The Wallpaper in the Lavender Room

When my grandmother’s health began to fail, our family packed up our lives in Ohio and drove west to the arid plains of New Mexico, not Texas, to care for her. She had moved there in the sixties, following a renowned orthopedic surgeon who had mended my mother’s polio-ravaged leg. After years away, we returned to her sprawling adobe house on the outskirts of a dusty town called Magdalena, where the sun bleached everything to pale ochre and the wind carried the scent of creosote and dust.

The house itself was a labyrinth of thick walls, vigas, and cool, dim rooms. The interior was decorated with faded Mexican folk art and heavy, dark furniture. My aunt Rosa, who had never left, was the permanent keeper of this mausoleum. My mother and I moved in, along with my cousin Isabel, her husband Tom, and my great-uncle Esteban, who had taken to muttering to himself in the corner. We were a caravan of caretakers, orbiting around grandmother’s failing body.

The strangeness began with the bedroom at the far end of the hall, which we called the lavender room, for its walls were covered in a peeling, ancient wallpaper of lavender and silver flowers. It was the largest of the three bedrooms, and it was used by whoever needed long-term lodging. First, Isabel and Tom took it, hoping for privacy. They lasted three weeks before moving to a cramped, windowless alcove.

‘It’s the breathing,’ Tom confessed to me one afternoon, his face pale under his tan. ‘At night, the wallpaper seems to ripple, like it’s alive. And the pattern shifts, you know? The flowers move, ever so slightly, just at the edge of your vision.’

I laughed it off, attributing it to the stress of caregiving and the three glasses of tequila Tom usually had before bed. But when I heard Isabel’s screams in the dead of night, and saw her clutching Tom, her eyes wild, I began to suspect something was wrong. She talked of a woman in the wallpaper, a tall, thin figure with hair like silver threads, who would step out and stand at the foot of the bed, watching.

After they fled, the room fell to me. I was a novelist, used to solitary nights and the whisper of my own imagination, so I thought I could handle it. I moved my desk into the lavender room, setting up my typewriter near the window. The first night was uneventful, save for a faint scratching sound, like nails on plaster, coming from within the walls. I convinced myself it was mice.

By the second week, I began to notice the pattern of the wallpaper during the day. The flowers were lilies, and their stems were intertwined in a convoluted, unnatural way. Sometimes, when I stared too long, the silver in the pattern seemed to glow with a faint, cold light. I started waking up at odd hours, feeling like I was being watched, but the room was empty. My sleep was plagued by dreams of a woman with a hollow face, who beckoned me to come closer, always closer, into the silver flowers.

One night, I woke to find the moonlight casting eerie shadows across the wall. The wallpaper was moving. The lilies were swaying, as if in a breeze, and the stems were unraveling, forming long, spindly fingers that reached toward me. I scrambled out of bed, my heart hammering, and pressed my back against the far wall, watching as the pattern contorted into a face – a woman’s face, with gaping, empty eye sockets and a mouth stretched into a silent scream. She was trying to emerge from the wall.

I fled to my aunt’s room, babbling about what I had seen. Rosa, who had lived in this house her entire life, just sighed and handed me a cup of herbal tea. ‘It’s the wallpaper,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘It’s been there since the house was built. It’s not the paper itself, but what’s underneath. My mother always said not to disturb it.’

I demanded to know more, but she clamped her mouth shut. The next day, I decided to investigate. I carefully peeled back a corner of the wallpaper, revealing the plaster beneath. It was not the smooth, white plaster I expected, but a dark, rough substance that crumbled like dried leaves. And there, imbedded in it, was a hair – long, silver, and brittle. At my touch, it disintegrated to ash.

When my great-uncle Esteban saw the exposed corner, he went into a rage. His eyes, usually milky with age, sharpened to a fiery focus. ‘You fool!’ he screamed. ‘She will come out now!’

That night, a storm rolled in, rattling the windows and turning the sky a bruised purple. I refused to sleep in the lavender room, but I was drawn back by a soft, mournful singing. It came from behind the wall, a woman’s voice, low and sweet. I pressed my ear to the wallpaper, and the singing stopped. Then, I heard a voice, clear as a bell, whisper, ‘Let me in.’

In a trance, I reached out and tore at the wallpaper, ripping it in long, satisfying strips. The plaster behind it was black and smooth, like obsidian, and it pulsed with a slow, rhythmical beat, like a heart. I dug my nails into it, and they sunk in, as if it were soft clay. A cold, wet hand clasped my wrist and yanked me forward. I screamed, but the scream was swallowed by the wall as my face pressed against its icy surface.

I came to, on the floor of the lavender room, the wallpaper restored, no sign of tearing. My great-uncle was standing over me, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. ‘She is satisfied now,’ he said. ‘She has a new host.’ I looked at my hands. They were pale, almost translucent, and I could see the veins like silver threads. I was no longer myself.

Now, I am the one in the wallpaper. I watch the new family members as they come and go, and I sing to them at night, begging them to let me out. My aunt Rosa knows. She brought a new relative, a teenager, and gave her the lavender room. In the dim light, I can see the girl’s face, fresh with fear, and I whisper, ‘Let me in.’ And she looks at the wall, at the faint outline of a woman within the silver lilies, and her eyes widen. She is close. Soon, she will tear the wallpaper, and I will be free.