The Tale of the Wailing Walls

If walls could talk, what might they say? I don't have to wonder. I remember exactly what happened the day the walls began to speak. The day everything changed forever.

The house across the street used to be ordinary, just a light blue split-level with a wooden fence. It contained a normal happy family with five children, a mom, and a dad. No one ever thought twice about it, until the day the walls started to talk.

At first it was barely a whisper. Only those who really paid attention noticed. But the words were mostly inaudible and the ones loud enough to hear just made no sense at all. So the walls were ignored and eventually they quieted down.

After that the house seemed a little unsettling to the children who spent so much time there, the ones who lived there and their friends from the neighborhood. No one ever talked about it out loud, but none of them ever liked being alone for very long anywhere in that home. It felt as if the walls had grown eyes and watched them, waiting for an opportunity to tell their tales. The children stayed together as much as they could. When they had sleepovers, they did their best to stay up all night together so no one would be the last to fall asleep. That was the worst. In the dark and quiet hours, the walls loomed menacingly, the secrets they longed to share bubbling under the surface.

But eventually the children got older. The memory of the whispering walls faded into a childhood ghost story. But it had been more than just a ghost story and the walls had been biding their time all those years, growing restless, eager to tell their tales. They had gathered strength as they waited for the perfect moment. It finally arrived and they knew this time no one could ignore them. The walls began to wail.

It started as a rumble, only the family inside could hear. But as soon as they had the family's attention, it grew in strength and volume. Soon the walls shouted their secrets so loud blood began dripping from the rafters. No longer safe inside, the family ran out to their front lawn and huddled together for protection. But the wailing walls had gathered a crowd. The entire neighborhood stood there listening. Now they all knew what the walls refused to keep hidden any longer. This was no ordinary house and this was no ordinary family. The man who had raised them was no ordinary father.

There on the porch he stood alone, dripping in blood, the family patriarch with all his sins finally exposed to the world. Once thought of as a friend and a confidant, the man always there with a helping hand and quick wit, his neighbors now saw him as the monster he had always been. Terrified, he ran from the place, abandoning his wife and children. Desperate to get free from the words the walls shouted he locked himself away from the world in a cement room with bars on the windows and bars for a door.

But the walls of that blue house continued to wail as the neighbors gathered to listen. Those who had spent so much of their childhood in that house fell to their knees in horror. Now young adults, they could finally understand what the walls had been trying to warn them about all those years ago. They finally understood all the sleepless nights they spent together in that blue house. They finally understood that the walls had never been trying to scare them, they only wanted to protect them. That's what walls are built to be, a protection to those inside.

The parents who had sent their children to play in that home seethed in rage. Betrayed and blindsided by a man they thought they could trust. Some yearned for vengeance, murderous thoughts filling their hearts. Others cried broken hearted, as their eyes fell on his children. Children they'd loved and watched grow up with their own. Children wished they could go back and protect. Children they feared they had failed.

For months the walls continued to shout, refusing to be ignored any longer. They kept the neighbors awake at night, tossing and turning. Eventually, the remaining members of that family moved away from the house and the walls slowly started to quiet down. As the years passed, the whispering faded away.

It's been nearly two decades since the walls broke their silence. Rumor has it that the father finally came out of the room where he hid from the world, but no one has seen him. The house across the street is now just an ordinary house again. But the walls still whisper to me. I can hear them from across the street when no one else can.

"Remember," they whisper. "It was never your fault."