The Floorboard’s Lament

The old farmhouse clung to the hillside like a patient, weathered hand. My husband, Daniel, had grown up here, and though he spoke of it with a sort of fond dread, I had never known it except through his stories. His father, a stern man named Gerald, had died a decade before we met, and the house was now his mother’s domain, a quiet, dim place where time seemed to move at the speed of molasses. We had come for a summer visit, our first as a family, with our infant son, Liam, in tow.

The second floor had been transformed over the years into a sprawling bedroom for guests, but we were to stay in Evelyn’s room, his mother’s, as was the custom. It was a spacious chamber with floral wallpaper and heavy, velvet curtains, but what drew my attention was the photograph opposite the bed. It was a portrait of Gerald, taken during his wake, a black-and-white image of a man with hollow eyes and a mouth set in a line that could have been a smile or a grimace, depending on the light. The frame was silver, tarnished at the edges, and it hung slightly crooked, as if it had been placed in haste.

We arrived on a Thursday night, the sky bruised with clouds, and by the time we had unpacked and settled, the moon was high and an owl hooted somewhere in the grove. Liam was fussy, a fresh teething episode making him wail until I fed him, and I knew I wouldn’t sleep until everything was spotless. I tiptoed around the room, wiping down the counter of the tiny en-suite bathroom, then washing his bottle with meticulous care, my mind foggy with exhaustion.

At last, around three in the morning, I crept back to the bed, the floorboards cool and smooth under my bare feet. Daniel was a mountain under the covers, a low rumble of snoring emitting from his throat, and Liam was a burrito of blankets in the bassinet. I slid between the sheets, my eyes already heavy, when a sound cut through the stillness—a soft but unmistakable *thump-thump* from the floor, just beside the bed, where Daniel and I lay. I froze, my heart suddenly loud. It was the sound of someone walking, but not with the deliberate step of a person; it was more like the heavy, foot-dragging gait of a weary creature. I opened my eyes, wide and alert, and I saw nothing but the moon casting pale light across the empty floor. The sound had stopped.

I told myself it was my imagination, a trick of travel fatigue, and closed my eyes again. But the moment I did, the walking resumed, closer this time, as if the walker was circling the bed, just inches from the mattress. My eyes snapped open, and I stared at the ceiling, refusing to look. The sound was so real—the creak of old wood, the soft slide of leather against floor—that I could nearly feel a breath on my cheek. I reached under the pillow and clutched the cold handle of Daniel’s pocketknife, a habit I had never thought I’d need.

A minute passed, then two, and the sound grew slower, more labored, each step dragging a little longer. I made myself turn my head toward the noise, my neck moving as if through water. The space beside the bed was empty, of course, but the sound went on, now coming from the foot of the bed. It began to ascend the side of the mattress, the floorboards groaning as if under a great weight, and I realized with a jolt that the invisible footsteps were now walking *on the bed itself*, moving up along the edge, parallel to Daniel’s sleeping body, coming toward me.

In a panic, I threw my legs over the side and sat up, switch on the nightlight. The room flooded with amber, and the footsteps ceased. But the air was wrong—thick, as if something had just exhaled close to my face. I looked at the photograph on the wall. It was no longer crooked; it was perfectly straight, and the eyes of Gerald seemed to follow me, not with malice, but with a sorrow that chilled me. I whispered to Daniel, shaking his shoulder, but he only grunted and rolled away.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in the wicker chair by the window, watching the sky turn gray, and when morning finally broke, I told myself that it had been a bad dream, a side effect of an unfamiliar house. Over breakfast, I mentioned to Evelyn, making coffee in the kitchen, that the floorboards in her room made the oddest sounds at night. She didn’t look up from her cup. ‘That’s the house settling,’ she said, but her voice was too flat. ‘It’s old. It moans and groans. You’ll get used to it.’

The next night, I insisted we close the door to the en-suite, and I placed a chair under the doorknob. Still, at exactly three, I heard it again—the slow, heavy footsteps, pacing around the bed, then up and over the mattress, stopping right by my head. This time, I did not open my eyes; I prayed, tears leaking from under my lids, and eventually, the steps retreated to the corner where the photograph hung, and a faint, rustling sound, like fabric brushing against wood, reached my ears. I felt the air grow cold near my face, and then it was over.

I became obsessed. I asked Daniel about his father’s death—he refused to talk, saying only that his father had been a mean drunk and that the house held too many memories. I searched the attic, where I found a journal, dusty and bound in cracked leather, written in a shaky hand. It was Gerald’s diary. The last entry, dated a week before his death, described his fear of the ‘walker’, something he called the ‘old man in the walls’, a spirit that had haunted his own father and his father before that, a presence that fed on the living, growing stronger with each owner’s despair.

Gerald had tried to leave it, he wrote, but it had followed him to work, to the bar, even to his bed. He had sought help, but no one believed him. He had drawn a crude map of the house, marking a spot under the floorboards in the corner where the photograph now hung—a hiding place, he had noted, for something precious.

On the third night, I could not bear it. I woke Daniel, forcing him to listen to the footsteps, but he heard nothing. ‘You’re exhausted, Leah,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘We’ll go home soon.’ But I knew I was not imagining it. As he slept, I crept to the corner, pried up a loose floorboard with a butter knife, and found a small tin. Inside lay a locket, rusted, and a piece of paper with a single word: ‘Be.’

The steps began again, behind me, and I turned, my heart racing. In the gloom, I saw a shadow separate from the darker corner and take shape—a tall, gaunt man, his face ghostly pale, with eyes that were sunken pools of shadow. He walked past me, straight to the bed, and knelt at Daniel’s side, placing a spectral hand on Daniel’s forehead. Daniel stirred, but did not wake. The spirit turned to me, and I saw his lips move, but no sound came. I read the words in the shape of them: ‘He is mine.’

I dropped the tin, and the locket rolled across the floor. As I watched, the shadowed man dissolved, leaving only the faint smell of mothballs and old pipe smoke. The footsteps were gone, but the photograph had changed. Gerald’s eyes, in the picture, now looked alive, and they were filled with a terrible, knowing glee.

I did not sleep for the rest of the visit. On the day we left, I could not shake the feeling that something was watching from the window, and as we drove away, I caught a glimpse in the rearview mirror of a figure in the upstairs window—a tall, gaunt man, standing in the room where we had slept, his hand raised in a slow, deliberate wave.

It has been a month since we returned home, and yet last night, at three o’clock, I heard it: the soft, dragging footsteps, walking beside our bed in this new apartment, far from that old farmhouse. I kept my eyes closed, my hands clutching the sheets, and I felt a cold breath on my face. A voice, like the whisper of dry leaves, said, ‘You have invited me in.’

I opened my eyes to find the room empty, but the feeling refused to leave. Now, every night, I stay awake, waiting, and I have begun to listen to the sound of the floorboards in my own home, wondering if I have become the next host to a visitor that no one can see but me.