The Moth-Bitten Wallpaper

In the autumn of 2009, my cousin Mira and I decided to spend our last weekend of October at our grandmother’s old farmhouse in the Rust Belt. The house had been in our family for three generations, but it had a reputation: the upstairs bedroom with the moth-bitten wallpaper was considered ‘unlucky’ by the locals. My grandmother, who had lived there until her death the previous year, had once told me that, as a child, she had seen things in that room that made her sleep on the porch for a week. But Mira, who had never encountered anything in her frequent visits, laughed it off. She was a skeptic, a biology major who believed in the power of the mind to create horrors. I, on the other hand, had always felt a chill in that room, but I agreed to test it. We watched a movie on the old television downstairs—something about a lost expedition in the Arctic—and then, around midnight, we climbed the creaking stairs with our sleeping bags and flashlights.

The room was exactly as I remembered: the floral wallpaper, faded to a sickly yellow, was peeling at the corners, revealing dark patches of plaster. The only furniture was an iron bed frame with a thin mattress, and a heavy oak dresser that had been there since the 1920s. The window faced the overgrown orchard, where the bare branches of apple trees clawed at the sky. Mira rolled out her sleeping bag and said, ‘I dare you to sleep facing the wall,’ pointing to the wall opposite the window, where the wallpaper was most damaged. I agreed, but I kept my flashlight on. We talked for a while about the movie, about our college plans, about the town’s lore. Then Mira yawned and turned off her flashlight, plunging the room into darkness. I lay on my side, staring at the wall, waiting for sleep. The silence was heavy, broken only by the ticking of a clock somewhere below.

I must have dozed off, because I was jolted awake by a sensation of being watched. I opened my eyes and saw that the flashlight had rolled to my feet and was still on, casting a low beam across the wall. But the beam didn’t create the shadow that was there. It was a large, misshapen silhouette that stretched from the ceiling to the floor, and it seemed to have a long, curved appendage rising from its top—like a horn. The horn’s tip was pointed, and as I stared, it slowly tilted, as if the figure (if it could be called that) was turning its head. My heart hammered. I tried to scream for Mira, but my voice was gone. It was as if my throat had collapsed. I couldn’t even make a rasp. I felt a pressure on my chest, as if something was sitting on me, and I couldn’t move. I was fully awake, my mind screaming, but my body frozen. The shadow began to move, not along the wall, but into the wall, like it was sinking into the plaster. The wallpaper seemed to bulge outward, and I heard a faint crinkling, like paper being crumpled. Then, as the last of the shadow disappeared, the entire house went dark—the flashlight flickered out, and the hum of the appliances below ceased. The silence became absolute.

I lay there in the dark, my body finally my own again. I could breathe, but I was drenched in sweat. I tried to call out to Mira, but my voice was a whisper. I reached out and shook her sleeping bag. ‘Mira!’ I croaked. She stirred and mumbled, ‘What’s wrong?’ I told her what I saw, but she just said, ‘You were dreaming. Go back to sleep.’ But I couldn’t. I grabbed my flashlight, but it wouldn’t turn on. The darkness was so thick it felt like a cloth over my face. I crawled toward the door, my hands on the floor, and when I found the doorframe, I stood up and fumbled for the light switch. Nothing. I stumbled down the stairs, feeling my way along the wall, my heart pounding. When I finally reached the bottom, the front door was open—we hadn’t left it open. Moonlight streamed in, and I saw something on the floor near the mat: a piece of the wallpaper, torn from upstairs, but it was wet, like it had been chewed. I ran out of the house to the neighbor’s, my bare feet on the cold gravel, and I didn’t stop until I was inside their kitchen, gasping.

The neighbor, an old man named Mr. Kasperski, called the police, but when they arrived, they found no sign of any intruder. Mira came down later, saying she had slept through everything and that the power outage was due to a storm that had knocked out lines. But I knew what I saw. I couldn’t stay there another night. I insisted we leave the next morning. Mira was annoyed, but she agreed. As we drove away, I looked back at the farmhouse, and for a moment, I thought I saw a figure in the upstairs window—a tall, dark shape with a horn. But I told myself it was just the reflection of a branch. I have never returned to that place. I still have the piece of wallpaper I picked up from the floor that night. I keep it in a jar in my desk. Sometimes, when I look at it, I see that the moth-eaten pattern has changed—the holes seem to form a shape. And if I look too long, I feel that pressure on my chest again, and I hear a faint crinkling, like paper being crumpled, right outside my door.