Hiding in Plain Sight by David Margolin

Hiding in Plain Sight by David Margolin

A shrill repetitive chirping sound–impossible to ignore—shattered the quiet in Chris and Isabella’s second-story bedroom. It was 3 a.m. on the dot.  In the transition zone between sleep and wakefulness, Chris was sure that they were under invasion by a giant aggressive creature.

As he surfaced into full consciousness, his theories became more realistic. The warning beep from a piece of heavy construction equipment backing up? No, this sound was sharper and closer, definitely something inside the house, but not right next to them. Was something on the first floor making the horrible chirp? The smoke alarm? The carbon monoxide detector?  Why do they always have to go off in the middle of the night?

Chris looked over at Isabella, a notoriously sound sleeper. In addition to her natural resistance to being awakened before morning, a sedating bedtime cold pill was doing its job.

Chris’s exit from the bed was energized by the hope of ending the noise before his wife woke up. He grabbed the small LED flashlight that he kept next to his side of the bed and managed to race down to the first floor without tripping over their cat Ferdinand, who liked to park himself just outside their bedroom door.

On the first floor the noise level increased from annoying to deafening. Chris winced, covered his ears, and searched for the source. The smoke alarm was attached to the ceiling and the carbon monoxide detector was plugged into an electrical outlet at the bottom of the living room wall. After a few additional eardrum-shattering blasts, he discovered that his luck wasn’t all bad, the sound was coming from the wall and not the ceiling—a lot more convenient. He was able to pluck the detector out of the wall without having to move any furniture. He was rewarded with merciful silence. He learned from the information printed in microfont on the back that the nerve-rattling chirping meant that the device had aged out, not that harmful gas had been detected. No need to evacuate, I’ll buy a new one tomorrow.

Mission accomplished, Chris intended to return to the comfort of his bed. He hoped that he could fall back to sleep quickly, despite the adrenalin rush of his search-and-rectify mission. Then he saw it–a blank plate mounted on the wall next to the electrical outlet that the detector had been plugged into. No doubt Chris had looked at this blank wall plate before, but he hadn’t really seen it.

Why haven’t I ever noticed that before? Maybe because it is so plain, so fungible. It was designed to be inconspicuous, to hide in plain sight. But why is it there? Is something hiding behind it?

Those thoughts seemed foreign to him, like he was listening in on someone else’s internal conversation. You’re making too much of this, just go back to bed and sleep off this paranoia, but he continued down a rabbit hole of anger, cynicism, and suspiciousness. What arrogance, what disrespect, to hang a plate there without a care in the world, with no apologies. Would it have been too much of an effort to have provided an explanation? It need not have been anything fancy. A small sticky note posted directly on the plastic plate would have been sufficient. “Apologies, but we couldn’t decide what to put in here,” or “Oops, we decided to put the electrical outlet somewhere else.”  Imagine going into a library and finding a book with all blank pages or finding a blank canvas hanging in an art museum. This is so insulting, so disingenuous, so disrespectful!

The desire to return to sleep had vanished, replaced by righteous indignation and a commitment to defending himself and his wife against this outrageous, unsolicited, and hostile blank wall plate attack.

Chris ignored Ferdinand’s perplexed look and headed back upstairs. He was happy to hear Isabella’s gentle snoring, Don’t worry honey, I’ll protect us and get to the bottom of this home invasion.

With the aid of his flashlight, Chris quickly found the headlamp that they kept in their go bag in the corner of the bedroom. Back on the first floor he retrieved a screwdriver from the tool drawer and went to work. It was easy to unscrew the two small screws, but he had to pry the plate from the wall paint adhering to it, as if the wall was trying to cling on to something that belonged to it.

 Chris was surprised when he directed the headlamp beam on the spot where the plate had been. He didn’t see electrical wires, communication cables, or an empty space. He saw the wall. The screws had been screwed directly into the wallboard and the wallboard looked the same as the surrounding wall. Now I know that they’re hiding something! They went to the trouble of repairing the wallboard, after…after what? After they hid money, or baby shoes, or a listening device, or a bomb?

Chris was back in a few minutes with a small saw that he retrieved from the garage.  He sawed as quietly as he could, cutting out a rectangle a little smaller than the wall plate that he had removed. The powerful beam of light from the headlamp didn’t reveal any secrets, just the expected things, wooden studs, insulation, wires and cables on route to outlets and jacks elsewhere on the wall.  The air was cool. There was a faint sound of normal building noises—fans, running water, and a low hum. The air still smelled faintly of construction materials, even though the building was 25 years old.

