The Hollow Siding

My name is Mara, and I’m fourteen. I know how this sounds, and I’m not the type to believe in ghosts or things that go bump in the night. But what’s been happening in our house isn’t something I can explain away. We moved into the old farmhouse on Mirewood Lane last October. It’s a big, drafty place with peeling paint and a yard that’s more weeds than grass. My room is on the top floor, a converted attic with sloped ceilings and a single dormer window that looks out over the back field. I didn’t mind the creaks and groans at first; old houses do that. But then the sounds started.

It was late November, just after Thanksgiving, when I first heard it. A faint, skittering sound coming from the wall behind my bed. I figured it was mice, or maybe squirrels that had gotten into the eaves. I told my dad, and he said he’d set some traps. But over the next few weeks, the noise grew louder and more insistent. It wasn’t just scratching anymore. It was a rhythmic thumping, like something large was pounding against the inside of the wall. It happened mostly in the early morning, around 3 or 4 a.m., and it would go on for what felt like an eternity. I’d lie in bed, frozen, listening to that awful drumming, and I’d feel the vibration through the floorboards.

I tried to ignore it. I put on headphones and blared music, but I could still feel it in my bones. My dad went up into the crawlspace above my room and checked the walls, but he found nothing. No nests, no droppings, not even a hole. He said it was probably pipes expanding and contracting. But I knew pipes didn’t sound like that. It was too deliberate, too rhythmic, like something was trying to get in.

One night, I couldn’t take it anymore. I got out of bed and pressed my ear against the cold plaster. The thumping was so loud I could feel it in my teeth. And then, underneath it, I heard something else. A low, rasping breath, slow and heavy, like a huge animal sleeping. I jerked back, my heart hammering. That’s when I noticed the wall was warm. Not just warm, but hot, like a radiator. I touched it again, and it was almost burning. I ran to the bathroom and soaked a towel in cold water, pressing it against the wall, but it didn’t help. The heat just kept coming, and the thumping intensified until the whole wall seemed to shake.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in the corner of my room, watching the wall, until dawn. When the morning came, the sounds stopped, and the wall was cool to the touch. I tried to tell my dad, but he just looked at me with that worried expression he gets, the one that says he thinks I’m cracking under the stress of moving. He said he’d have an electrician look at the wiring, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.

A week later, I found the hole. It was behind my dresser, and it hadn’t been there before. It was small, about the size of a fist, and ragged, like something had clawed its way through from the other side. I knelt down and peered in, but it was dark. I could smell something foul, like rotten meat mixed with damp earth. And then, from deep inside, I heard a whisper. It wasn’t clear; it was like a hundred voices all at once, hissing my name. My full name, Mara Jade, something almost no one calls me. I scrambled backward, my hands shaking.

I didn’t tell my dad about the hole. I knew he wouldn’t believe me. Instead, I stuffed it with wadded-up newspaper and taped it over. But that night, the thumping didn’t stop. It went on for hours, louder than ever, and I felt the wall bulge slightly, like a breath being held and released. The tape peeled off, and the newspaper was gone, sucked into the darkness. I saw something moving in there, a pale, writhing shape, and I swear I saw an eye, large and yellow, staring back at me.

I’m writing this now from my friend’s house. I couldn’t stay there another night. I’ve told no one what I saw, because who would believe me? But I know that thing in the wall is still there, waiting. And I know the sound of my name being whispered from within those hollow spaces will follow me no matter where I go.