There's Something in the Walls

by Samuel Brower

  “By God,” Mrs. Perkins said. “A child. You’re like a child, afraid of monsters in a closet…”

  “No. It’s uh—”

  Mrs. Perkins swatted a hand through the air, cutting him off. “Save it. Consider this your one warning. Any more drunken antics like this and you’re gone. I understand you sustained some sort of injury this week, Mr. Howell. Fell down a flight of steps, was it? Perhaps you should consider enrolling yourself in one of those programs.”

  David wanted to argue, but his mind wasn’t functioning well enough yet.

  “Where is your neighbor?” Mrs. Perkins asked, pointing at Tommy’s door.

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Of course you don’t. You’re all looking out for each other, is that it? Well, I need to have a word with him about the stunt I believe he pulled this morning. I had a man here to look at the electrical panel and the water heater in the basement, and he never even started the job. Do you know why he didn’t? I’ll tell you what he told me. He said a thin man with glasses and long, unkempt hair stopped him out front and told him he was the building’s maintenance person, and that it wasn’t safe to enter the building because of a black mold problem. That description sounds a lot like our Mr. Lambert, does it not? And put that with the fact that I’ve already had to listen to him ramble on about this black mold fantasy…Well, I mean to have a word with that awful man—”

  “Wait, this place has a basement?” David asked.

  Mrs. Perkins rolled her eyes “Of course it does. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.”

  “I was told there were no basements in California.”

  “They’re rare for places built after the second World War, yes, but this building was erected in twenty-seven…Now, about your friend—”

  “I haven’t seen Tommy. I don’t know where he is. If I see him I’ll send him your way, though.”

  “Be sure that you do. With so many residents late on their rent, the last thing I need is that awful man waylaying my hired help. It’s been over two weeks since that damned earthquake, and I’m sure the damage it caused is the very reason so many think they don’t have to pay me what is owed, but I can’t fix anything if the men I hire keep getting chased off, can I? And I find it very odd that Mr. Lambert would do this, considering the fact that he gave me an ultimatum about fixing his apartment. It’s as if he wants to sabotage my attempts to fix the damage just so he can report my building. I won’t have such contemptuous and petty behavior from one of my tenants. If I find out he’s behind this business with sending that man away today under false pretenses, I will evict him. Make sure you tell him that.”

  David’s head pounded, and he could hardly make sense of what the woman was saying, but something she had mentioned stuck out.

  “Wait, two weeks?” David asked. He started counting the days he remembered passing on his fingers. “Mrs. Perkins, it’s only been four days since the earthquake. Five at the most.”

  The old woman’s eyes narrowed to slits and she pursed her lipstick-laden mouth so tightly into a circle that it looked like little more than a cigarette burn in her face. “Are you still drunk or are you trying to toy with me? The earthquake occurred on July thirty-first, Mr. Howell. Today is August fifteenth.”

  David pushed himself upright and rested his back against the wall. He tried counting the days on his fingers again. “But…but that’s impossible.”

  The granite shell around Mrs. Perkins’ persona seemed to soften a little as she looked down at David. “Are you sick, Mr. Howell? You don’t look well… And if you are having lapses in time, you should see a doctor.”

  With that, she turned and left him in the hall. David continued to try and count the days that had passed since the earthquake. Two weeks? It wasn’t possible for that amount of time to have passed. He counted his fingers again. Five days at the most. The earthquake, and then a few days later his date with Alice, and then it had been only a few days since then… Mrs. Perkins had to be wrong. She was an elderly woman, after all. Her mind may not be as sharp as her words and demeanor made it seem to be.

  David realized he was still sitting in the hall on a pile of blankets. His head felt like it had cleared a bit. He slowly, painfully, got to his feet, then limped to Alice’s door. He knocked. There was no answer. He tried the knob. Locked. David blew out a breath and rested his forehead on Alice’s door a moment. Then he went back to his apartment.

