Hollow Walls

I have been awake for more than 12 hours. Body paralysed with lethargy, but eyes strained opened to catch the monsters drawn to the quickening of my heart and the stench of my sanity. The creatures of uncanny humanity that crept in the hibiscus and stalked the wet concrete that cast their silent voices beckoning me to turn around. Vultures closing in on my back every second I sit still. Despite feeling their broken finger bones clicking and clacking against the concrete, making the ground shiver with horrid anticipation, I couldn't find it in myself to move. Tears pricked and burned dry eyes while I stared at the universe above me, not daring to look back. Sticking to that childish endeavour that if I can't see them, they can't see me. The beauty of the endless star-stricken sky was shunted to the back of my mind to the would-be madness of silence induced panic. The stars a dreadful reminder that it was past the time to call for help. No one would hear me now while they cuddled up to their linens inside their super locked doors on the hardstone houses behind the tall iron gates. It would be an hour till sunrise.

The stars, hitherto of my evacuation of the city life, had always been a mystery. A child-like surprise waiting for me to discover it. A dream waiting to happen. Something beyond the old house's dank wooden creaks and croaks. In the juxtaposition to the live life hum of the metropolis that cascaded over our humble abode. You could never see them through the hummed livelihood of the city skylines. I can tell you now, they aren't all they are cracked up to be, a lesson learned by a cold child on the lands of a new country.

The old house was something of a weakly widow crying for help. It would shake when the winds picked up and groan when the July colds made the wood shrink a tad. The foundations were crumbling at the seams, an issue my father would always complain about when trying to make it appealing to real estate agencies. Ghosts of memories haunted its crevices. Most about the lost and forgotten childhood playthings and schoolish travesties that had never entirely left my mind like they had with others. All of this I could take from the inside looking out.

That is except for the knocking.

I didn't notice the incessant noise at first, but once I did, I could never get rid of it. Every night at an ungodly hour, this loud knocking on the adjacent wall of my bed frame would start. Only stopping when the sun drove the fatigue from my eyes or until I ran to my mother's room whispering of non-existent monster. I complained about it in my younger years. Told my parents about all the fine details of this non-stop hammer. Father had no care for this calumny of the houses sturdy walls and mother claimed as much with the suspect of a rat or a possum. Strangely though, this cripplingly repetitive noise I'd learn to deal with it.

It started with walking. I'd walk the block when the sun began to sink with my parents and the dog. This venture continued to increase in length every trip until it was only the dog who agreed to go with me. None the less, the trip tired me out enough that I didn't have the energy to focus on anything, let alone the noise when I returned home.

It only got easier from there when my parents gave me my first phone. It was a gateway into the universe of music, possibly the most excellent distraction I could hope for. Every night after I got home from my nightly walks, I listened to the top 100, which blocked the knocking out. Being interested in music also opened my purview to the arts. Thus I began painting, drawing, reading, writing and all sorts of other activities. These distractions would work so well, I would breathe an unworried sigh when I was deracinated to the countryside.

It wasn't my first choice. The tenebrous outback was uninviting, and the people were excessively suspicious of my ideals. They lived on large blocks of land with monstrous livestock that would very nearly stalk the fence if it wasn't for its sharp and electrifying qualities. The houses were behemoths of urban wood and stone that looked out of place against the pure ruralness of the area. A testament to the excellent money hauled by the various tradies and construction workers that lived in the region, who liked to flaunt their architectural prowess as a form of intimidation. The unbound nature of the surrounding bush was an unknown and surrounding the land of my parent's acre they had purchased—the very trees were like savages that needed taming.

I had no desire to do that. I resigned myself to the new backdrop of my room and thus my life. The walls were fresh, unequalled and creme. A canvas to start anew. For once, I felt the tranquil silence that could only be achieved through my rural habitation. I adjusted my bearings slowly but peacefully. The neighbours grew fond of my parents but not me. They were old and standoffish, and I simply had nothing to talk about with them. This didn't bother me as much as one would think. Every day I would stay in the emptiness of my room secluded to my loneliness that would soon vanish when school was in session. A month I enjoyed this silence and companionship. A month was all I needed to get used to it, until one day. I was about to lay my head on my soft pillows to sleep off teenage worries when I heard it. That segmented tap. That maddening bang. That incessant pounding of my new walls.

The knocking.

"That's alright." I remember thinking "I'll just move to a different room." And so, I did.

