The Pattern in the Wallpaper

I never believed in ghosts until we moved into the house on Cranston Road. It wasn’t the house itself that bothered me; it was the wallpaper in the room my parents insisted we use as a playroom. The floral pattern seemed to writhe in the dim light, and the flowers had an unsettling symmetry that made my eyes ache. I was twelve, my sister Ellie was fourteen, and our baby brother Max was just a year old and constantly crying. We had moved from our small apartment in the city to this sprawling Victorian house in the quiet suburb of Oakhaven, a town I had never heard of until the ‘For Sale’ sign went up. My parents were thrilled with the space, but I felt a knot in my stomach the moment I stepped across the threshold.

The first day, my parents were busy hauling boxes from the rental truck, and they asked us to keep an eye on Max in the room with the wallpaper. The floorboards were bare, and the room smelled of dust and old paint. Ellie was on her phone, ignoring me, while I tried to keep Max entertained. But he wouldn’t stop staring at one corner of the room, his tiny face scrunched up in that way babies do when they are about to cry. I followed his gaze, but there was nothing there—just paper peeling slightly at the seams. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing a soft, rhythmic tapping coming from the wall adjoining that room. I convinced myself it was the old pipes, but the sound had a human quality, like a gentle knuckle against wood.

Months passed, and we settled into a routine. I tried to avoid the playroom, but it was the only place with enough floor space for Max’s toys. One evening, after my parents had gone to bed, I went to fetch Max’s favorite stuffed rabbit. The hallway was dark, and I could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs. As I reached the door, I saw a flicker of movement inside. I pushed the door open, and there, in the pooling moonlight, stood a girl. She looked about seven, with long, ink-black hair that fell below her shoulders. Her dress was old-fashioned, like something from a hundred years ago, and her eyes were dark, almost black, with no whites visible. She was staring at the wallpaper, tracing the pattern with a small finger.

I froze, my breath caught in my throat. She turned to me and smiled, but it was a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She pointed at the wallpaper and said, in a voice that seemed to come from all around me, ‘They move at night.’ I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. She stepped forward, and I saw that her feet did not touch the floor. She floated inches above the ground, her dress swaying as if in a breeze. She reached out her hand, and I felt a cold draft wash over me. I stumbled back, falling into the hallway, and when I looked up, she was gone.

I never told my parents. Who would believe me? But after that night, things changed. The tapping in the walls grew louder, and sometimes I would find Max’s toys rearranged in the playroom, even when no one had been in there. Ellie started having nightmares, waking up screaming about a girl with black eyes who stood at the foot of her bed. My parents dismissed it as a phase, but they couldn’t explain the instances of the wallpaper. In the mornings, I would sometimes see that the pattern had shifted—a rose here, a leaf there—as if the paper had breathed and resettled in the night.

A year later, my parents finally decided to renovate that room. They tore down the wallpaper, revealing the plaster beneath. But they found something unexpected: a small, faded photograph tucked behind the peeling paper. It showed a girl who looked exactly like the spirit I had seen, standing in a garden with the same type of flowers as the wallpaper pattern. On the back was a date: October 14, 1902. I did some research online and discovered that a girl named Clara had lived in our house in the early 1900s. She had died in that very room, of a mysterious illness, and her parents had sealed the room afterward, unable to bear the memories.

I knew then that she was still there, trapped in the fabric of the house. And when I looked at the new wall, bare and blank, I noticed a faint outline—just a shadowy shape, as if her image was seared into the plaster. I tried to ignore it, but every night, I hear her voice, whispering through the walls, ‘They move at night. Now they can move anywhere.’ And I realize that by removing the wallpaper, we’ve set something free. Now, the pattern she traced is everywhere: in the ripples of water, in the cracks of the ceiling, in the lines of my palms. She is always watching, always shifting, and I fear that one day, she will step out of the pattern and into our world entirely.