The Weeping Wall

My name is Mara, and I’m twenty-one. I live in a town called Sorrow’s Peak, a place that seems to be permanently covered in a damp, grey mist. I’ve always been drawn to the macabre, devouring books about hauntings and folklore, but movies alone? They terrify me. This story is about a rented room, a strange stain, and a sound that still haunts my dreams.

It happened in the autumn of 2017, in a three-story apartment building that smelled of wet plaster and old wood. My room was on the second floor, right next to the communal kitchen, which was a cramped space with a rickety stove and a window that overlooked a dead courtyard. The room between mine and the kitchen had been empty when I moved in, but a week later, a quiet, elderly woman named Mrs. Kessler took it. She had a thin, bony face and never looked anyone in the eye. I barely saw her, but I often heard her pacing at night.

The first strange thing happened a month after she moved in. I woke up to a sound, a low, mournful wail that seemed to come from the wall between our rooms. It was like a woman sobbing, but muffled, as if she were pressing her face into a pillow. I sat up in bed, my heart pounding. The sound faded, replaced by a faint, rhythmic scratching, like fingernails dragging across wood. I told myself it was just the building settling, or maybe an animal in the walls. But it happened again the next night. And the next.

One evening, I noticed a dark stain on the wallpaper in my room, right where the shared wall was. It was roughly the shape of a hand, but with fingers that were too long, and it seemed to grow darker and more defined each day. I tried to scrub it off, but it remained, and the wiping only made it weep a dark, oily residue. The wailing, the scratching, and the stain, they all became a nightly ritual. I started to dread the coming of night.

Then, one Thursday, Mrs. Kessler disappeared. The super said she’d gone to stay with a relative, but her room was left locked, and a strange smell began to seep from under her door. It was a sweet, sickly smell, like rotting flowers and stale tears. That same night, I was woken by a violent banging on my wall, three quick thumps. When I pressed my ear against the cold surface, I heard a voice, a broken whisper: ‘Let me out.’

I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to break into her room. The door was old, and the lock was flimsy. A few pushes and it gave way. Inside, the room was empty, but the wallpaper was covered in dark, wet marks, like countless hands had pressed against it from the inside. And on the far wall, there was a single, perfectly drawn circle in black ink. In the center, a name: ‘Elias.’

I touched the circle, and the wall felt wet and cold, like a damp sponge. As I pulled my hand away, I saw my reflection in the circle—but it wasn’t my face. It was a woman with hollow eyes and a gaping mouth, screaming silently. I stumbled back, and the wall began to murmur. I ran to the kitchen, but the murmur followed me, coming from the pipes, from the ceiling, from the floorboards. It was the same word, over and over: ‘Mara.’

The next morning, I called the police. They found nothing in Mrs. Kessler’s room, but they did find her body. She had been dead for weeks, locked in a closet in the third-floor utility room. Her hands were bloody, and her fingernails were broken. The coroner said she died of a heart attack, but her face was frozen in an expression of absolute terror.

I moved out that day. I couldn’t stay in that room. But the memory still lingers. And sometimes, when the house is quiet and the mist rolls in, I can still hear it, the sound of weeping coming from behind the wall of my own bedroom at night. Only now, it’s not coming from the wall. It’s coming from the floor above, where I live now.

I’ve started to notice a new stain on my new bedroom wall. It’s shaped like a hand. And it’s growing.

I don’t think I’ll be safe anywhere.