2. Chapter II

I did not sleep.

Right on, fucking amazing.

Yes, I know.

That sounds dramatic, but I had a chair, coffee, and a wall which moved when the ants entered it. Sleep never became a serious proposal.

Now, if I was to sleep, and then wake back up after 2 hours, that would be a proposal I would have serious, serious trouble to reject.

Around five, the movement stopped. The channels returned to their previous width, if returned is the word. I measured them twice and received slightly different numbers, which was comforting. Bad measurements belonged to ordinary life.

I wrote both down, circled neither, and made another coffee I did not need.

The ants continued working.

They moved through the exposed wall in both directions, carrying fragments inward and bringing others out. There did not appear to be a nest. No eggs, no larvae, no swollen queen hidden behind the plaster.

Just traffic. Maintenance, perhaps.

I hated that word as soon as I thought it.

At half past six, one emerged carrying a clipping of fingernail.

Human, presumably. Pale, slightly ridged, with a narrow band of dirt beneath one edge. I had bitten my nails since childhood, so it was unlikely to be mine. Good. There are benefits to bad habits.

I picked it up anyway.

The clipping was too broad for my little finger and too narrow for my thumb. Index finger, perhaps. Or someone else’s. Or not human at all. A piece of shell can look like a nail when one has not slept and has spent several hours arguing with a wall.

I put it beside the ceramic and wallpaper.

Then I looked at my right index finger.

The nail was intact, though a fine split ran diagonally across the corner. I had caught it on a box two days earlier and forgotten about it. The clipping on the windowsill had the same diagonal edge.

No.

Approximately the same.

Important distinction.

I pressed the clipping against the nail. It completed the split and extended beyond it by perhaps two millimeters.

“Not yet,” I said.

That was a poor choice of words.

I dropped it.

The ant returned for it almost immediately. It climbed onto the windowsill, found the clipping and began dragging it toward the wall.

I blocked it with one finger.

The ant changed direction.

I blocked it again.

It climbed over my finger.

“Fine.”

I let it take the nail.

Kind of pathetic, really. My authority in the house had been reduced to briefly inconveniencing an insect.

By eight, the landlord had replied to my photographs.

Please do not tamper further with the wall. A contractor will be arranged.

He did not mention the channel.

He did not mention the old paint fitting a fresh break.

He did not mention that the photograph showed several hundred ants entering intact plaster.

Perhaps he had not zoomed in.

Perhaps landlords survive by never zooming in.

Perhaps he is JUST and SIMPLY a bothersome little scam-artist.

I sent another photograph with the channel outlined in red and wrote: This is not impact damage. It was already inside the wall.

His reply came twenty minutes later. The contractor will assess.

Wonderful.

I could have waited.

That would have been sensible.

Instead, I removed more plaster.

Not much at first. A narrow strip beside the exposed channel, using the back of a screwdriver because I did not want to go outside for proper tools while dressed in yesterday’s clothes. The plaster came away too easily. Large pieces separated along smooth internal curves, as though someone had scored the wall from behind.

The first branch widened.

Another appeared beneath it.

Then another.

Five channels ran through the wall in parallel arcs, each about six centimeters from the next. The uppermost disappeared behind the ceiling. The lowest passed beneath the counter and continued toward the floor.

Daniel had said ribs.

I had laughed.

The arcs looked like ribs.

Not bones. Not exactly. Their contents were still dirt, paint, hair, wood and fragments of household material. But their arrangement was not accidental. They curved outward from a thicker central channel and narrowed again near the edges, all bending around an empty space behind the plaster.

A cage.

I stood on the counter to remove another section near the ceiling.

This was stupid. The counter was wet beside the sink, I was wearing socks, and part of the cabinet still hung from one screw. I knew all of that. I climbed up anyway.

The upper branch continued into the ceiling.

Something dark was embedded inside it.

I reached in with the tweezers and pulled.

Hair came free.

A small bundle, tangled with plaster fibers. Dark brown. About the length of my thumb.

Mine, perhaps. Hair gets everywhere. Anyone who has cleaned behind furniture knows the human body is constantly leaving evidence of itself and then acting surprised.

One strand had a pale root attached.

I put it down.

