The Fourth Wall

It was the summer I turned twenty-three, and I had just moved into the top floor of a dilapidated Victorian house on the edge of a dying mill town. The rent was cheap because the landlord warned me about the ‘creaks and drafts,’ but I didn’t mind. I was in the middle of a self-imposed horror immersion: reading Ligotti, watching obscure Italian giallos, playing through an old PS2 library of survival horror classics. More than that, I had started meditating, trying to find a ‘gate’ to something beyond the mundane. I’d read about astral projection and lucid dreaming, but what I was after was different – a way to perceive the thin membrane between reality and whatever lay behind it.

Every night, I would lie in bed, the room lit only by the pale glow of the streetlamp outside my single window. The walls were covered in a peeling floral wallpaper that seemed to shift in the half-light. I would focus on the darkest corner of the room, where the shadows pooled thickest, and I would whisper the names of things I half-remembered from folklore, things I had no business summoning. I wanted to feel fear, true fear, the kind that made your skin crawl and your breath catch. And one night, I felt something shift.

It started as a subtle change in the geometry. The room seemed to stretch, the walls tilting inward just a fraction. The floor felt uneven, as if I were on a ship in a gentle swell. I kept my eyes open, staring at the ceiling, where the cracks in the plaster formed a map of some alien continent. I realized I could hear my own heartbeat, but it was slow, impossibly slow, as if time itself had begun to thicken. I tried to move my arm, but it was heavy, pinned by an invisible weight. Panic fluttered in my chest, but I forced myself to stay calm. This was what I had wanted.

Over the following weeks, I perfected this state. I called it ‘slipping.’ I would slip, and the room would become a warped version of itself: the corners no longer right angles, the window showing not the street but a black void, the closet door slightly ajar when I knew I had closed it. The constant was the wallpaper. The pattern – faded roses and vines – would begin to writhe, the leaves curling like fingers, the blossoms opening into tiny, hungry mouths. I found myself staring at one particular cluster of roses on the wall above my bed. In my slipped state, they seemed to pulse, and I noticed a small crack in the plaster beneath them, a crack that seemed to grow wider each night.

One night, I slipped deeper than ever. The room was almost unrecognizable – the walls shimmered like wet paint, and the air hummed with a low, electric tension. I focused on the crack in the plaster, and I saw it. Behind the crack, there was something, but not a void. It was like looking through a keyhole into a dimly lit room. I saw a figure – a woman with long, stringy hair, sitting in a chair, her back to me. She was rocking slightly, and I could hear her humming a tuneless melody. I knew, with a certainty that froze my blood, that she was aware of me. She slowly began to turn her head.

I snapped out of it, gasping, sitting up in bed. The room was normal again, but the crack in the plaster was still there, wider than before, and I could see a sliver of darkness in it. I spent the rest of the night with the lights on, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had left a door open. The next evening, I decided to stop. I told myself it was too much, that I’d glimpsed something I shouldn’t have. But as I lay in bed, the darkness settling around me, I felt a pull toward that crack. It was as if something was calling to me, something that knew my name, though it was no voice I had ever heard.

I tried to resist, but sleep wouldn’t come. I tossed and turned, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw that woman beginning to turn. I finally sat up and flipped on the bedside lamp. The crack was there, in the same spot. I got up, my heart pounding, and approached the wall. I put my finger to the crack, and it was cold, colder than the room around me. I felt a draft, and then, the crack widened, just a little, and I heard a whisper from within: ‘You see me, but do you see what’s behind you?’

I spun around. The room was empty. But when I turned back to the wall, the crack had disappeared, replaced by a smooth, unbroken surface. Only a small, dark stain remained, like a smear of soot. I backed away, and as I did, I noticed the wallpaper. The roses were no longer faded; they were vibrant, deep red, as if freshly painted. And they were watching me. I don’t know how, but I could feel their attention, like a thousand tiny eyes.

I fled the house that night, driving to a motel on the highway. But the crack followed me. It appeared on the motel room wall, a thin line of darkness that grew whenever I blinked. And when I lay down to sleep, I heard the humming again, and a voice that whispered, ‘You let me in. Now I will always be here.’ I haven’t let go of that memory. I’ve moved, changed my name, stopped all that horror talk. But last night, I woke up to find a woman standing in the corner of my bedroom, her face hidden in shadows, and she was humming the same tuneless melody. I’m writing this now, in the light, my back against a wall, but I feel a draft coming from directly behind me. And I’m afraid to turn around.