The Hole in the Wall

Jordan W. Kapellusch

It was late summer when my mother died. I guess it's 21st century etiquette that you shouldn't give somebody that sort of news with a computer, but when I received a message on Facebook from her long time friend telling me to call her I knew what had happened. I had not been close to my mother or my father since I left home after high school. hen my dad died five years ago, I told myself I would be a better son. I made a lot of e!cuses in five years and apparently she wasn't worth the hour drive or twenty minutes a week on the phone to stay in touch. I waited a few hours and called my older brother. "e told me that he and my younger brother had already made funeral plans. #hey had enough time to stay in touch with her. I wasn't surprised$ she was a diabetic with deteriorating health and often dulled the pain of her myriad diseases with the comfort of gin. "er friend, who had sent me the message, was her favorite person to drink with. I didn't bother calling her back, but knew she wouldn't have been surprised either. %y mother was si!ty&four. ' week passed before her attorney called and informed me that I would be receiving the enormous farm house we had grown up on. #he question of why she had left me the house is one that I don't have an answer to to this day. (own to the creepy ceramic cocker spaniels, every other piece of her property had gone to one of my two brothers. I knew the house needed work and wondered if she had left it to me as punishment for not so much as responding to one of the poorly&formatted conservative email forwards of which I received about a thousand every month. #ruth be told, I didn't know her well enough to fashion a guess, but I was stuck with the house. #hough corn didn't grow in front of it these days, the house was built to be hidden by walls of farm product. It was a testament to an age of function over form. ' relic from the mid& wests proud agricultural history. It sat on )* acres of farmland that had been sold to and managed by a farm company when my father died. +ven as a kid with no responsibility for the chipped, uneven paint or decaying foundation, I hated the house. I probably watched too much television or something because growing up, I never found an ounce of charm of comfort in the halls of that isolated manor. I wanted to get out and, the day I graduated our rural high school, I did. ,wnership over the prison of my youth was not something for which I ever had a passing thought. alking through the old dump, my mind was void of the warm childhood memories people swear charge at you like an angry boar when you revisit such places. I was careful to note every needed repair on my phone, attaching a photo of the damage to each entry. 'fter a few minutes, I had more photos of the living room than I did of the winter cruise I took si! months ago. 'bove the never ending list of repairs the house needed was the fact that it was completely trashed. -o!es of ancient newspaper nearly covered the floor of the kitchen, leftover strips of moulding were strewn about the hallway, and empty food packages decorated every solid surface in the living room and downstairs bedroom. I wondered how capable even my mother had been when she passed away and I partly wished I had called her friend and found out. %y brother told me she died in her sleep but I wondered, at her age, how much the stress of living alone in a big old house had contributed to her list of maladies. I decided to sleep at the house that night. #he tattered pull&out sofa was still in the bedroom upstairs that used to belong to my younger brother and I. #his would allow me to get to work on the rest of the inspection first thing in the morning. %y pockets felt lighter .ust thinking about what else I was going to find. #he creaking of the old stairs was like the whining groan of an old woman. I thought about my mother and how I had spent more time

