The door shut—a sound like someone being slapped across the mouth to keep them quiet.
I stood in the hallway, shoes still on, backpack slipping, the world outside dissolving into the wallpaper's gray smear. The place always smelled like dust and hot metal, like it hadn't been aired out in years. I didn't call out "I'm home." No one did that here. I think we all agreed not to pretend.
My mother was where she always was—on the couch in the living room, one hand limp around a wine glass, eyes fixed somewhere behind the TV screen. The TV flickered, voices clashing into static, too quiet to follow, too loud to ignore. Her face was lit up in flashes of blue and orange. I watched her for a moment and wondered if she'd blink. She didn't.
My sister sat at the kitchen table, pencil scratching softly against paper. She didn't look up. She never did. Her face was hidden beneath curtain-black hair, legs swinging like a metronome. A pile of drawings lay in front of her. Always the same—cracked faces. Wide eyes. No mouths. As if silence was the only thing she trusted.
She hadn't spoken since Dad left—the real one. Not the man who lived upstairs like a shadow waiting to move in.
"Hey." I mumbled, not expecting an answer.
Nothing.
My stepfather's voice came from somewhere behind the walls. Something about bills. About the electric again. About "that boy" using too much hot water.
I dropped my bag beside the stairs and stared up them like they were going to say something back. They didn't.
The first step creaked under my foot—a sharp, familiar betrayal. Always the same one, always too loud, like it had been waiting to tattle. I moved slower the rest of the way. The house felt heavier lately. Like it was holding its breath.
My bedroom door was closed. It always was. Not locked—just closed. Like it didn't want anything getting in. Or out.
I stepped inside and stood in the center of the room for a long time. The air was still. I stared at the wall across from my bed—the pale one where the paint peeled in dry flakes. And there it was again.
The crack.
It started near the ceiling and ran down like a jagged vein, about as long as my forearm. Last week, it didn't reach that far. I'm sure of it. Or maybe it just grew when I wasn't looking. I hadn't told anyone. There wasn't a point. They'd blame me or blame the house or blame nothing. We liked to blame nothing here.
I crossed the room and touched it lightly. It didn't feel like a crack in drywall. It felt warmer. And just for a second—I'm not saying this happened, not really—I thought it flinched under my fingers.
I stepped back and caught my reflection in the dark window—blurred, distant. Tired, maybe. Or just not there.
From downstairs, I heard the floorboards shift. My stepfather pacing. Maybe checking the thermostat for the third time today. Maybe muttering again. Maybe rehearsing things he'd say out loud if anyone ever answered.
I sat down on my bed, shoes still on, staring at the crack. It didn't move. But I felt it watching me. Or listening.
Same difference.
There were days I told myself it wasn't real. That it was just drywall. Just stress. Just grief playing dress-up. But tonight, I didn't bother lying to myself.
The crack didn't move. I watched it long enough to be sure. But I still turned my chair to face the opposite wall when I undressed. Just in case.
I kicked off my shoes and peeled my shirt over my head. I wasn't in the mood to shower, and I didn't want to run the water again. He'd say something if I did. I could already hear it—"Always soaking the damn pipes like you pay the bills." So I didn't.
Instead, I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. The faucet squeaked like it was protesting. I glanced at the mirror as I dried my face. My reflection looked tired—no, wrong. Like it wasn't quite done becoming me yet.
"Still here," I muttered. Was I talking to the house? The crack? Or myself? Sometimes it was hard to tell which one mattered most.
The hallway was quieter than usual when I stepped back out. Lights dim. No movement. I paused outside my bedroom door. Something was there.
Not someone. Something.
A slip of paper, slid underneath. Just a corner peeking out like a tongue. I bent down and picked it up without needing to guess who left it.
My sister.
She didn't knock. She never knocked. But she always left things. Mostly drawings. Never notes. Never words.
This one was a face again. Cracked down the center like porcelain. One eye open wide, iris a black spiral, the other eye missing. Just a white void. The mouth, absent, like always.
But it was the angle that got me.
The face was tilted. Just slightly. Looking out of frame. Looking at me?
I turned it over. Blank.
I held it in my hand longer than I meant to. Then I folded it into fourths and tucked it into the drawer beside my bed, with the others.
I turned off the lights.
The room went still. I could hear the TV downstairs humming, the occasional dull clatter of my stepfather moving a plate. Then nothing.
The crack on the wall seemed to vanish in the dark, but I knew exactly where it was. I could picture it perfectly. I pulled the covers over me and stared at the ceiling.
You know that moment when your skin prickles before you turn around? When you know someone's watching, even if the room's empty.
I felt that.
Except I wasn't looking behind me.
I was looking at the wall.
I whispered, "It's just the house settling."
And the silence that followed felt like something pretending to agree.
Sometime after two in the morning, I opened my eyes. I didn't know why. No dream to flee from. Just the feeling of having missed something I'd never seen.
The room was dark except for a thin strip of moonlight cutting across the floor, pale and cold. I hadn't moved. My hands were still crossed over my chest, fingers curling against fabric like they were trying to hold on to something that wasn't there.
Then I heard it.
Not loud.
Not clear.
A sound like breath. But not mine.
