The Wallpaper in the Master Bedroom

The day we moved into the house on Maple Street, the sun was a pale smear behind a sheet of grey clouds. The moving truck groaned under the weight of our lives, and my mother, Clara, directed the men with a nervous energy that made me uneasy. The house itself was a Victorian relic, its gingerbread trim peeling like sunburned skin. The porch sagged in the middle, as if tired of holding up the weight of its own history. My father, Richard, grumbled about the rent, but we had to leave our old place suddenly, and this was the only option we could afford. The landlord, a jittery man named Mr. Whitmore, handed us the keys with a sweaty palm and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Our new home smelled of dust and mothballs. The floors creaked in rhythm with our footsteps, and the windows were filmed with grime. The master bedroom, which my parents claimed, was the largest and the darkest, its walls covered in floral wallpaper that had faded to a sickly yellow. The pattern was of climbing roses, but the flowers had browned at the edges, like they were dying. I remember thinking that the room felt wrong, like a held breath. My younger sister, Lily, refused to sleep in her own room that first night, and my brothers, Max and Sam, were unusually quiet, their usual bickering absent.

The neighbors were another story. Every time we stepped outside, we caught them staring. They would quickly look away, pretending to be busy with their gardens or their dogs. The woman next door, Mrs. Gable, was the only one who approached us, but her conversation was clipped and full of unsaid things. She’d ask about the weather, then her eyes would dart to our house, and she’d lower her voice. ‘If you need anything, dear, you just knock,’ she’d say, but her tone suggested the opposite. The children in the neighborhood avoided us entirely, crossing the street when we walked by.

A month passed. We unpacked slowly, our lives oozing into the corners of the house. The house seemed to resist, as if it wanted to remain a hollow shell. The first sign that something was deeply wrong came when I noticed the wallpaper in the master bedroom. The roses seemed darker, the leaves more vivid, as if watered by something unseen. My mother dismissed it as a trick of the light. But at night, I could hear a rustling coming from that room, like dry leaves skittering across a floor. I would press my ear to my door, and the sound would cease, only to resume when I pulled away.

One evening, Mrs. Gable finally broke. She came over with a plate of cookies, her hands trembling. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this,’ she said, her voice a whisper, ‘but that house, it’s not right. No one lasts there. The Whitmores use it to unload their troubles.’ She leaned in close, and I could smell the gin on her breath. ‘The original owner, a Mr. Hargrove, he died in that master bedroom. They say he was a lonely old man, but that’s not the whole truth. And before you, the last family, the son, he took his life in that same room. The Whitmores will have you sign a year lease, but you’ll be lucky to see six months.’ She left then, her cookies untouched.

That night, I confronted my father. I told him what Mrs. Gable had said. He dismissed it with a wave. ‘Old wives’ tales, Emily. We’re fine.’ But his eyes betrayed him; he looked at the ceiling, toward the master bedroom. My mother, Clara, who had been unusually quiet, finally spoke. ‘I’ve felt something, Richard. A coldness in that room, like someone is watching.’ My father snorted. ‘It’s an old house. Drafts.’ But when he went to bed that night, I saw him pause at the doorway of the master bedroom, his hand lingering on the frame, as if afraid to cross the threshold.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my narrow bed, listening to the house settle, imagining the rustling in the master bedroom. At 3 AM, I heard a soft thud, like a body falling. I crept to my parents’ door and pressed my ear to the wood. Inside, I heard my mother’s voice, muffled and odd. ‘He’s still here, Richard. He doesn’t want us.’ Then a long silence, and my father’s voice, strained. ‘We’ll leave in the morning. I’ll call Whitmore.’ I returned to my bed, a knot of dread in my stomach.

The next morning, my parents were strange. They didn’t speak of the previous night. My father made coffee, his hands shaking. But as the days passed, the strangeness grew. My mother started talking to herself, or to the air. She would spend hours in the master bedroom, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying. My father grew gaunt, his face pale. He started sleeping in the living room, on the couch, claiming he had back pain. I began to see things in my peripheral vision: a figure in a long coat standing at the end of the hall, gone when I turned to look.

One night, I was woken by a scream. I rushed to the master bedroom and found my mother on the floor, pointing at the wall. The wallpaper, I saw, had changed. The brown roses were now a deep, wet red, and they seemed to move, crawling toward the ceiling. The pattern had formed a face, an old man with hollow eyes and a gaping mouth. My mother was babbling, ‘I saw him, I saw him. He wants us to leave.’ My father appeared behind me, his face ashen. He grabbed my mother’s arm, and for the first time, he looked truly afraid.

That was the breaking point. The next day, we packed our bags. The Whitmores didn’t argue when we left; in fact, the landlord seemed relieved. As we pulled away in our car, I looked back at the house. In the upstairs window, I saw a figure watching us. It was an old man with a gaunt face, exactly like the one in the wallpaper. He raised a hand as if to wave, and then he was gone.

We moved into a sterile apartment complex on the other side of town, but the memories stayed. Even now, months later, I sometimes wake in the night, and I can still see that face in the dark. I can still hear the rustling of the wallpaper in my dreams. We never speak of it, but we all know: that house marked us. And I can only hope that it has found new occupants to torment, because I know it will never let us go.