Chapter 8: The Wall Behind the Boxes

The door opened without a sound. Inside were more boxes, some old winter coats on wire hangers, and a row of dusty shoeboxes on the top shelf. It smelled like cold basements and forgotten things. There was nothing else, no whispering and no ghost, just a plain closet in a plain room on a bright Saturday morning.

I let out a shaky laugh. "See? Nothing."

"Told you," Ethan said. But I noticed he hadn't moved from where he stood.

I started to close the door, and that's when I noticed the scratches. They were on the inside of the door, low down near the bottom, where a child would be sitting. There were dozens of them, long lines and short lines, crossing over each other. At first I thought they were random. But when I crouched down and looked closer, I saw that some of them formed shapes. There was a crooked letter D, and after it came a tiny, careful A.

I ran my finger over the letters. The grooves were deep, as if they had been carved with something sharp and stubborn. Someone had spent a long time on them, and he had been afraid the whole time.

"Ethan," I said. "Come look at this."

He crouched beside me, and I felt him go still. "That wasn't there before," he said quietly.

"You've never seen it?"

"No. I've never opened this door. Not since we moved in." He swallowed. "Mom always said it was stuck. She stored stuff in it because it was easy to shut. I never wanted to look."

I turned and stared at him. "You never wanted to look? Why?"

He didn't answer right away. He rubbed the back of his neck the way he did when he was twelve and got caught eating cookies before dinner. "Because sometimes," he said in a low voice, "I hear it. Late at night. Somebody is breathing near the closet. I always figured it was my imagination. I never told anyone. I didn't want to sound crazy."

The words hit me like cold water. "You heard it?"

"Not every night. Just sometimes. And it isn't scary, Jack. That's what's weird. It's just sad. Like a little kid crying when he thinks nobody's listening."

We stared at each other for a long time. Neither of us said anything, because neither of us had to. All those years, I had believed I was alone in this, and Ethan had been carrying the same secret across the hall from me the entire time. We had both been too afraid to say it out loud.

I turned back to the closet. I pulled out the boxes and set them on the floor. I pushed aside the coats. The back wall was made of old, dark panels, like the rest of the house, and I ran my hands along it slowly. I don't know what I was searching for. I only knew that the scratches pointed toward the corner.

One of the panels felt different. It was a little looser than the others, and it wobbled when I pressed it.

"Jack," Ethan warned. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not sure yet." I pushed harder, and the panel gave a soft click. Then it swung inward on a tiny hinge, and a gust of stale, cold air brushed my face.

Behind the wall was a hidden space, no bigger than a phone booth. A secret hiding place, cut into the frame of the house. It had probably been built years ago as a place to store valuables or maybe as a safe room. There was a thin wooden shelf inside. On that shelf sat a faded green backpack, a flashlight with corroded batteries, and a toy police car with one missing wheel.

And beside the backpack lay a small notebook with a school logo on its cover.

My hands shook as I picked it up. Ethan leaned over my shoulder. Inside, in a child's uneven handwriting, was a name printed carefully on the very first page: Danny Walsh, age 9.