There's Something in the Walls

by Samuel Brower

  “Is he all right?” Alice shouted. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” David yelled back. “I’m gonna bring him out.”

  After a brief struggle, David had had enough, and grabbed Tommy around the waste as he writhed and jerked. David then lifted Tommy fully from the floor and hurried toward the hall, near tripping twice over all the god damned shit on the floor. He finally made it, and lowered Tommy to the ground in the hallway, then crouched over him. In the hall light the image of his friend sent a shockwave of panic through his body. It wasn’t sweat making Tommy feel slick and wet. It was blood. Tommy was absolutely covered in blood.

  Tommy stopped screaming and grabbed David by the collar, half pulling him down, half lifting himself up. He put his mouth very near to David’s ear.

  “It fucking bit me, man,” Tommy said, his teeth chattering from either fear, or blood loss, or both. “It got at me when I was asleep and it fucking bit me.”

  “What did? Where?”

  Tommy looked at David through unfocussed eyes, then he brought a hand up, moved it to the back of his neck at the base of his skull, and pressed his fingers there. David moved his friend, turning him on his side. He brushed Tommy’s stringy, blood-caked hair away from the spot he was holding, then pushed lightly at his hand. Tommy let his hand fall away.

  “Oh my god,” Alice hissed.

  David looked on in horror. There, on the back of Tommy’s head, was an almost perfect circle of a wound, about the size of a quarter. He couldn’t tell how deep it was through all the blood, but he thought that it had to be pretty deep for there to be this much blood.

  David turned to Alice. “Call an ambulance.”

  In fact, Alice already had her cell phone pressed to her ear and was in the process of doing just that, but she looked at David and nodded anyway.

  . . .

  Tommy was taken away in an ambulance not long after Alice made the call. Two police officers asked David and Alice a litany of questions before finally leaving them alone. Alice then apologized for having to do so, but she needed to be up early for class the next day and had to leave David and get some sleep. He walked her to her door and kissed her goodnight, then went back to his own apartment and went to bed himself.

  The next morning David woke up feeling surprisingly well rested. Tommy’s injury had weighed heavy on his mind when he’d lain down, but he’d fallen asleep relatively easily. He’d gotten out of bed and went for a walk to plan his day. He needed to visit Tommy at the hospital, of course. He also needed to find out what had happened to his friend. Tommy had said that something bit him. But that couldn’t be. What could leave a perfectly circular bite mark? It was more likely Tommy had fallen and hit his head on something that left a puncture wound. He’d probably knocked himself silly, which accounted for why he’d said such strange things.

  After about an hour of walking, David returned to the Perkins Building and went up to the fifth floor to his apartment door. He stopped, and on a whim decided to help Tommy out a little with his apartment while he was recovering. David remembered kicking over stacks of papers, and of course there was the blood that needed to be dealt with. David moved down to Tommy’s door and opened it. The lock had been broken when he kicked the door in the night before. With daylight streaming in through the windows, David could see the inside of the room now. The mess was a little more extreme than he’d thought.

  David moved gingerly through the room. After walking for so long the wound in his foot had begun to sting before smoothing out into an all over dull pain. David had no doubt that he’d have to throw away another bloody sock by the end of the day. He hoped the damned thing would heal soon, otherwise he’d end up having to go to the hospital or an urgent care, and the bill would be ridiculously high.

  David made his way to the back corner of the apartment where Tommy kept the little military cot that he slept on. He screwed up his face when he saw the pillow on the cot. It was almost completely red with blood. There were long streaks of scarlet staining the floor and some of the stacks of papers around the bed, where blood seemed to have poured out in great gouts. David came in with the intention of cleaning, but now that he saw the true scale of what he was dealing with he wondered what he could even hope to do. He decided he could at least restack all the papers, files, magazines, and newspapers. And throw away the blood soaked pillow. There was no saving it, he knew. He’d buy his friend a new one after visiting the hospital today.

  David got to work, starting with the stacks right near the cot and working his way outward. When he reached the edge of the room where Tommy had a small writing desk, he noticed several pieces of wrinkled paper, laid out as if for some purpose. He moved in a little closer and examined them. Missing pet flyers. Four of the them, all told. Three dogs and a cat. David had no idea what interest Tommy could have in something like this, or why he would’ve pulled the leaflets down from telephone poles, or corkboards, or wherever. But then he looked a little closer at the flyer all the way on the left, and realized something. He recognized the dog in the picture.

  This particular leaflet had been printed on a color printer instead of photocopied like the rest. Because of this, the picture was clearer and David recognized the little brown spot in the middle of the pictured terrier-mix’s forehead, which had presumably led to the mutt’s name, Bullseye. It was Mr. Gustafson’s dog, from the second floor. David sometimes ran into them on his morning walks.

  David looked at the other flyers and thought that he might recognize one of the other dogs as well. Were they all from the building? Three of the leaflets offered cash rewards to whoever found the missing animals, the fourth did not. Was Tommy just chasing some extra cash? If that were the case, why would he have taken the leaflet where no cash reward was offered?

