The Boy Who Lives in the Wall

"Mommy?! Mommy, wake up!"

Heidi groaned and rolled over toward the small voice, wishing her dream of mai-tais on the beach and hunky cabana boys could've lasted just a little longer. It took a few seconds for her bleary eyes to adjust in the dark. The second the frightened little boy standing at her bedside came into focus, she was wide awake.

"Lucas?" she mumbled, pushing her tangled auburn curls out of her face, "Baby, what is it? Didja have a bad dream?"

The six-year-old shook his head, flinging his straw-colored mop side to side. His usually rosy cheeks were whiter than Heidi's sheets, and he was absolutely shaking in his favorite dinosaur pajamas.

"Dere's a man in the basement," he whispered. "I hearded him, Mommy, when I got up to get some water."

Heidi sat up right away, her brown eyes huge with alarm, and immediately pulled her child into her lap. "What?! Honey, are you sure?!" she asked.

"Uh-huh," Lucas insisted, tears welling in his big blue eyes, "I hearded it, Mommy! I did! Hims was shouting real loud, an' stomping around with big boots. Pwease, Mommy, I scawed!"

"Okay, okay," Heidi murmured, stroking her son's trembling cheek, "I'll go check it out. You stay right here, and don't move a muscle until I get back. Can you do that for me?"

Lucas nodded, throwing the blankets over his head the second his mother got out of bed. She tried her best to move calmly, quietly, and without fear to the kitchen downstairs, only stopping to grab the Louisville Slugger from her bedroom closet. The last thing she wanted was for Lucas to know how terrified she actually was.

This was not the first time Lucas had awakened her in the middle of the night since the big move. Not by a long shot. They'd been in the house for a month, and she hadn't gotten a full night's sleep yet. All those other times, he'd come crawling into her bed with minor complaints: his room was too cold or too dark; there were monsters in his closet; he'd had an accident or a nightmare. Typical stuff one might expect from a little kid getting used to a new house.

Claiming he'd heard a prowler in the basement, however, was an entirely different issue.

Before she knew it, Heidi was standing in front of the basement door. One sweaty palm gripped tightly around the handle of her raised bat, she reached out and slowly turned the old-fashioned crystal knob. After taking a deep breath to steel herself, she flung the door open wide and flipped on the light switch just beyond it. Adrenaline flowed like a raging river through her veins as she stared down that dimly lit, creaky stairwell, ready to swing at a second's notice. All that greeted her, though, was silence.

"Didja get him?"

Heidi swallowed a scream and whirled around, her hand flying to her hammering heart. "Lucas!" she snapped, "I told you to wait upstairs!"

As soon as she saw that kicked puppy look on her son's face, Heidi instantly regretted her harsh tone. Without wasting another second, she knelt down and scooped him into her arms, squeezing him tight.

"Sorry, Baby," she murmured, "I shouldn't have yelled."

After loosening her grip with a cheek kiss, Heidi glanced down the basement stairs again. Besides a draft, there was absolutely nothing down there. There wasn't a cobweb out of place, or even a grain of dust disturbed on the steps.

"Come on," Heidi sighed, "let's go back to bed now."

"No," Lucas whined, clutching his mother's neck fearfully, "Mommy, the man! He still down dere!"

"Lucas, enough," Heidi insisted calmly, pressing another kiss onto his brow, "there's nobody in the basement, I promise. This house is really old, okay? Old houses sometimes make funny noises."

Lucas didn't seem a bit assured, but he didn't fight Heidi when she picked him up and carried him back upstairs. He spent the rest of the night in her bed - as usual - sleeping like a perfect angel. Heidi, though, couldn't go back to sleep for the life of her.

Her son had a big imagination, but he wasn't a liar by any means. If he'd heard something moving around in the basement, Heidi believed it was the truth. After taking Lucas to school the next morning, she called an exterminator to check for mice. Not fifteen minutes after setting foot in the basement, the exterminator called Heidi down. By the time she jogged off the bottom most step, he was in the far corner, squeezed behind what she thought was a built-in shelf.

"Ah, Mrs. Sloane," he grinned, waving her over excitedly, "I found something that might interest you. Come take a look at this."

"It's Miss," she corrected icily, chafing her arms as she came to stand beside him. Her cautious demeanor melted away to awe within seconds, however, when she saw what had the exterminator giddier than a little kid on Christmas morning.

The portion of wall that the shelf was bolted to had been pulled forward, revealing a small, dark space behind it. There were no lights in the small, concealed room that Heidi could see, or at least as far as the exterminator's flashlight beam could show. All she could really see were three crumbling brick walls, a dirt floor, and a single, straight-backed wooden chair caked in a solid inch of dust.

