The Thing That Walks Out of the Wall

Some of the things that come from beyond the wall howl, and rush the wall, and burn to ash in oil and fire. And some leave nothing but a trace.

After a snowfall, someone found a line of footprints in the snow below Watchtower No. 47. They were shaped like a man's — the outline of the sole, the dip at the heel, the way the weight leaned in walking, all of it the same as a man's. But a man has 5 toes, and every one of these prints had 6. The sixth grew on the outer side of the little toe, shorter than the rest, and only touched down halfway.

The prints set out from the foot of the wall and went as far as the back of the tower. They did not go round anything; where snow had drifted they went over the top of it. They did not go into the tower — half a step short of the tower door they turned aside and went past. Halfway along, they simply stopped: the step before is there, the step after is not, and the snow is whole, unturned, with no drag-mark and no sign of anything lifting off it or sinking into it.

The man who found them measured them as the rules require: stride 71 centimetres, depth 2 centimetres, shallower than the print of a grown Wallwarden. He finished measuring, and before daylight new snow had covered the line over.

The wall has an unwritten rule for this kind of thing: do not follow it, do not call out, do not put it in a battle report sent south. Of the men who have followed, some came back and some did not. As for calling out, the old soldiers say one sentence only — at night, at the foot of the wall, do not call a name. Nobody has ever explained the reason for that rule.

Among the old wallmen a line goes round, handed down from the generation before them: Some things walk out of the wall. Not like beasts — like people who have been forgotten.

No one knows what it means. And no one is willing, at night, to think about what it means.