The noise followed me through every hall, and every crevice of that damn house. Even when I had tried to find solace at a friend's 100 ways away, it's still there to the ignorance of the house's patrons. I remember my heart dipping below my stomach, and a cry strangling out of my throat as the cognizant hit me. The cycle had only been postponed rather than cancelled. That thing, whatever it is or was, was now following me.

Regardless of the day's journey, the nights only consisted of this knocking. I tried to distract myself again, first with books only for the words to be lost in the noise when the sun sunk below the horizon. The stories lost and uncared for. I tried friends, but an affinity for crying at the sound of bangs doesn't make it easy to form relationships. I tried to walk again, but my house is next to the main road, and after nearly being run over by a truck, my parents decided that it wouldn't be safe. They took me to a gym then tried dropping me off a street down from my school to walk there, but it did little to solve my problem. I finally came back to music. However, one thing you realise about the country is that cable and good internet connections are as elusive as cats in swimming pools. I'd have to illegally download the music to my phone when the data had returned after a few days of laying low. Still, over time it would become inconvenient, and the knocking started to beat along with the cross-rhythms of even the happiest medleys I had gotten months before.

Eventually, I looked to myself in light of little to take my mind off the sound. I was suddenly captious of my body and habits—the newfound despair between my irredeemable sluggish, disgusting image and a selfish self-interest in the preservation of my heart. Stretch marks and fat became the main features of my otherwise dull and ugly appearance. Anxiety became the backbone of friendship. I thought out conversations weeks before I'd have them in fear of making a wrong move and annoying those I still had into abandoning me to my insanity. Academics became the driving point of my depression, for I was never good enough for even the stupidest of subjects such as the arts. All I'd ever do is think of imperfections of this meat bag I call home and the insignificance of that which I call a life. Worse of all, I began to wonder why I bothered anymore. What was the point of a tormented life if it's spent trying to achieve an unobtainable one?

I could take it no longer. One night my mind cracked and shattered at the despair this noise was imprinting on me. I decided I'd no longer allow it to torment me in this fashion. That I'd do whatever it took to destroy this vile demon in my wall. The tips of my knuckles bruised and broke as the wall became a punching bag for my frustration and pain. Varying purple and blue blisters littered the better side of my hands and sweat was chilled to my skin like a sheen. Tiredly turning and running my back down the wall, I was solidly splayed across the floor looking up at the ceiling. "It's gone." I laughed to myself in a fit of fatigued madness, eyes slowly closing at the relief of silence and humdrum. My body fell pray to the winding fingers of a blissful sleep only for it to drop its facade into a nightmare of traumatic caution.

Dreams of my familiar faced bodies being gored and mutilated made my blood run cold and my mind go numb. Screams in sleep beckoned me to wake, but darkness shackled me in unconsciousness. I felt the scratches of a rope throttling me full force while watching myself being hung from a board before the breathless emptiness as my blue corpse floated down a river. I saw myself die so much it felt like yet to live destinies. The next morning nothing went past my mind. I felt like I'd seen every which way to die and for once I didn't know how I felt about it. I spent the day enveloped in blankets listening to the muted movies my parents were watching from beyond the confines of my room. Trying desperately to find me again.

The night came slow, but the knocking didn't make an appearance. My violence had been a success it seemed, but the battle wounds linger on. Small sludges of blood littered the crème wall between the indents and the white scars of scrapped paint. I took a tissue and water to it, dotting the wall to its original colour but it remained forever altered. I turned to rest. I'd had enough of this. I just want to sleep. A loud bang came and shook me to my core, ripping the strength from my feet, causing me to land dangerously close to my metal bed frame. Instead of the segmented knocks, I was used to, it was fast-paced and building to a crescendo that threatened to knock the house off its very foundations. I fell against the wall when trying to get up only to be shocked by the silence as I reached the spot. The cracks in my skin had reopened, and blood was once again on the wall. The silence continued.

If I wasn't convinced, there was a monster of any kind living in my wall, this was the moment that convinced me. I won't lie by saying I wasn't relieved to discover this solution; however grim it is. If giving a little blood to whatever this thing was means that it would grant me a moment of peace, I was willing to take that deal, but this didn't mean I wasn't shaken, to say the least. I'd spend weeks experimenting with the amount it would accept. A small drop would keep me safe for the night, but a smear of 30 centimetres would keep me in comfort for a week. Admirably it doesn't seem to have a preference for where the blood comes, I'd swiped a bit of blood from a bird I found half run over on the road and it was appeased, but I'd instead just take the blood from myself. It was more comfortable, and it lacked any killing on my part.

