The silver foil crinkled between my fingers, a sound that was louder than the storm outside.
It was a specific sound. Not the generic rustle of paper, but the tinny, sharp snap of a Snickers wrapper. The smell rose from it—not just the stale chocolate from the present, but a phantom scent that hit the back of my throat like smoke. Peanut butter. Dust. And the coppery tang of dried blood.
The flashlight beam wavered. The hole I had smashed in the wall began to pulsate, the edges of the broken drywall expanding and contracting like a breathing lung.
My knees hit the floor. I didn’t remember falling.
The room was spinning, the angles of the Glass House twisting into a kaleidoscope of reflections. I tried to look away from the peephole, from the black pupil drilled into the wood, but it pulled me in. It was a gravity well, sucking the oxygen out of the room, sucking the years out of my bones.
Don’t look, the journalist in my head screamed. Stay here. Stay in 2024.
But the girl in my heart whispered, Open the door.
The air grew cold. Not the damp cold of the Oakhaven fog, but the sterile, conditioned chill of the house when Richard turned the thermostat down to sixty-five because he said heat made people lazy.
The flashlight rolled across the carpet. The light strobed.
Flash.
The hammer was gone.
Flash.
My hands were small. My fingernails were bitten down to the quick, raw and stinging.
Flash.
I wasn’t thirty-three. I was twelve. And I was crying.
I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, wedged into the narrow space between the bed and the wall. I was wearing my nightgown, the one with the lace collar that scratched my neck. I had pulled my knees to my chest, trying to make myself as small as possible, trying to disappear into the pattern of the wallpaper.
Downstairs, the music was playing. Opera. La Bohème. Richard always played opera when he was angry. He turned the volume up so high the floorboards vibrated, drowning out the sound of his voice, drowning out the sound of my mother’s pleading.
Smash.
The sound of a plate hitting the wall downstairs.
I squeezed my eyes shut, burying my face in my knees. “Go away,” I whispered. “Please, just go away.”
Scritch.
The sound came from the vent near the floorboards.
I froze. Richard didn’t scratch. Richard stomped. Richard slammed.
Scritch. Scritch.
I lifted my head, the tears cooling on my cheeks. The metal grate of the air return vent was loose. I knew it was loose because I had tried to pry it off once, thinking I could crawl inside and hide in the ductwork like a rat.
Now, the grate was moving.
It shifted, sliding to the side with a soft metallic scrape.
Two eyes appeared in the darkness of the shaft.
They weren’t glowing or monstrous. They were wide, human, and terrified. They reflected the moonlight filtering through my window like polished river stones.
I should have screamed. I should have run to the door and locked it. But fear has a hierarchy, and the monster inside the walls seemed less dangerous than the monster downstairs.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
The eyes blinked. A hand emerged from the darkness.
It was filthy. The skin was stained with mud and grease, the knuckles scabbed over. It looked like a hand that had dug its way out of a grave.
I pressed my back against the bedframe, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
The hand opened.
Resting on the dirty palm was a candy bar. A Snickers. The wrapper was silver, catching the dim light.
“For you,” a voice rasped. It sounded like dry leaves skittering on pavement. Unused. Hoarse.
I stared at the offering. “I’m not allowed to eat sugar after six,” I said automatically. Richard’s rule. Sugar makes children hyperactive. Hyperactive children make mistakes.
“He can’t see you,” the voice said. “I’m watching. The Dragon is eating his dinner. You eat yours.”
The Dragon. That’s what I called Richard in my head. How did he know?
“How do you know?” I asked, inching closer.
“I listen,” the boy said. “I listen to the walls. They tell me secrets.”
I reached out, my hand shaking. I took the candy bar. The wrapper was warm from his hand.
“Are you a ghost?” I asked.
He shifted in the darkness, his face pressing closer to the grate. I saw a smudge of dirt on his cheek, a scar running through his eyebrow. He looked about my age, maybe a little older, but wilder. Feral.
“Ghosts are dead,” he said. “I’m not dead. I’m hiding.”
“Hiding from what?”
“Everything.”
He gestured with his chin toward the candy. “Eat. You’re too skinny. The Princess needs her strength if she’s going to run away.”
I tore the wrapper open. The smell of chocolate and peanuts filled the small space, masking the smell of Lemon Pledge and fear. I took a bite. It tasted like salvation.
“I can’t run away,” I said, swallowing the sob that threatened to come up with the chocolate. “ The fog won’t let me.”