Behind it, something moved deeper in the channel.

Not an ant.

A slow tightening passed through the packed debris, drawing the hair-shaped cavity closed. Dust pressed outward around my tweezers.

I pulled my hand away so quickly that my heel slipped.

I came down badly, struck my shoulder against the sink and sent the blue cup onto the floor.

It broke.

Of course it did.

The handle separated first. The body split into three large pieces. The thin gold rim chipped near the old repair.

I stayed on the floor for a moment, partly because my shoulder hurt and partly because getting up would require looking at the cup.

The ceramic fragment on the windowsill was gone.

No.

The ants had carried it away with the nail.

I knew that.

Still, I searched.

Behind the toaster. Beneath the dish rack. In the sink. Pointless places.

Then I found it embedded in the channel.

The blue triangular fragment sat inside the lowest arc, wedged between plaster and a strip of red material. Its broken edge had darkened. Dust filled the glaze. It looked as though it had been there for years.

I picked up the cup piece from the floor.

The fragment fitted the fresh break beside the gold rim.

Again.

I did not swear immediately.

That came after.

I stood in the kitchen holding both pieces and said every useful variation of fuck I knew, then several which were probably not grammatically sound. I shouted at the wall. At the ants. At the landlord, though he was not present and therefore received the strongest portion of the argument.

“Is that it? Is that the fucking trick?”

The wall did not answer.

Odd. It usually answers promptly

“What, you take things before they break? You put them back afterward? For what?”

An ant crossed the exposed channel carrying a piece of the cup I had just dropped.

Fresh blue ceramic.

It passed behind a layer of old plaster and vanished.

“No.”

I grabbed the insect spray.

Then stopped.

The can felt ridiculous in my hand.

There were ants, certainly. Thousands, possibly. But the channels were not made by ants in any ordinary sense. The insects were using them. Following them. Filling them.

Keeping them complete.

The cabinet had fallen, and they had already carried its missing paint into the wall before the fall occurred. The cup had broken, and part of it had been inside the channel since yesterday. The wallpaper fragment belonged to a section of office wall which had not yet faded or torn.

They were not predicting damage.

They were collecting it.

From when?

No idea.

From later, apparently.

I put the spray down.

Then picked it up and sprayed the counter anyway because helplessness should not exclude pest control.

The ants scattered. Several curled immediately. Others ran into the wall. The smell filled the kitchen, sharp and chemical.

I opened the window.

One dead ant lay beside the broken cup with a red fiber still held between its mandibles.

The fiber was wet.

I touched it with the tweezers.

It stretched.

Not thread.

I dropped it into the sink and ran water over it.

The strand twisted in the stream.

Muscle, I thought.

No.

Too small. Too clean. A piece of meat from food waste. A worm. Plant fiber.

It caught against the drain and contracted.

I turned the water off.

The strand relaxed.

I turned the water on.

It tightened again.

“Absolutely not.”

I lifted the drain cover with the tip of the screwdriver and washed it down.

That solved nothing, but it removed it from view.

The contractor was due after noon. I knew I should stop. Leave the wall alone, photograph everything, wait for another person to confirm I had not invented an anatomical arrangement in my kitchen after one sleepless night.

Instead, I followed the lower branch.

The plaster beneath the counter came away in strips. The channel passed behind the sink cabinet and through the floor, which required emptying cleaning products, old cloths, and a collection of carrier bags large enough to suggest I had once expected plastic bags to become currency.

At the back of the cabinet, the wood was warm.

Not room temperature. Warm.

I placed my palm against it twice because the first time could have been imagination.

The warmth pulsed.

Very faintly.

A slow increase, then release.

I removed the rear panel.

The smell arrived first. Damp dust, old wood, and something metallic. Not rot. Not sewage. The smell of a cut finger held too close to the nose.

Behind the panel, the channels converged around a vertical structure the thickness of my wrist.

It looked built.

That is the only word I had then.

Bits of timber, wire, plaster and bone-colored material had been packed into a single column. Ants moved along its surface through narrow grooves. Several disappeared into small openings and emerged elsewhere carrying wet particles.

A strip of electrical cable entered one side.

The insulation had split. Fine red threads wound through the exposed copper.

