The Crooked Floorboard

Elena had only been dating Marcus for three weeks when he invited her to his family’s old farmhouse outside of Ridgefield, a town that seemed to exist only because of the cornfields surrounding it. The house was a sprawling, two-story Victorian with a wraparound porch, its paint peeling like sunburned skin. Marcus’s father, a quiet man named Gerald, worked the night shift at a grain mill, so they had the place to themselves most evenings.

On their fourth date, Marcus built a fire in the parlor’s stone hearth. The flames cast skeletal shadows across the floral wallpaper that was yellowed with age. ‘You know,’ he said, poking at the logs, ‘this house has a few… quirks.’ Elena, a pragmatic lab technician, raised an eyebrow. ‘Quirks? Like a drafty hallway or a stubborn window?’ Marcus smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Like when I was a kid, I woke up one night because something grabbed both my ankles and yanked me right out of bed. I hit the floor hard enough to bruise my tailbone.’

Elena laughed, thinking it was a joke. But Marcus was serious. ‘I swear on my mother’s grave. And sometimes, if you’re outside and you look up at my old bedroom window, you’ll see a face—just for a second—and then the lights will flicker on by themselves.’ He glanced at the stairs as if expecting something to be there. ‘I told my dad, but he said I had an overactive imagination. He thinks it’s just the house settling.’

Elena gave a skeptical snort. ‘Settling doesn’t grab your ankles.’ Marcus shrugged. ‘That’s what I said. He never believed me. Wanna see something?’ Before she could answer, he walked over to a vintage stereo console in the corner and turned it on, letting a scratchy blues record spin. Then he turned the volume up, almost to max. The brass lamps on the side tables began to tremble.

A moment later, a loud knock came from the ceiling above them—three heavy thuds, as if someone was pounding on the floor of the room directly over the parlor. Marcus looked at Elena, his eyes wide. ‘That was him. That’s what he does when he’s annoyed.’ Elena stared at the ceiling, her heart skipping. ‘It’s just the house settling,’ she said, echoing his father’s words. But as she said it, a floorboard in the hallway outside the parlor creaked loudly, as if someone had stepped on it. The sound was followed by a slow, dragging noise, like something being pulled across the wood floor above.

Marcus’s face went pale. ‘He’s never done that before.’ Elena felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draft. She tried to rationalize: ‘Maybe it’s your dad? He came home early?’ Marcus shook his head. ‘He doesn’t get off until 6 AM. And that dragging sound… that’s not him.’

They sat in silence for a while, listening. The only sound was the crackle of the fire and the distant hum of the refrigerator. Then, from the top of the stairs, they heard a whisper. It was too soft to make out words, but it was distinctly human. Elena’s ears perked up. ‘Did you hear that?’ Marcus nodded, his knuckles white where he gripped the armchair. ‘It’s gotten worse since you came,’ he whispered. ‘Maybe it doesn’t like me being here,’ Elena whispered back, half-joking, half-terrified.

Then the lights flickered—not just in the parlor, but all over the house. The stereo cut out, then came back, but now playing a slow, mournful piano piece that neither of them recognized. Marcus stood up, his voice trembling. ‘I think we should leave.’ But as he reached for his coat, the front door slammed shut with a force that rattled the windows. Then they heard footsteps ascending the stairs, heavy and deliberate, and the sound of a door opening above them—the door to Marcus’s old bedroom.

They both froze. Elena’s heart was racing. ‘What do we do?’ Marcus grabbed her hand. ‘We go out the back.’ They tiptoed through the kitchen, past the old pantry, and out the back door. They didn’t stop running until they reached Marcus’s truck, parked at the end of the gravel drive. As they drove away, Elena looked back at the house. In the upstairs window of Marcus’s old room, a pale face was pressed against the glass, mouth open in a silent scream.

A week later, Marcus’s father Gerald called to say he had quit his job. He claimed he couldn’t sleep because every night, at 3 AM, he heard someone dragging a heavy chain across the attic floor. He asked if Marcus had ever experienced that. Marcus told him no, but he didn’t tell him the whole story. Elena and Marcus never went back to the farmhouse. They moved to an apartment in Ridgefield’s tiny downtown, and they never spoke about that night except in whispers, as if the house might hear them.

But sometimes, when they made love or when they lay in bed in the dark, they would hear it from afar—a faint, rhythmic thumping, coming from the ceiling above them, even though their apartment was on the top floor and the only thing above them was the flat roof. And Elena would hold her breath until it stopped, praying that it was just the pipes, just the settling, just her own imagination. And she would never look up, because she was afraid of what she might see peering down at her through the cracks in the ceiling.

The last time it happened, she was alone. Marcus was on a business trip. The thumping was so loud she thought the ceiling would give way. She grabbed her phone to call him, but before she could, she heard a whisper right next to her ear, so close she felt the breath on her skin: ‘You forgot something.’ She spun around, but there was nothing there. And that’s when she noticed the crooked floorboard by the window—the one that had always been slightly raised, impossible to step on without making it creak. It was now perfectly flat. And beneath it, a small, dark object glinted in the moonlight.

She didn’t want to look, but her hand reached down on its own accord. Her fingers closed around a small, tarnished key. It was cold, impossibly cold, and it fit a lock she had never seen before—a lock on a small door in the back of her apartment closet, a door she had always assumed was a crawl space. She turned the key, and the door swung open, revealing a narrow staircase leading down into darkness. And from the darkness, she heard Marcus’s voice, calling her name. She stepped inside, closing the door behind her, and the lock clicked shut.

She never came out. Marcus returned to find the apartment empty. The only trace was the crooked floorboard, now pried open, and a muddy footprint leading from the closet to the front door. He now lives alone in a small room above the garage, and every night, he lies awake, listening for the sound of that key turning in the lock, praying that the door to the darkness never opens for him again.