The Cracks in the Veil

They warn never to peer into cracks—the thin lines in walls, doorframes, sidewalks. Most step over them without thought, but some linger, fascinated by the darkness inside. Those who linger too long report a pressure behind the eyes, like the world holding its breath. A few vanish mid-step, foot balanced on a seam the width of a fingernail. Others return shaken, whispering about rooms that shouldn’t connect and voices speaking sideways. Parents tell children, “Don’t step on cracks,” but the rhyme was older than rhyme, a riddle with teeth. The city paved and plastered and painted, but the lines survived. The city held its breath. Whatever stares from inside prefers patience—and stillness. Elise didn’t believe in omens. She managed building inspections for the city, cataloging ordinary problems: hairline plaster fractures, settling slabs, fatigue in old timber. Cracks were paperwork and budgets, not doors. Then the calls began. Tenants claimed a hallway split “a little more” every night. A boy swore he heard someone breathing through a fissure in the school gym. An elderly woman reported a draft from her wardrobe, though no exterior wall stood behind it. Elise went to dismiss the rumors with tape measures and moisture meters. The numbers behaved. The lines didn’t. They felt wrong, deliberate. Each seam pointed somewhere as if choosing. The crack listened without blinking.

The first hallway seemed ordinary until she knelt. The fissure traced a lazy S along the baseboard, not wider than a pencil line. Yet the air against her cheek felt colder beside it, like the wall leaked winter. She lowered her tape’s hook into the seam and heard a tiny sound: a distant rustle, papery, like pages turning. Her phone camera blinked. The preview showed a smear of depth where no depth should be—black layered atop black. She laughed it off. Settling. Drafts. Pareidolia. Still, her scalp prickled as she backed away. She kept her shoulders tight, resisting the urge to glance back. The crack listened without blinking. Night brought the sidewalk. Elise waited at a crosswalk, eyeing the city’s usual spidering, randomness spread by heat and cold. But the line beneath her shoe didn’t branch; it ran straight and purposeful, slicing the concrete panel in two. She shifted away, heart ticking faster than the signal’s chirp. A man beside her tsked, “Old habit—don’t step on cracks.” She smiled politely. Then he stepped forward as the light changed—and wasn’t there. Pedestrians flowed around the gap he’d left as if forgetting were reflex. A dropped coffee spun, kissing the seam before vanishing with a hiss. Nothing crossed the seam. Shadows leaned toward the line. Elise staggered, swallowed, and kept walking. Somewhere, plaster settled.

They found his phone later, screen recording an accidental video of his shoes as he waited. Elise scrubbed frame by frame. On the final image, as the shoe crossed the seam, the outline wavered like heat-haze. For a fraction of a second the crack deepened—not widened, but receded—as though the ground were farther away than before. She closed the file and told herself it was compression artifacts. A stress dream. The next morning she visited the school gym. The fissure in the varnished floor had grown a fingertip longer, arrowing toward the center circle. Light refused to pool across it; reflections broke there. Dust haloed the smallest gap. She breathed shallowly, and measured. Children whispered that if you knelt and looked along the crack, you could see feet walking somewhere else, stepping out of rhythm with your world. Elise crouched, ignoring the coach’s protest. The line throbbed against her teeth, a pressure like altitude. She held a steel ruler over it, expecting nothing. The ruler’s shadow fell across the seam, then vanished—cleanly snipped. She picked it up. An inch was missing, the edge glass-smooth and cold. “Saw trick,” the coach muttered, voice thin. Elise logged the incident, stamped it URGENT, then stared at the word until it blurred. The floor remembered every footstep. Light pooled and would not cross. She left without looking back.

The elderly woman’s wardrobe crack was next. No exterior wall, no pipes, no reason for a draft. Elise pressed her ear to the thin line running down the back panel. The wood vibrated faintly, like a hummingbird trapped in the grain. Then she heard the voices. Not words—angles. Sounds sliding past comprehension the way fish slide past fingers. She jerked back, swallowing bile. The woman touched Elise’s shoulder. “My late husband keeps calling,” she whispered. “He’s smaller every time.” Elise stared at the seam until dizziness bloomed. She counted heartbeats against silence. The air thinned like paper. It waited just beyond the edge. The seam tasted the room. Elise promised barricades. Everywhere Elise went, lines appeared. Paint fissured in the inspector’s office, framing her desk in a web. A crack crept across the breakroom tile, arrowing toward her chair. In the elevator, two panels didn’t quite meet; the sliver between them ran darker than the rest of the shaft. She took the stairs. Outside, the river’s concrete embankment wore a new seam like a closed eyelid. Elise avoided it, half-ashamed. She began to step wide, to trace arcs around thresholds, to keep her gaze soft, never centered. Listeners gathered where walls met. Tiles clicked like distant teeth. Cold folded inward softly. Names curled like leaves in wind. Distance felt one inch longer.