thinking about her over the last week than in all of the years of my adult life. I wont return to the tired clich/ of appreciating what you have before it's gone, mostly because I still didn't appreciate her. I didn't feel much for her beside the dim, e!istential fear that any person has of finding themselves alone at the moment of death. #his whole house ordeal was determined to devour my entire weekend. I took off my suit and went to bed. #hat night, I dreamt of the house. It was as young as I ever remembered it and the wallpaper was fresh and bright alongside the dark, recently polished wood trim. I walked up the stairs to my room and saw myself as a teenager asleep on the sofa. 0lowly, around me, the house began to evolve and shift into its current form as wallpaper ripped and furniture disappeared. hen I looked down again, it was at my adult self asleep in the white shirt I was wearing. %y point of view in the dream shifted and I was now awake in the sofa bed. I looked up around the room, details of the surroundings ha1y. %y door was open and as I looked down the hall, I saw a man walk by. +!cept, this was not a man. 2ou know that feeling you get when you see a robot trying to mimic human behavior3 4ike something isn't quite right. I instantly picked up on une!plainable nuances that gave away this character's artifice. #he 5man6 walked past twice before turning and looking at me. It was too dark in the dream hallway to see any details of his form, and before I could ad.ust my eyes, its arms melted to the ground followed quickly by the rest of its body. hat remained was a dark circular pool of dream&shadow&guy in the hallway .ust outside my door. -ecause the curtains on the window had been taken down years ago, I woke up when the sun did at 782*. I should've eaten something, I thought to myself when I woke up the ne!t morning. I had the feeling, however, that if I would've pulled something out of the free1er downstairs, the dream would have been even more strange. -olting to silence my phone's alarm before it went off, I made a quick note of my dream and swung my feet off the surface of the pull&out bed. hat was left of the wallpaper was garish in the natural light. I hadn't inspected this room yet but there was already quite of bit a work it needed. For starters, the wallpaper needed to come down. It was probably a clearance bin buy when my father purchased the house in the 197*'s and was now peeling off in awkward strips around the room. :e!t, the combination light and ceiling fan had two broken blades. "ow this had happened, I am not sure. Finally, there was a hole slightly bigger than my open hand on the wall opposite the sofa bed. #his house was, for all intents and purposes destroyed, so there was nothing about a hole in the wall that, by itself, stuck out. I looked at the opening in the drywall. #he si1e looked liked somebody had put their hands through. I couldn't e!plain that, though, since my younger brother had moved into my older brother's room the year my older brother went off to school. #his room was mine until I moved out and, as I understood from my brothers, had remained vacant ever since. %y father was a stoic, even&tempered man who used effective tools like silent disapproval rather than reactive violence to voice his frustration and curb our misbehavior. "e was not the kind of person to ever lash out or strike something in anger. %aybe my mother had fallen and put her hand out to break her fall only to have it go through the wall. 's I looked closer, all of my ideas about the reason for the hole seemed to disappear. #here was no torn wallpaper surrounding the hole and, while it was not perfectly round, there was no broken drywall along the edge. 'lthough across the room, the hole appeared to have been cut with a power&saw. In a word, it appeared intentional. Inside, there was only the blackness of an old uninsulated upstairs wall. 'mong the unfurnished wall, it appeared almost as a work of art and took all of the attention from the generic dandelion

prints that hung on the ad.acent walls. I had yet to get to the upstairs on my inspection so I didn't bother photographing the imperfection. ;lanning to use the remainder of the day and, if need be, the night to continue the investigation of the e!tensive property, I went to a cafe in town for the morning to send emails and do an hour and a half worth of work. I resumed my inspection of the first floor upon getting home and worked through sundown. #he survivor theme started as I threw the last egg carton away from the fridge and I knew it was 98**. +!haustion had set in about two hours ago but the kitchen was the last room to inspect downstairs and I wanted to finish the floor. #he only thing I could think about was giant rats climbing through the hole in the room I had slept in last night so I decided to stay in my brother's room ne!t door. <nlike my room which had been primarily used for storage space after I left home, my brother's room had become the guest room. It was maybe used twice, but my mom and dad had built it up like a room at a bed and breakfast. 'n ancient, dusty comforter lay on the full si1e bed and still the idea of a musty bed set was less off&putting to me than the various vermin I imagined crawling through that hole in the room ne!t door. It didn't take any time to fall asleep. 'ny hope I had of a less imaginative sleep was culled within what must have been minutes. #his time, I was in the guest bedroom, looking down at myself tossing and turning. 4ooking up, the large mirror on the wall caught my eye. hile everything else in the house had been a perfect representation of reality, the mirror was obscured by perfect blackness. #he center of the frame screamed with the depth and communication of a nightmarish void. I was starting into it and it frightened me deeply. It was the the fear of whatever was the opposite of e!istence and it was alive and reaching out to steal me. "opelessness overcame every thought. I wished for death. Fighting everything inside of me, I turned away to the oak cabinet and reali1ed I had woken up and was now sitting up in bed. 0weat poured over my face and I became aware of how frightened the dream had made me. %y white undershirt was soaked along with the bottom of the comforter and =it embarrasses me to write this> I knew it wasn't .ust sweat on the sheets. #he clock radio showed ?812 & morning already. I flicked the light on to see that everything in the room looked as it had a minute ago. +!cept..."oly shi& #he mirror was crooked. :ot enough for me to have noticed before going to sleep, but enough that it would keep me from sleeping again if I left it that way =I really was not a country person>. I felt like I needed something to do before going to sleep any way. 'gain, I regretted skipping dinner. #he mirror no longer frightened me. I had woken up$ this was the real world. In middle school, I won the admiration of my friends by saying 5-loody mary6 one&thousand times into a dark mirror at a sleep&over. I had read that when you see yourself, your brain undergoes a weird feedback response and warps the facial details that you're not focusing on. 0o what looks like your face transforming is actually .ust your brain trying to make sense of the continuous image in front of it. #his is the same way you can tune out a ticking clock or a bad odor after a few minutes of not paying attention to it. In the real world, there was always an answer. :one of that is to say that fear was a foreign emotion to me. I was afraid two months ago when my sales were down. I was afraid when my e!&girlfriend sent me a 5we should talk6 te!t message. It scares me every time the doctor comes into the room after blood work without a smile on his face. #he mirror was not a reasonable or mature fear like these things and yet the amount of terror that it had struck me with was undeniable and fresh.

