The Center Wall

Peter

Peter

George woke me, just as planned, at exactly twelve a.m. It never ceased to amaze me how he was able to time things so precisely. Neither of us believed in any of this ghost nonsense, and so, we decided to search out the clever fellow who had so cruelly deceived my wife and Celia. It was but a few hours ago that Ivy had found Marge in that room with the very suspicious-looking door, the one with all the fanciful carvings on it. She was quite shaken and she clung to me like a child does after a terrible nightmare. Not that I minded, but as frail and timid as that woman might seem, Marge is as fierce as a grizzly and as bold a boar. Besides, she's never clung to me like that, not even when we were courting. So it got me worried, and George, being head over heals for Celia, though he'd never admit it, swore to find the man who had touched her in the night. Celia claimed it was a ghost, and her exact words were 'he touched my sheets', so in the end the ghost didn't even touch Celia herself. But I didn't bother pointing this out George. It was all a bit too dramatic for me, and I wanted the mystery to be solved as quickly as possible, so that I might go back to bickering with Marge and that George might go on courting Celia in his way. So we both swore to find the person responsible for harming our lovely girls.

We entered the small room and began to tap the walls for any hollowness that might reveal a hidden passage. I had just assumed that it was the only explanation for the disappearance of the so-called ghost.

I failed to mention earlier that this room was covered in tiles. They weren't ceramic ones as you would find in a bathroom or a kitchen, but rather, they were made of wood. Each tile had a carving on them, very intricate, and much like the ones found on the door. Now my reason for telling you this, is that as I knocked on one of the tiles, I heard a hollowness behind it. Excitedly, I called George over, for he was the one carrying the lamp, and inspecting it, found that the tile had a carving of an eye. I knocked on a tile beside the tile with the eye, then I knocked the eye tile once more, and sure enough, there was a difference. I grinned and shouted in triumph, but to my annoyance, George shushed me. At first, I was merely irked by his audacity to shush me after such a discovery. But once I began to hear it too, I fell silent of my own accord. The sound was coming from behind the tile and it grew louder as the sound of footsteps do to a person standing at the end of a hallway. Suddenly, the sound stopped, as did my breath. I hadn't realized that I had stopped breathing until my lungs started to beg for mercy. I tried then to breath, but found that the air would not come, or rather, that something had seized my throat. I grasped at my neck and found nothing there. My mind screamed for air and I writhed in pain on the floor silently. I tried to scream for help, but no sound escaped my lips. I turned my head to the side and found that George, too, had fallen under the same affliction as I. Lifting my fist in a final effort to resist the force that had strangled me, and I slammed my fist against the eye.

When I came to, I found myself surrounded by darkness. My head ached and my eyes watered from the pain, but I ignored it and forced myself to stand, only to find that the ceiling was much smaller than I had imagined. My head hit it with such a force that it caused me to fall right back down again, this time on my knees. After recovering from my rendezvous with the ceiling, I cautiously felt around me. I concluded that I was in a small passage. There were two walls on either side of me, both approximately two feet away from my body. Being as there was nothing in front of me, nor behind, I decided that I'd best choose a way to go, and so I decided to go forward, for no particular reason. The ceiling being so low, I was forced to crawl. I went on for quite sometime. I told myself it had been hours, but in reality, it was more likely that only a few minutes had passed. Still, it was tiring, and I'd not done such strenuous work since high school when I was on the track team. After another five minutes or so of grumbling about how it was all Marge's fault for my being here, a light suddenly flared up from the darkness, it was a small light, but even so, I was overjoyed to find a way out. I hurriedly crawled towards the candle, which I now saw that it was, but stopped abruptly when I realized that it was held in the hands of a doll. It was in a basket wrapped in an old, worn blanket. I drew forward, suddenly very afraid of this thing. Nearing it, I saw that it was not a doll at all, but an infant, a dead infant. As this realization dawned upon me, the flame suddenly blew out. Sending me once again into utter darkness. But I was not alone this time. I slowly crawled back, my heart drumming within my chest. I could hear the blood rushing through my veins and I longed to scream, and I almost did, but before I could, a gloved hand clasped over my open mouth and something whispered in my ear, "hush, you don't want to wake the child." The voice was cold, it was a dead voice and I feared it more than anything I had ever feared in my life before. My eyes rolled back into my head and I almost fainted. Realizing what happened to the child was about to happen to me, I forced myself awake. I didn't wonder why the person whose hand that had been covering my mouth had disappeared. I just fled from that place as fast as I could-half crawling, half running, I stumbled without stopping and fell several times. I was so scared that whoever, or whatever, was back there was still chasing after me. I kept going down the hall till abruptly, I rushed, head first, into a dead end. I groaned and although I was knocked out for a few seconds, I revived quickly and immediately proceeded to slam my fist against the wall with all my might, again and again. Seeing that it was no use, I lay on my back and kicked the wall, once, twice, till, with a satisfying crack, the wood opened up and my foot went straight through. I heard a woman scream, but I cared not. All I could think of then was the necessity to get out of that place. I kicked and kicked, till there was a sizeable hole for me to fit through. My hand grasped the opening I had just created and I pulled myself up, breathing hard. Again, the woman screamed, and I realized, then, that it was Marge. I felt a pang of guilt when I realized that I was the cause of her fear, but then again, I was kind of turned on by her screaming. I'd never heard her scream with such enthusiasm before. I ran to her and tried to grasp her shoulders to get her to look at me, but she was flailing about so much that all I could do was yell at her. I told her that it was me even while she screamed that I was Satan. After a fee more tries to bring back her insanity, I gave up and fell back onto my hands and started to laugh. It was so like her to react in such a way. The laughter seemed to get her out of her panic. Once I had convinced her that I was not the Devil and that I was, in fact, her loving husband Peter, she immediately began to scold me. I was so relieved that she was with me, that I couldn't help but hug her. I felt her shaking from fear and I pulled away. Her eyes were brimming with tears and she looked so beautiful, then that I couldn't resist kissing her. All my fears passed away at that moment and when I pulled away from her tear stained face, I smiled, and she smiled back. I began to lean in for another kiss, when the moment was broken as George suddenly put his hand between our two faces. He looked panicked as he told us in many words to get a room. Marge and I broke out into laughter and we kissed anyways.