Girl in the Walls

by A. J. Gnuse

  The house now seemed so open around her. As if the roof had been torn off, and something dark and large circled above. She went upstairs and crawled into her walls. She took her book and squeezed it tight against her chest.

  “What have I done?” she asked. She took a deep breath, shuddering. The empty dark around her. Her eyes shut. With no one in the world to talk to, she told Odin what had happened.

  And, from the darkness, the wise god said, “Well, that’s a mess.”

  She’d made a mistake. Another mistake.

  But even he had made mistakes before—right?

  “Many,” the old god’s voice echoed, sad, through the empty space between the walls. “I still often do.”

  But as one sovereign to another, he wished her the best of luck.

  Elise stayed there in her walls for a while. She collected herself. Then she pulled herself out.

  Had to.

  Elise went to the utility closet and snatched a broom. The boy had left gray footprints all over the floors.

  “Right,” Odin said. “Good luck with those, too.”

  More Work

  “BUT THE GARAGE IS FINE THE WAY IT IS!” MARSHALL SAID. “WE don’t even use it anyway.”

  “That’s the problem,” his father said.

  When Eddie’s family moved into the new home, the small garage was already half-filled with lumber and cardboard that had been left by the family before them. Since the Masons were moving into a house much larger than the one they had before on the Northshore, Eddie remembered the words his parents had repeated to one another when they were packing up the U-Hauls and looking over the collection of the boys’ outgrown, childhood clothes and toys, a push lawn mower in need of repair, enormous kayaks the family hadn’t used in years.

  “There’s so much space in the new house,” they’d said. “We’ll sort it all out there.”

  The house had engulfed their objects easily enough. But the result was chaotic spaces in the attic, and especially in the garage, where white and black garbage bags of clothes and old sports equipment were stacked on top of necessary things, extension cords and tools and cleaning supplies. Bikes with rusted chains were wedged behind their father’s workbench, cardboard boxes filled with assorted things already forgotten and lost and being replaced. Marshall’s parents had tasked him with cleaning it out.

  “I’ll be spending my entire summer vacation working on y’all’s projects, won’t I?” Marshall asked, dropping his book bag in the foyer when they arrived home from school.

  His father sorted through the mail. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you quit your job.”

  That evening, Eddie sat on the library sofa with a book, all the while hearing, several rooms over, Marshall dragging boxes, cursing, and kicking at them. Upstairs, his father worked in his office while his mom dust-mopped the wood floors—Eddie smelled the lemon-scented Endust even down here. A horsefly, likely snuck in through the open garage doors, spiraled above him and hummed relentlessly.

  Eddie tried to slap the bug with the back of his book every time it passed through the light of the floor lamp, but as soon as he sat up, the bug slipped out of view. Its buzz distracted him from a book that was hard enough to pay attention to—a dry, historical one from his grandmother about the Spanish-American War, written for adults, that he’d put off reading for months. The easiest solution was to go upstairs, put up with the smell of Endust in the hallway, and read in his bedroom. But since his birthday, he hadn’t enjoyed being in his room.

  Across the house, Marshall wasn’t becoming any more productive. He’d been working for over an hour, but before that had spent as long as he could in his room, delaying the work. He hadn’t begun until their father had hammered on the door, demanding he get off his ass and get at it. And even since then, Marshall had come in several times through the kitchen door, calling up to ask whether a cracked Frisbee, a box of packing peanuts, or a bin of soiled cloths should be kept. He lingered inside each time, flipped on the television for a few minutes. He grumbled that if his parents had hired someone to do the work in the guest room, he wouldn’t have to do this on his own. He came in the library to tell Eddie it was ridiculous his younger brother didn’t have to work on the garage as well.

  “It’s not like you’ve got a job, either.”

  Around dinnertime, Marshall again shot halfway up the stairs, to call up to his parents. “So, what are we eating tonight?”

  “Something in the pantry for you and your brother,” their mom shouted down. “There might be some leftovers from the restaurant still in the fridge.”

