The Wallpaper in Room 4

At nine, I spent weekends at my grandmother’s crumbling Victorian hotel, The Marigold, where my father helped re-paper the guest rooms. My cousin Edwin and I were banished to the lobby while the adults worked, with strict orders not to climb the stairs to the private quarters. But we were bored, and Edwin dared me: ‘Bet you can’t sneak up to Room 4 and look through the keyhole.’

I crept up the back staircase, my heart thumping against my ribs. The hallway was dim, lit only by a dusty chandelier that cast long, wavering shadows. I reached Room 4, a room that had been sealed for years because of a ‘smell,’ and pressed my eye to the keyhole. All I saw was peeling wallpaper in a sickly green pattern—until the pattern moved. A shape, darker than the gloom, slid across the wall, and a voice, dry as dead leaves, whispered, ‘Let me out.’

I stumbled backward, and the door creaked open an inch. A hand—gray, sinewy, its fingers too long—slid through the gap, grasping at the air. I ran, my sneakers squeaking on the worn carpet, and I swear I heard it slithering behind me. I burst into the lobby where Edwin was flipping through a magazine. ‘Did you see it?’ I gasped. He looked at me blankly. ‘See what? You were gone two minutes. You look pale.’ I told him everything, but he just laughed and said I was imagining things.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. My room was next to the staircase, and I heard scratching on the other side of the wall, like nails dragging across plaster. I pressed my ear to the wall and heard a faint, rhythmic tapping, as if someone was knocking from inside. I lay awake until dawn, staring at the ceiling, and in the morning, I saw that the wallpaper in my room had begun to peel in the exact same pattern as Room 4.

Years passed, and the memory faded. My grandmother died, and the hotel was sold. But last year, I received a letter from my mother, who had gone to clear out the last of the belongings. She said the new owner had found something strange in Room 4: behind the wall, there was a hollow space, and inside it lay a mummified cat, its fur still intact, its eyes open as if in surprise. There was also a note, yellowed with age, written in my father’s handwriting: ‘If you’re reading this, it’s already too late.’

I called my father, but he denied ever writing anything like that. When I visited the hotel, I stood outside Room 4. The door was locked, but I felt a cold draft seeping from underneath. I knelt and looked through the keyhole again. The wallpaper was still there, but now it was not just peeling—it was crawling, the pattern swirling like a living organism. And from within, a voice, clearer than before, whispered, ‘I see you, child. You’ve come back.’

I ran, and I haven’t gone back since. But sometimes, in my own apartment, late at night, I hear scratching behind the walls. And when I look at my hands, my fingers seem just a little too long, and my skin a little too gray. I think something followed me home. And it wants out.