The Weeping Wainscot

The summer I turned four, I slept in the back room of my grandmother’s house, a long, narrow addition that smelled of camphor and old linen. The house itself was a sprawling Victorian that had been converted into a boarding house, and my grandmother, Aunt Ruth, and my cousin Eleanor all lived there, taking in lodgers to make ends meet. I didn’t have a room of my own, so I rotated among their beds, and that particular August, I was in Eleanor’s.

The back room was stifling, so we left the window open, the screen barely keeping out the moths that batted against the mesh. The window looked out onto a narrow alley that separated our house from the abandoned church next door, its steeple casting a cracked shadow across the faded wallpaper. Eleanor was already asleep, her breathing a steady rhythm, but I lay awake, listening to the creaks of the old house and the distant hum of the city.

Then I heard it: a sound like paper being crumpled, or dry leaves skittering across pavement, coming from the alley. I sat up, my small fingers gripping the sheet. The streetlamp cast a sickly yellow glow through the window, illuminating the screen. I watched as something moved on the other side—a shape, darker than the night, pressing against the mesh. It was formless, shifting, and as I stared, it began to seep through the screen, not breaking it, but passing between the wires like smoke.

I wanted to scream, but my throat closed. The thing flowed into the room, taking shape as it did: a tall, thin figure with arms that stretched too long, fingers like twigs. It had no face, only a smooth, pale oval where features should be. It glided toward the bed, and I felt the air grow cold, the smell of damp rot filling my nostrils.

It stopped at the foot of the bed, and I saw that it was holding something—a small, white cloth, dripping with a black liquid. It began to weep, a high, keening sound, and the black drops fell onto the wooden floor, sizzling like acid. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying it would go away, but I could still hear its wail, feel its presence leaning closer.

When I opened my eyes, it was gone. The window was closed, the screen intact. Eleanor was still asleep, unaware. I told no one, thinking it was a nightmare. But the next morning, there was a new stain on the floorboards, a dark, irregular mark that wouldn’t scrub away.

Weeks passed, and I slept in other rooms, trying to forget. But one night, in my grandmother’s room, I woke to find the same figure standing at the foot of her bed, its featureless face turned toward her. I screamed, and it vanished, but my grandmother only muttered in her sleep, turning over.

The house began to change. The wallpaper started to peel in strange patterns, revealing writing beneath—scrawled, frantic words in a language I didn’t know. The lodgers complained of bad dreams, of a weeping sound echoing through the walls. The cats in the neighborhood refused to approach our door.

I knew it was my fault. I had seen it, and I had brought it into the house, or maybe it had been there all along, waiting for someone to notice. I tried to sleep with Eleanor again, hoping that the presence of another would protect me, but the horror followed me from room to room.

One evening, my grandmother found me huddled in the corner of the living room, shaking. She knelt down, her eyes kind but tired. ‘Child, what troubles you?’ she asked. I told her everything, the words spilling out like a confession. She listened, her face growing pale, and then she led me to the back room, where the stain still marred the floor.

‘This house was built on the site of an old almshouse,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Many poor souls died here, unwanted and unmourned. There is a wainscot in the wall, behind the wardrobe, that weeps when it is restless. I have seen it before, but long ago.’ She opened the wardrobe, revealing a panel of cracked wood. ‘It is the wainscot that weeps, child, and it takes the form of your fears.’

I didn’t understand. She pressed her hand against the wood, and I heard the weeping again, coming from inside the wall. ‘It feeds on attention,’ she continued. ‘If you ignore it, it will wither. But you have given it a name, and now it will cling to you.’ She turned to face me, her eyes filled with an ancient dread. ‘You must learn to live with it, or it will consume you.’

I tried to ignore it, tried to forget, but the figure appeared every night, standing at the edge of my vision. It would weep, and the black tears would fall, and the stain on the floor grew larger, spreading like a dark flower. The other lodgers began to leave, whispering about the haunted house. My grandmother grew weak, her flesh pale, her eyes sunken. Eleanor fell into a strange melancholy, speaking in rhymes she couldn’t remember.

One night, I woke to find the figure standing over my grandmother, its twig-like fingers reaching for her throat. I screamed, and it turned its faceless head toward me. For the first time, I saw a mouth open in the oval, a yawning void, and from it came a sound that was not a weep but a laugh, a dry, rattling sound that made my blood freeze.

‘I have taken her,’ it said, its voice like the rubbing of bones. ‘Now I will take you.’

I fled the house, running into the night, the laughter following me. I ran until I collapsed in a field, gasping, and when I looked back, the house was burning. The flames were black, and the weeping had stopped. I never saw my grandmother or Eleanor again. The police found no bodies, only a charred structure and a single, untouched panel of wainscot, still weeping in the ashes.

I was sent to live with a distant aunt in another state, but the figure found me there, and the weeping began anew. It is with me now, always lurking at the edge of my vision, waiting for me to close my eyes. I am an old man, and I have learned to live with it, but I am never truly alone. The wainscot weeps, and I weep with it, for the souls it has taken, and for the child who saw what he should not have seen.