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The Hungry Purple Wallpaper

Conrad’s Story “Yes, Admiral Alligator, I agree. We do need to get some more lights. It’s much too dark in here,” Conrad said as he walked down the upstairs hallway with Admiral Alligator under his arm. The stuffed animal had just mentioned the fact that dark hallways gave him the willies. Conrad’s slippers made slithering noises on the floor as he passed the hall table. On the wood paneled wall to either side of him were child-like paintings of sailboats and drowned mer-maids. He averted his eyes from the painting of a shark devour-ing people in the water and hoped Sergeant Shark had not got-ten ideas from it. Conrad and Admiral Alligator joined the rest of the crew in their bedroom. Sergeant Shark, Senior Snake, Tech Sergeant Tarantula, and Major Mammoth were piled on the small, iron-framed bed waiting to be tucked in. Conrad gingerly crawled under the covers, making sure to tuck in all the paws, claws, and fins, and turned off the light, hoping his friends would keep the house’s monsters at bay. They had all, Conrad, his older sister, his older brother, and his dead grandmother, moved into the house at the end of Harpner Street the week before. It had been uninhabited for the last five years and no one knew exactly what had happened to the previous occupants. There were rumors about them going away on holiday to the Bermuda Triangle but Conrad’s sister didn’t believe that. She figured they had gone to some tropical island and been taken in by the natives. Either way, there had been no objections by the neighbors when the Lowelle children had moved in after the untimely death of their parents. Tech Sergeant Tarantula, whose many-eyed face was closest to Conrad’s ear, whispered that it had been a month now since

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his parents’ passing. Conrad thought for a moment and then nodded. “You’re right. Today’s the twenty-fifth of November, which makes it ex-actly one month. I wonder if they’ve made it to heaven yet.” Major Mammoth offered to help him with the math. Conrad thought he saw a shadow move near the far wall. He pulled Major Mammoth closer. “Well, first we have to know how far away heaven is. It’s got to be at least a hundred feet,” Con-rad said, trying to convince himself he had imagined the move-ment. Major Mammoth thought heaven must be farther than that. “You’re probably right. Otherwise the buildings on the boardwalk would run into it. So, now we just need to figure out how long it takes their boat to sail more than a hundred feet,” Conrad told his friends, scrunching up his face as he played with the numbers. “It might take longer than a month,” he said after a moment. “Their boat never was very good at sailing over things.” Senior Snake hissed a comment about the boat. “No, perhaps they didn’t take the boat,” Conrad agreed. “It might have been too damaged after it was hit. Maybe they hitchhiked instead. Do you think you’re allowed to hitchhike to heaven?” he asked his friends. None of them knew the answer. “I don’t know either,” said Conrad, double-checking that the blankets were tucked in. He could have sworn he saw movement in the wallpaper. He hated the wallpaper in his room. It was purple with girly white flowers. “Agnes should have this room instead,” he told Tech Sergeant Tarantula. “She’s a girl after all, and she’s a lot braver than I am.” His friends all chimed in and defended his bravery, espe-cially Major Mammoth, who recalled that Conrad had recently saved him from a band of cockroaches. “No, I’m not brave. Agnes was the one who killed the cock-

roaches. I just stood on top of the kitchen table. And I didn’t help Basil either when Grandma made him check all the rooms for rats. I haven’t done anything brave since we got here,” Con-rad said, pulling the blankets up higher so they touched his chin. “If it wasn’t for you guys, I’d be too scared to sleep.” Sergeant Shark promised to keep him safe and Admiral Al-ligator showed Conrad his toothy grin and told him nothing would get past his teeth. Conrad gave each of his friends a hug and slowly closed his eyes. He dreamed he was playing in his bedroom. There was a noise behind him and he turned to see the wallpaper had come alive. The flowers were slithering across the purple background like snakes. In their centers were rows and rows of pointy teeth that made horrible gnashing sounds as they chewed through the walls. The flowers quickly came after him, moving from wall to wall with unbelievable speed. Conrad jerked awake. He turned to Sergeant Shark to tell him about his dream, but his friend was not there. Neither was Admiral Alligator. The spots where they had been tucked in were empty and the blanket had gaping holes with stuffing sticking out. Conrad opened his mouth to scream when he heard a some-thing slither into the hallway. Then there were two or three loud chomping sounds, as though the paintings were being chewed off the walls.

