Murmurs in the Walls: The Voicemail
Episode X
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Murmurs in the Walls is a serial paranormal mystery novella featuring Judith Temple, psychic detective. This is Season 3 of Case Files of a Psychic Detective.
While Murmurs in the Walls can be read as a standalone story, you may appreciate the characters and their interactions more if you are familiar with Judith’s previous adventures, Down in the Holler and Beasts of the Field.
Season 1, Down in the Holler, is now available in paperback and e-book. You can get your own copy here! Season 2, Beasts of the Field, is currently free to read! Click here to read Beasts of the Field.
← In Episode IX: The Wedding - Her paranormal investigation case all but completed, Judith attended Melissa Sloan’s wedding and set about giving Tim an answer to his question.
Episode X Content Warning: Domestic violence
When Brian was a grown-up, he’d be tall and strong, so strong that his mama wouldn’t ever have to step between him and danger again. She wouldn’t have to shove Tucker and yell to snatch his raging, bleary eyes away from Brian and fix them onto herself instead. When Brian was big, one punch would be all it would take to send Tucker off, cowering, running away with his tail between his legs, never to return. When Brian was big, no one would ever hurt his mama again.
But he wasn’t big. He was small, even for his age. Small enough to squeeze into the farthest corner of his closet and crouch there, hiding in the dark with his hands over his ears.
He could feel the vibrations in the walls. The quick, high-pitched crashes, those were plates and cups, smashing to pieces. Vibrations that went ding, almost like music, those were the sturdier things, like the metal picture frame on the bookshelf or the fake-wood decorations his mom hung on the wall. The deeper thuds were chairs shoved back, thumping against the plaster. But the worst hits, the vibrations that made Brian’s throat close up and his bones turn soft as quivering jelly, were the sound of a human body - Tucker’s fist or his mama’s head or shoulders - slamming against the wall.
There was a faint crash from somewhere in his room. Brian peeked through cracked eyelids, and through the open sliver of his closet door he could see his model pirate ship on the floor, fallen from its perch on the shelf above his bed. The mast was crooked, bent at the wrong angle from the beautiful ship.
From the living room, he couldn’t hear words, but he could hear voices. Tucker’s throaty, incoherent rage, and his mama’s shrill, short sounds broken by thuds and crashes.
A seedling of an idea flashed through Brian’s head, and he scrambled out from the closet. His pillow shot from his bed across his room, struck the wall, and tumbled with a soft whump to the floor.
Not now, please not now. He kept moving, pushing through the familiar jolt of prickling fear.
Brian leapt over the pillow, then grasped his door handle with shaking hands. Opening the door, he thumped down the hallway and slammed open the bathroom door as loudly as he could.
“I’m gonna be sick!” he yelled, but his voice was swallowed by a crash.
He leaned his head out the bathroom door. “I’m gonna puke!”
Footsteps moved toward him for a moment, then halted amid a slam and a shattering of cheap ceramic.
The doors of the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink flew open, banging on their hinges, and the warped mirror built into them cracked down the middle like torn fabric. Light flickered from the ceiling, the old yellow lightbulb brightening and darkening. Then, with a keening whine and a sudden pop, the windowless bathroom dropped into utter darkness.
Brian’s hands fumbled and found the cool, hard top of the toilet lid. Throwing it open, he leaned over and tried to stick his finger far, far back in his mouth like Will Collins said he did when he didn’t want to go to school. But whether it was Brian’s too-short fingers or his racing heart or the noisy clatter of medicine bottles flying off the shelves or the yells and crashes from the living room that broke his concentration, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even do this, couldn’t even make himself throw up as a distraction. What was he good for, anyway?
Nothing. Just like Tucker had said when this all started.
From the living room came a scream - his mama’s scream, high and ragged and leeched of the stony edge that had burst into her voice when she first raised it at Tucker, dragging his anger to her instead. Then a crash, a thud, the broken smash of drywall.
Brian’s lungs ached with the frenetic in-out-in-out of air that couldn’t give him enough oxygen. He couldn’t breathe; not enough air.
He could call the police. They were bigger than Tucker; they could stop him.
But the last time, months ago, before they’d moved out, the police had looked with narrow eyes at his mama. The social worker had said things that made his mama’s eyes turn red and her fists clench. He’d heard the social worker, with her velvet-soft voice and her cardboard-stiff, curly hair, whisper the words foster care.
He wouldn’t call anyone who would make his mama cry like that, not now. He wasn’t going anywhere without her. He wouldn’t; he couldn’t.
With the sudden, deep pop of rocketing pressure, something in the shower burst open, splattering Brian and the wall and the floor and the ceiling with thick, coconut-scented globs. Another pop - a spray of slick lavender soap - and the shower caddy leapt off the tile wall, clattering to the bottom of the tub.
A shriek trapped in his throat, Brian darted toward the bathroom door, his hands groping for the handle. He had to get out, find somewhere with air. But where could he go? His mother’s screams, punctuated by horrible thuds, filled the house, stealing the oxygen.