  “From Brennan’s? There’s nothing left. You know it.”

  “Marshall, watch yourself,” she said. “I’ve spent the whole evening cleaning up dirt you boys have tracked in all over the house. Go find something, okay?”

  Marshall descended the stairs. He crossed into the library where his loose black jeans and small belt buckle stood at the edge of Eddie’s peripherals as he read. Marshall grabbed each side of the book and closed it shut.

  “Dinnertime,” he said.

  Small Signs

  EDDIE SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE AND WATCHED HIS BROTHER scour the pantry. Marshall lifted a bag of black-eyed peas, read the back, and dropped it on the shelf. He did the same with a can of corn, and again with one of green beans. The tin of the cans smacked against the wood. Eddie winced each time.

  “There’s nothing here,” Marshall said. “No dinner food.”

  “I’m not really hungry,” Eddie said. Part of the reason was that Marshall had left the garage door open, and the sawdust and mildew smells had begun turning his stomach. The other part was that, if he could choose, he’d rather not eat than be around Marshall.

  “Yeah, dipshit,” Marshall said. “Me eating and you not will go over real well for me with the parents. Don’t be dumb. But, seriously, what are we actually supposed to eat? Cereal? Even these boxes are mostly empty.” Marshall stepped out of the pantry and shook the Raisin Bran. “I didn’t realize any of us ate this crap.”

  Eddie’s gaze lay on the stained-glass window above the stovetop vent, the one that led nowhere but into the dark of the wall space.

  “Do you even eat this junk?”

  “No.”

  “Really?” Marshall opened the box of Raisin Bran and peered inside, shook it. He closed the lid and tossed the box to the top shelf where it toppled to its side. Marshall considered Eddie, his lips pursed.

  “Why are you looking at me?” Eddie asked.

  Marshall had grown into a way of examining Eddie sometimes, as if seeing him like he were some other boy, not a brother. Like Marshall was puzzling out what to do with him. The look made Eddie feel like a stranger. He could be sitting next to Marshall on the couch for an hour and a half, watching television, and if he turned to see that expression, he knew he might end up with one of their mother’s throw pillows shoved into his face.

  Marshall stood up straight. He went to the fridge and opened it, tilted the crown of his head back and looked inside through the bottom of his eyes.

  “Hm.” He closed the fridge. “Well, someone did.” Marshall moved around the kitchen counter, still watching Eddie.

  Eddie felt relieved when his brother turned and left the room. But after his brother’s dragging feet faded, climbing again up the stairs, the emptiness of the kitchen swelled around him. Eddie was alone on the first floor. The stained-glass window that led into the wall caught the light from the overhead lamp, so its painted fleur-de-lis illuminated as though a candle shone from the other side. The porcelain rooster teapot on the top of the glassware cabinet made bug-eyed, wild eye contact with him.

  Now even the teapot was getting to him. Eddie rubbed the bones below his eyes, then his temples. Nothing in the house was listening. It was his imagination. Why couldn’t he shake that feeling?

  Eddie stood and closed the garage door. He went to the threshold of the kitchen and living room, then passed on to the foot of the st
airs. His brother was arguing with their parents. Eddie leaned against the antique clock, hearing its steady ticking, and watched the pendulum swing. The horsefly hummed in another room.

  Above, his mom’s voice: “I’ll get to the grocery store soon, Marshall!”

  “Mom, I’m not saying that—”

  “Then I’m not following,” she said. “Hey, please. You’re standing right in the pile I swept up.”

  “Okay, whatever. Well, I’m trying to say—”

  “Marshall!”

  Eddie imagined his father opening the office door, still hunched in his rolling chair, leaning out into the hall. “Does it look like we want to hear, one more time, about your goddamn Pop-Tarts?”

  “Dad, I’m not talking about—”

  “Marshall,” his father said. “For the love of God, can you just stop? This isn’t Tom and Jerry. Maybe can you just give the stupid childishness a break. Just tonight, since we’re busy, maybe can you think and act like a normal kid?”

