"The Whispering in the Wallpaper"

The wallpaper in the upstairs hallway had always been strange. Not ugly—just peculiar. A faded pattern of vines and roses, etched in muted golds and pale greens, curling and unfurling like they were reaching for something. It had already begun to peel when we moved into the house, but my mother said it gave the place “character.”

It started with the whispers.

I was seven. Small enough to be ignored, but old enough to notice. At first, I thought the sounds were the pipes or maybe wind through the cracked windows. But pipes didn’t say your name.

At night, I’d hear it—soft, deliberate.

“Lucy…”

Just once. A whisper low and patient, like someone crouched beneath the floorboards, waiting.

I told my mom. She laughed. “That’s just your imagination,” she said, brushing my hair behind my ear. “This house is over a hundred years old. Old houses make weird noises.”

But it wasn’t the house.

Not entirely.

On the second week of living there, I noticed a spot near the base of the hallway wall, just beside the linen closet. The wallpaper was peeled back slightly. A tear no longer than my pinky finger. One night, as I passed by it on the way to the bathroom, the whisper returned.

“Lucy… come look…”

I froze. My breath caught in my throat like a fishhook. The voice was coming from the wall.

Not behind it. Inside it.

The next morning, I asked my father if we could replace the wallpaper. He glanced at it while sipping his coffee. “That stuff? It’s original. Probably older than you, your brother, and this toaster combined.”

I didn’t argue. I just stopped walking in that hallway alone. I took the long way around. Downstairs, up the back stairwell, and through the den.

Until my brother, Jack, disappeared.

It happened the day after Halloween.

He was nine. We’d spent the afternoon eating candy, watching monster movies, and sword fighting with paper towel tubes. Mom went into town to run errands. Dad was napping on the couch. I left Jack in our room with a stack of Milky Ways and a comic book.

When I came back, the room was empty.

At first, we thought he was hiding. He loved pranks—jump scares from closets, fake spiders on pillows. But by dinner, the laughter had turned to shouting, and shouting to sirens.

They never found him.

No footprints. No forced windows. Just… gone.

A week later, I woke to find the wallpaper torn wider—this time, a foot-long gash trailing down the hallway. And beside it, tiny scratches etched into the plaster beneath.

Five fingernail marks.

I stopped sleeping after that.

I tried to tell my parents, but grief had wrapped them in cotton. They barely heard me anymore. So I started keeping watch.

At night, I’d sit across from the hallway with a flashlight and a bat. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew it was waiting for me, too.

One night, I saw the wallpaper move.

It shuddered, like it was breathing.

I stood, flashlight trembling in my hands, and stepped closer. The tear in the paper was yawning wider now, edges curled and stained dark. I held my breath and leaned in.

“Lucy…”

A breath against my cheek.

The wall rippled. A small, pale hand pushed through the slit.

I screamed.

The hand clawed outward, blindly, then withdrew. And before I could run, something else pressed forward—a face. Thin. Hollow-eyed. My brother.

“Jack?” I whispered, stunned.

He looked… older. Like he’d aged years in a week. His eyes were wide, mouth twisted in terror.

“Don’t trust the house,” he gasped. “It eats us.”

The wall snapped shut.

I screamed again, louder this time. My parents came running, tired and angry. But when they looked, the wall was whole. No slit. No scratches. Just wallpaper.

I was grounded for “another outburst.”

But I knew what I saw.

I began to research the house at the school library. Its name was once The Ellesmere House. Built in 1893. Owned by a textile baron who vanished in 1901—along with his wife and four children. Rumors said he was obsessed with soundproofing. Said the walls could “trap screams.” Local folklore called it cursed.

Of course.

I tried to rip the wallpaper off myself. Clawed at it with fingernails, scissors, a kitchen knife. But each night, the paper healed. Returned, whole and smug, as if mocking me.

One night, I left the house.

I ran to the neighbor’s barn and slept under a tarp. Cold and afraid, but safe. But by morning, I awoke back in my bed.

The wallpaper torn a little more.

My mother said I sleepwalked. Said I needed help.

But the house had dragged me back.

That night, I made a choice.

I took a can of paint thinner, a box of matches, and a hammer. If the walls wanted to whisper, I’d make them scream.

I started with the hallway. I tore down the paper with fire. The flames roared—too fast, too alive.

The walls wailed.

They screamed like the shriek of thousands, like a tomb being split open. Beneath the wallpaper were faces. Pressed into the wood. Stretched and screaming.

I saw Jack. Reaching. Begging. And others—children I’d never met. A family. A man in a nightgown.

And then—nothing.

I awoke in the hospital.

The house had burned. The hallway, mostly. My hands were bandaged. The wallpaper was gone, at last. The authorities ruled it an accident. “Old insulation,” they said.

But I knew better.

Jack never came back. Not really. But some nights, I see him in dreams—standing in a hallway that doesn’t exist anymore, whispering my name, his voice drifting through smoke.

And I whisper back.