There's Something in the Walls

by Samuel Brower

  “The thing. The thing in the walls.”

  The clicking noise went on, and David watched as Tommy crouched over his table and moved his hand quickly over something.

  “What are you doing?” David asked again.

  “I’m getting ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Ready to fight it.”

  The street lamp outside kicked in and a new band of light illuminated David’s apartment. It fell on Tommy, who winced and held a hand up to block the light from his eyes. David saw him. His friend was so pale he almost looked like a corpse. His face seemed jaundiced. There was a layer of dried snot crusted over his lips and smeared onto his cheek. His eyes were circled in black bruises and his hair was wet like he’d just had a shower. But by the smell of him, David knew that last part couldn’t be true.

  “What happened to you, man?” David asked. “You look like hell.”

  “It tried to eat me, David. When I was sleeping. But I woke up before it could, and now I know what it’s up to. It hooked into me, you know? I could feel it…searching around inside my head. At the hospital they said my skull was intact, but I know it got into my brain somehow. I could feel it. Feel it in my thoughts. But I was also able to get a read on it. I don’t know how, and I don’t think it had experienced that before, because it let me go as soon as I saw inside it. It’s a predator, man. A carnivore. And everyone in this building is its prey.”

  “Tommy…that sounds…crazy.”

  “I know it does. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true. I know what I saw.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “First, I’m gonna’ make sure my head’s clear. Gotta’ get rid of the gunk it caked all over my gears. That’s what this is for.” Tommy set something down he’d been holding, then motioned at the table top where he’d been clicking away.

  “What is it?” David asked, unable to see.

  In answer, Tommy brought a dollar bill out of his pants pocket and began to tightly roll it up. Then he bent over the floor, put a finger to one side of his nose, closing the nostril. He tensed, and a glob of mucus shot out of his nose and hit the floor with an audible slap. Next he stuck the dollar bill in his cleared nasal passage and bent over the table. He snorted, and moved the straw he’d make in a line across the tabletop.

  “Tommy, is that cocaine?” David asked. “Are you nuts?”

  Tommy straightened up from the table and wiped at his nose. “It’s not cocaine. Cocaine wears off too quickly. I needed something long term.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Adderall. My sister’s kid takes it for ADHD. It should do the trick. Come here and take some. You’ll need it if you’re going to help me.”

  “Help you what?”

  “Fight it, man. If we don’t kill it, it’ll kill us.”

  “Tommy… This is just too crazy. There were men here today. They came to check the place out. To see what was going on with the walls and the slime. Mrs. Perkins got into a fight with them and fired them… That was sort of my fault. But at least it shows she’s trying. I bet more people will be by soon to check it out and fix it.”

  Tommy laughed. It was a rueful sound. “They won’t know what to do. This thing has never been encountered by humans before, not in our known history anyway. Even if they believed what they saw, they’d be completely unprepared for how to deal with it. I’ve seen stuff like that happen a thousand times in my research… But me? I’ve been getting ready for something like this all my life. I’m the only one who can stop it. But I could use your help. Strength in numbers, you know?”

  “We should just leave, Tommy. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not saying you’re wrong… I guess I should tell you in case Alice didn’t. Whatever happened to you that gave you that hole in on your head. It happened to me too. I knocked myself silly afterwards, so I don’t remember it. But a few things have come back to me. I remember being thrown around like a rag doll. I mean…I don’t even know if that really happened, it’s just a flash of a memory in my head, but still… If what you’re saying is true, if it’s some kind of creature, and if it really can do what I think it did to me, there’s no way we can kill it. We should just leave and get everyone else to come with us…”

  Tommy put the dollar bill to his nose again, hunched over the table, and snorted. He righted himself, and his eyes looked wider now, clearer.

