The Hollow Floor Above

In 1987, when I was nine, I lived with my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Paul in their creaky Victorian house in Gladewater, Texas. My room was in the basement, and I hated it. The walls were bare concrete, and the single small window looked out onto a grate that let in the sounds of water dripping from the gutters. The stairwell to the main floor was narrow and steep, and at night, the shadows from the porch light made it seem like something was always waiting at the top.

One sweltering August night, I woke to the sound of my own heart thumping. There was a figure in the doorway of my room, a tall, lean silhouette darker than the darkness around it. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. My eyes were locked on it, and I felt sweat trickle down my temples. It stood there for what felt like an eternity, then, as I blinked, it vanished. A wave of relief washed over me, but then I heard a heavy, ragged breath right next to my ear. I turned my head and saw it lying on the floor beside my bed, its face obscured, but I could feel its gaze on me. Its breathing was loud and labored, like it had been running a long race. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed, and when I opened them, it was gone.

I didn’t tell anyone. I was too scared and too ashamed. But a week later, my best friend Sarah noticed I was pale and jumpy. I confided in her, and she, thinking it was a cry for help, told our third-grade teacher, Mrs. Delgado. Mrs. Delgado called Aunt Margaret and said I might be ‘disturbed.’ Aunt Margaret took me to a therapist, Dr. Fields, who asked me about my dreams and my feelings. I answered his questions vaguely, never mentioning the dark visitor. He declared me ‘normal,’ and my aunt seemed relieved, but she watched me with a new wariness.

Two years later, I moved in with my grandmother, who lived on the other side of town. I thought I’d left the darkman behind. But then, one Saturday morning in October, Aunt Margaret called my grandmother in a panic. The kids—my cousins, Tommy and little Jenny—had started talking about a man in black who paced up and down the stairs at night, and whose heavy steps echoed from the spare room that had been mine. Tommy heard it breathing on the other side of his wall, and Jenny woke up screaming that it was leaning over her bed. Aunt Margaret said the footsteps would start at 1:00 AM and continue until dawn. I knew then that the darkman hadn’t been following me; it had been waiting in that house for a new audience.

I never returned to that house. But as I grew older, I understood the truth. The darkman wasn’t a ghost or a spirit. It was a parasite of fear, feeding on the terror of children. It had followed the lines of my attention, drawn to the next vulnerable mind that shared my bloodline. Last week, I received a letter from my grandmother. She said that Aunt Margaret had sold the house, and the new owners—a young couple with a six-year-old girl—had already heard footsteps on the basement stairs. The hollow, rhythmic thudding, just above their heads. It seems the darkman found a new family, and I can still hear that breathing in my dreams, as if it’s trying to find a way back to me. But now I know that as long as children are afraid of the dark, the hollow floor above will never be silent.

I write this as a warning. If you feel a presence in a doorway, if you hear footsteps where there should be none, do not close your eyes. For that is when it moves, closer, breathing, waiting for you to open your eyes and see that it has been there all along, patient and hungry. And once it finds its way into your home, it will never leave until it has left its mark on every child who dares to sleep beneath its gaze.