  When David opened his door, the first thing he did was check the hole in the ceiling. The slime was still there, and it painted the inside of the hole a glistening black, but it was no longer pulsating and no weird tentacles seemed to be coming out of it. David’s attention then went to the floor where a spot of white caught his eye. It was a handwritten note. Alice, he thought at first, but as he bent to pick the paper up he recognized Tommy’s chicken-scratch handwriting. David was disappointed for a moment that it wasn’t a note from Alice, then he was distracted a moment longer while thinking about Alice’s lithe, naked body. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the thoughts. What was wrong with him lately? Like a teenager again…

  The note read:

  Dave,

  Found you sleeping in the hall. Smart, man. The thing in the walls is stronger at night. Nocturnal, or just used to no light underground where it came from? I don’t know yet. But staying away from the slime patches at night is smart. Sorry I didn’t wake you, but I didn’t have time to talk and you’ll need your rest. We’re doing it tonight. I know, I know, I just said it was stronger at night. But I think it’s also more exposed. If we tried to kill it during the day, it may be able to pull itself back underground before we can hurt it, like a mollusk going back into its shell. We’ll start digging once it gets dark, and get at its main body while its appendages are up in the building trying to grab people.

  I wish I had more time to research and prepare, but I can’t wait any longer. That thing is somehow making me lose track of time. I think it’s already killed some of the tenants too. I’m going to try and get ahold of Mrs. Perkins’ master key today. We’ll need to get as many people out of the building as we can before we get started. If they don’t answer their doors, we’ll let ourselves in and drag them out. I don’t know exactly how we’re going to kill this thing. But I’m thinking fire is our best bet. We’ll dig down and burn it out. I’ve already gathered some supplies together. I’m going to put them in my apartment as soon as I finish writing this. Don’t let anyone in my apartment, Dave, especially Mrs. Perkins. I’ll be back by nightfall.

  Tommy

  David slowly lowered the note once he’d finished reading it, wondering what kind of “supplies” Tommy had in his apartment. He wished Tommy carried a cell phone. His friend didn’t know about the basement where the electric panel and the water heaters were. David wondered how Tommy could’ve missed something like that, but wrote it off to the slime making everything slow and cloudy in their heads. Anyway, they may not need to dig at all, if this thing was in the basement.

  Tommy had mentioned losing track of time. Was it really possible that two entire weeks had passed? It seemed ridiculous, but so did the idea of a man-eating, subterranean tentacle monster gaining access to the upper world through a crack in the earth’s crust caused by an earthquake… David wished Alice were home. He had to wait for Tommy to get back and he’d rather not have to do it alone. He wondered where Alice could be. Had she felt well enough to go back to school and work? Or had she just grown tired of David already and was purposely avoiding him?

  Keeping a wide berth around the hole in the ceiling, David began to look for his cell phone. He had no clock in his apartment. He needed to know what time it was. For all he knew, it could be ten in the morning or four in the afternoon. He wanted to check the date as well. After looking in all the places he usually left it—kitchen counter, arm of the chair, bathroom sink—he finally spotted it on the floor beneath his futon, and directly under the hole in the ceiling. Shit, he thought. David inc
hed closer to the futon, keeping his eye on the hole in the ceiling. He crouched down, reached under the futon, and felt around for his phone. His hand didn’t touch it. David didn’t see any movement from the slimy black patch above him, so he took his eyes off it for a moment to peer under the futon. He saw his phone and grabbed it, and was just pulling it out from under the futon when a glob of onyx goo landed on his bare forearm.

  “Goddam it!” David shouted.

  He went as quickly as he could to his kitchen sink and spun the handles to turn the water on. Nothing happened. David felt the slime begin to burn his skin, and grabbed a dish towel hanging from his oven handle to wipe it away. His forearm was stained black where the slime had touched him, and almost immediately he began to feel dizzy and tired. This slime was different. It had a different viscosity and a stronger, acrider smell than any he’d experienced before.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” David said, pounding his fist on the kitchen counter.

  He went to the bathroom and tried the faucet there, but nothing came from the spigot. David sat down on the toilet and huffed. Then, because he could do nothing about what just happened, he looked at his phone, still clutched in his hand. It was dead. Of course… David pressed the power button to make sure it wasn’t just switched off, but nothing happened. He set the phone on the sink and put his head in his hands, then rested his elbows on his knees.