“The fog is a blanket,” he said. “It hides you. I can teach you. I can teach you how to be invisible.”
I looked at him, really looked at him. He wasn’t scary. He was just… lonely. Lonely in a way that matched the hollow ache in my own chest.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He hesitated. He looked down at his dirty hands, flexing the fingers. “I don’t have one anymore. I left it in the river.”
“Everyone has a name.”
“Not me.”
I chewed on the candy, thinking. He needed a name. If he didn’t have a name, he wasn’t real. And I needed him to be real. I needed an ally.
“Mrs. Gable says the Sandman lives in the walls,” I whispered. “She says he sprinkles dust in your eyes to make you sleep.”
The boy smiled. It was a jagged, broken thing, revealing teeth that hadn’t seen a brush in weeks. But it reached his eyes.
“The Sandman,” he repeated. “Does he protect the bad children?”
“No,” I said. “He steals them.”
“Good,” he said, leaning his forehead against the metal grate. “Then I’ll steal you. I’ll steal you away from the Dragon, and we can live in the castle under the roots.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
I finished the candy bar. I handed him the wrapper. He took it, folding it into a tiny, perfect square, and tucked it into his pocket like a treasure.
“Go to sleep, Elara,” he whispered. “I’ll watch the door.”
“You’ll stay?”
“I’m always here,” he said. “In the walls. Just scratch if you need me.”
He reached out one finger and tapped the wall. Scritch. Scritch.
I mimicked him. Scritch. Scritch.
“Goodnight, Sandman,” I whispered.
“Goodnight, Princess.”
His eyes receded into the darkness. The grate didn’t slide back. He stayed there, a shadow in the shaft, watching me as I crawled back into bed. For the first time in months, the opera music didn’t keep me awake. I slept. Because the monster in the wall was on my side.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The sound ripped through the memory like a knife through canvas.
My eyes snapped open.
I was back.
I was on the floor, my legs tangled in the debris of the shattered drywall. The flashlight was rolling on the carpet, casting dizzying shadows against the ceiling. The smell of chocolate was gone, replaced by the chalky dust of gypsum.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The front door.
“Elara! Open the damn door!”
Julian.
I gasped, sucking in air that felt too thin. My body felt heavy, leaden, as if I had actually been asleep for twenty years.
I scrambled to my feet, stumbling over the hammer. I was covered in white dust. I looked like a ghost.
I ran down the hallway, down the floating stairs, my boots slipping on the smooth treads. The pounding on the door was relentless, vibrating the glass walls.
I unlocked the deadbolt and threw the door open.
Julian stood there, rain dripping from his hat, his gun drawn and held low at his side. Behind him, the lights of a patrol cruiser washed the driveway in red and blue.
He took one look at me—at the white dust coating my hair and clothes, at the wild terror in my eyes—and holstered his weapon.
“Elara,” he breathed, stepping inside and kicking the door shut against the wind. “Jesus, look at you. What happened? I saw the light moving, I thought…”
He grabbed my shoulders, his grip grounding me. “Are you hurt? Is he here?”
I shook my head, a cloud of drywall dust drifting off me. I couldn’t speak. My throat was closed tight around the memory I had just excavated.
“Talk to me, Elara,” he commanded, giving me a shake. “Why are you covered in dust?”
I looked up at him. I saw the boy in the river photo. I saw the brother he thought was dead.
“He was here,” I croaked. My voice sounded like the boy’s. Dry. Unused.
“Tonight?” Julian’s eyes went wide. “Did you see him?”
“No,” I said. “I mean… yes. But not tonight.”
I grabbed Julian’s lapels, pulling him down so I could look him in the eye. I needed him to understand. I needed him to share the weight of the stone in my pocket.
“I broke the wall, Julian. I broke the wall in my bedroom.”
“Why?”
“Because I remembered,” I whispered. Tears leaked from my eyes, cutting tracks through the dust on my face. “I remembered his name.”
Julian went still. “Whose name?”
“The feral boy. The one my mother reported. The one you said was a ghost story.”
I took a breath, inhaling the scent of Julian’s rain-soaked jacket and the lingering smell of the Snickers bar that wasn’t there.
“I fed him, Julian. I gave him blankets. I let him live in the walls.”
Julian stared at me, horror dawning on his face.
“Elara…”
“I called him the Sandman,” I said, the confession pouring out of me like blood from a wound. “But he wasn’t a stranger. He was your brother.”
I let go of him, stepping back, my hands shaking.
“Elias didn’t drown,” I said. “He came to me. And I hid him.”