The Veil of Feasting

Marta had lived in the crumbling three-story building on Denmore Street for nearly a decade. The walls were thin, the radiators clanked, and the neighbors changed like seasons. But the constant was the living room—a rectangular, dimly lit space with a worn floral sofa and a window that faced the brick wall of the adjoining structure. It was in that room that her marriage to Carlos had dissolved into daily shouting matches, and later, with her new partner, Dmitri, the arguments had escalated to thrown plates and slammed doors. The tension was palpable, like a film of grease on every surface. She often wondered why all the conflict occurred there and nowhere else in the apartment.

Then came the new tenant next door, a wiry man named Eli with hollow eyes and a tattoo of a spider on his neck. He kept to himself, but one evening, as Marta was taking out the trash, he cornered her in the hallway. ‘I used to mess with things I shouldn’t have,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Had a Ouija board, but I got rid of it a year ago. You know, they love when people fight. Gives them power. Feeds them.’ Marta laughed nervously, attributing his words to the paranoid ramblings of an ex-con. But she couldn’t shake the image of the board, discarded like a bad memory.

Over the next weeks, her arguments with Dmitri grew more vicious, more frequent. They only ever erupted in the living room. One night, during a particularly heated exchange, the lights flickered, and Marta felt a cold draft despite the sealed windows. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, a shadow detach from the corner of the room and slide along the ceiling. She dismissed it as a trick of the light, but Dmitri noticed her distraction and accused her of not taking their fight seriously. The fight intensified until Dmitri stormed out, slamming the door so hard the pictures on the wall tilted.

Alone, Marta sank into the sofa, her breath ragged. The room felt heavier, the air thick with something unspoken. She remembered Eli’s words and grew uneasy. She began to notice small changes: the persistent smell of decay near the baseboards, the occasional whisper of static from the dead TV, the way her cat refused to enter the living room. One evening, she found a child’s drawing wedged behind the radiator—a crude sketch of stick figures with open mouths and wide eyes, all facing a circle with a cross inside. She had never seen it before, and no children lived in the building.

Desperate for answers, she visited Eli. He was chain-smoking in his kitchen, which smelled of burnt coffee and mold. When she asked about the drawing, a flicker of recognition crossed his face. ‘They mark their territory,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘I’ve seen that before. In California, this guy I knew—he had a board, and after a big fight with his girlfriend, he found similar drawings. They’re like invitations. You’ve been feeding them for years, Marta. All those arguments, right in that room. Don’t you see? They’re getting stronger.’ Marta left, her mind racing. She wanted to believe he was insane, but the coincidence of her living room being the epicenter of every conflict felt too deliberate.

That night, she avoided the living room, staying in her bedroom with the door locked. But sleep wouldn’t come. She heard them—not voices, but murmuring, like a radio tuned to a faint station, coming from the living room. It grew louder, and then, unmistakably, she heard her own voice, shouting curses at Carlos, then at Dmitri, replaying the worst moments of her fights. The words were distorted, stretched into a grotesque parody. She clamped her hands over her ears, but the sound traveled through her skull.

She decided to cleanse the room. She bought sage, salt, and a crucifix, though she wasn’t religious. As she lit the sage, the smoke curled in unnatural patterns, forming a spiral that tightened like a noose. The murmuring stopped, replaced by a profound silence. Then, the silence was broken by a loud knock at the front door. She opened it to find Eli, his face ashen. ‘It’s too late,’ he whispered. ‘They’ve found a new feeder.’ He gestured to the apartment across the hall—a young couple, newly moved in, already yelling at each other. Marta watched, horrified, as the couple’s faces contorted in rage, their voices echoing down the hallway. But what chilled her was the shadow that hovered at their window, watching them, drinking in the conflict.

Marta retreated into her apartment, but the living room was not empty. She saw it—a writhing mass of darkness in the corner, not quite solid, with countless eyes that reflected her own fear. It spoke in a voice that was both her own and not, a chorus of every argument she’d ever had. ‘We are always hungry,’ it said. ‘You have given us so much. Now, we want more.’ She screamed, but no sound came out. The shadow lunged, enveloping her in a cold that seeped into her bones. The last thing she saw was the pattern on the wallpaper, which she now realized was not a floral design but a swarm of tiny mouths, open and waiting.

The next morning, the building was quiet. Marta’s apartment was empty, her belongings packed in boxes as if she had moved out overnight. The new couple across the hall had stopped arguing. They sat on their sofa, pale and silent. Eli, standing in the hallway, crushed his cigarette and muttered, ‘They’ve had their fill. For now. But they’ll be back.’ He glanced at the doors, all closed, and thought of the endless cycle of anger that fed the unseen. Marta was gone, but her legacy remained—a house that loved to feast on discord, and a man who had once thrown away a Ouija board but couldn’t throw away the knowledge of what lurked beneath.

Six months later, Eli himself moved out. The building was scheduled for demolition, and he left without a backward glance. But on his last night, he heard the whispers again, coming from the empty living room of Marta’s apartment. He pressed his ear to the wall, and a voice, faint but clear, said, ‘You threw us away, but we never left. We’ve been in your walls all along.’ He ran, not stopping until he reached the city limits. In his new apartment, far from Denmore Street, he kept every light on and never argued with anyone. But sometimes, in the dead of night, he’d catch a whiff of decay, and he knew—they had followed him home.