The Papered Walls

The trailer sat at the end of a gravel lane in the scrubby outskirts of Parshall, North Dakota, where the wind never stopped. We’d lived there for six years, wedged between a defunct grain elevator and a field of sunflowers that looked like they’d given up. The first thing we noticed, after the mice and the smell of old carpet, was that the walls had a texture like skin—clapboard siding over cheap paneling, and in the bedroom, a wallpaper pattern of tiny, repeating ivy leaves that had faded to the color of weak tea.

From the start, the place felt watchful. The kids—Maddy, nine, and the twins, Sam and Eli, seven—started talking about a man in the hall with a hat. I chalked it up to imagination, but then Jerry, my husband, started finding his tools moved. A hammer that he’d left on the workbench would be on the kitchen counter. A wrench would appear in the bathroom sink. He’d laugh, say, ‘The ghost has a sense of humor,’ but his eyes didn’t. And I knew he’d noticed what I had: the wallpaper in the bedroom seemed to ripple when no one was there, like the ivy was breathing.

Our first real scare came three weeks in. I was alone, folding laundry in the living room, when I heard a voice—clear as day, with Jerry’s exact nasal twang—call out, ‘Hey, you comin’ to bed?’ I turned, expecting to see him in the doorway, but the hallway was dark and empty. The trailer shifted on its piers, a low groan that made the window rattle. My heart did a funny little skip. I called back, ‘Jerry?’ Nothing. When I walked to the bedroom, the door was shut, and I knew he was still at the bar with his buddies. The voice had been too inside my head, like a thought that wasn’t mine.

Then the touching started. Maddy swore she’d felt a cold hand on her shoulder while she was doing her homework at the kitchen table. She screamed, and the cat, Pumpkin, shot out from under the sofa. Later, Sam woke up with a red scratch across his forearm—not deep, but angry, like a cat’s claw. We blamed the cat, of course. But the cat had no claws—we’d had her declawed before we moved.

The nights were the worst. Jerry and I would lie in our bed, and just as we’d be drifting off, the mattress would give a violent shudder, as if someone had taken the edge and yanked it. The first time, Jerry fell out, swearing. The second time, we both lay rigid, holding hands, feeling the bed shake like a washing machine on spin. Then it would stop, and the room would go silent, save for the wind. And the wallpaper? In the dim glow of the nightlight, the ivy seemed to crawl—not fast, but when you weren’t looking, you’d catch it inching along, turning a corner, spiraling into a bigger swirl.

One evening, Jerry came home from work with a story. He’d been talking to an old-timer at the feed store, a man named Gus who’d grown up here. Gus told him that our trailer sat on the site of an old county hospital—a tuberculosis sanatorium that burned down in the ’40s. ‘They never found all the bodies,’ Gus had said, winking, but his voice was grave. Then he’d leaned in and whispered, ‘Some say the fire was set, and the souls never left. They get lonely. They’ll call to you, mimic the ones you love. But whatever you do, don’t answer.’ Jerry laughed it off, but that night, I heard it again—my mother’s voice, from the kitchen, calling, ‘Tara, honey? You got some cake for me?’ My mother had been dead five years, and her voice was like a crackle in my ear. I put a pillow over my head, but the voice kept calling, growing more insistent, until I heard the wallpaper rustle behind me, and I felt a breath on the back of my neck.

I decided to investigate. The wall in the bedroom, the one with the biggest patch of ivy, had a seam—a vertical line that I’d always assumed was just bad wallpapering. But one afternoon, when the kids were at school and Jerry was at work, I ran my fingers along it, and the paper gave way, peeling back like a giant scab. Behind it, there was a hollow space, and in the hollow, a bundle of old letters tied with a surgical mask—the kind from long ago, with the metal nose bridge. I pulled them out, and they crumbled in my hands, but the words were still legible. They were from a nurse named Eleanor to her sister, written in 1943, describing how the patients in the ward next to hers would moan for their families, how she’d come home and hear her own name in the wind. The last letter was dated the day before the fire: ‘I’ve started to hear him, Sis. The man with the hat. He stands at the foot of my bed, and he whispers my sister’s name—my sister, not mine. I’m afraid to answer. But I’m more afraid not to.’

The paper torn, I felt a draft, and the ivy pattern peeled away from the wall entirely, falling in strips to the floor. Behind it was the original wall—not drywall, but old plaster, and scrawled on it, in what looked like ash or charcoal, a repeated word, over and over: ‘MIMIC.’ I stumbled back, and the trailer gave a great shudder, as if the whole thing was going to shake off its blocks. The kids would be home in an hour. I grabbed the letters and ran outside, but even in the pale sun, I could hear the voice—now Jerry’s—calling from the trailer’s open door, ‘Hey, babe, come back in. I got a surprise for you.’ And I knew it wasn’t Jerry, because Jerry had a key, and I saw his truck parked outside. The surprise was the thing in the walls, finally coaxing me back.

I didn’t go back in. I called Jerry, and he rushed home, and we packed up the kids and stayed in a motel in town. Jerry wanted to sell the trailer, but no one would buy it. In the end, we just abandoned it. But the worst part is, we couldn’t take the memory. Every place we’ve moved since—a rented house in Minot, an apartment in Bismarck—has the same papered wall. In our new bedroom, there’s a patch of ivy pattern, faded but familiar. And last night, I heard my own voice, clear as day, calling from the kitchen: ‘It’s okay, kids, dinner’s ready.’ And I could swear I saw the wallpaper ripple, just for a second, like something behind it was settling in.