  . . .

  David woke still sitting on his toilet, cradling his head in his hands. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He looked out of his bathroom door and saw that it was fully dark outside his windows. Fear gripped at him. Tommy. Tommy said he’d be back by nightfall, yet his friend hadn’t come to get him.

  David tried to stand, and nearly fell to the ground. His legs were numb, asleep from sitting on the toilet so long. His head swam and his vision blurred with the effort. He felt drool dripping out of his mouth and reached up to wipe it away. It was strange, his lips felt numb as well, like when you first left a dentist after getting a cavity filled. Now that he was thinking about it, his whole body felt numb. All except for the place on his forearm where he’d been slimed. It still burned.

  Using the sink to steady himself, David stood. He stumbled out of the bathroom, and to his front door. He could hear the squishy, sluicing sound behind him, undoubtedly coming from the slimy hole in his ceiling, but he didn’t look back. He lurched out into the hall, falling against the far wall for a moment, then turned toward Tommy’s door. He started for it, and then somehow lost control of his own body. He had aimed for Tommy’s door, but ended up in front of Alice’s instead. And it was open. She must’ve come home while he slept.

  “Alice?” David said.

  No answer came. David stepped inside of the apartment and peered into the darkness.

  “Alice?” he said again, louder this time.

  “Da…vid,” a raspy voice replied, his name coming in two separate syllables. It sounded like Alice, but her voice was different somehow, like she had strep throat.

  “Alice, where are you? I can’t see you.”

  “I’m…here…Da…vid…”

  David began to search for a light switch, feeling along the wall with his hands. “I can’t see you. Why are you talking like that?”

  Suddenly she was there, right next to him. She placed a hand on his shoulder and he nearly screamed.

  “No…no…light,” Alice said.

  David turned and faced her. He could only see her outline against the room, which was aglow with faint streetlight making its way in through drawn curtains on her windows.

  “Alice, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  She reached out and caressed his face. Her hand felt clammy, cold.

  “Da…vid…I…have…an…urge,” she creaked.

  Her hand trailed from his face, down his chest, over his belly, and finally to his crotch, where it stopped.

  “Alice, what are you—”

  She pushed forward and put her lips to his. Her tongue shot into his mouth, but it didn’t feel like a kiss. It was more like a frog catching a fly, darting quickly in and out. And her mouth, her saliva, tasted strange. David tried to push her away, but she clutched at his shirt and held on. He began to feel nauseous, then that faded and a sort of euphoria came over him. Alice’s hand was still on his crotch, rubbing now, and he felt himself become erect.

  “Have…an…urge…Da…vid…” she said again.

  Slowly, she walked backwards, pulling David along with her to her bed against the back wall. David’s head spun, but his body now “had an urge” as well, and he went along willingly. Alice reached her bed and pulled hard at David. They fell to the mattress, David on top. She began to work at his fly with clumsy fingers.

  “Please…Da…vid…need…you…have…an…urge….”

  The strangeness of her words were now lost on him. He knew only the deep need, the terrible itch in his body, that must be sated. Alice finally undid David’s pants, and she pushed them down around his hips, then she drew her legs up and pushed his jeans the rest of the way down with her feet. David could feel now that Alice wore only a tee shirt and panties. He lifted himself up and tore the panties away. She was already so wet. He couldn’t see this with the absence of light, but he could feel it. His desire raged anew and he lay on top of her and thrust himself inside. A wave of overwhelming pleasure overcame him and for a moment he was lost to the world. Alice made guttural, animal noises, grunting and wheezing. They went on like this for an unknowable amount of time.

  Eventually David felt a stitch stab into his side. His body seemed to be beginning to give way. He’d been holding his upper body up, locking his elbows and thrusting with all he had, but he was unable to keep this up. David lowered himself onto Alice, chest to chest, and he moved a hand to the back of her head, to hold her. Something writhed and squirmed in his grip. Something slick with slime. David gasped, and the shock that went through him seemed to free his mind from the prison his body and animal nature had caged it in. He pulled away and leapt from the bed, feeling liquid run down his legs as he did.

