The Space Between

It was an end to a long but wonderful day for Sarah. She was finally in her first new house and looking forward to a night of rest in her own home after a day of unpacking. Sleeping on fresh sheets, a new pillow and a super comfy brand new down comforter she found at Marshall's for a steal would make her night. "I'm beat" she thought to herself as she turned off the light and slipped under the coziness of the comforter and closed her eyes.

Sarah was in that stage right before you fall asleep when things feel like a dream but they are not. That is when she first heard a noise. The scratching started not long after. In her daze, she wondered if she was hearing things. That is when she heard the familiar, maddening sound - exactly like fingernails dragging across the inside of the wall.

"Just mice," she told herself, the same way her parents had almost thirty years ago. But mice don't scratch in patterns. Three slow drags, pause, three more. Suddenly she felt like she was eight again. These were the same rhythm that had kept her awake in her childhood bedroom, staring at the faded wallpaper patterned with pale yellow roses until sunrise.

She'd chosen this ranch-style house specifically because it looked nothing like her childhood home. It was a single story house, brightly painted with no floral wallpaper. There were no narrow hallways or oddly-placed closets that contributed to her childhood dread. But as she laid rigid and almost shell shocked on her fresh sheets, the new queen-size bed was of little comfort. The surrounding half-unpacked moving boxes contributed to her mental displacement as shadows formed from the faint light, created by the streetlights, entering her window. The scratching made all houses the same house.

Three drags. Pause. Three drags.

Sarah grabbed her phone and nervously hit the flashlight icon. She panned the light around the room. "Empty" she whispered. she stepped off the bed, her feed touching the cold tile floor and walk to the wall switch and turned on the overhead lights. "Yea, empty" she stated a bit above a whisper this time. Almost as if she were telling someone in the room. She pressed her steady and damp palm against the wall. The scratching stopped immediately. It always did.

"I'm thirty-eight-years old," she whispered to herself. "This isn't happening again."

But it was. And she knew what came next.

The whispering would start soon. Maybe not tonight - the scratches were usually an introduction. When she was a child, the whispers always waited a few days, building anticipation before she heard them. She remembered how she was almost relieved when the scratches ended and the whispering began. At at least she could understand the words. The soft, sing-song voice that had plagued her childhood nights: _"Sarah... come find me, Sarah..."_

Sarah has been in therapy most of her adult life trying to figure out why she felt so haunted when she was young. Her therapist had called it a stress response, a manifestation of anxiety about her parents' divorce, maybe even PTSD from an event she can't yet recall. Sarah doubted these explanations as the scratching and whispers began before her parents divorced. In her mind, the whispers were one of the reasons her parents divorced.

Her mother had blamed the old house's settling foundation. Being superstitious, she would tell Sarah that the house was probably built on ancient burial grounds and that the souls needed some fresh air every once in a while. This seemed plausible to Sarah when she was young, but having read many books on spirits since then, she doubted that too.

Her father had simply installed a white noise machine and told her to keep her door closed at night. A new nightlight did not make her feel any better but that was enough for her father to feel like he fulfilled his obligation - at least for now.

Yet neither could ever explained the dirty fingerprints she'd find on her bedroom walls on some mornings. They were too high for her eight-year-old hands to reach. Or why her sheets would sometimes have yellow spot that matched the faded wallpaper.

The family moved often when she was young due to her father's work. That didn't stop the scratching. The scratching followed the same pattern in every house they lived in afterward. That was until she moved into a modern apartment building with concrete walls in college.

She'd thought she'd escaped it then. From the age of eighteen until now, years of peaceful nights, in various apartments, had convinced her the whole thing had been an overactive childhood imagination combined with old house noises. She'd even felt confident enough to buy this house - her first - after her bitter breakup with her boyfriend of ten years.

Now, returning to the bed, and sitting up with her back pressed against the fluffy headboard, Sarah realized her bad judgement. She hadn't escaped anything. Maybe she'd just been living in buildings where it couldn't reach her. After all, this only happened in houses.

The scratching started again, fainter now, three drags-pause- three drags, moving upward through the wall toward the ceiling. Sarah tracked its progress with her eyes, her heart pounding against her ribs. Three drags. Pause. Three drags.

At this moment she recalled a memory. She'd forgotten, probably because she had never told anyone about the time she'd actually answered the voice. She'd been ten, angry about her parents' recent divorce, determined to prove to everyone that she wasn't crazy., that the noises were not in her head. When the whispers began again - "Sarah... come find me, Sarah..." - she'd whispered back, "Where are you?"

The answer still haunted her: _"In the spaces between. Come see."_

Sarah was so confused that night. What did it mean the space between?

"What do you mean? she replied."

Suddenly, she'd watched in horror as the faded yellow floral wallpaper developed a seam where no seam should be, slowly widening like a mouth opening in the darkness, a dim yellow light shinning through the opening. She'd screamed then, loud enough to wake anyone. Her mother barged in. By the time she'd reached Sarah's room, the wall was solid again.

They'd moved two weeks later.

Three drags. Pause. Three drags. The scratching started once again. Now, Sarah found herself yelling into the air of her new bedroom: "Why did you wait so long to come back?"

The scratching stopped abruptly. The silence that followed was deeper than ordinary silence, as if the very air was holding its breath, holding nature's sounds still. Then, in a whisper so faint that she almost missed it: _"I never left, Sarah. I've been waiting for you to come back where I could reach you again."_

If she'd had a full bladder, she would have pissed herself.

Then the lights flickered and shut off. She reached for her phone but it was also off.

The wall beside her bed shuddered, her fluffy headboard shook and and a thin line appeared in the fresh paint.

Sarah said to herself "I am not screaming this time."

Instead, she watched as the line widened, revealing not darkness but a light yellow soft light at first. Then a brighter pulsing light. Within that light, she glimpsed at something that looked like her childhood bedroom's wallpaper - pale yellow with faded pink roses. The flowers seemed to moved as if caught in a breeze.

"450k for a house just to return to my childhood dread" she said to no one.

"Fate is resourceful," the voice whispered, clearer now. "And patient."

Sarah stood up, her bare feet cold against the floor. She knew she should run, she couldn't call out for her mother or father, do anything except what she was about to do. But she'd spent her life wondering what she would have seen if she'd been brave enough to look into that opening when she was young.

The gap in the wall kept widening and was now wide enough for her to step through. Beyond the pail roses, she saw an impossible spaces - like a M. C. Escher painting - rooms that folded into other rooms, staircases that ran sideways and upside down, windows that opened onto endless twilights only to become rooms once again.

"Come see," the voice invited in a calm, comforting tone.

Sarah took a step forward. Behind her, the lamp flickered on and off as she stepped through the opening.