Walls Evaporate Sometimes (Short Story)

 Walls evaporate sometimes, the note said. Soon yours will be gone for good. Leave.

She held the note against her chest. The problem was that she had no other place to go. But she knew the warning — whoever had sent it — was true.

It was happening all around her, to people everywhere. It started slowly, with walls that cracked from pressure or buckled from rain. The floors thinned, too, and sagged. In the final stages, the walls became papery and useless.

Then, incredibly, magically, it all went away; the house, what was left of it, just blinked out of sight – vanished.

It was happening to her, too. All the signs were there: the cracks, the easily bruised walls, the straining moan of buckling floors afflicted by heavy furniture, keeping her awake at night. She knew if she stayed, the floor would collapse with her on it, or the ceiling would crash on her head.

There was no place in her area where the House Blight was not happening. Even many of the shelters had succumbed. Some flocked to unsanitary tent encampments. To get away from it, she was told, she would have to move far away.

There were rumors of a distant place where the House Blight could not live. The climate, they said, was too hot for it. They said it was a place of lush beauty near the sea with dense forests and oak trees that drooped with strange playful tufts.

Because the House Blight hated the sun and its heat, she did as she had been advised; she packed up her things, everything she could take, and prepared to move.

It was not easy. She felttoo much while she packed. She had grown attached to the house over the decade she had lived there, and now it was going away.

She also fretted over what to take or leave. She thought maybe she should box up her mind with everything else, and take it out again only after she had moved.

She packed everything she could not live without. And her cat. She had to take her cat. A cat was what made a place a home.

She left everything else in her house to her neighbor, whom the House Blight had not touched. “Take it all. Just pay whatever you can.” she said. Seeing her desperation, he wrinkled his forehead and shook his head, as if making a huge sacrifice, and gave her three dollars for most of her belongings, while secretly rejoicing about the profit he would make at his upcoming garage sale.

She spent all the savings she had to buy a used car in good enough condition to make the trip and still had to borrow for other expenses. By moving day her walls were so thin, she could almost see through them.

Unable to afford a moving truck, she spent the morning packing all she could into her new car until at last she got inside and drove away. It was night when she and her cat arrived at her new town.

She found an affordable place to stay in the upper floor of an old inn. The first thing she noticed was how solid everything was. Even before the Blight, her walls had been thin. When the wind blew, the floor rattled and the house shook.

Here, it was different. Only the strongest materials had been used. The floor was solid granite. The walls and doors were heavy and massive. A wind would be no threat to them. Even the Blight would take awhile to burrow through the solid material.

She also noticed how quiet it was: no more crumbling, groaning, creaking things in the night. In the backyard was a pretty lake, with an inviting bench in front.

A neighbor, an elderly woman, was sitting there the first day, and asked her why she had come from so far away. The girl said, “Walls evaporate sometimes. You know how it is.” This was such a common saying in her home town that she was surprised when the neighbor looked at her strangely. “Come again?”

“They evaporate. The walls. They go away. At least where I come from, they do.” The lady shook her head, pursed her lips, pulled her purse into her lap and rose. As the lady shambled away, the girl tried again: “Not all at once.” But the lady did not turn, only hurried her steps. “The Blight eats them slowly,” she whispered, the words trailing away.

Unheard, she went to her new home.

Her new home had a fireplace and big closets and a high window so that she could sit in her living room and watch the clouds, just as if she were outside.

Despite these luxuries, she had no bed at first, so she slept on the hard floor for the first few weeks until she could afford one.

Money was tight. To make matters worse, a nasty note appeared in her mailbox from the person who had sold her old house to her, demanding that she continue the high monthly payment. She called and told him she could not afford to pay for an evaporating house plus rent. He said, “Well you should have bought the House Evaporation Insurance.”

He had a point; she had to grant him that.

She unpacked her things. The cat began to sniff everything and decreed the new place worthy by rubbing against the door posts and scraping its claws against the carpet.

After finding a new job, a temporary one, she bought some bargain furniture and had it all moved inside.

She felt a click of satisfaction as they days went by. There was nothing she could have done at her old place she could not do here. Caught up in her routine, she barely saw her surroundings anymore, the lake or the fireplace or the clouds.

She wondered if anything had really changed, except the walls.

One day while reading, she shut her book, put it down, and left the inn. She wanted to see more of her new town. She had heard there was a beach nearby. She bought a map and set off in search of the ocean, which would show her once and for all that she really was in a new place.

As she neared the beach, she began to see more palm trees. The wind rushed against them, and they leaned away from it. The buildings were scattered far apart, allowing her the first glimpse of the sea.

Far away, it was quiet, but on the beach, she neared the ocean and its sounds opened up. The waves roared and splashed and pulled away. The wind grabbed her long hair and pulled and whipped it against her face.

She thought about the home she had left, but could only summon vague images.

The House Blight was a thing of the past, a distant memory, and all that mattered now was this, the cresting, splashing, and pulling back, the wind in her face, the sand on her feet.

The place she had called home was far away, and she wondered if she would ever feel home here. But maybe all she needed was a place to sleep, and walls.

Which walls surrounded her was unimportant, as long as they stood. Outside, inside; what did the words really mean?

At night she took comfort in the thickness of the walls, the heaviness of the bricks. Until she began to hear the rumors.

Sometimes, in this town, people said, the ground collapses without warning. It is the heavy solid things that are most in danger, the things that press and weigh that most easily fall.

Giant signs, plastered everywhere, proclaimed the new horror, a word she dared not speak. Sinkhole? See the Sinkhole Guy!

She could not believe her bad fortune. A new House Blight was upon her! Even when neighbors told her that sinkholes only affected a few, she would not calm down.

She considered moving again. She even packed a few boxes. She remembered her fear of the ceiling collapsing, knew too well the treachery of shelters meant to protect.

Where could she go where she could rely on surfaces to bear her weight or walls to hold the ceiling?

She thought about her sturdy new walls that blocked the rain and wind, appearing so stable.

And she remembered the ocean, too, so near, with all of its wild beauty, unpredictable, unsafe, but still comforting in the rhythms it did have.

She sighed in resignation. Walls evaporate sometimes, she thought, and the ground — it turns out — sometimes disappears.

But for the time they were there you had to trust them, the ground that might give way or a ceiling that might fall. The timeless strength of walls and surfaces was an illusion. But it was one you had to have.

She began to unpack the boxes she had filled in her haste to escape the Sinkhole Blight. As she did, she thought of the ocean, alive and constantly moving.

Meanwhile, her walls and floors stood still, and she congratulated them for that.