Basil’s Story “I don’t see why you don’t just leave me in the kitchen,” she told him one night after they’d been in the house a week. “It’s not like I need the company. There are enough spiders and dust bunnies to talk to.” Basil Lowelle loved his dead grandma more than anything, which was why he had been so excited when she had agreed to come live with them in their new house. “I won’t take any nonsense,” she had told him in her gravelly

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Hungry Wallpaper drawing

“The Hungry Purple Wallpaper”Pen and ink, watercolor

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voice as he’d carried her cat-shaped cookie jar through the front door. “I expect you three to keep the place clean. I’m not here to babysit. Lord knows I gave up that duty when I was cremated.” “We’ll be good, Grandma, you’ll see,” Basil had assured her. As soon as Agnes had gotten rid of the cockroaches, Basil had found his grandmother a nice shelf in the kitchen to sit on. From there she could see and hear everything that went on dur-ing the day, although she refused to have anything to do with it. She criticized Agnes’s cooking, gave Basil the wrong answers on homework questions, and demanded Conrad stop carrying his stuffed animals around. For all her gruffness though, Basil still loved her and at night he took her off the shelf and carried her up to his room so she wouldn’t get lonely. And every night she told him the dust bunnies were better company than he was. Basil shrugged off her comment and slipped on his pajamas. “I like talking to you. I used to talk to Mom before I went to sleep. She’d tell Conrad and me stories about how she met Dad.” “You mean how she met that no-good, unattractive bum,” his grandmother corrected. She gave a snort in her cookie jar. “I never did like that man. It’s a good thing you didn’t get your looks from him.” Basil looked at himself in the mirror. His blond hair was a haystack of cowlicks that rested on his large ears. “I think my ears are his,” Basil said, tugging at his lobes. His grandmother laughed. “Yes, those are his all right. You’re both as deaf as a pile of rocks. That’s probably why he didn’t hear the ocean liner’s horn when - What was that?” “What was what?” “Shh! Listen!” she said, her voice grating like sand particles. Basil strained his ears but heard nothing. “I don’t hear any-thing,” he told her. “Nonsense,” she said. “There’s something making noise out in the hallway. Go see what it is.” “Why me?” Basil demanded. He didn’t want to admit it to

his grandmother, but the hallway gave him the willies at night. In fact, the whole house did. His grandmother let out an irritated, gravelly sigh. “Because I’m in a cookie jar, nimwit. Go get Conrad or Agnes if you’re scared. Just go see what it is.” Basil opened his door and found the hallway empty. There was nothing in it. No tables, no paintings, not even the light fix-tures that had been there when he had walked to his bedroom. There was only the girly purple wallpaper that was in Conrad’s room. “Well, what is it?” his grandmother yelled. “It’s all gone,” Basil said, rubbing his eyes in disbelief. “What do you mean? What’s all gone?” Basil ran over to his grandmother’s jar and carried it to the hallway. “It’s all gone!” he repeated, holding the cookie jar up high so she could see. There was a scream from Conrad’s room and, in terror, Basil let go of his grandmother.

Agnes’s Story It was the middle of the night and someone was screaming. Before Agnes could throw back her covers, she heard the unmis-takable sound of a cat-shaped cookie jar shattering. “Grandma!” Basil shrieked. “My friends!” Conrad screamed. Agnes jumped out of bed and flung open her door. She’d expected to find one of her brothers hurt or a robber stealing from them. Instead, her younger brothers were standing in the hallway with teary eyes, Conrad clutching three of his stuffed animals and Basil holding only air. “Something ate Sergeant Shark and Admiral Alligator!” Con-rad bawled. Basil pulled at his hair and screamed, “Grandma’s gone!” Agnes had no idea what Conrad was on about but she un-

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derstood Basil’s problem. “She’s not gone, Basil. She’s just on the floor at the moment.” She had always been good at stating the obvious. “Go downstairs to the kitchen and get another con-tainer for her.” Basil nodded and ran down the hallway. Agnes heard him gallop down the steps and swing open the kitchen door. “I need to oil that tomorrow,” she said absently. “All right, Conrad, what’s going on with your friends?” “It ate them!” he hollered between tears. “What ate them?” Agnes asked. Conrad pointed at the wallpaper in the hallway. “It did!” Agnes was about to tell him that wallpaper couldn’t eat things when she realized that the lamps in the hallway were gone. She looked around and found that the sea paintings and the dusty hall table were also missing. Plus, she could have sworn there hadn’t been wallpaper in the hallway before. In fact, she was sure that only Conrad’s room had been papered. The other rooms were paneled in rotting wood salvaged from shipwrecks. There was a clatter on the steps and Agnes and Conrad turned to find Basil returning with a container for their grand-mother. Agnes held out her hand and Basil handed her the clear Tupperware they kept cookies in. “Where did all the cookies go?” Agnes asked as she peered into the empty container. “I ate them,” Basil mumbled between mouthfuls of choco-late crumbs. Agnes chose not to say anything. Instead she scooped up all she could of their grandmother and put her in the Tupperware. “There,” she said, handing the container to Basil, “see if she’s all right.” “Grandma, are you there?” Basil asked, holding the contain-er up to his ear. “Well?” Agnes asked. She was as anxious as Basil. If Basil thought something was wrong with their grandmother, he

