Short Fiction Horror: Wall Dreams

Wall Dreams Anthology #1

For the last several nights, the walls had been still.

It should have been a relief, but the absence of horror created an anticipation that was worse than its presence.

Nadia lay perfectly still, arms straight at her sides. She couldn’t put a finger on why, but her six-year-old wisdom told her that if she held her "mummy pose" with blankets wrapped tight, and nothing but her eyes and nose peeking out, she was safer. Maybe it wasn’t true, but it felt true.

As much as she wanted to believe that she’d found the magic position that kept her tormentors at bay, she knew that couldn’t be it. A strand of her short blonde hair tickled the edge of her eyebrow. She didn’t move to scratch it.

Nights of restless terror versus nights of relative peace came down to one detail. It was a detail that she did not control.

Nadia pulled her gaze away from the walls and squeezed her eyes shut, willing her breathing to slow. Her muscles relaxed, bit by bit. It was like releasing the tension on a drawn bowstring without firing. Sleep drifted through her mind, billowing its way to every corner. It was the sleep that she desperately needed.

A key was inserted into the front door. The lock clicked.

Nadia’s eyes snapped open, the bowstring once again drawn tight. The familiar wail of the front door swinging open echoed through the house, followed by the muffled sound of voices.

They sounded like they were in a fine mood. That was good, at least, as long as a hangover didn’t follow.

Nadia focused on her breathing again, willing herself to drift towards sleep before something could change.

A memory surfaced. It was the face of her teacher, Ms. Waller, on one of the days her father had picked her up. He was drunk that day too.

There was a helpless pleading in her teacher’s eyes.

“If you ever need anything, I’m right here, Nadia.”

Ms. Waller looked like she’d wanted to say more, but Nadia’s father had shouted that she needed to “move her ass.”

That moment nestled deep down. Maybe it was the confusing contrast of feelings: safety and fear, hope and resignation, kindness and anger.

Her lungs did their steady work and settled into an even rhythm. Her hand had grasped the handle of the door that would lead her to dreamland when the shift came. Even she didn’t fully understand how she could sense it. It was like a sudden change in air pressure.

Nadia sat straight up in bed like a corpse shocked back into the land of the living. She could hear it now. They must have had a few more drinks. Pleasantly buzzed would have evolved into drunk and angry by now. Angry about what, she couldn’t tell, but it didn’t really matter. It was enough to feed it, to wake it.

As she stared at her bedroom’s closed door, movement began to crawl at the corner of her vision. The wallpaper, usually a static arrangement of jungle leaves, started to wave and flutter as if caught in the breeze of an approaching storm.

The little girl tried not to look at the walls. She always tried. She always looked.

The stairs outside creaked as unsteady feet made their ascent.

Every inch of the wallpaper writhed with life now. Behind the painted fronds, there were glimpses of rough, scaled bodies. Nadia never saw eyes but knew that she was being watched.

The motion on most of the walls had stilled. All focus was around the door to the hall. The waving of the paper plants made the door feel like the center of a vortex. The things behind the leaves grew more chaotic by the second.

The footsteps had found their way to the landing and were now making an uneven beat down the hall. A few moments later, the doorknob rattled as clumsy fingers failed to get a grip.

“Nadi,” slurred the girl’s father as he continued to attempt entry. “Open the—if you’ve locked this, I swear—I fu—I swear I’ll put your head through the door.”

He wasn’t yelling as he said this. It was just a stated fact that dripped from his mouth with the spittle that was no doubt running down his chin.

The door wasn’t locked, but Nadia’s jaw was clamped shut, and not even the silent scream swelling in her throat could break free.

As the drunken man outside continued his unintelligible muttering, he eventually grew tired of his failed attempts with the door handle. He opted for an even less subtle approach and began to throw his considerable weight at the problem like the alcohol-fueled battering ram that he was.

With each impact, the wall pulsed anew, as if swallowing the violence whole.

The latch finally relented with a spray of splintered wood. Nadia’s father stumbled through and was stopped short by the bedpost. He bellowed and turned on Nadia, a rabid rage in his bloodshot eyes. The scream caught in her throat became more deeply embedded as her father groped at her blanket until his fingers found purchase on her ankle.