0hoving my weight against it, the mirror didn't budge. I twisted and turned. I counter& turned and pulled on the ornate frame and it didn't move an inch. It felt glued to the wall. 5I guess that's one more rotten thing to fi!,6 I said out loud. #he room responded with predictable silence. #hat is until a deep growl filled the space between my stomach the wall. ' routine of breakfast immediately following waking up had ruined me. I had cleaned out the fridge earlier but wondered if there was something in the free1er that could be heated up or thawed out until I could get into town later today. 's I left the guest room and walked past the bedroom, I noticed that the hole in the wall was on the shared wall with the guest room. I had absent&mindedly assumed it was on a single wall and behind it had lay a thick layer of insulation or whatever other guts are inside old houses. 's I thought about the wall, however, it hit me that there could be no more than five or si! inches behind the hole before getting to the guest rom wall. 'nother thought hit me as I turned and walked toward the stairs. #he hole was right behind the mirror. #he living room was dark, but I could see that lasted only until the entrance to the kitchen. #here was a small amount of light penetrating the dining room and kitchen. It was soft and sporadic. alking into the kitchen confirmed my guess that I had left the refrigerator open. #he light eking out of the barely open door illuminated strange shapes on the diversely& te!tured surfaces of the shared kitchen and dining room. @oing to close the door, I saw something inside A something that would have been impossible to miss cleaning out a refrigerator. I was losing my mind, I knew it. I wouldn't wait until tomorrow. I had to leave now. #here is always an answer. #here is always an answer. #here is always an answer. #here is always an answer. #here is always an answer. #here is always an answer. #here is always an answer. #here is always an answer. Inside the fridge, on the top shelf was a plate. ,n the plate were two soft piece of meat. #hey were shaped like pork chops. ;itch black in color, it was easy to see the shapes were not burnt.. In fact, they were marinading in a layer of black liquid which submerged the saucer ridge on the tea plate. #he otherworldly .u!taposition of color and te!ture made me want to puke. I wanted to run forever and yet knew that what I was looking at was not real. %y attempt to rationali1e what was in front of me out of e!istence added to the strange of the something I now felt moving around me. #here was another in the kitchen. :o, it was downstairs and upstairs. It was all around me. It was inside of me. I was it. #wo persons at once. #error overtook me and I knew I had to get out of the house at that moment. #here is always an answer. I sprinted toward the front door. #here is always an answer. I threw my weight into it. #here is always an answer. I .umped through the door and landed on the porch. #here is always an answer. I opened my eyes and got up to make a break for my car. #here is always an answer.

#he carpet from the guest room was the first thing I saw upon opening my eyyes. #he light burned on the nightstand above me. #he clock glowed 18?B. -edding lay disheveled at eye level. It was a dream, another hyper&realistic night terror about the house. :o time at all passed before the tested spirit of my skepticism returned to me. I felt stupid for being afraid of these nightmares. I felt stupid that it happened twice. ,n the bright side, I guess, I hadn't really wet the bed. 0canning the room, I saw that there was no mirror. #here never was a mirror. #he other side of the hole was fi!ed where the mirror had hung in my dream. %y rationale for sleeping in this room dissolved before me upon reali1ing that it went through to this wall. ;utting my feet underneath me, I stood up and walked over to the wall. #he hole was bigger on this side than it was in the old bedroom. I couldn't see anything on the other side, but knew that was because I had turned out the bedroom light before settling in the guest room. It was round on top and flared out as it came down. I could look right into the blackness of it without having to slouch or lift myself up on my feet at all. #he cleave was similar to the other room. 'bsent of debris along the edge, the e!istence of the other side of the hole should have erased any rapidly vanishing doubt that there was an answer for its quirks, the uniformity of its design added to its intrigue. I retrieved my glasses from the nightstand and turned to leave. I didn't need to put them on,however, to see something that made me question whether or not I had actually woken up. #hat pu11le of a shape in the old wallpaper had grown to the si1e and shape of a human being. #he arms hung by it's side. 0omehow, I avoided the knee .erk reaction of running out of the room and yet again pronouncing myself insane. Choosing instead to calmly continue in my belief that I was still entangled in a multi&leveled nightmare, I stood and faced the ghastly shape on the wall.#his dream had now twice convinced me of not only being awake, but of having actually woken up. I learned about lucid dreaming in a psychiatry class in college. In a dream, if you become aware you are dreaming, you can change the dream around you and imagine what ever you would like to see. "oping to engage lucid dreaming, I shut my eyes and held them tightly and imagined a bright yellow sports car on the floor of the guest room in front of me. I imagined a garage door ne!t to it that I could speed out of the room with. I opened my eyes to see that the wall wrapped around the room uninterrupted by the door I had imagined. 4ikewise, the rug sat in front of me unburdened by so much as a lug nut of my imagined escape.. I was awake and in the room. Closing and opening my eyes in the nightmare must have triggered me to awaken. +!cept, this time I was in the middle of the guest room floor

facing that god&awful human shaped opening in the wall.