  “Not a chance, man,” he said. “You remember what Mrs. Perkins said the other day when I threatened to have this place condemned? About how a lot of the people who live here would be out on the street? Well, as much as I hate to agree with the old bitch on anything, she was right about that. If we all leave, where will we all go. Sure, some of us will be all right, but others will be homeless. And besides, I don’t think it’s smart to just leave that thing in here. I don’t know where it came from, but I imagine wherever it was, the food supply was scarce. Here… I think it started small, eating rats and insects, god knows this place had an abundance of both. Within a few days after the earthquake, people’s pets started missing. And now, it tried to get at me, and it tried to get at you. And it failed, maybe it just wasn’t strong enough yet, but how long before it is? What if it moves on to another building, or, god forbid, lays eggs or splits into two of those things or something? We have to kill it, man. There’s no other choice.”

  “But how? How could we do that?”

  “I stabbed it! That first day, remember? I made it bleed. If it can bleed, it can die. It’s as simple as that.”

  David took a few, measured breaths. “All right, what’s your plan, then?”

  Tommy tapped on the table top. “First I’m gonna’ get as much of this shit in my system as I can. Get rid of all the cobwebs. Then I’ll make a plan. I’m useless right now.” Tommy bent and snorted another line of powder. “Alice said she heard Mrs. Perkins bitching to herself after her argument with the guys who came for the inspection. Something about not having the money to pay for repairs because folks are late on their rent. Especially the old folks who are usually always on time. Got me thinking. If this thing started with rats, then worked its way up to dogs, what’s next in line?”

  “People,” David said.

  “But not just any people. It would go after the weakest first. Like lions on the Serengeti. Target the very old, the very young, and the infirm first. Easiest prey.”

  “Makes sense, I guess.”

  “So we go door to door. Anyone with kids, anyone especially sick, any senior citizens we find, we warn them. Tell them to get out. Make something up if we have to, but get them to stay away for a few days.”

  “What if they’ve got nowhere else to go?”

  “Then we do the best we can to get as many of them out as we can. Minimize casualties. That’s priority number one.” Tommy stood up from his chair. He seemed unsteady at first, but soon he was pacing back and forth like he always did when he had something stuck in his craw. “The stuff in the walls, it can’t be the main part of the creature. It’s just tentacles, or veins, or…something. We could probably hack away at that shit for a month and get ourselves nowhere. There has to be a main part to it. Something with organs, a heart, a liver, brains… If what I think is right, that the plates in the earth beneath this place cracked and split, and let something out, it would make sense that the creature is still beneath us.”

  “Like in the basement?”

  Tommy scoffed, glaring at David, and shook his head. “There aren’t any basements in California. It’s probably still down in the Earth’s crust, just higher up than it was before. Like a mollusk that moves from one shell to another when it grows too big for the old one... I’ll have to try and get some digging tools. Shovels and pick axes probably won’t be enough. I wonder if I could get online and search the deep web, see if I can get my hands on a jack hammer, maybe some explosives—”

  “Tommy, hold on, explosives?” David asked.

  But it was too late. Tommy whisked out of the apa
rtment, still talking to himself. He didn’t even bother to close the door. David heard his friend clop down the hall to his own door.

  “Start warning them, David,” Tommy shouted from the hall. “I’ll help you as soon as I can, but go ahead and start warning people.”

  David was still sitting up in his bed. With a great amount of effort, he threw his legs over the edge of the bed. His head whirled with the exertion. Still he pressed on, stood, and began to dress.

  . . .

  The next morning, David remembered his screenplay. He hadn’t thought about it in days, it seemed. Then he realized he hadn’t even checked his cell phone to see if Sandra had tried to reach him. He hadn’t slept at all the night before. He’d started warning people on the bottom floor soon after Tommy left, and made his way upward. All told, he’d only had about fifteen residents answer their doors. And of those, most just seemed to think he was paranoid, or drunk, or both, when he told them that the inspectors had discovered dangerous levels of black mold in the building before Mrs. Perkins fired them, and that they needed to go away for a few days while it was cleaned up.