I stared at that for quite a while.

The threads moved against the wire.

Not much. Tiny contractions, almost hidden by the ants passing over them.

I should have left the house.

I know.

I should have called emergency services, though I am still not sure what service handles blood inside electrical wiring. Fire department, perhaps. Electrician. Priest. Whoever answers first.

I reached in instead.

There was a hard pale section near the center of the column, partly hidden by compacted plaster. I scraped around it with the screwdriver.

The surface was smooth.

Curved.

Bone.

This time I did not argue with the word.

It was too large to belong to a rat or bird. Too narrow for a femur. A rib, perhaps, except it did not end where a rib should. It continued downward through the floor and upward into the wall, transitioning gradually into wood.

Not attached to wood.

Becoming wood.

The pale surface developed grain near the upper edge. Varnish appeared in streaks. One of the old cabinet supports emerged from it at an angle, enclosed inside a translucent membrane.

I touched the bone with the screwdriver.

The entire column tightened.

The kitchen floor shifted beneath me.

One plate fragment slid from the counter and shattered.

Inside the wall, something knocked once.

A deep, damp sound.

Then again, farther away.

Another answered from the office.

Another from upstairs.

The channels did not belong to the kitchen.

Of course they did not.

Why would anything have the decency to remain in one room?

I backed away from the sink cabinet.

The red threads around the cable tightened in sequence. The movement traveled upward through the column and into the rib-like arcs.

They drew inward.

The empty space behind them narrowed.

For a moment, the wall had a chest.

No.

The house had a chest.

That was worse, so I returned to the first phrasing.

The wall had a chest.

The movement passed.

The arcs relaxed.

Ants resumed their traffic.

One emerged from the central column carrying something white and metallic.

It dropped the object on the cabinet floor.

A tooth fragment.

The hell? The fuck?

Small. Part of a molar, with a dull silver filling in the center.

I touched my tongue to the left side of my mouth.

That is...

The back molar there had an old amalgam filling.

Intact.

That is disgusting.

I need to focus on my thoughts.

I checked in the bathroom mirror anyway. Then with my phone camera. Then with the little dental mirror I had bought years earlier and never used because inspecting one’s own mouth is a good way to discover anxieties for free.

The filling had an irregular crescent near the inner edge.

The fragment from the wall contained the same crescent.

I carried it upstairs and held it beside the reflection.

Similar.

Not proof.

Many fillings are irregular. Many molars have the same general curve. There are billions of teeth in the world and probably several in the house, if the channel had been gathering debris for decades.

I returned to the kitchen.

The fragment was warm.

That bothered me.

I placed it on the windowsill, where the other pieces had been.

Then laughed because there were no other pieces anymore. The ants had reclaimed them.

A collection with one item.

My tooth, perhaps.

Not yet.

There. Again.

I looked at my hands.

The split in my index nail had widened. A tiny triangular section at the corner was missing.

No pain.

No blood.

I knew where it had gone.

The contractor knocked at twelve forty-seven.

I did not open the door immediately.

I was standing in the kitchen, staring at the exposed anatomy of the wall while ants carried fragments of my belongings—and possibly myself—into channels which already contained their future damage.

He knoced again.

“Coming.”

My voice sounded normal.

That was insulting.

I covered the opening beneath the sink with the removed panel. It did not fit properly anymore. Something behind it had thickened.

I pushed harder.

The column pressed back.

Not violently.

Just enough.

I left it open.

At the front door, I looked down and saw a new line of ants crossing the hallway.

They came from beneath the kitchen floor and continued toward the stairs.

Each carried a pale fragment.

Paint, I thought.

Then one passed over the dark floorboard, and the light caught it.

Not paint.

Skin.

Thin, translucent strips with pores and short dark hairs.

I looked at my forearm.

A narrow red line had appeared from wrist to elbow.

No cut.

No pain, really.

Just a line beneath the skin, following the exact curve of the ant trail below.

The contrator knocked a third time.

I opened the door.

He looked past me toward the kitchen.

“Cabinet?”

“I- Yes.”

He stepped inside.

An ant crossed his boot carrying a clipping of fingernail.

Clearly mine.

This time, I was certain.