The Floorboards of the Old Clinic

Before the storm came and swallowed our little town, we lived on the second floor of the old clinic. The clinic had been abandoned for years, but the landlord had converted the upper rooms into a rental. It was a skeleton of a building, all exposed beams and warped planks, standing at the edge of a rice field. Our windows faced a grove of acacia trees that whispered when the wind picked up, and beyond that, the river that curved like a dark vein through the land.

We had been there for three months, and in that time, I had learned the building’s language. The groans it made at night, the way the floorboards settled after a hot day. But there was one sound that did not belong: a creak from above, directly over the bedroom. It was rhythmic, like footsteps pacing back and forth. The first time we heard it, we were downstairs in the communal kitchen, boiling water for coffee. My sister Liza looked up at the ceiling, her cup trembling. ‘There’s someone up there,’ she said, but we all knew the door was locked—my father had secured it with a padlock from the outside.

We tried to ignore it, as our father told us to. ‘It’s just the old wood,’ he said, but his voice wavered. He was a firm believer in prayer, so we gathered in the living room and said the rosary. But the creaking continued, growing louder, as if the unseen walker was moving to the stairs. Then it stopped. A cold silence fell, and I felt a draft even though the windows were shut.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, listening. Around 2 AM, I heard a light patter, like bare feet on the floorboards above. Then a voice, muffled but clear enough: ‘Let me in.’ It was a woman’s voice, soft and pleading. I sat up, my heart hammering. The voice came again, closer this time, as if she had descended the stairs and was now outside our door. ‘Please, let me in.’ I shook Liza awake, but she was already trembling. ‘You heard it too?’ she whispered.

We woke our parents. My father grabbed a flashlight and opened the door a crack. The hallway was empty, but the air smelled of damp earth and something sweet, like overripe fruit. My mother clutched her cross. ‘It’s just the wind,’ she said, but she didn’t believe it. We went back to bed, but none of us slept.

The next morning, I noticed something on the floor near the stairs: a thin smear of mud, like a footprint, but the toes were too long, the heel too narrow. It wasn’t human. I didn’t tell anyone. Instead, I went to the window and looked out. The rice fields stretched gold and green to the horizon, but there, in the shadow of the acacia grove, I saw a figure. It was a woman in a white dress, her hair hanging over her face. She stood perfectly still, facing the building. When she noticed me looking, she raised a hand and pressed it against the glass of the clinic’s ground-floor window—the same window that faced the grove. She did this for a long moment, then turned and walked into the trees.

I was convinced she was the source of our trouble. I told my parents, but they waved it off as a neighbor or a wanderer. My father insisted on reinforcing the lock on our door, adding a chain. That evening, as the sun bled orange over the fields, we heard the creaking again, but this time it was slower, heavier. The steps moved to the hallway outside our door, and then a knock. Three sharp knocks. My father shouted, ‘Who’s there?’ Silence. But the knocking came again, harder, and the door rattled as if something pressed against it. We held our breath. Then, from the other side, a voice—my own voice, but distorted, like an echo from a deep well—said, ‘Let me in, Father.’ My father’s face went pale. He started to pray, but the voice continued, ‘I’m not your daughter. But I want to be.’

My mother screamed. The noise was so loud that the lights flickered. When they steadied, the knocking stopped. We spent the rest of the night huddled in the corner, our ears straining. At dawn, we decided to leave. We packed what we could and moved in with my aunt on the other side of town, just before the typhoon struck. That storm took the clinic down to its beams, washing the mud and wood into the river. But sometimes, in my dreams, I still hear that creaking above me, and the whispered plea from a voice that sounds exactly like mine, asking to be let in. And in those dreams, I know that on the other side of the door, the figure in white is waiting, her hand raised, ready to knock again.