  It fucking bit me, man…

  David shook his head, then continued moving throughout the room, righting the knocked over stacks of Tommy’s archives. When he’d made the room into what only Tommy may have considered organized, he went to the kitchenette and opened the cabinet beneath the sink. He rummaged around until he found a box of trash bags, took one out, and went back to Tommy’s cot. David took the blood soaked pillow by the very corner of the least bloody end. He dropped the pillow into the bag, then after a moment’s deliberation, wadded up a thin blanket that wasn’t in as bad a shape as the pillow, but still past the level of being able to be properly cleaned. He pushed the blanket into the bag right along with the pillow, then tied the top. His work done, David left the room and walked down to the stairwell. He started down the steps, again being reminded about his possibly-infected foot when pain began to pulse through his wound.

  David went out into the bright daylight of the early afternoon, stopping at the dumpster beside the building to dispose of Tommy’s soiled bedclothes, then headed for his car. The drive to the hospital was a short one, and David was soon waiting at the reception desk for a busy looking, heavy set nurse to finish her phone call and help him. He had to wait longer than the drive had taken.

  “May I help you?” the nurse asked immediately after hanging up the phone but without looking up at David.

  “Thomas Lambert,” David said. “He was brought in late last night with a head injury.”

  The nurse, still not looking up, tapped away on a keyboard on her desk, staring vacantly at her computer screen as she did do.

  “Checked himself out this morning,” the nurse said.

  David didn’t respond for a moment as this news worked its way through his mind, then he said, “That’s impossible. He hasn’t been home.”

  The nurse shook her head, then tapped on the computer screen. “Seven thirty-eight AM this morning, it says. Thomas Lambert, right?”

  David nodded.

  “I’m sorry, sir. He’s no longer here.”

  “Well…can I talk to the doctor who saw him?”

  “Are you family?”

  “No,” David said, then immediately cursed himself for not ly
ing.

  “The doctor wouldn’t be able to disclose information to you anyway then. I’m sorry.”

  David waited a moment, and then a thought occurred to him. “Is there anyway there were two Thomas Lamberts here and you just have the wrong one?”

  “No,” the nurse said, offering no further explanation. Just then the phone on her desk rang and she picked it up. She turned away from David and spoke to whoever was on the other end.

  David, more worried than ever about his friend, turned and left the hospital. Had Tommy gone to his mother’s? It was possible. Hell, even likely. Where else would he go when he needed someone to take care of him? David wished he had asked the nurse if she could at least tell him whether Tommy had been released, or if he had left before the doctors said it was okay. It would make him feel better to know for sure whether the doctors thought Tommy was well enough to go out on his own. But the nurse probably wouldn’t have given him the information anyway, since he was only a friend, and not family.

  David didn’t know where Tommy’s mother lived, and he couldn’t call his friend because Tommy refused to get a cell phone. Between the radiation they gave off and the fact that the government could easily get reams of information about you from a smart phone, Tommy said that cell phones were out of the question for him. David considered a moment trying to find Tommy’s mother’s number in the phone book and reaching out to her, but then dismissed it. This was LA, after all, and who knew how many Lamberts were in the book? It would probably take him longer to find Tommy’s mother than it would for Tommy just to end up back home on his own.

  David wondered what he would do with the rest of his day now. He had planned nothing beyond visiting Tommy in the hospital. He decided he would just go home. Maybe he would continue editing his new story or, hell, maybe even have one or both of the beers Alice had left in his fridge the night before. It was settled. David went back to his car in the hospital’s parking garage, then headed for home.

  . . .

  As it turned out, the two beers left in the fridge hadn’t been enough to wet David’s whistle. After he’d finished them, he felt like having a few more. He’d walked to the corner store directly after throwing away the second empty bottle. He’d looked around for a moment for the same kind of beer, but soon realized the little bodega he was in just wasn’t the type of place to carry that kind of thing, and settled for a six pack of Budweiser. David checked Tommy’s apartment when he came back from the store to make sure he hadn’t returned home while David was out. Tommy’s apartment was still empty…

  David went back to his room and sat in his chair. He set the sixer down within easy reach, then took a bottle and opened it. A good drunk was what he needed, David decided. That would help ease the worry over his friend. He drank down the entire bottle in a few, long pulls, then opened the next. With the two bottles of Alice’s very-high-alcohol-content brews already in him, it didn’t take long for David to become completely shit-housed.

  A little bit of plaster fell on David’s shoulder. He swept it away, then rubbed at his eyes. Had he been sleeping? He peered over the arm of his chair and counted six empty beer bottles, three placed carefully back in the six pack holder from where they came, two placed upright next the those four but outside the carrier, and the last laying in its side about a foot away. David laughed at this, because the bottle placement seemed to be a chart showing the progression of his drunkenness.

  He looked out the window and was surprised to find it was fully dark. What time was it? How had he passed out and slept until nightfall? He realized then that he’d had nothing to eat all day. No wonder the beer had hit him so hard. Why hadn’t he eaten? That was odd, David had a routine, it wasn’t like him to miss a meal, let alone meals plural.

