The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,12

she always pictured Eastern skies lit garishly by shopping plazas and malls.

There were no malls here—the stars, after her second mug of wine, seemed close enough to stroke. She taught an astronomy section in science, hosting star parties with a telescope so her students could take turns peering up at Saturn or Mars. She wondered where those boys and girls were now, the eighth graders she had last year, the seventh graders who would have her in the fall. It was only eight o’clock back home, she could picture them wrapped in towels at swimming pools or sitting on the grass in the twilight watching their dads play softball, talking among themselves about the coming year.

You having Mrs. Savino next year for science? She’s nice, you’ll really like her as long as you do your work. You having Mrs. Savino next year for science? She so used to be nice, but she’s grumpy all the time now. You having Mrs. Savino next year for science? It was weird, really weird, but last year in fourth period she suddenly turned toward the blackboard, covered her face in her hands, and began like almost to sob.

Two

THE third day was much the same, as was the fourth and fifth, and her great discovery didn’t come until Saturday, with the very first piece she stripped from the wall.

She had finished both sides of the hall and was ready to shift her attention to the front parlor. To the left of the window was the obvious place to start—a protruding edge where two seams overlapped right there at face level. She had learned to look for these vulnerabilities, and so, not thinking much about it, she slid her putty knife under the seam, wedged further, then lifted.

The piece came off easily enough, though it was disappointingly small. On the wall beneath it was something she thought at first was an insect, a petrified spider. She started scraping, then realized the spot didn’t protrude but was flush with the plaster. It looked like a stain, a calcified black stain, taking on a crescent shape before disappearing under paper she hadn’t yet scraped off.

Careful Vera, she told herself, though she wasn’t sure what she was responding to or why caution came over her so fast. She put her face up close to the wall and squinted, making sure she only got paper and didn’t scratch the plaster underneath. More of the stain slowly became visible, enough so she finally understood what it was. The letter c written in black ink, India ink, with a precision and gracefulness that could only be from a different era.

An initial? It was lower case, it couldn’t be meant for initials. It was partly hidden under a three-layer fragment—under, which meant it had to have been left there by whoever first papered the walls back in 1919. The ink was faded the same way the bottom layer of paper was, so it was reasonable to assume it had been applied just before the wallpaper and they had aged through the decades together.

She rummaged through the supplies for a smaller putty knife that would work more delicately. To the right of the c was an r and an e. She put her cheek so tight to the wall that her vision couldn’t make out what came next, and only after uncovering the next five letters did she bring her head back and read.

credence

It was like someone’s voice spoke the word out loud—in the silence, she took the surprise of it straight into her heart. An old-fashioned word, one she had to think about for a moment before understanding. Credence. The last e wasn’t quite cleared yet; in scraping off its final loop, she came upon a period, so it was obvious, if she was going to uncover the entire sentence, she had to work back to the left.

Mrs. Hodgson said he asked about me but I gave this no credence.

The handwriting was beautifully proportioned, flowing along with perfect naturalness, though it must have been wearying to hold a pen that high. The script part, the little decorations, flourishes and curls, was particularly graceful, and gave the impression a breeze was blowing the sentence across the wall. The o’s were round and open, almost prissy, but the t and i’s looked rebellious, the cross bars and dots drifting well to the right of where they should be. The first letter in Hodgson was wonderfully bold and exaggerated; Vera, staring at it, realized she had