its one ear missing, and she was grinning. ‘Ready or not, Jason. Here I come.’