"Looks like an old root cellar," the exterminator guessed, directing his beam to the tall, narrow shelves lining the far wall from top to bottom, "did you have any idea that this was here?"

Heidi shook her head, too stunned to speak, and pulled her sweater tight around her body to hide a shiver. Maybe Life had made her too jaded by this point, but she did not share in the exterminator's excitement at all. That little room gave her so many creeps. If it could even be called a room. Really, it was more of an oversized closet, so tight and cramped that she could've easily lain her palms flat on two walls at once if she so desired. Way too small, in her opinion, to be a functional root cellar. Clearly it hadn't been used in a very long time... but what, exactly, had it been used for? And why would anyone keep a single chair in a tiny, dark room in a basement? Honestly, Heidi was perfectly content not knowing the answer to that question.

She had the exterminator close up the little room right away, planning never to look at or think about it ever again. The only good that came of the whole afternoon was that he didn't find any signs of an infestation. Unfortunately, it left Heidi with more questions than answers... just like that strange, hidden room in the basement.

Later that evening after putting Lucas to bed, Heidi cozied up in front of the TV to unwind for a while. After the unsettling day she'd had, Heidi figured she'd earned a little wine and some Hell's Kitchen reruns. Halfway through the first episode and her second glass, however, a loud thump from the kitchen made her leap six inches off the couch. She scrambled to pause the episode as fast as she could and just froze in place, listening for a second. Just when she'd managed to convince herself that her mind was playing tricks on her, another sound reached her panicked ears: muffled footsteps, walking down the basement stairs.

Alarmed but desperately trying to keep her cool, Heidi carefully approached the basement door. Armed with her phone in one hand and a corkscrew in the other, she swallowed dryly once it came into view. The basement door was open just a crack. Heidi knew without a doubt that she'd closed it after the exterminator left, and that it hadn't been opened since. The closer she crept to it, a new wave of terror broke over her.

Two distinct voices echoed softly up the steps... and one sounded a lot like her son.

Heidi's panic gave way to anger as her body automatically switched to full on Mama Bear mode. Without fully realizing what she was doing, she kicked the door open all the way and charged down there. To her mingled shock, confusion, and deep relief, however, Lucas was alone and completely unharmed.

"Lucas Sebastian Sloane, what are you doing down here?!" she demanded. "Baby, do you have any idea what time it is? What were you thinking?! You could've fallen down the stairs and badly hurt yourself!"

Lucas picked himself up off the floor and hugged his teddy bear sheepishly. "Sowwy, Mommy," he mumbled, "Jonah said it would be fun. I told him you'd be mad, but he din't listen. Are you mad?"

Heidi's jaw fell open instantly, but no sound came out for a long few seconds. Frankly, she didn't know what to think.

"Who's Jonah?" she blurted, "Baby, what are you talking about?"

Lucas looked just as confused as Heidi felt. A moment later, he turned toward the basement's back corner, and pointed to the shelf concealing the hidden room.

"Jonah's my fwiend," he said, "he lives there, in the wall."

Heidi's blood turned to ice in her veins. There was no way Lucas could've known about the basement's secret room. He wasn't home when the exterminator found it, and she hadn't mentioned it to him at all. Frankly she kept it a secret on purpose, because she didn't want her little boy poking around down there.

After blinking for a minute or two in complete shock and bewilderment, Heidi tried to shake it off. Maybe she had mentioned the hidden room and forgotten about it. Figuring stress, lack of sleep, and a little too much wine was playing havoc with her head, she chose to ignore the comment for the time being.

"I'm not mad," she insisted, picking up her son and setting him on her hip, "c'mon, Baby: it's bedtime... and I don't ever want to catch you playing down here by yourself again. Do you understand?"

"But I wasn't 'lone," Lucas insisted, "Jonah's here, too. He said-"

"Lucas, please," Heidi sighed, silencing him with a kiss on the cheek, "it's late, okay? You can tell me all about your new imaginary friend tomorrow."

The next day while Lucas was playing in the back yard, Heidi's next-door neighbor came over for a chat. Mr. Hinks was a retired police detective, and - although they were little more than acquaintances - he had a warm, genuine energy about him that instantly put Heidi at ease. When Mr. Hinks heard Lucas talking excitedly to "Jonah", and saw how uneasy Heidi was about it, he asked if everything was okay.

