Short Story: The House That Kept Its Secrets

 Alright, so my roommate and I bought this old house—super cheap, total fixer-upper. It was one of those places that had “character,” which is just a nice way of saying it needed a ton of work. My roommate handled the big projects—knocking down walls, rewiring stuff—while I got stuck with the worst job: wallpaper removal.

Now, I don’t know what kind of obsession the previous owners had with wallpaper, but they didn’t just cover the walls—they covered the ceilings too. It was brutal work, but oddly satisfying. You ever peel a sunburn and try to get the longest strip possible? That’s basically what I turned it into. A little game to pass the time.

And that’s when I noticed something weird.

Underneath the wallpaper, in every single room, were names and dates written on the walls. At first, I didn’t think much of it. Maybe it was a quirky renovation thing, like marking when they last updated the room? But something about it felt… off. So, one night, curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to Google one of the names.

And my stomach dropped.

The name I searched? It belonged to a missing person. And the date under the wallpaper? The exact date they disappeared.

At this point, my brain is screaming nope, nope, nope, but I keep going. I make a list of all the names and dates and start searching them one by one. Every. Single. One. Matches a missing person’s report. Every date? Lines up perfectly with when they vanished.

At this point, I’m freaking out. I call the cops first thing in the morning, and as soon as they hear what I found, they send an entire crime scene team to the house. I’m standing in the corner, watching them work, still trying to wrap my head around it, when I overhear one of the forensic techs say:

“Yup… it’s human.”

And I’m like, Wait. What’s human?

That’s when one of the officers turns to me and asks, “Ma’am… where’s all the material you already removed?”

Because apparently, the stuff I had been peeling off wasn’t wallpaper.