And he couldn’t run from himself. Wherever he ran, he couldn’t escape the flickering lights, the objects flying from their places and ricocheting off walls or smashing to pieces on the floor. He couldn’t escape what he was, the monster he was, the force he couldn’t explain, which somehow came from him and was part of him, though he couldn’t predict or control it.
If he could control it, he’d throw the bookshelf onto Tucker and crush his bones, and the shelves would leave indentations, criss-cross lines of pulverized skeleton.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t control any of it.
What was he good for, anyway?
Nothing.
Brian’s fingers found the doorknob, but his sweaty skin slipped. Pawing at the little round knob, he finally jerked it open and stumbled into the hallway, where the noise was louder.
A photo flew off the wall, smashed into the plaster beside Brian’s head, and tumbled to the vinyl floor in a hail of broken glass.
He couldn’t control it, couldn’t stop it. No one could.
Miss Temple. Judith.
She had put her number in his mama’s phone.
She had looked at him with her serious face and her eyes that were sharp but never mean, not like Tucker’s. He could call her, he knew he could. Maybe she could help him stop it.
But where was his mama’s phone?
The hooks in the kitchen, where she hung her purse and her car keys.
Brian hurled himself down the hallway, his fingers in his ears.
Stare straight ahead; don’t look. Just go.
In the gray, late evening light that pushed through the slats of the closed window blinds, Brian found his mother’s purse and yanked it from its hook. The phone would be here; it had to be, so long as it wasn’t in her pocket or strewn somewhere in the living room.
Clutching the purse to his chest, Brian retreated to a small space between the stove and the cabinet stuffed with pots and pans. He crouched down, gasping with ragged breaths.
Terrible words crackled through the air, slinging into Brian’s ears as he fished his mama’s phone from her purse. Nasty words, poisonous words, the kind a little boy never forgets, especially when someone aims them at his mama.
Her password - he knew it, but with his trembling fingers it took him three tries to get the number in just right. On the other side of the kitchen wall, another crash vibrated, swiping what little breath remained in Brian’s lungs.
A hard thud, thick and solid as a body. His mama, flung against the wall.
In Brian’s ten years, three men - his daddy, Evan, and now Tucker - had gone in and out of his mama’s house, trailing chaos and bruises and words lingering in the walls like razor blades flung hard enough to stick in the plaster. It must be that all men were like this, or it wouldn’t keep happening again and again. Was this what he would turn into? Was it something about getting older and bigger that made grown-up men tell a woman they loved her and then hurt her, scream at her, leave black and green and purple marks blooming like ugly flowers on her skin?
Would this be him someday?
With a keening burst that blasted through the dark kitchen, the coffeepot shattered, and shards of glass scattered over the floor, pelting Brian with their tiny sharpness. He covered his head with a whimper, then pulled the phone closer to his face.
He scrolled down his mama’s contact list to the T’s.
Tarbell
Talliman
Temple - There it was. Miss Judith’s number.
The phone rang -
And rang.
“Please,” Brian whispered, his voice small and hoarse and wet with strangled sobs. “Please answer, please.”
You have reached the phone number of Judith Temple. I am unable to answer your call at the moment -
The fruit bowl on the counter suddenly shot through the air, throwing apples and bananas onto the floor, and slammed into the opposite kitchen wall, leaving a round dent before it ricocheted off and upended a chair.
Tucker’s footsteps thunked across the floor, coming closer to the kitchen. “What are you doin’ in there, you little -”
“You leave him alone!” That was his mama, the angry fear in her voice again, and Brian knew she had just pushed Tucker or hit him, trying to keep him focused on her.
The cabinet doors beside Brian swung open, smacking and creaking, and pots and pans tumbled out, clattering on the floor.
The voicemail beeped.
“Miss Judith,” Brian said into the phone. He could barely hear his tearful voice over the thumping in his ears. He couldn’t cry, not now; she’d think he was a baby, a crying, whiny baby. But his face was already so wet that he couldn’t even feel the new tears on his cheeks, only knew they were there because they choked his words. “It’s happenin’ again, an’ I can’t - I can’t make it stop.”
Nasty words, harsh and ruthless as a hammer, and a crash, a shatter of glass -
With a screech of wood on vinyl, the kitchen table tipped and fell on its side as though flipped by strong hands.
“Help me,” Brian whispered into the phone, his voice a squeak, barely audible. His hands shook and his chest clenched like his ribs wanted to crush his lungs and his skin was hot and without his permission his fingers curled into weak, helpless fists. “Please.”
Thank you so much for stopping by the read Murmurs in the Walls! If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know with a like, comment, or restack!
→ Keep reading! Episode XI: The Poltergeist
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This brought me to tears.
I worked for a few years as a staff attorney at the Indiana department that handles these sorts of matters. Having a kid of my own wasn't the only reason why I left, but it was one of them. This is all too real.
Oh no Brian!!! 😭 Judith answer your phone! (And get Tim over there 😉)