  Eddie’s mom said something too soft to hear, probably to their father, telling him to tone his temper down. But when Marshall spoke, Eddie heard him well enough. “Dad, you can screw yourself.”

  Marshall rumbled down the stairs. Their father calling after him. Marshall paused at the base of the stairs, breathing heavy through his nose, his face raging bright red, his lower lip puckered and pouting. Eddie sidestepped him, crossing to the other side of the clock, allowing him a berth to pass.

  Marshall watched him. His voice hushed when he spoke. “You’re in this house. You’re here. And I’m the one Dad’s calling a child? Calling weird?” He looked up at the ceiling, clenching his fists.

  “You know what?” Marshall said. “I don’t need this. Fuck this place. Fuck this family.”

  Brody

  THIS WAS THEIR AGREEMENT: BRODY COULD COME BACK, TODAY, AS long as he didn’t tell a single soul they’d met. Elise hadn’t told him more than that. When he had asked her which room was her bedroom, she had said she preferred sleeping on the couch. Fortunately, for a boy like Brody, that seemed to be enough.

  At the back door that morning, Brody showed up thirty minutes early, knocking on the window, and leaving smudges on the glass. Elise pointed at an imaginary wristwatch on her arm, grabbed two clumps of her hair, and mimed ripping them out. She opened the door, but held the screen shut and pointed down at his feet, which were still bare and caked in mud.

  “If this is going to happen,” she said, “that isn’t.”

  Elise wiped clean the window and sent him back twice to the hose alongside the house to spray his feet, the second time demanding the “jet” setting (worry stiffened his face) until finally they were clean, the heels and tops and soles, his skin blotchy pink from the harsh stream. She tossed him a towel and, while he dried off, she had him answer questions, ones she had prepared the long evening before.

  “Who did you talk to last night? Did you tell anyone about me? Who knows where you were yesterday, where you are now?”

  “No?”

  “No to what?”

  “All? I didn’t tell anybody. Auntie’s at work, so I came over.”

  “Why aren’t you at school?”

  “Homeschool. Auntie doesn’t believe in Halloween. She took me out of school last year after we did jack-o’-lantern cupcakes and decorated the calendar board with bats. You going to let me in?”

  “You didn’t tell anyone about me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you a spy?”

  “Yes.”

  She considered. That was probably the safest response. “You can come in.”

  Once he was inside, Elise realized what little control she really had over the boy. It was like steering a wild goat with nothing but her open palms. Brody wandered the rooms, opened cabinets and drawers, chewed ice from the freezer, insisted on seeing how fast the overheard fans would go. He turned on the television, raised the volume, and darted away to another room, still listening to the shows. She could make suggestions, put her foot down when he wanted to go too far (like sliding down the banisters, pretending the floor was lava), but she felt, more than anything, like a babysitter scrambling after a toddler.

  Elise couldn’t keep him out of the bedrooms. He lunged atop the parents’ bed and rolled across the sheets. Marshall’s death metal posters fascinated him. “Wicked!” Eddie’s room startled him. “Everything’s opened up!” Even with Elise snatching at the back of his shirt collar, he sprang between the boys’ rooms, tripping over dirty laundry on the floor. “Does he have video games on here?” he said, running his fingers along Marshall’s computer keyboard.

  Brody touched everything.

  This would be it. No way she could clean this up. He’d gone into every room—moved so many things. How could she move it all back? She could hardly catch all of his footprints last time.

  “My cousin has Duck Hunters and Alien Invaders. I played last time I went over—he lives in Chalmette, across the river by the big oil refineries. How do we turn the computer on to see what he’s got?”

  “We don’t.”

  Elise was firm here. No way she’d allow him that incomprehensible machine, with its strange chimes and rings. She figured whatever Brody planned to do to it would need fixing, and she’d be stuck having no idea how. She thought of Marshall, the sharp points of his shoulder blades sticking out the back of his shirt like sprouting wings of a dragon. His oversized knuckles. Too easy to imagine him coming home, finding something wrong with it and, in anger, punching a hole in her wall.

