The Floorboards’ Song

The town of San Isidro was barely a smudge on the map, a collection of sun-bleached houses clustered around a dusty plaza. It was founded just over a century ago, but the land it stood on was older, a forgotten artery of footpaths that had once connected scattered villages. My grandmother told me that before the town existed, the forest was thin there, and travelers used the natural corridor to move between the mountains. She also hinted, with a shake of her head, that not all of those travelers had made it to their destinations. The place had a memory, she said, a long one, and it never forgot a single footstep.

I was ten that summer, staying with my abuela in her old house on the edge of town. The house was a relic, with thick adobe walls and rough-hewn beams that seemed to breathe with the heat. The nights were suffocating, the air heavy and still, and I often found the coolness of the tiled floor more inviting than my sweat-stained sheets. On the particular night that I will never forget, I had been reading a comic book under the weak glow of a bedside lamp. The story was about a lost soldier, and as I drifted off, my eyes grew heavy, and I let the book slip from my fingers.

I decided to move to the floor, spreading a thin blanket near the center of the room, where the tiles felt the coolest. I closed my eyes, and the seconds blended into a haze. Then, I heard it. From the far corner of the room, near the closet, came the unmistakable sound of footsteps. They were heavy, deliberate, like someone wearing worn leather boots. Thump, thump, thump. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to be asleep, but the sound grew louder, closer. It circled me, moving from my left to my right, then paused directly at my head. My heart hammered against my ribs, and I forced my eyes open, expecting to see a figure looming over me, but the room was empty. The moonlight cast only the silhouettes of my furniture.

I scrambled to my feet and dove onto the bed, pulling the covers over my head. The footsteps did not stop. They continued their perimeter, now around the bed, and I could feel the vibrations through the wooden frame. I began to whisper a prayer, anything to make it stop. The pacing went on for what felt like an eternity, and then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ceased. The silence that followed was deafening. I lay there, shivering despite the heat, until the first gray light of dawn crept through the window.

The next morning, I told my grandmother what I had heard. She listened without interruption, her face unreadable. She then told me that the footsteps were the walkers, the ones who had been lost on the old paths. They didn’t know they were dead, she said. They just kept walking, looking for a way home, and sometimes they passed through the living. She warned me not to disturb them, to treat the night with respect. But I couldn’t help feeling that the footsteps had been aimed at me, that the walker had been circling me, not just passing through.

I tried to sleep on the bed the next few nights, but the heat and my fear made it impossible. I eventually moved back to the floor, hoping that I had imagined the whole thing. The first night was silent. The second, I heard the footsteps again, but this time they started at the door and came straight to the spot where I lay. I kept my eyes tightly shut, my body rigid. The steps stopped so close that I could feel the air move, like someone had knelt down beside me. I heard a sound, a strange wet rasp, as if the walker was breathing. Then, a voice, not human but like dry leaves rubbing together, said, ‘You are in my place.’

I bolted upright, screaming, and the candle on the nightstand flickered and went out. I fled the room, ran to my grandmother’s room, and threw myself onto her bed. She held me, muttering calming words, but I could feel her body was tense. In the morning, she went into the room and came out with a handful of dried herbs. She sprinkled them in the corners and along the threshold. ‘The walkers are drawn to particular spots, places where they died,’ she said, pointing to the center of the floor. ‘They can’t rest until they reclaim that spot.’

I spent the rest of the summer sleeping in my grandmother’s bed, and she never asked me to return to my room. She only said, ‘The floor remembers what we try to forget.’ I never stepped foot in that room again, and when I left San Isidro, I was relieved. But to this day, I can still hear that voice, that dry rustle, and the heavy thud of boots, and I know that the walker is still pacing, waiting for someone else to claim his spot on the floor.