Jae from Records found her on the roof, breathing through her scarf as if the air carried powdered glass. “You’re avoiding the cracks,” he said gently. She almost joked, but his face was too careful. He rolled up his sleeve and showed a pale line along his forearm, a seam that refused to tan. “I looked when I was sixteen,” he said. “On a dare. The seam followed me. If I stare into any gap too long, I see the other side. You don’t want the other side, Elise.” The wind pressed down. Somewhere between two bricks, mortar sighed. Silence knitted itself tighter. Time took a shallow breath. Some doors chose not to close. “What’s there?” Elise asked. Jae’s eyes went unfocused. “Rooms that shouldn’t connect. Corridors with corners that fold wrong. People missing so long their names wore away. Things that mimic footsteps from far away and arrive only when you don’t listen. Mostly it’s halls and halls and halls—like a hospital designed by forgetfulness.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “And voices. They say your name as if it’s already past tense.” Elise shivered. Down on the street, someone stumbled, recovered, and hurried on. The city held its breath. Nothing crossed the seam. The crack listened without blinking. Somewhere, plaster settled and sighed. She nodded once. “Show me,” she said at last. Elise filed for emergency closures: gym, hallway, river embankment, wardrobe. Her supervisor rejected them all. “Budget,” he said, adding a practiced smile. “Seal it with epoxy. Schedule a resurfacing.” She showed him the ruler’s missing inch. He joked about manufacturing defects. She showed him the phone video; he complained about motion blur. As Elise left, she noticed a hairline fracture splitting his office window, a perfect vertical etched by sunlight. He was standing on a floorboard seam too. “Please step back,” she said. He laughed, dismissing her. Light pooled and would not cross. She counted heartbeats against silence. The air thinned like paper. He waved. The seam listened. She kept walking.

That night, Elise taped paper over every gap in her apartment: under the door, along baseboards, around outlets, across the hairline above the sink. She slept in the bathtub because its curves felt continuous. At three a.m., tapping woke her—measured, patient. It came from under the tub, from a hairline where porcelain met tile. She held her breath. The tapping paused, then traced her name in slow, careful Morse. E-L-I-S-E. She clamped her hands over her ears. The drain exhaled a needle-thin draft. The city held its breath. Nothing crossed the seam. The crack listened without blinking. She whispered, “No.” Somewhere, plaster settled and sighed. The drain went quiet. Morning brought denial, coffee, and motion. She walked until the city’s chatter blurred into one long band of noise. At the river, workers were spreading epoxy over the embankment seam. As the squeegee dragged, the crack looked like a mouth being sealed—until the epoxy folded, caved, vanished as if poured off an edge. The foreman swore and signaled again. The second pass slid into the same absence, sucked thin and gone. The workers backed away. For one impossible second, the river flowed uphill along the line, then forgot how to be water. Dust haloed the smallest gap. Light pooled and would not cross. She counted heartbeats against silence. The seam grinned.

The city shifted that afternoon. Trains stalled as rails misaligned by a hair. Doors stuck against frames that no longer fit their own houses. Rubber weatherstripping stretched like chewing gum toward invisible gaps. Reports came faster than Elise could triage. People disappeared in public—stepping onto a particular grout line, pausing over a floorboard split, leaning too close to a doorjamb shadow. Security cameras showed pauses: silhouettes flickered, the seam darkened, the frame dropped. Then nothing. The city held its breath. Nothing crossed the seam. The crack listened without blinking. Somewhere, plaster settled and sighed. Light pooled and would not cross. The phone rang. It was Jae. “Tonight,” he said. “Circle.” Night returned. So did Jae, pale and resolute. He brought chalk. “Draw,” he said. Together they traced a circle on Elise’s kitchen floor, careful, meticulous, restarting whenever a hairline intruded. When it was whole, they sat inside it and waited. Through the window, streetlights blurred, halos stretching toward gaps as if light preferred seams. Tapping came from the stove, the sink, the outlet plates, the hairline above the door. The apartment learned her name, syllables rubbing together like coarse thread until they almost sparked. The city held its breath. Nothing crossed the seam. The crack listened without blinking. Somewhere, plaster settled and sighed. She gripped Jae’s sleeve and didn’t breathe.

Just before dawn, a final voice spoke from the crack beneath the window—her supervisor, confident and bright. “Budget approved,” it said. “Stand still.” Elise laughed, or sobbed; they felt identical. The sun lifted. The tapping unspooled and went still. They were safe—or adjacent to safe. Elise stood carefully and opened the door. In the hallway, the baseboard seam curved like a kindness-less smile. She stepped wide. Jae pressed a bright thread coil into her hand. “Tie it to a doorknob whenever it pulls,” he said. “Hold fast.” Light pooled and would not cross. She counted heartbeats against silence. The air thinned like paper. She walked on curves, and lived.