By the time anyone believed Ethan, the damage had already braided itself into his nervous system. He flinched at footsteps, froze at the creak of pipes, and only relaxed when his cheek touched that same patch of paint.

The wall was no quirky comfort; it was a border patrolled by a stranger inches away, a man who had slipped into their home through a crack grief left in David’s routines. Nolan had been living behind the drywall for weeks, nested between studs and insulation, watching through a cut the size of a coin.

The baby monitor’s blue glow backlit his eye as he mapped their arguments, their schedules, their weakest hours. He taught Ethan with whispers and knocks to disappear on command, to press his face to plaster and become a shadow whenever danger crawled down the hall.

When the police finally dragged Nolan out, gaunt and grinning, they took the body from the wall, but not the wall from Ethan’s body; every startle, every rigid breath was a fluency in a language of fear no one had thought to trans… Continues…

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