With a stomach-dropping lurch, Nadia was pulled from the safety of her bed and over the edge. Her head clipped the bed frame, adding flecks of light to the chaos that she saw spreading from the walls to the ceiling.

She landed with her arms and legs tangled in her blanket, which was still wrapped tightly around her. The toy shelf stopped her short as dolls and books rained down. A container of matchbox cars fell from an upper shelf, pelting her face with a shower of four-wheeled missiles. One of them landed a bullseye and split her lip.

As her head cleared from the impact, Nadia wiped cautiously at her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes came into focus on the crimson streak on her skin that was now dripping onto the floor.

The walls took notice. What had felt like a wind stirring the leafy scenery now raged like a monsoon. There were large gaps in the painted vegetation. The writhing masses behind them felt closer, as if they were pushing their way into the room.

Nadia’s father found his balance at last and turned toward her.

“Look at this mess you made! You think a little boo-boo is going to get you out of cleaning this up?”

The last three words mushed together in his mouth. He kicked at the scattered matchbox cars. Nadia brought her arms up instinctively, saving herself from further injury to her face.

“G’up!”

The big man took a laborious step toward the little girl. Nadia closed her eyes and pulled the blanket close. With one more step, he’d be within reach.

There was the thud of a heavy step, followed by a cry of surprise. Nadia’s eyes flashed open just in time to see the toy cars her father had stepped on zipping across the floor as her tormentor fell back toward the bed like a human redwood.

For the briefest moment, the walls grew still. Then there was the ripe-melon impact of a skull hitting the hardwood bedpost. Flailing arms went limp as the man’s body twisted at an unnatural angle. His unconscious frame slammed against the side of the bed before sliding down it.

Silence fell on the room with as much weight as Nadia’s father just had.

The small girl pushed herself off the floor. Her blanket stayed wrapped around her shoulders as she took a tentative step toward the hulk of the fallen giant.

She stood there for a moment, taking in the strangeness of the scene. It was the first time in her memory that she had stood in her father’s presence without an ounce of fear.

“What did you do, you little monster?”

Nadia stumbled backward into the toy shelf. Her head snapped to the left. The silhouette of her mother stood in the doorframe, one hand clutching her chest.

The woman staggered forward a few steps. Clearly she’d had a generous nightcap herself. She leaned close to her husband’s splayed body. He was still breathing.

Nadia’s mother turned on her, eyes wide. In one motion, she took two steps toward her daughter, cocked her left arm, and struck out with the back of her hand.

Her wedding ring left a cut across Nadia’s cheek.

This time, drawing blood didn’t stir the walls to react. They were still for the moment, waiting, watching.

“You nearly killed him, you little bitch!”

She stumbled back a few steps and nearly tripped over her unconscious husband.

“I need to—I need—I need to call.”

The girl’s mother ran from the room, nearly hitting the doorframe as she wove her way into the hall. Her footsteps grew faster as she went, then there was a moment of cold silence followed by a violent clamor. The body came to a sudden stop that echoed up the stairs; then silence fell over the house once more.

Nadia sat frozen where she’d fallen back. She was starting to feel the cut on her face now. A line of blood ran down her freckled cheek and pooled on her chin. It tickled.

All the places that would be bruises tomorrow made themselves known as Nadia slowly got to her feet.

The tar-slick tendrils behind the leaves were swimming again. Their intensity grew in an area just above the dresser.

Nadia could see her father’s chest heaving. Each breath expelled fresh bubbles of blood from his nose. It was so strange to stand over him, to see him helpless and broken.

An object on the wooden floor caught Nadia’s eye. Her father’s phone had fallen out of his pocket. The screen was cracked, but otherwise, it seemed intact. Nadia remembered hearing at school that you could dial 911 without unlocking a phone.

There was a noise to the left, or maybe it was just a feeling. It sent a chill down the girl’s spine. Nadia turned her head just in time to see the tendrils and leaves bulge at the top of the dresser enough to knock one of her snow globes to the floor.

It rolled to a stop against her foot. When she looked down, Nadia saw snow swirling around the Eiffel Tower.

“Naaaadia.”

Had the walls just spoken? It was the merging of sound and feeling again.

