The Rip in the wall

It was moving day. Melanie didn't want to leave her house in Sydney. She liked it there. It was where all of her favourite memories were. Her dad had gotten a job in Melbourne, so they had to leave. She understood but it still upset her.

Their new house was old and rickety, not like the Sydney house, which had been brand new. It smelled funny, like other people. The floors had scratches and the doors were squeaky. It made her feel cold, like she was being watched as an intruder in someone else's house.

Melanie ran up the stairs to pick her new room. The first room she saw was the biggest and had beautiful big windows that looked onto the street. It was dusty and a little bit colder than the hallway. The wallpaper was pale green with fading white flowers, but it was still beautiful except for the tiniest rip in the middle of the wall. Even though the room was lovely, she couldn't help but feel scared, as though she were being watched. Not just watched, hunted. She quickly left the room and wandered into the smaller room at the back of the house, which was a little more worn out but much warmer than the big bedroom.

While unpacking her belongings in her new room, she hears knocking at her bedroom door. Particularly strange, since her parents were both outside with the moving truck. She opens the door with a shaking hand and quickly flings it open. No one is there. Just as she goes to close the door, she hears the knocking again. It is coming from down the hall. From the big bedroom. Maybe a bird was stuck somewhere?

She walked down the hallway to see what was going on, but just as she approaches the bedroom door, the knocking stops. Curious, she opens the door. Again, no one is there. Yet again, just as she turns around to leave, the knocking starts again. This time it is not the door. The knocking is coming from the wall. It is coming from the rip in the wall. Probably just a rat or a possum, she thought to herself. She'd have to remember to tell her dad about that.

"I'm going down to the shops to pick up some things for dinner, is there anything you want in particular?" Melanie's mother asked as she picked up her purse and threw on her shoes.

"Oh! Umm, could we have lasagne? Please?" Melanie asked. It was her favourite.

"Sure, sweetie. Whatever you want," she said as she kissed her on the forehead and left.

It was so boring at the new house. Nothing was set up yet. Not even the phones.

Melanie wandered upstairs with her phone and sat on the bed, scrolling through Instagram mindlessly trying to pass the time. The sounds of the TV woke her from her nap. Finally, she thought, Dad has finally set the TV up. She walked downstairs to find the TV on but it was stuck on some home shopping channel. She tried to change the channel but it wouldn't work. Frustrated, she tried to turn it off but the remote was completely dead. She went to the wall to pull the plug, but found that it was already unplugged. She looked up at the TV. It was off. As though it had never been on at all. I must be going crazy, she thought to herself.

Halfway up the stairs, she could hear her dad calling her from their bedroom. The big bedroom. "Coming!" she called out.

The door was open, but she couldn't see her dad anywhere. She looked to the wall again. The rip seemed larger than it was before. Maybe dad had picked at it. "Dad!" she called out.

"What is it, Mel?" she heard him call. From downstairs.

"Dad?"

"Yes?! I'm down here, come down if you need something. I'm not going to keep shouting at you across the house."

Huh? But he was up here? She thought to herself. Maybe it was the acoustics of the house. She read about that somewhere, that you can make it sound like you're in one place while you're actually really far away. Maybe it was the old house.

She walked downstairs to see what her father was up to.

"Hey Mel, check this out. I found a bunch of old portraits of different people. You like art don't you. We'll hang these up. There must have been a collector or an artist living here before this", her dad said.

Melanie walked down the stairs to the basement. Her dad was looking at a row of painting leaning up against the wall. She stood next to him and looked at the faces. None of them looked older than twenty, but all of the clothes made it seem like they were pulled out of some part of history. They all looked unhealthily pale, but the strangest thing of all was that every one of them had their eyes closed and on the wall behind them was a rip in the wall paper.

"Darling, can you come up here for a second?" She could hear her mother call from the big bedroom.

"Mum must have come home then. Off you go, Mel! I'll take care of these," Dad said as she made her way up the stairs towards the big bedroom.

"Melanie!" her mum called again from the bedroom. Her voice was very high-pitched.

She walked into the bedroom but again, no one was there. As she turned to leave and find her mother, she heard her name again. Quieter this time, as though being whispered. She stopped in her tracks. "Mum?"

"Melanie..." she heard a voice almost sing. It sounded like it was coming from the rip in the wall again.

30 MINUTES LATER

"Mel, I'm home. I couldn't find the lasagne so I got some pizza," shouted Mel's mom as she walked through the door.

"Hey Honey, Mel's upstairs. She went there about 30 minutes ago since you called her up," said Mel's dad as he came up the stairs from the basement. "You should see what I found in the basement. A bunch of portraits of dead-looking adolescents painted like they were from different eras. It's creepy... Are you okay honey you look kind of pale"

"Ralph... I wasn't here 30 minutes ago. I just got back from the shops," said Mel's mum as she started to get worried.

"Yes you were, even I heard you"

"No, I wasn't, I just got back"

"Then who was it..."

Both the parents looked at each other. They ran the stairs and entered the big bedroom. Up on the wall lay the portrait of Melanie, but the creepiest thing was that the portrait looked just like the portraits down in the basement, but her eyes were open and in the wallpaper behind her there was rip. The parents looked at the wall that lay behind the portrait and there was no rip to be found. They put the portrait back down.

The eyes moved.