  More plaster fell on him from above, and this time David thought he heard something up there as well. It was like the sound made when dragging your feet through gravel. He looked up. The hole in the ceiling stared back at him. David watched for a moment as the hole seemed to widen a bit at the edges, then heard more of the gravelly sound. Then, something inside the hole glimmered as it caught the light coming in from the kitchen. It was only for a moment, but David was sure he had seen something silvery up there. The crunching gravel sound came again, and more plaster fell.

  David jumped up from his chair, then swayed a little, drunk. He grabbed the chair and pushed it into a position directly below the hole. Then he took hold of the back rest, stepped up onto the seat, and stood on top of it. With his face very near the damaged part of the ceiling, David could see much better. He could see some of the framework of lumber between his ceiling and the slats of the floorboards of the apartment above him. He could also see that nearly every inch of what he was looking at was covered in the same dark slime that seemed to be filling up the building’s skeleton and dripping out through its walls ever since the earthquake.

  David started to get down, to retrieve his cell phone, which had a flashlight app on it that would activate the camera’s flash and keep it on. He wanted to get a better look at the slime. But before he stepped off the chair, the crunching gravel sound came again, and the glimmering, silver object caught more light. Had David been sober, he wouldn’t have even though about what he did next. But, with the alcohol blurring his vision, and his wits, he plunged a hand into the hole in his ceiling, and grabbed hold of the object that kept catching the kitchen light. He felt his hand close around it, but also felt his fist plunge into a glob of muck. Even through his inebriation, this sensation sent shivers down his spine. David jerked his hand back, still grasping whatever it was that he’d grabbed, and his fist came out of the hole looking like he had just reached into a barrel of hot tar. Fright took him, he lost his balance, and fell backwards off the chair. The back of his head banged hard on the floorboards, and stars shot across his vision.

  David moaned, his head throbbing, and felt like he was going to pass out. He lay there a while, staring at the ceiling. What was happening to him? He felt sluggish, dazed. Was it just the alcohol and the fall he’d just taken? It didn’t seem possible that even the combination of the two could make him feel so strange. Did he have some major head injury? He hadn’t fallen very far, but maybe he’d hit his head in just the right spot. His slimy hand began to tingle, and this reminded David of what he was holding. He slowly lifted his too-heavy arm from the floor and brought the object up to where he could see it. He realized now that the shining thing he’d seen was only part of it. Straps hung from either side of his hand, and after wicking some of the sludge away he saw a silver buckle. It was a collar. A pet’s collar.

  David used his thumb to clean off the tag hanging from the collar’s middle, then moved it closer to his face to examine the word pressed into the metal there. So close to his nose, the smell coming from the slime dizzied him further and blurred his vision. David squeezed one eye shut and peered at the dog tag with the other, like a drunk driver trying to see one road ahead instead of two. His sight cleared some, and after a moment’s effort he could see the word. “Bullseye,” it read. Bullseye. Mr. Gustafson’s dog. This was Mr. Gustafson’s missing dog’s collar.

  . . .

  Alice came to see David the next morning. Her cold had worsened and she hadn’t gone to class because of it. This was fine with David. He hadn’t slept well, and had gone to Tommy’s apartment again soon after dawn. He’d again found it empty. An hour later while he was standing over the kitchen sink staring at the sludge-covered dog collar as he ran water over it, Alice’s soft patter of a knock came to the door. He’d rushed to it and let Alice in, then guided her straight to the sink while she explained how she was too sick for school and wanted to see him.

  “What is that?” Alice asked, twisting her face and looking into the sink.

  “It’s a dog’s collar,” David said.

  “Okay… Why is it in your sink? And what’s all over it?”

  David reached out and turned the water off, realizing it wasn’t doing much to clean
the collar. Whatever the slime was, it didn’t seem to be water soluble.

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy,” David said, looking at Alice seriously.

  “David, what is it?”

  “Okay…” David walked over to his dresser by the window and took a leaflet of paper from atop it, then returned to Alice. He handed it to her. It was the missing dog flyer. He’d taken it from Tommy’s room this morning. “Look at that.”

  Alice looked it over for a minute. “I saw one of these hanging down in the lobby. Is that collar from the same dog?”

  David nodded.

  “Where did you find it?”

  In answer, David walked over to the hole in his ceiling, pointed up, and said, “In there.”

  Alice looked up at the hole, then back at the flyer in her hands, then at the collar in the sink. The expression on her face was blank.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Neither do I, Alice. Not really. But… Okay, here’s where it gets crazy. Just bear with me, all right?”

  David waited a moment until Alice nodded at him.

  “So the night of the earthquake… The ground under us basically broke open, right? And then the next day the walls are bleeding this black slime… And everyone starts getting sick… And then Tommy gets bitten in the middle of the night… And now people’s pets are disappearing, and I found that collar, from one of the missing pets in a glob of the slime in my ceiling—”

  Alice stepped forward and put her hand on David’s chest, then patted twice. “Just stop a moment, David. Your nose is dripping.”