The problem came when my parents found me on one of my later escapades hunched over a wall smearing blood from my lower arm on the pristine wood. They hadn't screamed, but I could see the confusion on there face when they dragged me to the hospital. As I was sitting in the ER with the most minor of injuries, I heard them fretting about what to do. So they sent me to an alleged medical professional who asked me a bunch of questions. I told him about the knocking, the dreams and the blood sacrifices I had been making. He pulled my parents in and sent me into the hall while they discussed things. My mother screamed, and he gave me some medicine. He must've given me the wrong medication. The pills gave me extreme physical sickness. I couldn't eat much, and sometimes I went without food for days, and on the days when I forced the smallest bit of bread down my throat, it would violently come back the way it happened. I had rebounded into the despair I had, as the torment over the state of my bodily prison continued for the brief while I was on these pills. I was ugly, I was scared, and I was sick. It was so horrifyingly terrible that my school and the hospital doctors had to mandate that I be taken off the medication, so I'd have enough school days to graduate.

The 2 o'clock pill time passed with pills lying amongst the garbage. My body, still weak and helpless, clicked and clacked as I stumbled from my living room to my room with the help of my mother’s withering hands. It was 5pm, and the sun had sunk below the horizon as the winter season came into play. No knocks, no nothing. Just silence. I didn't feel relieved. Nor did I feel accomplished that I had defeated whatever it was. I just felt tired. So very tired.

There was a foul stink of rot and blood in the air when the sleep paralysis left my eyes. The worst smell I had ever encountered and so powerful that it made my eyes water. I twisted and turned in place, trying to find the origin of the stink. What was it? Had an animal come in and defecated? Had a sewage pipe filled with dead rats just burst? I twisted to the emptier side of my bed to see that what I left uninhabited suddenly held a body. A near-perfect replica of my body warm with corpse worms that had eaten my brown eyes, leaving nothing but empty spaces. It was taking up the majority length of the sheets, and its hands lay covered in fingernail laden dirt that seeped dark sludge. Vacant eyes stared into my soul as I scrambled to the edges of my mattress. My heart hammered nearly out of my chest, vomit rearing in my throat, threatening to project all over the cadaver. In a blind panic, I jumped off the bed very nearly tripping over the sheets while taking great lengths not to touch her. I ran to the door, the mentally imprinted path the only guide through water blurred eyes.

Slamming the door behind me, my eyes looked to the tiled floor. The extreme anxiety making my legs shudder and my muscles go into a premature rigour Mortis. "What is this?" I cried in a ghastly tone. "What have I done to deserve this! Why is this happening to me?!"

"I think you know." Taking a sharp breath, I turn my head towards the voice to see the image of my body hung by a rope from a ceiling fan. Its gap-toothed smile faltered as it choked on air for a second. It laughed hastily, its eyes pooling with bloody tears. "oh, you definitely know why." Stumbling to the garage in a desperate attempt to escape to the ungodly sights but it seemed to only worsen my situation.

"It's all you fault." Another corpse screamed from the under my mum's cars left wheel.

"You're the reason I'm like this." Another blackened and burned body charred as it crawled towards me. I made a break for the open garage button, making a desperate attempt not to touch any of the newly joined nightmares crawling on the ground. I saw my dead bodies lie in piles or drag their blood widen masses towards me in a slow crawl. All screaming in a tired madness or growling in pain. I steamrolled towards the top of my driveway.

A myriad of mutilated bodies came crawling from the undergrowth and up the hard concrete—the sick inducing smell of bodily secretion. I sat as I do now at the edge of the steep driveway. My back turned to the house and Eyes to the sky. There was a sudden quietness. No groans, no scraping bones against the concrete and no screams. The panic crippled me to the floor, and thus there I'd stay static as I look to the horizon waiting for daylight.

It's been 13 hours since I've slept. The sky has turned a beautiful purple as the sun chases the stars and demons back to their crevices. The air is fresh and clear of any rot, and there are no bodies in my driveway. No carcasses in my garage. Not a corpse hanging from my ceiling. No cadaver in my bed. I come to the bruised and battered wall. I raised my hand to the hardwood my hand trembling as I did...

And knocked.