Maybe this blank plate is a trick, a distractor to steer me away from the real deal. Scanning the living room for more cover ups to investigate, Chris saw a round blank wall plate screwed into the ceiling. He took another trip to the garage and returned with a 6-foot ladder and his heavy-duty toolbox. Ferdinand was plopped on the couch sleepily eyeing the drama.

Chris removed the plate without difficulty. Having done a fair amount of handyman work in his time, he recognized the now-uncovered electrical wiring as a potential connection for a ceiling lamp, nothing peculiar. Maybe a previous owner moved a fixture from this location to another one, or abandoned it. How annoying—why are people so indecisive?

Chris felt an urge to reach up, pull the wires down, and explore above the ceiling, but he tried to reign himself in. This is ridiculous. I need to get back to bed. He returned everything to its place so as not to leave any clues of his nocturnal folly. When he turned quickly to head upstairs Chris knocked over a drinking glass on the counter. High-strung Ferdinand leapt forcefully onto his cat-tree perch. The force of his landing displaced the cat tree by a couple of inches, far enough to reveal a blank wall plate behind it.

Chris lost the battle with himself to ignore this new plate and go back to bed. This plate appeared no different than the other wall plates until his light illuminated the screws. Unlike the other plates, that had plastic screws painted to match them, these screws were made of ancient-looking wood. The slots in the screws were also peculiar. They weren’t straight grooves designed to be removed by flat head screwdrivers, they weren’t machined for a Phillip’s screwdriver, and they didn’t match any of the customized safety screws that he had used on projects. They were in the shape of a cross, the long arm of which was positioned perfectly straight up and down.

Chris gauged that one of his small flathead screwdrivers would fit nicely into the vertical post of the cross. He inserted it and began to turn the top screw counterclockwise.

Stop! Don’t do it, but something pushed him on despite his accelerating pulse and respiratory rate. The screwdriver became progressively harder to turn and sweat loosened his hold on it. He switched to a two-hand grip, but the resistance to turning the screwdriver continued to increase and sweat was dripping from his hands. You idiot, why can’t you stop?

He pushed on past the dry throat and loud swallowing. He pushed past beyond reason and the instinct for self-preservation.  He pushed past the pit in his stomach, and the vivid scenes from horror movies that were racing through his memory.

He grabbed a thick dish towel out of a drawer and wrapped it around the handle of the screwdriver. That improved his grip enough to permit him to continue turning, and after one more full rotation–success! There was a pop, like a loud champagne cork ejecting, but more ominous; he pictured a heavy gavel being brought down on a hollow block. With that, the wooden screws shot out of the holes and bounced off the cabinets on the other side of the kitchen.

Chris was blown to the ground.

An intense stench permeated the air. Voices within cried out in agony. Young, old, men, women–a collective cry of grief, loss, pain, suffering, and horror. They had been prisoners in the wall–incorporeal sufferers hidden behind a thin plastic plate that was as impenetrable to them as a three-foot thick steel door.

He knew that he was in deep trouble. He wished that he could undo whatever it was that he had just done—put the genie back in the bottle. He pleaded for mercy, but none was granted.

Curiosity killed the cat, started sounding repetitively in his mind, but Ferdinand isn’t as foolhardy as I am, or was.  He felt like he was falling down a bottomless elevator shaft, irreversible, irretrievable, alone.

As usual, Isabella awoke refreshed and cold-symptom free, on the top of the world. She went down to prepare her morning coffee. There was no sign of Chris, upstairs or down. He must be out for one of his early morning walks.

Ferdinand raced from the couch to join Isabella as she entered the kitchen. Isabella shrieked, “What a mess!”There was gray debris of various sizes—powder, small particles, and clumps–strewn all over the kitchen. She shouted at Ferdinand to stop licking up a spatter of red goo.

“Aaahk!” Isabella bent down to extract the two small wooden screws that were imbedded in the bottom of her right foot. There were cross-shaped slots in the center. Weird looking, must be from one of Chris’ handyman adventures.  I can’t imagine what got into him. He’s gotten carried away with projects before, but this is over the top. Why fix something in the middle of the night and not clean up the mess? Crazy, but I’ve got to give him credit; when he tackles a project, he gives it his body and soul.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright David Margolin 2026

Image Source: Dey from Fictom.com