The Floor Sitter

My great-grandmother, Edith, passed when I was barely three. I don’t remember her face, only the image of her cross-legged on the worn Persian rug in our old farmhouse, her fingers weaving through a cloud of wool. After she was gone, I found a length of frayed twine in the barn. I called it Edith. I would drag it around, talking to it in a low, serious voice, and I refused to sit anywhere but the cold, wooden floor. My mother, Martha, would find me there, cross-legged, humming a tune I couldn’t have known, and she’d shiver as if a draft had passed through the warm room.

We moved to a new suburb when I was six, leaving the farmhouse and its ghosts behind. But the habit stayed. I sat on the linoleum of our kitchen, on the pavement of the cul-de-sac, on the tile of the school hallway, always cross-legged, always with my invisible string. It was during one of these sittings, in my new bedroom with its bright yellow walls, that I first heard it. A soft whisper, like the rustle of a long skirt, saying my name, Oliver. It came from the corner near the closet, where the shadows pooled even at noon. I turned, but nothing was there. It happened twice more, and then it stopped. I told my mother, who laughed it off as my imagination, but I saw her eyes dart to the corner.

The whispers grew bolder. They came at night, a low murmur beneath the hum of the ceiling fan, and I’d wake with my heart pounding. I started seeing a woman in my periphery, a blurred figure with grey hair and a long floral dress, always sitting on the floor in the corner of my vision. When I turned to look, she was gone. My mother noticed my changes—I wouldn’t sleep alone, I’d sit on the floor even in the doctor’s waiting room, rocking back and forth. She took me to a child psychologist, who called it a ‘transitional phase.’ But I knew the truth.

One evening, I was in the kitchen with my mother, both of us sitting at the table. She was reading a magazine, and I traced patterns on the tablecloth. Then, from the pantry, a clear voice, not a whisper, said, ‘Oliver, come sit with me.’ It was Edith’s voice—I knew it from the old recordings my father had digitized, the crackling warmth of it. My mother froze, her face white as milk. She dropped the magazine and backed away from the table. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered. I nodded, and I slid off my chair, my body moving on its own, and I walked to the pantry. I opened the door. Inside, on the cool floor, sat the woman—Edith, as young as in the photos, with dark hair and dark eyes, wearing the same floral dress. She patted the floor beside her. ‘Sit,’ she said. I sat.

My mother screamed my name, but her voice sounded distant, underwater. Edith took my hand. Her skin was cold, but not unpleasant. She started humming a lullaby, and I felt a deep calm. The pantry seemed to expand, a vast darkness beyond the shelves, and I could see the old farmhouse, the Persian rug, and another child—a girl with pigtails—sitting cross-legged, playing with a string. I realized it was my great-grandmother when she was young. ‘She’s waiting,’ Edith whispered, and she pointed to the girl. ‘She wants you to join her.’

I tried to pull away, but my body wouldn’t move. I could hear my mother’s frantic shouts, the slam of the pantry door behind me, but I was trapped in that endless floor. The girl turned her head and looked directly at me, her eyes black, and she smiled with a mouth too wide. Then I felt a tug on the string in my pocket—the one I’d kept all these years. It was pulling me forward, into the dark, and I knew that if I let go, I’d never come back. But the shadow of my great-grandmother, the real Edith, leaned close and whispered, ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s just a game. We’ve been playing it for a hundred years.’

I don’t remember how I got out. My mother found me in the pantry, hours later, sitting cross-legged on the floor, drooling, the string tied in knots around my fingers. She burned the string, and we moved again, across the country. But even now, as an adult, I can’t sit on a chair. I have to be on the floor. And sometimes, when I’m alone, I hear a child’s voice calling my name from an empty corner, and I feel a tug on an invisible string, tempting me to come and sit. I always resist, but I know one day I won’t. That girl is patient, and the floor is always waiting.