The Face in the Unfinished Wall

When I was twelve, in the autumn of 1991, my father, my younger brother, and I moved into a house that wasn’t quite done. It was a sprawling ranch-style place on the edge of a new housing development in the high desert of New Mexico, where the subdivision met the scrubland and the junipers. The builder had run out of money, and we got a deal if we finished the last few things ourselves: hanging a few interior doors, installing the window blinds, and patching some drywall in the hallway.

I remember the first night. My room was in the back of the house, facing a courtyard that had been paved with cracked concrete and left to the weeds. The window still had no covering, just a sheet of clear glass, and the back door was a heavy slab of wood with a deadbolt but no lock on the knob. The house smelled of fresh paint and sawdust. I lay in my sleeping bag on the floor, because my bed frame wouldn’t arrive until the weekend, and stared at the ceiling, listening to the wind rattle the loose siding. I felt a strange unease, as if the house was holding its breath, waiting for something.

That night, I had a dream. In it, I woke up parched, my throat sandpapery. I got out of bed and walked down the dark hallway toward the kitchen. The kitchen was at the back of the house, with a sliding glass door that led to the courtyard. In the dream, the glass door was open, letting in a cold draft. I went to the sink and filled a glass with water. As I raised it to my lips, I felt a pull to look outside. There, beyond the courtyard wall, a figure was moving—just a head and shoulders, gliding along the other side of the cinderblock wall. Then it stopped, turned, and faced me.

The face was black, like a void, but two eyes burned in it, silver and blazing, and they fixed on me with malevolent intent. The dream shattered. I woke with a gasp, my heart pounding, the image seared into my mind.

I tried to shake it off. Dreams were just dreams. But the next night, it came again, almost the same, except this time the figure was closer, standing just outside the glass door, its hand pressed against the pane. The eyes were unmistakable, silver and hungry. I woke up screaming, and my father came running in. He sat with me, told me it was just a nightmare, but I saw him glance at the window, where a thin crack had appeared in the glass, like a spider web, radiating from a single point.

Over the following weeks, the dreams grew more intense. I began to see the figure in my waking hours, always at the edge of my vision, a dark silhouette against the evening light. The house itself seemed to shift, to creak and groan in ways that didn’t match the wind. My brother, who was nine, started sleeping with his light on. He said he heard footsteps in the courtyard at night, pacing back and forth. My father dismissed it as coyotes, but he installed a motion-sensing floodlight above the back door. It never triggered.

One afternoon, I was helping my father finish hanging the door to my bedroom. We were adjusting the hinges when I noticed something odd. The wall behind the door, which was just bare drywall, had a small hole, as if someone had driven a nail too hard. I peered through it, expecting to see the wooden stud, but instead I saw a dark, empty space, and in that space, two points of silver light blinked back at me. I stumbled back, and my father asked what was wrong. I told him nothing, but that night, I decided to investigate.

I took a flashlight and a hammer, and while my father and brother were watching TV, I went to the back of the house. The hole was in the bedroom that was supposed to be a guest room, right across from mine. I gently tapped the drywall, and it crumbled away, revealing a cavity. I played the beam of my flashlight inside. It was a crawl space, but it shouldn’t have been there—the house plans didn’t include it. And there, pressed against the back of the drywall, was a face. Not the shadowy void, but a gaunt, pale visage, with skin stretched tight over bone, and two silver eyes that reflected the light like a cat’s. I screamed and dropped the flashlight.

My father came running. He saw the hole, the darkness, and the face now etched like a bas-relief in the drywall, but it was inanimate, just a grotesque impression. He thought it was a joke, a prank by some local kids. But I knew better. That night, I didn’t sleep. I sat in my room, facing the window, and I watched the courtyard. At 3:00 AM, the figure appeared. It walked right up to the glass, its face black, its eyes silver. It raised a hand and tapped the glass, once, twice, three times. The tapping was answered by a knock from inside the wall behind my bed.

I wanted to flee, but I was frozen. The figure outside began to speak, though its mouth didn’t move. The words seemed to come from inside my head, an icy whisper: ‘I have been waiting for this house to be finished. Now I can come fully. But you, you will be my first guest.’ I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the figure was gone. But on the glass, in a thin layer of frost, were the prints of two hands, as if it had pressed itself against the pane.

The next morning, I told my father everything. He listened, and for the first time, he looked worried. He called a builder friend to inspect the wall. They found that the closet in the guest room had been built over a recess that was not in the plans, and inside that recess, they found the skeleton of a man, his skull crushed, and a small leather-bound journal. The journal belonged to a previous construction worker who had vanished mid-project. His last entry read, ‘I think there is something in the ground under this house. It whispers to me at night. It wants me to join it. God help me, I think I will.’

We moved out the following week. The house was never fully finished. But sometimes, even now, years later, I will catch a glimpse of a shadow just at the edge of my vision, and I swear I see two silver eyes. And in the quietest moments, I hear a faint tapping on my window—tap, tap, tap—even though I live on the fifth floor of a brick apartment building.

And I know, deep in my bones, that the face in the unfinished wall is not done with me. It’s just waiting for me to come back.