"From Within the Walls" by Don Anelli

From Within the Walls

by Don Anelli

It was Lorena’s first night in the house, and she had every intention of making this special. Her first house at the age of 26, long before her friends were even capable of doing this, she was getting ready to embark on the next path to adulthood she had wanted since she was a girl.

With her boxes ready to be delivered tomorrow and left with a futon and knitted blanket her grandmother made her, Lorena tries to settle down for the night, except for the strange scratching noises in the walls.

Scratching, scurrying, chittering noises.

Like a rat or mouse was inside the walls. Coming from the attic.

Maybe more than one, by the sounds of it.

No, it couldn’t be rats. The inspection would’ve found something. It had to just be the house; she had never lived in one, and perhaps this was just what it was like. So many characters from the horror novels she read would complain about houses making strange noises, and while those usually ended with everyone murdered in horrific ways, they were just novels. This wasn’t one of those books, so maybe she could deal with it in the morning.

Dutifully remembering everything when she wakes up, Lorena tries to check if she has something in her house, eventually finding nothing after an exhaustive search. Settling for that, when she gets the message that her furniture is ready for delivery, Lorena spends the day unloading and organizing.

By that night, exhausted, on spindly legs, and barely able to keep her eyes open, she plops down on the couch and begins scrolling through Instagram while waiting for the pizza she ordered to arrive. That leaves her unaware of the pagan symbol materializing out of thin air on the trap door to the attic above her. Forging itself into a Pentagram and other arcane markings, the reaction of the symbol goes unnoticed until deep into the night.

Awaking at 2:00 in the morning, Lorena tries to make her way back to bed but is unable to find her way around the house in her groggy state, causing her to stumble into the kitchen by accident. Realizing her mistake, she tries to back out, only to spot the strange symbol on the ceiling for the first time. In her half-asleep state, she tries to approach it only for the returning skittering sounds to start getting louder the closer she gets to it.

She gets closer, intently searching for the source of the skittering and chittering behind the wall.

It’s then that she notices the voices chanting outside. Looking out her window, across the front lawn, over a dozen hooded figures wielding torches are seen, looking ominously up at her. Their faces shrouded in darkness, it mattered not; this was bad news.

From among the gathered horde, a leader emerges from between the group, wearing the same black robe but holding a massive scepter-like rod with a strange, ornate symbol on top. He bangs the scepter against the ground, sending the gathered crowd into a frenzy as they begin chanting loudly before falling silent.

Desperate to lock the front door just in case they try to come in, Lorena rushes over to close it, but upon rushing back to the window to check what happened, she sees a giant arm protruding from the Pentagram symbol on the ceiling door above her. The hand, clawed, furry, and most decidedly not human, lunges at her unexpectedly, nearly scratching her face.

Backing away from the hand to tend to her wound, she doesn’t notice the full extent of the figure stepping out of the symbol and landing on the floor. By the time it’s fully exposed, the creature is a large, bipedal, ferocious-looking humanoid rat, its bent whiskers and gnarled fangs a clear sign that something was amiss with the creature.

By the time Lorena realized she was fine, she spotted the creature coming for her with no time to react other than to try to get her hands up to protect herself. However, the larger, more vicious, and clearly unconcerned rodent-like creature is more focused on ripping her to pieces, dismembering Lorena with ease, and tossing the blood-strewn limbs and other parts across the room. The torrent of gushing blood pooling across the hardwood floor reaches the front door, eventually causing the door to magically unseal itself, which allows the robbed figures to enter.

Entering the blood-stained room filled with scattered body parts, the leader looks over at the humanoid rat, dutifully looking back at him, waiting for acknowledgement of having completed his task. Granted with a head pat, the leader points to one of Lorena’s severed arms, which the rat-creature takes and hungrily returns to the portal on the wall. The rest of the group gathers up the body parts, stacks them on top of the main chunk of Lorena’s body, and takes everything down to the basement so they can wait for more bodies to fulfill their special ritual. Just three more to go.