Wailing Walls

It's driving her crazy, this weird humming, high pitched wail coming from the front door. She discovered it coming home late one night, climbing the stairs to her darkened porch, waving her arms to trigger the world's least responsive motion sensor light. She could hear this whinging, like a pitch pipe stuck between tones, ebbing and flowing. At first she thought it was a distant siren, or someone's smoke alarm going off next door. Then it crescendoed to a keening wail from the depths of some tortured soul. Kat freaked out, shoulder checked frantically, fumbled in her bag for her keys, dropping them on the ground. She managed to muscle her key into the lock and had to body check the door to open it. It was like entering a total vapour lock. Kat found this house online about 4 years earlier, on a spontaneous trip back home over the high holidays. A need to get away from her present craziness and bask in the familiar yet equally crazy energy of the big city. It's an old three story Victorian with good bones. Some beautiful touches and a whole lot of what the hell were they thinking quirks. Very Kat. She took possession 4 months later and every day, every season, the house reveals it's history to her. Improperly laid kitchen tiles that shift and sing when tapped, shedding grout like nuggets of grey gold. Floors you could roll a bowling ball across diagonally. Stained glass windows that might as well have been wide open all year long and walls that have never known insulation. Now this. Once inside the foyer, her ears popped from the forced air vents bellowing heat like a hurricane. She leaned her entire weight into the oak door to seal it shut. That's when the screaming resumed. A thin brass strip of flashing lines the threshold of the frame and when the heat blasts and the door is locked, it screams. All the pushing, pulling, slamming in the world will not shut it up. So now she sits inside tuning out the sounds of the house. Every now and then she'll hum along, trying to find a sweet spot, that perfect third or fifth, maybe even fourth for dissonance sake. She waits for the moment to pass. There is incredible stillness here amidst the roar. If she can withstand the storms, this too shall pass.