would be inconsolable. She was the only family they had besides themselves. Basil leaned in closer, his face scrunched in concentration. He stayed like that for a moment and then exclaimed, “She’s all right!” Agnes breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Now, about the wall-paper…” All three of them looked at the purple wallpaper. Conrad whimpered and hugged his friends tighter. Basil took a step back so he was an arm’s length away. Agnes, on the other hand, moved closer. She took the hem of her nightgown and pressed it against the wallpaper. Flowers from all sides lashed out and set their teeth into the fabric. With a jerk, Agnes pulled her night-gown away and stumbled backward. The flowers continued to munch for several seconds and then returned to their places. Agnes examined the rather large hole in her nightgown. “Basil, didn’t you say you found a wallpaper steamer when Grandma had you search the house for rats?” Her brother didn’t answer. He was already running down the hallway to the unused bathroom. “What are you going to do?” Conrad asked. “I’m going to get rid of it,” Agnes told him, squaring her jaw. So far she’d saved Conrad’s stuffed animals from cockroaches and Basil from an army of rats. Now she was saving all of them from wallpaper. “What about Sergeant Shark and Admiral Alligator?” Agnes looked down at her younger brother and shook her head. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.” Conrad squeezed his friends tighter against his chest. “You mean they’re gone? Like Mom and Dad?” Agnes bit her lip and nodded. “But they don’t have a boat!” Conrad exclaimed. “How are they going to get to heaven?” “I’m sure someone will give them a ride,” Agnes assured him.

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Conrad tilted his head toward his stuffed spider. “Tech Ser-geant Tarantula thinks they’ll get picked up by oceanographers.” Agnes couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe.” Basil came running back with the wallpaper steamer in his hands. He plugged it into the nearest outlet and handed it to Agnes. “I filled it up with water,” he told her, backing away. “Right, you two go into Basil’s room and don’t come out till I tell you,” Agnes said, tightening her grip on the steamer’s han-dle. Basil tucked their grandmother under his arm and hustled Conrad into his room. When the door slammed shut behind them, Agnes put her hand on her hip and addressed the wallpa-per. “All right, you girly flowers, time for you to go to heaven.” Agnes immediately set to work steaming the wallpaper off the walls. The flowers at first tried to attack the steamer, but its hot cloud of vapor scorched their petals and they shrank back, gnashing their teeth in anger. The glue on the back of the wallpa-per was old and smelled like rotten cookies but the paper pulled easily away from the wall. Agnes ripped it off in huge sheets and kicked it into a ball on the floor. When Agnes was on the last strip of wallpaper, there was a terrible thud as several large items emerged from behind the paper. It was the table and all of the paintings. The light fixtures followed a second later when Agnes ripped the remaining sec-tion off the wall and added it to her pile. “What was that?” Basil asked, his voice muffled by his door. “The hallway things are back!” Agnes shouted. “What about my friends?” Conrad demanded. Agnes unplugged the wallpaper steamer and went into Con-rad’s room. “I’ll know in a bit,” she told him. The wallpaper was much harder to get off in Conrad’s room. The flowers let out deep-throated growls and twisted their stems in tight knots as they threw themselves over and over at the steamer. When Agnes tried to pull the paper off, long strings of

old glue held on tight. She had to use all her strength to break the paper’s hold on the wall and the whole time the flowers con-tinued to growl and gnash their teeth. Agnes had to be careful not to get too close. It took over an hour for her to rip the wallpaper all down, but just as she was about to steam off the last bit, it bulged like the stomach of a bloated whale and out popped Conrad’s stuffed animals, slightly chewed but otherwise well. Agnes tore off the paper with a laugh and scooped up Conrad’s friends. “Conrad, they’re here! They’re safe!” she exclaimed, pound-ing on Basil’s door. The door flew open and Conrad, in tears, embraced her. He immediately took his friends and asked how they had survived the hungry purple wallpaper. “The wallpaper was vegetarian,” Conrad told her after a brief conversation with Admiral Alligator. “It didn’t like the taste of aquatic animals.” Agnes could only shake her head and laugh. She hadn’t thought wallpaper could be vegetarian, let alone hungry. Agnes asked Basil how their grandmother was doing. The old lady was apparently fine but disliked her new container. Agnes didn’t mind too much. Everyone was still in one piece. The three of them had managed to survive another day on their own.

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