  “Alice…there’s something on your bed…” he said.

  He backed away slowly towards the front door. Alice slid off the bed, then stood and followed him.

  “Da…vid…have…urge…come…back…”

  His back hit the wall by the front door and he felt a light switch poke him between the shoulder blades. He turned and flipped it on. The room lit up around him. He faced Alice…but it was not Alice he found. A corpse stood before him, its flesh a pale green. David began to sob. He began to lower himself to the floor. Because…the thing was Alice, or at least it had been once. She shambled toward him, her knees bent inward, her back hunched, and her arms hitched at odd angles. Her mouth hung open, and black slaver dripped from her bottom lip. Her eyes were covered in a pale film. The entire front of her tee shirt was stained dark with whatever dripped from her gaping mouth. And below that…Alice was naked from the waist down. From between her legs, black ooze dripped, dripped, dripped. He looked down at his own crotch and found it sodden with the same substance.

  David’s mind broke then. He’d seen too much. He’d experienced too much. He collapsed to the floor, and squirmed as if he were gripped by an epileptic seizure. He screamed. The mockery of Alice—the thing—came closer still, cooing at him with that awful voice. It reached for him. Instinct took over and David kicked at its hands, its arms. He shrieked.

  In the overhead light, David could see now that the thing he had felt on the bed, the ropy object that had squirmed in his grasp, was attached to the back of Alice’s head. From there, it trailed back and disappeared into a patch of slime that covered most of the back wall. He knew then what he was seeing. The creature…the thing in the walls… it had her. It had Alice. It was controlling her like a marionette, trying to lure him in so it could consume him like it had consumed Mr. Gustafson. The fear in David burned away the fog in his brain. He looked at the Alice thing with clear eyes, and suddenly
it stopped reaching for him.

  As if the creature in the walls somehow knew the jig was up, that David would no longer be fooled, the squirming rope at the back of Alice’s head suddenly disengaged. Her body fell to the ground, a heap of twisted, lifeless limbs. The ropy tentacle leveled out in the air, and then, its toothy maw open, it shot out at David. He jumped away on instinct and the mouthed tentacle with its razor teeth only grazed his cheek. The pain sent David reeling to the door. He wrenched it open and scrambled into the hall. A booming groan shook the building around him.

  David yanked his pants back up around his waist, and realized now that the slime at his groin was burning, stinging the flesh there. He clambered to his feet, and tried to run down the hall to the stairwell. Before he’d gone two steps, the floorboards beneath his feet creaked as if under some strain or pressure, then they burst open with a resounding crack and a shower of splinters. Jagged-toothed tentacles shot up from the floor and writhed around him.

  David veered to his right and shouldered his way through Tommy’s open door. He fell to the floor and kicked the door closed. A sharp, powerful odor flooded his senses. David looked up and tried to peer through the darkness. His eyes protested, but eventually adjusted to the lack of light. Near the front door, David found two, large plastic containers. Each had a nozzle affixed to an opening, and David recognized what he was seeing. Containers of gasoline, like the kind you’d buy at any gas station. The supplies Tommy had mentioned in his note. Plastic containers full of gasoline. Tools to burn the monster out.

  Something groaned at the back wall, and David looked up. There, in the center of the wall, like he had seen at Mr. Gustafson’s apartment, was a large, oval sac made of slime. It pulsated, just like the one he’d seen earlier. David pushed himself up, then went to the back wall. He searched Tommy’s counter and found the butcher’s knife Tommy had thrust into the wall days ago. David picked it up, and full of rage and confusion, he plunged the knife into the center of the egg shape. A sharp popping clap echoed around the room as the sac tore open, and suddenly David’s legs were flooded with the same oily blood that had oozed from the walls the last time the knife was used. But something solid fell to the floor as well. David looked at it. The partially digested body of his friend Tommy lay on the floor at his feet.