Scratching

It started on a Sunday night, which Sammy remembered because Sunday nights were already the worst night of the week even before this. He was lying in bed not sleeping. He did that a lot. School the next day made his stomach feel like a fist, and he would lie there in the dark watching the little glow stars his mum had stuck on the ceiling years ago when he was small, the ones that didn't really glow anymore, just sat up there being grey shapes. And then he heard it. Scratch. Scratch scratch. It came from the wall. Not the wall with the window, the other one, the long wall right next to his bed where the headboard was. Close. If he reached out his arm in the dark he could touch the wall the sound was coming from, and Sammy did reach his arm out, and then he pulled it back really fast and put it under the covers, because that felt safer even though he couldn't have said why. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch scratch scratch. It wasn't loud. That was almost the worst part. It was a small busy little sound, the sound of something with small busy claws, working away at the inside of the wall like it had a job to do and the job was important and it had all night. In the morning Sammy told his mum and his mum said it was mice. "Old houses get mice, love," she said, putting toast in front of him. "We'll get some traps. Don't lose sleep over a mouse." Sammy ate his toast and didn't argue, because arguing with his mum before school never went anywhere good. But he knew it wasn't mice. He didn't know how he knew yet. He just knew, the way you know a wasp from a bee before you've really looked. His dad put traps down. Little wooden ones with cheese, and two of the snappy kind, all along the bottom of the long wall by Sammy's bed. His dad was pleased with himself about it. "That'll sort your mouse out," he said, and ruffled Sammy's hair, and Sammy said thanks Dad and went to bed and lay there waiting. The scratching started at the same time as the night before. Sammy had checked his clock the first night without really meaning to remember, and now he checked it again, and it was the same. Eleven minutes past midnight. Exactly. The scratching did not start at ten past or quarter past. It started at eleven minutes past, like it had a clock too. Sammy lay very still and listened to the small busy claws and waited for the snap of one of the traps. The snap never came. The scratching went on for almost an hour, moving a little bit up the wall and then a little bit down, patient, busy, and not one single trap went off, and Sammy worked out why while he was lying there, and working it out made him feel cold all the way down even though he was under two blankets. The traps were on the floor. The scratching wasn't on the floor. The scratching was up the wall, level with his pillow, level with his head, and it had been higher than the floor every single night, and mice could not climb up the inside of a wall and hang there for an hour doing a job. Mice went along the bottom. Mice found the cheese. Whatever was in Sammy's wall had not found the cheese because it was not looking for cheese. That was the third night. And on the third night Sammy did the thing that he wished, after, that he had never done, the thing that changed it from something he was listening to into something that knew he was there. He couldn't help it. It was right by his head and it had been going for ages and he was tired and scared and a bit angry, and so Sammy made a fist and he knocked on the wall. Just three times. Knock. Knock. Knock. Like telling someone in the next room to be quiet. The scratching stopped. The whole room went so quiet Sammy could hear his own heart. And then, from inside the wall, right next to his head, in the dark, something knocked back. Knock. Knock. Knock. Three times. Exactly like his. And it was waiting now. Sammy could feel it waiting, on the other side of a few centimetres of wall, for him to knock again.