The Wall Between

The train from Oslo crawled through the pine forests like a dying serpent, its brakes screeching as we pulled into the tiny station of Kaldtvatn. My friend Lena nudged me, her breath visible in the cold air. ‘Maren, look,’ she said, pointing at the hotel across the lake. It was a sprawling, dark-timbered building with a sagging roofline, perched on the edge of the water like a forgotten thing. The clerk at the desk was an old man with a face like crumpled paper, and he handed us our keys with trembling fingers. ‘Mind the north wing,’ he muttered. ‘It sleeps.’ My room was on the third floor, at the end of a corridor that smelled of damp wood and old dust. The moment I stepped inside, I felt it: a pressure, a weight on my chest, as if someone was standing just behind me, breathing down my neck. Lena, who had followed me in, whispered, ‘This place is haunted, right?’ I laughed, but her eyes were wide. ‘It’s just old,’ I said, ‘and perfect for a wedding. Imagine the photos.’ We both felt it, though. It was like the air itself was thick with stories, and we were the newest pages.

That first night, I slept alone in my room. The bed was high, with a bolster that smelled of mothballs, and I lay awake, listening to the wind rattle the windows. The bathroom was small, with a claw-foot tub and a mirror that seemed to lag a half-second behind my movements. I avoided looking at it directly. Just before dawn, I had the sensation of water dripping, even though the tap was off. I sat up, heart thumping, and the sound stopped. I told myself it was pipes. The next night, I moved into a double room next door to share with Lena. The room had a single large bed, and we joked about being old married couples. But as we settled in, I noticed the wall between this room and my previous one. It was solid, but I could feel something emanating from it, a cold spot that made the hair on my arms stand up. Lena felt it too, and we both avoided touching that wall as we undressed. We lay in the dark, side by side, not speaking, both pretending to sleep.

I fell into a dream, but it was not like any dream I’d had before. I was in a corridor of the hotel, but the walls were stripped bare, and the floorboards were warped with damp. Ahead of me stood a man, tall and gaunt, with a hat pulled low over his eyes. He didn’t move, but I could feel him staring. His voice, when he spoke, was dry, like leaves rustling. ‘I need you to finish what I started,’ he said. I tried to speak, but my throat was closed. He took a step closer, and I saw his hands were black, as if stained with soot or blood. ‘The wall,’ he said. ‘You must open it.’ I shook my head, but I could feel my feet moving toward him, against my will. He pointed to the wall in my room, the one I’d left, but now it was cracked, with a faint light seeping through. ‘They put her inside,’ he whispered. ‘She’s been waiting.’ I screamed, or tried to, and woke with a start. Lena was sleeping beside me, her face peaceful. But the room was cold, impossibly cold, and I could hear a faint scratching from the wall. I lay there, frozen, until the sound stopped.

The next morning, I told Lena about the dream. She went pale. ‘I had a dream too,’ she said. ‘A man was asking me to help him. He kept pointing at the wall.’ We decided to investigate. The hotel was old, and the staff were locals. The bartender, a gruff woman named Sigrid, hesitated when we asked about the north wing. ‘There was a story,’ she said, wiping a glass, ‘about a woman who lived here in the 1800s. She was a servant, or maybe the wife of the original owner. They say her husband walled her up in a room to get rid of her.’ She laughed, but it was hollow. ‘Old tales, you know.’ Lena and I exchanged glances. That night, we couldn’t sleep. We sat on the bed, watching the wall. Around midnight, the scratching started, louder this time. And then I heard a voice, muffled, as if from behind plaster, saying, ‘Let me out.’ It was a woman’s voice, desperate and thin. We pressed our hands against the wall, and I felt it grow warm, like a living thing. ‘We should tell someone,’ Lena whispered, but I shook my head. ‘They’ll think we’re crazy.’ I grabbed a hairpin from the nightstand and started picking at the plaster. Lena watched, her eyes wide, but she didn’t stop me.

It took an hour to make a small hole. As I pulled the last chunk away, a cold draft rushed out, and the room filled with the smell of decay. I peered inside. There was a cavity, dark and narrow, and at the bottom, I could see something white: a bone, a rib, nestled in dust. Lena gasped. ‘We need to call the police,’ she said, but before I could answer, the wall in front of us bulged, and a hand pushed through the hole, skeletal and black, grasping at my arm. I stumbled back, screaming. The hand withdrew, and then the hole began to widen, plaster crumbling, as if something was digging from the other side. We ran out of the room, down the corridor, and we didn’t stop until we were in the lobby, gasping. The clerk looked up from his ledger, his face impassive. ‘Did you find her?’ he asked. ‘She’s been waiting a long time.’

We told the authorities, and they found the remains of a woman in the wall, her arms crossed, her fingers curled. The police were baffled, but they didn’t linger. The wedding went on as planned, but Lena and I barely spoke. We changed rooms, to the opposite side of the hotel, but I still felt her presence, a faint pressure at the back of my mind. On the last night, I dreamed of the woman again. She was no longer gaunt or skeletal; she was beautiful, with a serene smile. She pointed to the wall, now patched, and said, ‘Thank you.’ When I woke, I felt lighter, but Lena was trembling. ‘I dreamed she gave me something,’ she whispered, and she opened her hand to reveal a small, carved wooden box, ancient and smooth. I tried to open it, but it was sealed. ‘What’s inside?’ I asked. Lena shook her head. ‘She said it’s for us, to remember her by. But we have to wait.’ We left the hotel that day, and I’ve never been able to open the box. It sits on my nightstand now, and sometimes, in the dead of night, I hear a faint scratching from inside, as if she’s trying to get back out. And I realize the story isn’t over. It’s just begun.