A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel by Paul Tremblay

heard and felt it all with my insides.
    Dad yelled, “Jesus Christ, Marjorie! Stop it!” and disappeared into her room.
    Mom stayed behind in the doorway and yelled all sorts of staccato instructions that were directed at Dad. “Don’t! Easy! Gentle! John! Go easy! Don’t touch her! Let her calm down first! She doesn’t know what she’s doing!”
    I crawled down the hallway toward Marjorie’s room, my palms and bare knees collecting grit and dust from the hardwood that hadn’t been swept for weeks.
    The pounding stopped. Marjorie was still screaming and hysterical but she’d calmed down just enough so that I could make out what everyone said.
    Marjorie yelled, “Get them out of my head!”
    Dad: “It’s okay. You—You just had a bad dream.”
    “They’re so old. They won’t let me sleep. They’re always there.”
    Mom: “Oh, Marjorie. Mom and Dad are here. Everything’s okay.”
    “They’ll always be there. There are too many.”
    Dad: “Shh, no one’s here. It’s just us.”
    “I can’t escape them.”
    I was halfway to her room. Marjorie wasn’t screaming anymore. She sounded calm, detached; speaking in that normal teenager tone where she barely mustered the energy to grunt an answer to annoying parental questions.
    My parents were getting louder, growing more desperate.
    Mom: “Please, honey. Climb down!”
    “We can’t escape them.”
    Dad: “Marjorie, come down from there! Now!”
    Then Mom yelled at Dad for yelling at Marjorie, and Dad yelled at Marjorie to knock it off, and Marjorie began screaming again at the both of them, and everyone was screaming, and I thought it would never stop.
    I leapfrogged into the doorway, still crouched low to the floor. And when I looked up and saw Marjorie, I started screaming too.
    The next morning, Mom told me that Marjorie wouldn’t remember any of what had happened because she was sleepwalking or something. And I asked her about the holes in the walls and Mom tried to joke, saying,“Yes, Marjorie was sleep punching too.” I didn’t get the joke. Mom explained that Marjorie was having some sort of night terror, which was a really strong nightmare that scared you so much it made your body seem awake to everyone else but you weren’t really awake, and Marjorie was so scared that she punched holes in the plaster, probably trying to get away from whatever it was she was dreaming about. Mom assured me that Marjorie had the strength to punch holes in the walls, and that plaster, particularly the old and crumbly plaster of the second floor, wasn’t very strong at all. I was supposed to find comfort in Mom’s explanation, but I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around what a night terror was, and I was equally concerned to hear that our walls were so weak. What kind of house had crumbly walls?
    That night, standing in Marjorie’s doorway, when I knew nothing of night terrors and old plaster, I saw Marjorie clinging to the wall like a spider. Her circular poster collage, her collection of glossy body parts, was her web, and she hovered over its center. Her arms and legs were spread-eagled, with her hands, wrists, feet, and ankles sunk into the wall as though it were slowly absorbing her. Marjorie squirmed and writhed in place, her feet at least my height above the floor. Dad had to look up at her and he tugged on her sweatshirt, demanding that she wake up and come down off the wall.
    Marjorie’s head was turned toward us. I couldn’t see the side of her face because her hair was everywhere. She yelled, “I don’t want to fucking listen to them anymore. I don’t want to fucking listen to fucking anyone anymore! Fucking ever fucking again!”
    Mom grabbed me by the hand and led me down the hall to my room. She shushed me the whole way, the sounds from Marjorie’s room receding until we were at the end of the hallway. Mom powered my bedroomdoor open, busting through my tied robe belt that fell to the floor, a dead fuzzy vine. My plastic orange juice