The leaves above the dresser fluttered and parted, revealing a memory. Much like with the sound, Nadia wasn’t sure if she was actually seeing or just reliving the day her father had given her the snow globe.

Through the leaves, another evening played out. It had been much like this one, except instead of ending up unconscious on the floor, her father had left her with a bruised rib for getting out of bed to turn on the lamp.

Nadia had had a particularly disturbing wall dream that night and was desperate for anything to push the darkness back. Instead, it had grown.

She realized with a start that the snow globe was now in her hand. It was heavier than she remembered. Her father’s bloodied head looked comically distorted when viewed through the glass sphere. It was almost as if it were about to pop like a brain-filled balloon.

The screen on her father’s phone lit up with a notification of an email from Ms. Waller at her school.

Nadia blinked and looked at the hard orb in her left hand and then turned to the glowing phone in her right. Her grip on the glass sphere loosened.

The walls came to life. Not just in one area, but everywhere. There was a pulse through the tendrils that made the paper leaves shudder and part. The furious energy flowing along the filth-drenched tendrils pushed toward the ceiling from all directions.

Nadia raised her chin as the thrashing concentrated directly above her father’s fallen body. She watched in disbelieving disgust as tongues of cold darkness pushed past the boundary of the gaudy wallpaper and reached down.

The tendrils flexed and crawled over each other, forming a tornado-like cone of writhing hate.

The slithering vortex spread like the roots of a cursed tree. They seemed to gesture to Nadia, encouraging her to step forward. Without knowing why, she obeyed and found herself standing over her father’s head.

The globe grew heavy in her hand. The roots were waiting for something, waiting for her. She raised the globe a few inches and saw a shudder ripple down the roots.

The phone lit up once more with a new notification, but Ms. Waller’s message was still there, just above the emergency call button.

In that moment, Nadia’s young mind was flooded with a revelation. For the first time in her life, she had power. Not just power, though. She held life and death in her small hands.

A chill passed through her. She wondered if it was like the one she’d seen pass through the tendrils. Probably not. Her hands may hold life and death, but she was certain there was only one option that would satisfy the nightmare in the walls.

Everything was the same: her father, her mother, the darkness, even Nadia herself. But somehow, the memory of Ms. Waller’s kindness had as much presence in that moment as the chaos strewn about.

The snow globe rolled out of Nadia’s hand as she stepped back.

“No.”

A guttural sound emanated from the dark walls like a choked scream of rage.

Nadia’s thumb hit the emergency call button. She entered 911.

The room exploded.

Tendrils pressed their way out of every corner of the room. The dark roots ripped through stuffed animals and pictures on the walls as they strained to reach the diminutive form that stood in the center of the room, defiant and kind.

Lit by the soft glow of the screen in her hand, Nadia hit “call.”

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

The tentacles were on her now. There was a tarry mist in the air. Nadia could taste it.

“My parents need help. Please hurry. They’re hurt.”

The darkness curled back as if strafed by a flamethrower. It flailed as each twist and turn emitted the screech of metal on glass. As the tendrils retreated, painted fronds swallowed their shadows. They gave a final rustle and were still, returning to a static two dimensions.

In spite of the destruction and blood that remained, the room felt lighter.

“Stay on the line, miss, we’re sending someone to you now.”

“Don’t worry, Nadia, you’re safe now.”

Nadia had finished telling the young police officer what had happened. She had not told her everything, though. She might only be six, but she knew her wall dreams were best left out.

The officer stood up and walked over to where the paramedic was waiting. Two other ambulances had already rushed off with Nadia’s parents, their blaring sirens clearing the way before they disappeared down the street.

“Alright, Stan, I’ve got everything I need,” she said, flipping her notebook closed. “No other family, but she kept mentioning some woman named Waller at her school. I guess I’ll start there.”

The paramedic pushed himself off the bumper of the ambulance with a grunt. He glanced at Nadia from under bushy gray eyebrows.

“Weird to be back here for the same kind of shi—uh—crap show again, right?” he said, shaking his head as he stole a glance over his shoulder at Nadia’s house.

“Doesn’t usually turn out this well,” the officer said. “That little girl defused the whole thing.”

Nadia kept her back to the pair. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She knew what the walls needed, and she would never give it, no matter where she called home.