I blinked but I shouldn't have and in an instant I was inches from the wall. #he wall had moved closer to me and I was now staring into the depth of that terrible hole. It squirmed and recoiled in sightless movement and silently bellowed a seething hatred. In an absurd way, was interesting and I could not, no didn't want to, turn away. I was kissing -loody %ary on the mouth with the lights on. I felt my desire to run away being ripped from me and along with it, everything of myself. 5I am nothing but a bag of bones, blessed by a borrowed e!istence.6 I thought to myself. 5'nd when all that is borrowed is asked for, to the darkness it must be returned.6 It answered. 0taring into the void, any detail or element of my life was profane and putrid. I was overcome by the thought of how little my wet skeleton mattered in relation even to the rest of the vile race to which it belonged. %y mother was gone. %y father was gone. %y brothers were gone. 'll were gone. ere it to be taken from me, my life would leave behind no frayed ends and I welcomed the liberation which staring into this darkness promised.

-ut noD I am me. :one of that was right. #he ha1e of the darkness's trance evaporated and my attachment to my life =however lonely it was> returned to me. I needed to escape, but the hole in the wall held me there. It filled me with fear and for the first time, there was no answer. I was staring into the void of all answers. I decided to live and I resolved to run. I would .ump through the window in the hallway and then, I don't know, burn the house down or something. If this house wasn't the door to hell itself, then I had surely lost my mind and burning down a house with no insurance to gain seemed like an appropriate cry for help. I could be half way home before anybody knew the fire to be more than a farmer burning leaves.. #he more I thought, the deeper the nothingness gripped me. (eep down inside, I was certain that the it was playing with me. I didn't know what to e!pect when it pounced but would not be devoured without a fight. +!pecting to be fro1en in place, I was miraculously able to put my feet beneath me and sprint for the door. #he guest room sat on the second floor, but there was a roof outside of the hallway window and I hoped it would give me a chance to make a more controlled .ump to the front yard. #urning the corner, I saw the window within reach at the end of the hall. From behind the window, the blackness of the early morning =and the idea of ouutside> was a tremendous comfort. Eeady to .ump, I hit the window at a full run and it was then that two truths became immediately apparent to me. #he first, that the window was wide open. here I had anticipated a pane of glass, there was only empty space. #he second, which was less of an immediate concern but far more sinister, was a reali1ation of how wrong I had been with my observation a few sentences ago. #he darkness I had seen outside was not the midnight sky. It was too deep, too hard, too full to be something so warming. #hese two truths immediately planted my feet on the carpet of the upstairs hallway but not soon enough and I found myself tumbling through the open window and into the lonely ink.

#ime means nothing to me. It is dark and cold and hours pass as weeks. It may be that I have been here for one day or one hundred&thousand years. -lackness surrounds me, and every day I feel like the idea of 'me' grows smaller and more foreign. I see nothing and hear nothing outside of the silent screaming of the all&encompassing nothingness in which I e!ist. I see nothing and hear nothing outside of the silent screaming of the all&encompassing nothingness in which I don't e!ist. +very sense is devoted to the te!ture and taste and sight of the infinite depression. I pass time by imagining that a dream can feel as real as this feels and when I wake up it will all seem silly but I know this is not true. #here is no answer to where I am. +very faculty of my perception is continuously preoccupied with estimating the depth and reason for the darkness I know. I am dead and I am in hell. In between the screaming, I have named the silence god. 0ome time ago, I found a hole. :ot the monster that ate me in the old farmhouse. I was here and a hole opened up. #here was once a hole in this darkness. It had been only seconds in the spire that I had waited millions of years for this interruption. #hrough the opening, I saw the bedroom I had slept in that first night in the house. I was asleep on the bed in the center and saw my body =now a stranger> tossing and turning on the old sofa bed. #hrough the other side of the hole, I saw that same body look up and notice the bridge between our two worlds separated by an infinite e!panse of hope. I saw in its face the curiosity with which I remember ga1ing into the abyss that first time we were acquainted. It looked closer. I looked closer. I looked into my own face. #he right corner of the mouth peeked up and the e!pression became a sly smile. #he thing wearing my skin looked into me and as for the eternity I will spend in this darkness, I will never forget the last words I ever heard and the laws words I am ever to hear.

Fits like a glove.

end