The words came tumbling out of Heidi before she could stop them. She felt very silly confiding in Mr. Hinks about the hidden room and Lucas' strange behavior the night before, afraid that he might think she was crazy or an overprotective helicopter mom. To her surprise, he listened to her entire story quietly and without judgement. Once she was done, he asked for permission to inspect the property thoroughly, just in case there was some nutcase sneaking into the basement at night without her knowledge.

Heidi was so relieved to be taken seriously, she consented with an emphatic, "yes". It took Mr. Hinks a solid two hours of knocking on walls and circling the place - mostly focusing on the basement itself - before he came back to her with a grim frown.

"There are definitely no other ways in or out of that basement," he concluded, "...but I found that room you mentioned. I agree: something's not right about it." He stared up at the old house then, his moustache rumpled up over his pursed lips, then sighed through his nose.

"This ol' place has changed hands quite a bit over the years," he said, "at least eight different owners in my seventy plus years living next door. If you like, my wife works down at City Hall. We could look into the property for you, just in case there's a stubborn ex-owner who's got a beef. Might give ya some answers... or a little peace of mind at the very least."

Heidi was grateful to the old ex-cop, but politely turned him down. A full-scale investigation of her home felt unnecessary and a little too invasive for comfort. Instead, she took herself down to the local hardware store and bought a brand-new set of deadbolts for the house. The first of which was screwed onto the basement door.

A few nights later, Heidi was awakened from a dead sleep by a blood-curdling scream. That same second, she stumbled down the hall to Lucas' room as fast as her half-asleep feet could carry her. When she flipped on the light, however, her precious baby boy was still fast asleep under the blankets. Still grappling with her panic and confusion, Heidi's head snapped toward a new sound coming from downstairs: deep, agonized sobbing. After staring at her son's racecar bed a few seconds longer to determine it definitely wasn't him, Heidi cautiously followed the noise... straight to the bolted basement door.

The crying was so loud and heartbreaking, it made her soul ache. There was no doubt it was a child, which only served to confuse her more. When she reached for the deadbolt to slide it out of the way, the entire door shook with a loud bang. Almost like it had been punched by a huge, meaty fist from the other side. Heidi's hand flew back in an instant as if it had burned her, covering her mouth to hold in an involuntary yelp.

"Shut the hell up!!" a deep, definitely masculine voice snarled.

In a flash, Heidi raced back upstairs, driven by a motherly instinct to protect her child. It took her ninety seconds flat to rip Lucas out of bed, grab her phone, and sprint to the front yard. Five minutes later, a police car pulled up to the house, and a pair of officers joined her. Just like Mr. Hinks, though, the cops found no intruder and no signs of a break-in whatsoever, which only distressed Heidi further.

That instant, Heidi decided she'd finally had enough. That house was supposed to be her and Lucas' forever home; a place where they could start over together. She couldn't explain it, but she knew without a doubt that all these strange problems were the fault of that creepy little room in the basement. It had to go, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Two days later, she hired a team of contractors to gut the entire basement from top to bottom and renovate it into a rec room. The first thing she had them tear out was that hidden room, and they wasted no time seeing to her wishes. Within five minutes of demo, however, the lead contractor called her down there. Heidi was worried they'd hit a water pipe or gas line based on the urgency of his call, but his wide eyes and ashen face told her the problem was even bigger. When Heidi made her way over to the hidden room, and saw what he was looking at, she nearly fainted on the spot from shock and horror.

Stuffed in a hole behind the bricks was a startlingly small human skeleton.

The police were called immediately to examine the remains. They determined the body was male, and roughly six to eight years old at the time of death. The bones were so decayed, though, it was impossible to tell how the boy died, or how long he'd been there.

Although the police quickly let the case grow cold, Heidi was determined to find out who he was and what happened to him. Being a mother, it was the only thing that made sense to her. With no one else to go to, Heidi turned to Mr. Hinks for aid. He'd heard about the remains that were found in her basement, but he got a strange look in his eye after getting all the details from Heidi. For a long while, he just sat back in his easy chair, lost in thought and chewing on the stem of his reading glasses silently. Then, suddenly, he spoke.

"I was seven when my folks moved here back in '59," he murmured, "the neighbors who lived in your house had a boy at the time, 'bout my age. He was... well... a little 'soft in the head' as the old folks would say, but a good kid nonetheless. Always felt sorry for him. Not for the reason you might think, though. His old man was meaner than a pit viper; hardly ever let him go outside or play with the neighborhood kids. Then, one day the boy next door just... vanished. Like he never existed at all. I never forgot about him, though. Not once."

Mr. Hinks paused to take a deep breath, focusing his wistful eyes on Heidi again... and when he spoke, there was a noticeable tremor in his voice.

"His name... was Jonah."