  That was the lie he’d come up with. And he’d only been able to come up with that because Tommy had left a single line of white powder on his table. And David had snorted it. He’d had to. His body was hardly under his command before that, but afterwards he was able to have a few coherent thoughts at least. The lie hadn’t worked very well. Of the fifteen people who answered their doors, only one had seemed to believe him. That was Miss Anne, in the apartment directly above his. She said she would call a nephew she had in San Francisco and see if she might stay with him a few days.

  Tommy had never come to help David. He’d done the whole building by himself. And when he checked Tommy’s apartment after the few hours it had taken, he’d found it empty. Tommy was gone again, and that worried David, but it wasn’t why he hadn’t slept. The Adderall he’d snorted wasn’t even the reason, if one could believe that. The reason he’d sat up all night in his writing chair, staring at the wall and frightened to the edge of his breaking point was because of what he’d seen in Mr. Gustafson’s apartment.

  Miss Anne had asked David to go check on Mr. Gustafson after they’d talked about the black mold. She said that Mr. Gustafson usually came to see her every day, but for the last two days he’d been absent. David had agreed to make sure he was all right. After Miss Anne closed her door, he walked down to the second floor and for the second time that night knocked on Mr. Gustafson’s door. The first time, no one had answered. The second time was no different. But after Miss Anne had expressed her concern, and after considering the fact that Mr. Gustafson’s dog was missing, David was worried. So he’d tried the doorknob and found that he could turn it. It was unlocked.

  David entered the room. There were no lights on at all. He worried Mr. Gustafson may just be sleeping, so he called his name a few times. No answer came. David found a light switch and flicked it on. Mr. Gustafson was not in the room. Neither was Bullseye. But David did find something. Something that caused him to slowly move backwards without realizing it until his shoulders pressed against the door. The back wall of the apartment was covered, floor to ceiling in a thick, dripping layer of black sludge. It had even started to encroach onto the ceiling, the floor, and the adjoining walls. And it bulged out in an oval shape at the middle, like a giant egg. The egg thing pulsated like a beating heart. Slime sluiced off in sheets each time it pulsed and pooled onto the floor beneath.

  David had turned and ran then. He’d slammed the door behind him and jogged up the stairs to the fifth floor. On a whim, he’d gone to Alice’s door first. He’d knocked and knocked, but she never came. Then he’d checked Tommy’s room, found it empty, and finally, went to his own room. He’d pulled his chair as far as he could get it away from the hole in the ceiling, sat in it, and stared at the wall. And he was still in the chair now, hours later.

  David could feel the Adderall wearing off. He could feel the foggy heaviness returning to the inside of his head. And the odd thing was, he welcomed it. It would take the fear from his chest, and the anxious pain from his gut. And in that moment, halfway between the energetic, clear-headed buzz the drug had brought and the boggy sleepiness that the slime had apparently wrought, he thought of his screenplay, and his career, and his agent.

  It didn’t last. Before David could fully convince himself to get up and check his cell phone or call Sandra, he had finally begun to feel truly tired. His head drooped, his eyelids slowly closed, and he drifted off. Images flashed across his eyes in a semi-lucid dream state. Images of Tommy and the wound in the back of his neck, images of the throbbing egg shape in Mr. Gustafson’s apartment, but mostly, images of Alice, and specifically, sex with Alice.

  A small sound worked its way into David’s awareness an indeterminable amount of time later. David’s eyes fluttered open. His first thought was to wonder how long he’d been sleeping. It was dark outside, and his whole body ached and felt stiff. The noise came again. A squishy, bubbling sound. It came from above him. David slowly looked up. The hole in his ceiling was no longer a hole. Like Mr. Gustafson’s wall, it was now completely filled in with black slime, which had also stared to make its way past the edges of the hole, creeping outward toward the walls. And it moved. The sludge seemed to churn and agitate itself, like the contents of a witch’s cauldron. David sat in his chair, unable to move. He was paralyzed by both fear and atrophy. He watched.