  “You have to go now,” Elise said.

  “But you said I could stay until the owl hooted from the clock downstairs.”

  “You’re leaving now.”

  “I can leave whenever I want.”

  “No, you can’t. Get out.”

  Something wild and immovable in her eyes. She knew it from the way Brody looked at her. He turned around in the room, resigned to his fate. He hung his head while she led him out.

  Life, and What’s Missing

  BUT THE NEXT DAY, ELISE SAW HIM THROUGH THE GUEST ROOM window, walking along the levee, the tuft of his odd bowl-cut bobbing in the glare. He carried a bag of Doritos and the board game Life under his arm.

  She opened the window and called out to him, “Hey! Hey! Get in here!”

  After he’d circled around back and, once again, had finished washing his feet with the hose outside, he grimaced with his chin tucked tight to his neck, still pouting from the day before. “You never told me your name.”

  Her mouth full of his Doritos, Elise told him, “It’s none of your business.”

  The less he knew, the better. That voice in her head, nagging at her, was right about that much, even if Elise ignored its howling protestations about allowing him in now. Yesterday’s long afternoon, listening to the Masons’ routines beneath her, waiting until they finally went to bed, the whole while knowing that tomorrow would be the same dead quiet of the house, then the same afternoon routines, that most days would be exactly the same, hour by hour, week by week—she’d been worn down.

  Elise had Brody pour the contents of Life out on the dining room table. And when he did, she discovered most of the pieces were missing, including every last bill of the bright-colored game money. And even if they had them all, playing through middle age was impossible, as the cardboard had been left long in the sun, and much of the text had bleached to illegibility. Elise squinted at Brody, expecting some justification, but the boy only shrugged as if surprised as she was.

  “Do you want to investigate your house?” he asked.

  “I thought you wanted to play a board game.”

  “You’ve got a really good house.”

  “I already know what it looks like.”

  “Okay, well, I’m going to investigate.”

  “No way,” she said. “You’re going to move things, and switch things, and turn things on. You made a mess yesterday, you know that? Everywhere. You weren’t even here that lon
g. Took me forever to get it right.”

  Brody groaned. “Why are you always fixing things? You’re always moving it all back and cleaning right away. Do your parents say you have to?”

  Elise wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “Even my uncle isn’t that bad about cleaning.” Brody craned his neck to study the chandelier above them and twisted in his chair to look over the antique china cabinet. “Are you homeschooled, too?”

  “No,” she said. “Well, yes. Sort of. I just don’t go anymore.”

  “What about your brothers?” Brody asked.

  “They’re not my brothers.” She shouldn’t have said it. But the thought of lying then seemed exhausting, like its own kind of sneaking around.

  “Oh,” Brody said. He looked around at the picture frames hung on the walls. “I wondered about that. You’re creepy looking. Your hair’s all flat and dirty. Looks like you crawled out of the ground. Was wondering how you got allowed to be that way.”

  Elise patted lightly at her hair. She didn’t think it was that bad.

  “Are you being punished? Is that why you’re always here alone?”

  “No,” Elise said. For whatever reason, the question stung. “No. I’m here because I want to be here. Nobody tells me what to do. Nobody else knows.”

  What was she doing?

  “Really?” Brody said. His eyes grew. He leaned over in his chair. “Do you sneak into houses, too?”

  “What?” she said. “No.” She squinted at him. “Is that what you’re doing all day?”

  “Have you snuck in any other houses around here? Do you live in another home, when you aren’t here?” He turned his head to the side. “Which one?”

  “No. This is my home,” she said. “This is where I live. So, wait, how many houses are you sneaking into?”

  Brody didn’t answer. He stared at her, mouth agape, eyebrows raised in childish fascination.

  That part of her pleaded, No, don’t take this from yourself—but Elise ignored it, giving in to the rush, the vibrating warmth, of having eyes on her, wide with excitement. Someone wanting to know more, caring to know, about her. Hidden for months—months—when part of the feeling of being alive is seeing someone see you, react to you.