The Blood in the Joists

My grandmother’s cabin sat at the edge of a redwood forest, where the trees pressed so close that the sun only reached the porch in thin, amber slats. I remember the summer I was twelve, when my cousin Lena and I stayed with her in that creaking, timbered house that smelled of pine resin and old dust. The place was beautiful in a way that made your skin crawl, with floorboards that dipped underfoot like they were breathing, and a staircase that groaned even when no one stood on it.

One evening, as the last light bled out of the sky, Grandmother set a pot of stew on the table. We ate in the glow of a kerosene lamp, because she said the wiring was too old to trust. Lena and I were quiet, listening to the wind sift through the trees, when Grandmother set down her spoon and spoke. Her voice was dry as fallen needles.

‘Before I was born, my own grandparents built this cabin,’ she said. ‘They were the first white folks to settle this ridge. But they weren’t the only ones here. There was a family before them, the Harlowes. They tried to farm this land, but the forest didn’t take to plows. My grandfather said they left in a hurry one winter, and the cabin stood empty for a decade before his brother claimed it.’

She paused, and the lamp flickered. ‘When my grandmother was unpacking her great-grandmother’s china, she saw a man standing in the hallway, just at the edge of her vision. She called out to my grandfather, but he didn’t answer. She turned to look fully, and the shape was gone. That’s when my grandfather walked in through the back door, mud on his boots. He’d been in the barn the whole time.’

Lena and I exchanged glances, our forks hovering. Grandmother continued, her eyes fixed on the grain of the wooden table. ‘But the strangest thing was the blood. One night, a few weeks after they moved in, my grandmother woke to a wetness on her face. She touched her cheek, and her hand came away red. She looked up, and the ceiling above their bed was weeping blood. It dripped in slow, heavy drops, pooling on the quilts. They tried to clean it, but it kept coming for half an hour, then stopped as if a wound had closed. The next morning, there was a brown stain in the wood that never washed out.’

I felt a cold knot in my stomach. Lena whispered, ‘What did they do?’

Grandmother leaned forward, and the lamp cast her face in deep hollows. ‘They asked their nearest neighbor, an old trapper named Elias, if he knew anything about the Harlowes. Elias wouldn’t look them in the eye. He said the Harlowes left because they claimed the cabin was cursed. But Elias knew more. He told my grandfather, later, when the women weren’t around, that the Harlowes had buried their youngest son under the floorboards after he died of a fever. They thought it would keep his spirit close. But it didn’t keep him quiet. It made him hungry.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The wind moaned through the chinks in the log walls, and every shift of the house sounded like footsteps. I lay in the narrow bed, watching the ceiling above me, a dark plane of wood. Lena was asleep in the bed opposite, her breathing slow. I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew, I was awake in the black hours, and there was a sound. A soft, rhythmic tapping, like a finger knocking on the underside of the floorboards underneath my bed.

I froze. The tapping stopped. Then it started again, faster, more insistent. I wanted to call out, but my throat was tight. I slowly pushed the blanket aside and looked down. In the sliver of moonlight from the window, I saw the floorboard beneath my bed was slightly raised, as if something had pushed it up from below. A dark, wet stain was spreading from the crack, and I realized with horror that it was blood. It seeped up, oozing between the boards, and I smelled iron. A small pool formed, black in the dim light. I scrambled out of bed, backing into the wall, and screamed.

Lena woke with a start, and Grandmother burst in with the oil lamp, her hair wild. She saw the blood and her face went ashen. She grabbed both of us and pulled us out of the room, into the kitchen. ‘It’s started again,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘It’s been dormant all these years. Why now?’

She made us sit at the table while she paced. The tapping had stopped, but I could feel something watching from under the floor, something patient. Grandmother finally spoke, low and urgent. ‘The Harlowes’ boy, he’s not at rest. They say he wants company. Every few decades, the blood comes. It happened when I was a girl, too. My father nailed boards over the hatch to the crawlspace. But it found a way through.’

She paused, and looked at us, her eyes wet. ‘I think it’s because there are children in the house. He wants playmates.’

At that moment, the lamp flickered and went out. In the darkness, I heard the sound of a child’s laughter, muffled, as if from beneath the floor. And then a thump, as something slammed against the underside of the kitchen floor. We screamed, all three of us. Grandmother fumbled for matches, relit the lamp, and we saw that the floorboards were now stained with a fresh, dark patch in the shape of a small handprint.

We spent the rest of the night in the truck, parked at the edge of the forest, with the engine running. The cabin stood black against the trees, a dark rectangle. As dawn broke, we drove into town and never returned. I don’t know if anyone else ever lived there. Some things don’t want to be left alone. And some floors hold more than just soil and stone. They hold the hungry remains of a child who never got to play.