The Sliding Paper

The house on Aldergate Lane was the kind of place that promised comfort: a new-build with cream walls and double glazing, built in the late 1990s. My room, at the end of the upstairs corridor, was my sanctuary. At fourteen, I was a walking hormone storm with a poster collection to match. The walls were a shrine to my obsessions: the lads from Bros, all leather and pouts, and a brooding James Dean in black and white. Marc Bolan, too, with his glitter-glam flair. But there was one strange thing: the James Dean posters never stayed up. I’d smooth them onto the wall with Blu-Tack, press the corners, step back to admire, and the moment I turned my back, a soft, sliding rustle would announce their descent. They didn’t fall straight down; they’d peel away gradually, as if something was pushing them from the top, then glide to the floor in a heap. I’d find them face-down, corners curled, as if in surrender. The Bros posters stayed put, untouched. The Marc Bolan, too. But James Dean—every single time.

My sister’s room, next to mine, was perpetually cold, even in summer. The radiator was always on, but the room felt like a walk-in freezer. My parents dismissed it, said the thermostat was faulty, but I knew better. One evening, I was taping up James Dean again, but this time I didn’t turn away. I kept my eyes fixed on the poster, waiting. And then I saw it: the top-left corner lifted slightly, as if invisible fingers had pinched it, and then it peeled downward with a slow, deliberate motion, making that rustling sound like dry leaves. Once it hit the floor, it lay still. I felt a cold breath on my neck, but I was alone. The poster seemed to mock me, its black-and-white eyes staring up at the ceiling.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in the dark, listening to the house’s creaks. Around 2 AM, I heard a faint scratching from my sister’s room, then the sound of something sliding across her wall. I crept to the shared wall and pressed my ear against it. The cold from her room seeped through the plaster, making my ear ache. The sliding stopped, replaced by a low hum, like a distant tuning fork. I decided to peek into her room. I pushed the door open slowly, and the light from the hallway spilled in. My sister was asleep, her breathing steady. But on her wall, opposite her bed, the wallpaper was shifting—not just rippling, but moving in waves, as if something was trapped between the plaster and the paper. The cold was so intense that my breath fogged. Then, a single word formed in the frost on her window: ‘MINE.’ I stumbled back to my room, heart pounding.

The next day, I tried to tell my parents, but they laughed it off. Dad said it was ‘just the temperature change.’ But I knew. I started sleeping with the light on, and I avoided my sister’s room. The poster falls continued, but I stopped putting them up. Instead, I left the walls bare, feeling a quiet defeat. But then, something new: my own posters began to slide off—not just James Dean, but all of them. Bros, Marc Bolan, everything. I’d enter my room and find them scattered like leaves, face-down. I took it as a sign to leave them down. The room felt emptier, but at least the slide stopped.

A week later, I was home alone, sick from school. I was lying on my bed, listening to my mixtape, when I heard a crash from my sister’s room. I found her door slightly ajar, and inside, the furniture was arranged differently—the bed rotated, the drawers pulled out. The cold was worse, almost suffocating. On the wall, in the frost, a new word: ‘GO.’ I did not go. I called my mother, sobbing, but she just said, ‘Boys and their imagination.’ That evening, my sister came home from a friend’s, and I dragged her into my room, told her everything. She looked at me with a blank expression, then said, ‘I know. It wants you.’ She pointed to the floor, where a James Dean poster lay. On it, in white paint, was written: ‘STAY FOREVER.’

I never learned what it was. The following summer, we moved to a new town, and the house was sold. I heard later from a neighbor that the new family moved out within a month, complaining of ‘drafts’ and ‘dampness.’ But I knew. To this day, I cannot look at a James Dean movie without my hands tremble, and I still check behind wallpaper for hidden writing. The sliding paper was only the beginning; the words on the wall were the true horror. And somewhere in that house, something is still waiting, patient, patient, for another boy to turn his back.