The Floor Above

At fifty-one, I’d finally found a place I could call my own—a modest bungalow on the outskirts of Ashford, Maine, where the pines pressed close and the roads turned to gravel after a mile. I’d moved from the city after my wife died, seeking quiet, and this house offered it in spades. The first night, I unpacked boxes and listened to the wind in the eaves. It was peaceful. I slept soundly.

The next evening, as I sat reading in the living room, I heard a creak from the ceiling directly above me. The house had two floors, but the upstairs was just a storage attic, cluttered with old furniture and forgotten belongings. I ignored it—old houses settle. But then came the footsteps. Slow, deliberate, as if someone were pacing the length of the attic. I told myself it was a raccoon, maybe a squirrel that had gotten in through a hole. I went to bed early, and the sounds stopped.

The following night, I was in bed, just drifting off, when I heard a loud snap right by my ear—like a twig breaking, but sharp and close. I sat up, heart hammering, but the room was empty. I lay back down, and the sensation came: a fluttering, electric buzz inside my skull, like a moth trapped behind my eyes. I couldn’t move. My limbs were lead. I felt a presence pressing down on my chest, heavy and cold. Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped. I could breathe again. I dragged myself out of bed and slept with the lights on.

That happened twice more over the next week. Each time, the fluttering would begin, and I’d be paralyzed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to reveal itself. I started sleeping downstairs on the couch, but one night, I saw a shadow at the top of the stairs—just a faint darkening against the darker hallway. I knew then that I wasn’t alone.

I’m not a religious man, but I was desperate. I found an old Bible in a drawer and fell to my knees in the living room, praying hard, eyes squeezed shut. I prayed for protection, for the thing to leave me be. For twenty minutes, nothing. Then, a sensation: something cold, like a hand, on my shoulder. I forced my eyes open.

It stood before me—not in the attic, not at the top of the stairs—but right in the middle of the room, so close I could see the grain of its skin. It was a man, pale, with a shock of blond hair, wearing a dark suit that seemed too tight. His mouth was open, but no sound came out. Instead, I heard a voice in my head, like a radio tuned to static—’You’ve been sleeping in my bed.’

I screamed and scrambled backward, but my voice came out as a hoarse whisper. The figure tilted its head, almost curiously, then faded, dissolving like mist. I didn’t sleep that night. I packed a bag and drove to a motel on the edge of town.

But the following evening, as I sat in the motel room, I heard it again: the creak of a floorboard, the snap of a twig, the flutter in my skull. And I realized—it had followed me. It wasn’t in the house; it was in me. It lives in that space between wakefulness and sleep, in the corners of my vision, in the sound of my own heartbeat. I drove back to the bungalow, because where else could I go? The thing—the man with the blond hair—waits for me in the attic. And soon, I know, I’ll be the one walking the floor above.