Screaming Behind the Walls

     I lay awake again, skin burning even though it's January...no, it's after midnight, it's February now.  After midnight, and I'm awake again.  
     I can't sleep with all the screaming.  You see, there are always people screaming, screaming behind the walls.  They are pounding, pounding furiously and their screams are frenzied; something is wrong again.  I've told my mother again and again about them, but she just shrugs them off: "There are no people screaming behind your walls, Jennie.  I would hear them."  Which is true, she should be able to hear them, our house's interior walls are made of plaster.  Anything I can hear, she should be able to hear.
     Besides, I have a corner room.  There is no room behind my bedroom wall.  But people scream behind it just the same.  Sometimes they don't.  Sometimes they just whisper, whisper to me.  They tell me that there is a light inside of my chest and that just a little, tiny bit would make them so happy, they would never scream.  So I give them a little of the light in my chest and they laugh, laugh and it sounds like screaming.  Hysterical, insane laughter, and they pound on the wall in their joy and still I can't sleep.
     Jason knows about the people screaming behind the walls.  Sometimes they scream behind his wall, too; they only do it when I'm there, though.  He says he can't hear them unless he's touching me or listening with his ear to my chest.  Then he hears them screaming.  He says they don't sound frenzied or scared or in pain, he said they sound angry.  Angry about what, he doesn't know.  He tells me not to give them any more of the light in my chest.  He says it's there for a reason, and if I give it all away, something bad might happen.  So I smile and say, "Yes, Jason," and I mean it!  But then they whisper, whisper when I'm alone and I give them a little anyway.
     When I get upset or scared, they scream right outside of the door, they scream to be let in.  Jason told me not to let them in, but I wonder what will happen if I do.  I can't really think when they're right outside the door and sometimes, just sometimes, I think it would be better if I just let them in and see what they wanted.  But no, no, Jason says not to, and I follow him away from the door and close my eyes until they stop.
     When I turn the light and the TV off, I see the people behind the walls, only they are in my room, in the air, screaming, screaming, happy screaming, they have been let out.  They float over me and tell me things and ask me things and I lay very still and hope they think I'm asleep.  One of them ran a hand down my cheek, but it fell rough and stiff and it left a scratch.  I had to put a bandaid on it the next morning; my mom said that I must have had a Night Terror again.  And I said, "Mom, I'm 18, I don't have Night Terrors anymore.  Anyway, you scream and walk around when you get a Night Terror.  Did I scream and walk around?"  And she just looks sheepish and says, "Maybe it was a very calm Night Terror."
     The people aren't very nice to look at.  They are so very thin and white, and their eyes are very big.  They all have these huge, dark eyes.  They blink at me and use their long, stiff, cold fingers to pull themselves closer and they whisper, whisper such awful things to me.
     "We know you so well, Jennie."
     "We see you all day, Jennie."
     "We know everything you do, Jennie."
     "Give us more light, we're getting cold again."