The Tally Marks in the Boiler Room

It began with the house on Meridian Street, a sprawling Victorian that my parents bought for a song after the previous owners fled in the night. I was eleven, my sister Maya was eight, and my little brother Simon was five. We moved in during a sweltering August, and the house felt like a sauna, but there was a chill in the basement that no amount of sunlight could reach.

Our first week was uneventful, save for the faint, rhythmic tapping that came from the walls at night. I chalked it up to the house’s old bones, but one evening, while I was unpacking boxes in the attic, I found a small, tarnished brass key. It was oddly warm to the touch, and it unlocked nothing I could find. I pocketed it, thinking it might be for a trunk or a lockbox.

The nights grew colder as September waned. Simon began waking up screaming, insisting that ‘the man in the walls’ was whispering his name. My parents dismissed it as night terrors, but I noticed that the tapping in the walls would stop whenever Simon started screaming, as if whatever it was had been listening.

One afternoon, while my parents were arguing about the house’s strange energy, I took the brass key down to the basement. I had explored it before, but there was a recessed door behind the old boiler that I had missed. It was locked. The key fit.

Behind the door was a narrow, low-ceilinged room, dusty and cobwebbed. In the far corner, I saw a wooden chair, and on the wall above it, someone had carved a series of tally marks. There were thousands of them, grouped in fives, but some were crossed out. A tarnished hand mirror lay on the floor, its glass cracked.

I didn’t tell anyone about the room. I thought it was just a child’s game, a family’s private counting. But that night, the tapping in the walls was relentless, and I could hear it coming from my own room, directly behind my headboard. I pressed my ear to the wall and heard a faint, hollow breathing.

My parents decided to have the house blessed. The priest, a thin, nervous man, walked through every room, sprinkling holy water and muttering prayers. When he reached the basement, he stopped at the locked door, though he couldn’t see it. He turned to my father and said, ‘There is something old here. It’s been here a long time, and it’s been counting. I don’t know what it’s counting, but it’s almost done.’

That night, Maya woke up screaming. I ran to her room and found her sitting upright, her eyes wide, pointing at the closet. ‘It was counting my teeth,’ she sobbed. ‘It said, one, two, three…’ I looked in the closet, but there was only a few boxes. But I noticed the brass key on her nightstand. She had no idea how it got there.

I decided to confront the thing. I took the key and a flashlight and returned to the boiler room. The tally marks had grown. They now covered every wall, reaching up to the ceiling. In the center of the room, a child’s drawing was pinned to the wall: a stick figure with hollow eyes, and one, two, three… nine tally marks next to it. I realized the count was for people. It had been waiting for the tenth.

I turned to leave, but the door was locked. The key was in my hand, but the lock was different. Something else had taken control. I heard a noise behind me, a soft, dry laugh, and when I spun around, I saw a pale hand reaching out from the wall, its fingers leaving deep furrows in the plaster. It was counting on its fingers, one, two, three… and when it reached five, it pointed at me.

I threw the brass key at it and screamed. The hand retracted, and the door swung open. I stumbled up the stairs, my heart pounding. My parents were in the hallway, looking pale. They had heard something too. They told me we were leaving, that they had finally accepted the house was not safe.

We packed quickly, leaving most of our belongings. As we drove away, I looked back at the house and saw a light flicker in the basement window. I still had the brass key in my pocket. It was warm, almost hot. When I pulled it out, the key had turned crimson, and etched into the metal were the words: ‘The count is complete. Await the next house.’

We never spoke of the house again. But sometimes, at night, I still hear a faint tapping, and I count the years. It’s been twelve. And I’m beginning to hear it more clearly now, in my own bedroom wall. I wonder who will be the tenth.