My eyes snapped to the wall.
The crack was still there. Of course it was. But something about it had changed. It looked deeper. Like it had depth now. Like a sliver of black glass had been wedged into the wall and was pressing outward.
I sat up slowly. My body felt heavy, like I'd been dreaming too long—and maybe hadn't woken up at all.
The sound came again—quieter this time. Not wind. Not pipes. Not the house.
A murmur.
I slid out of bed without turning on the light. Bare feet on cold wood. The air around me felt warmer the closer I got to the wall. I leaned in.
The crack pulsed—once. Not to the eye, not to the hand. But in the part of me that forgets it's there—behind the ears, under the teeth.
I held my breath and listened.
A whisper.
Soft. Garbled. But not meaningless. The syllables were muddy, blurred like words underwater.
But then—It said my name.
Not a shout. Not even a whisper, really. More like a breath that happened to shape itself into a sound I knew too well.
I stepped back like I'd been slapped.
"Okay," I said quietly. "That's... no."
But my body didn't move. My hand was still on the wall, but my legs wouldn't take the message. My breath felt like it belonged to someone else. I wasn't just afraid—I was being afraid, like it was happening to me from the outside in.
My hand touched the light switch. I didn't flip it. I just kept my fingers there. Like it was a weapon. Like light could defend me.
The house was still.
Then, somewhere deep in the drywall, the whisper repeated. Fainter.
My name again.
But this time... it didn't sound like someone calling to me.
It sounded like someone reminding me.
When I came downstairs, the morning light had already turned the kitchen gray. Not warm. Not golden. Just gray.
My mother was gone.
There was no note, no message, not even her usual empty coffee cup. Just the quiet rattle of the refrigerator and the barely ticking clock above the sink. I stood for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, listening—hoping to hear her car pulling out, a door closing, anything that might suggest where she'd gone.
Nothing.
My sister was already seated at the table. She didn't look at me when I walked in, but I didn't expect her to. Her sketchpad was open in front of her, the pencil tapping against the paper rhythmically, like a heartbeat. She was drawing the same cracked face again.Except this one... this one had lips.
Sewn shut.
It made my chest hurt to look at it—like I was the one holding the thread. Like I was the reason she couldn't speak.
She didn't glance up, not even when I pulled a chair back across the linoleum and sat down across from her. Her bangs hung over her eyes like a veil.
"You hungry?" I asked. My voice sounded wrong in the room. Like it didn't belong to anyone.
She didn't answer.
In the corner, the toaster clicked on.
A moment later, my stepfather walked in, dragging air with him like smoke. He was in his usual button-down, half-wrinkled, the tie around his neck limp and uncommitted. He didn't look at either of us. Just opened the cabinet, pulled down a chipped mug, poured coffee like he was fuelling a machine.
He sipped. Sat. Picked up a piece of toast someone had made, maybe yesterday, maybe a week ago. I watched his jaw work like a metronome. No chewing. Just grinding.
"You know your mother left early," he said after a full minute of silence. "Said she had errands."
"She didn't tell me."
He shrugged. Didn't look up.
My sister flipped a page and started a new drawing. I saw her glance at the toaster. It hadn't popped yet.
"I think the wall's cracking," I said, surprising myself. "In my room."
That got a glance. Not from him—from her.
She didn't look for long. But her eyes found mine. Just a second. Then down again.
"No one's touching the drywall," my stepfather said. "Last thing we need is you tearing up that room."
He said it like he was worried about the house. Not me. Never me.
"I didn't—"
"I said what I said."
The toaster clicked again, this time without popping. Just a dull snap of metal, like a dying breath.
No one moved to fix it.
No one said another word.
At school, everything felt like it was on mute.
The halls buzzed with too much light and not enough sound. I moved from class to class like a file being passed between hands—unopened, unexamined.
No one looked at me. I didn't blame them.
I drifted through class like a ghost in a textbook. Unreliable narrator, they said. I smirked. Like anyone ever tells the truth when the lie feels better.
You ever feel like your own mind is playing defense? Like it's keeping secrets from you—on your behalf?
By the time I got home, my head was full of cotton. I drifted up the stairs with one hand on the wall, half-expecting it to pull away from me. When I reached my room, the first thing I did was look at the crack.
It hadn't moved.
But I didn't believe it.
I dropped my bag. Closed the door. Didn't bother locking it.
The evening dragged. I didn't eat dinner. My mother still hadn't come back. Maybe she had. I don't remember. My sister never knocked. My stepfather muttered once outside the hallway, then vanished into silence.
The hours bled.
It wasn't until late—after I'd turned off the light, after I'd laid down again—that I said it.
Soft. Barely louder than a breath.
"I heard you."
I don't know why I said it. Maybe I needed to hear myself first.
The room didn't respond.
Just the hum of electricity. The faraway drone of the refrigerator downstairs. The faint tick of the useless watch I kept by my bed.
Then—from the wall:
"...heard you..."
I didn't just hear it. I recognized the breath between the syllables. The rhythm of it. Mine.
I didn't move. Didn't blink. Just listened to my own breath, waiting to hear it again.
It didn't come.
I'm still not sure if that made it better or worse.