  In the center of this inverted tar pit on his ceiling, a point began to form, as if someone were poking a finger through from the other side. The point lengthened, and took form as the moments ticked past. It was soon too long to be compared to a finger. It now looked like a tentacle. A tentacle that opened up on the end like a yawning mouth. David wasn’t sure, but he thought he could make out teeth inside of the little mouth on the end of the searching appendage. Searching? Why had David thought of that word? But as he watched on, he knew. The thing sticking out of the sludge at first bent toward the back wall, and seemed to sniff and bite at the air as it moved back and forth, slowly turning toward where David sat at the opposite end of the room. It was like a submarine’s periscope searching above the water for targets.

  David suddenly didn’t want to wait around for the tentacle to spot him, and he struggled to stand up from his chair. His legs were weak and wobbly, and his arms nearly gave out when he tried to push himself up. At first he tried to get up quietly, but found this to be impossible in his current state, so he went for speed instead. He pushed down on the arm rests with all his might, and his body finally lurched up from the chair. David stole a glance at the ceiling. Though the tentacle didn’t seem to have ears or eyes, when David made the racket getting up, the thing whipped toward him and spotted him. The maw on the end of it opened wider and David could see now that it was indeed filled with tiny, needle-like teeth. He bolted for the door. The room shook, and a long, low groan bellowed from the walls around him. David felt like he was struggling in quicksand just to make it to the door, but make it to the door he did. He wrenched it open, then dove out into the hall. A searing, bright pain jolted through his shoulder and he heard the cloth of his shirt tear. David hit the floorboards in the hall and rolled over on his back. The groaning sound came again from inside his room. David lay in the hall, huffing breath and staring at the ceiling.

  Eventually, he made himself stand up. He staggered down to Alice’s door and knocked. There was no answer, and no sound at all from inside. David tried the handle, just in case, but found that it wouldn’t budge. Locked. He then went to Tommy’s door and opened it. A light was on inside, but no Tommy. David’s eyes fell on the back wall. A three foot in diameter, roughly circular shaped patch of slime writhed there, much like the one on the ceiling in his own apartment. David didn’t see anything sticking out of it, so he edged into the room and went as quietly as he could to the bathroom. He opened the door. Empty. No Tommy.

  David started back to the front door, then notic
ed something. To the left of the door leading to the hall there was a bundle of bedclothes and a pillow. Tommy wasn’t on it, but it seemed his friend had learned his lesson from sleeping so close to the back wall where all the slime was. David had an idea then. He went to the blankets and pillows and started to gather them together. Just as he did so, a familiar noise sounded behind him, the sluicing, slimy sound he’d heard in his room. David quickly dragged the bedclothes to the door, opened it, and went out into the hall.

  David would make his bed in the hall tonight, he’d decided. The hall light wouldn’t bother him, as tired as he now was. He started to lay out the blanket when he noticed there was something solid wrapped up in it. David sat down, unwound the blanket, and found a book. The title was simply “Mollusks.” David flipped through it and found a dog-eared page. He opened to it, and was shown a diagram labeled “Nautilus” at the top. The picture below looked roughly like a snail’s shell, only instead of a snail coming out of the opening, there were several long tentacles. Under the first diagram was a second of the same creature, only this one had an x-ray view that showed what was inside the shell. There were scrawled remarks written by this picture. The creature’s heart, lungs, and brain were all circled, and in what could only be Tommy’s handwriting above these were the words, “Kill Shots.”

  . . .

  “Just what in the name of God do you think you’re doing out here, young man?” a voice snarled, drawing David from his heavy sleep. “I’ll have no layabouts or drunkards in this building, you can be sure of that.”

  David rubbed at his eyes, and all at once became aware of the many various pains throughout his body. He opened his eyes and winced. He still lay in the hall where he’d fallen asleep, and the bristled form of Mrs. Perkins stood above him. Her fists were balled up on her hips and she scowled, her face like an angry, grinning skeleton.

  “Some…something in my room,” David said, pointing at his door. He immediately regretted this as he knew how it sounded.