Chapter 2
Story: She Slapped the Little One for Pointing at the Wall — Then Marcus Took a Mallet to It
Corinne's mouth stayed open for a long moment, and then it closed. Her hands unclasped, and her fingers pressed against the front of her dove-grey silk blouse, smoothing it down, as if the fabric needed her attention more than her husband did.
"Pipe," she said finally. "Old house. It's a pipe."
Marcus didn't look away from the seam in the plaster. "There's no pipe in this wall," he said. "The plumbing runs on the other side of the house. We had the whole system replaced two years ago. The plumber showed me the layout."
Corinne's smile was thin, brittle. "Well, maybe it's – mice. Or rats. In the walls."
"In a sealed plaster wall?" Priya said. She crouched beside the small figure, her emerald cardigan pooling on the dusty floorboards. "There's no gap, no vent, no baseboard. How would anything get in there?"
"Priya," Corinne said, her voice sharpening. "You're a guest in this house, and I'd appreciate it if—"
"She's not a guest," Marcus said. "She's my sister. And she's right. That wall is sealed."
The thudding came again. It was louder now, or maybe it just felt louder because they were all listening. A steady rhythm. Three beats, a pause, three beats. Like a hand knocking, or a fist, or something trying to be heard through the plaster.
The small figure pressed her ear against the wall. Her hand found the seam and traced it, following it down to the floor.
"It's cold," she said. "The air comes through. Right here."
Marcus crouched beside her. He felt the seam with his calloused fingers, and he felt it too. A thin thread of cold air, impossibly cold for a closed wall in a warm house. Cold like the air from a cellar. Cold like the air from a place that didn't want to be remembered.
"Where does this wall back onto?" he asked. He was talking to himself as much as to anyone. "Which room is on the other side?"
No one answered.
Marcus stood up. He walked out of the junk room, down the hallway, into the room next door. It was the formal dining room, the one they never used. He pressed his hand against the far wall. It was warm. Normal. There was no cold spot, no seam, no sense that anything was on the other side.
He came back to the junk room. His face was different. Closed. Thinking.
"It doesn't match," he said. "The dining room wall is smooth. No seam, no patch, no cold air. But this wall—" He touched the seam. "This wall was framed separately. It's not a wall at all. It's a box."
"A box," Priya repeated.
"A room," the small figure said.
Corinne made a sound. Low, involuntary, like a breath forced out. She was standing by the window now, the deep blue evening light behind her, her dove-grey blouse dark against the glass. Her face was hard to read. But her hands were at her sides, and they were not still. They were opening and closing, opening and closing, like she was trying to grip something that wasn't there.
"Corinne," Marcus said. His voice was quieter than it had been all evening. That made it worse. "I'm going to ask you one time. What is behind this wall?"
Corinne's mouth opened. Closed. Opened.
"It was here when I bought the house," she said. "The – the previous owner mentioned it. Some kind of old storage. They sealed it up years ago, before we even looked at the place. It's nothing. It's just an empty space that they closed off to save on heating."
"Then why is someone knocking on it?" the small figure asked.
The room went silent.
The thudding came again. Three beats. A pause. Three beats. And then, fainter but audible, a scraping sound. Like something being dragged across the other side of the plaster.
Priya pulled out her phone. She didn't unlock it, didn't call anyone. She just held it, her thumb hovering over the camera app, her eyes fixed on the seam.
"Priya," Corinne said, her voice sharp, "what are you doing?"
"Nothing yet," Priya said. She didn't put the phone down.
Marcus stepped toward the wall. He felt the seam with his fingers, working his way up from the floor to waist height. The patch was thin. Too thin. Anywhere else, a patch this thin would have cracked under the house settling. But this patch was straight and even, like it had been applied yesterday.
He looked at the boxes on the floor. At the heavy mallet leaning against the far-left box.
He looked at the mallet for a long moment.
"Marcus," Corinne said, "don't."
He didn't answer. He walked over and picked up the mallet. The wooden handle was smooth, worn, familiar in his grip. The steel head was heavy. He had used it two years ago to break up an old concrete path in the back garden, and he had forgotten it in the junk room ever since.
But he hadn't put it there. He had left it in the garage. He remembered that clearly, the way he remembered most things about his own tools. The mallet was supposed to be in the garage, on the pegboard, next to the sledgehammer.
"Who moved my mallet?" he said.
Corinne looked at the floor.
"Who moved it into this room?"
Priya said, "It was there when I came in. Leaning against that box. Like someone wanted it close."
Marcus turned to his wife. "What did you do?"
"Nothing," Corinne said. Her voice was high, thin. "I didn't do anything. That's – that's where you left it, Marcus. You must have left it there last time."
"I've never used it in this house," Marcus said. "I used it in the garden. I put it in the garage. I remember."
"You're wrong," Corinne said. "You're – you're confusing yourself. It's been a long day. You're tired. Please, just put it down and let's—"
The small figure's hand pressed against Marcus's arm. He looked down at her. Her dark curls were disheveled, her left cheek still carrying the red mark from the slap, but her eyes were steady, dark, certain.
"She's lying," the small figure said, flat and quiet, matter-of-fact as the evening hum. "She knows what's behind the wall. She doesn't want you to see."
Corinne's face drained. In the amber lamplight, her skin went from olive to grey.
"I don't know what you're talking about—"
"She's been putting her ear to it all week," the small figure said. "When she thinks no one's watching. At night. She stands here and she listens."
Everyone looked at Corinne.
Corinne's hand went to the gold stud in her ear. She touched it, once, twice, a nervous gesture Marcus had never seen before in twelve years of marriage.
"This child has an imagination," she said. "She watches too many—"
"She doesn't watch anything," Marcus said. "She's five. She doesn't have a tablet. She doesn't watch TV. She plays in the garden and she reads picture books, and she doesn't lie. She has never lied to me in her life."
It was true. The small figure was not his daughter — she was his niece, his sister Priya's child, staying with them for the summer while Priya worked a contract in the city. But in the three weeks she had been in this house, she had never once given Marcus a reason to doubt her.
"Priya," Marcus said, not taking his eyes off the wall, "take the little one back to the kitchen. Make her some toast. I need you out of this room."
"I'm not going anywhere," Priya said.
"Priya."
"Marcus," she said, her voice steady, quiet, "I was in the hallway when Corinne hit her. I heard the slap through the door. I have already made my decision about whose side I'm on. It's not hers."
Corinne looked at her sister-in-law, and something in her face shifted. Not guilt. Not fear. Something harder. Something closed.
"You've always been like this," Corinne said. "You've always been trying to turn Marcus against me. From the very beginning. Showing up early, staying late, whispering in his ear—"
"I've never whispered anything," Priya said. "I've said everything to his face, the same way I'll say it to yours. And right now, I'm telling him that your hand has been shaking since the moment we mentioned that wardrobe."
The thudding came again. Louder. Three beats. A pause. Three beats. And then, from the other side of the plaster, a voice. Faint, muffled, but unmistakably a voice, calling something none of them could quite make out.
Corinne backed toward the window. Her back hit the glass, and she stopped, trapped between the deep blue evening and the broken wall.
"Marcus," she said, and her voice was barely a whisper, "please. Please don't open it. Whatever you hear—please don't."
Marcus raised the mallet.
He brought it down on the plaster.
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