The Loam Beneath the Linoleum

My name is Elise, and I grew up in a sleepy, rainswept town in the Pacific Northwest called Ponderosa Pines. When I was nine, my parents split, and my dad moved into a squat, moss-covered duplex at the edge of the old logging road. It was a place that seemed to be slowly sinking into the earth, the foundation perpetually damp, and the porch steps warped like they were trying to become roots. From the first weekend I spent there, I felt a wrongness in the air, a heaviness that clung to my skin like the mist that rolled in from the Sound. It was strongest in my dad’s back room, a space he used as a workshop and where he slept on a pull-out couch. I couldn’t name it then, but it was a feeling of being watched by something patient and cold, something that breathed beneath the floorboards.

I was fourteen, just starting to care about boys and zits, when I first heard the humming. It was a Saturday night, the television a dull murmur in the living room, and dad had been asleep for a couple of hours. I was nursing a soda and flipping through a magazine when this low, rhythmic hum started up from the floor, like a giant tuning fork buried deep in the ground. It wasn’t a sound so much as a sensation, a vibration that traveled up through my bare feet and settled in my teeth. I froze, my heart knocking against my ribs. It stopped as suddenly as it had begun. I told myself it was the old furnace or the water pipes, but something in me knew better.

The next weekend, I was alone in the house, dad out on a last-minute job. I was in the kitchen, boiling water for ramen, when I noticed the linoleum floor bulging near the back door. It was a queer, soft lump, like a blister under the surface. I poked it with my toe, and it gave slightly, like wet cardboard. Curious and a little creeped out, I fetched a butter knife and carefully sliced along the seam. Underneath, instead of subflooring, there was a layer of dark, loamy soil, damp and rich, smelling of mushrooms and decay. And there, half-buried in that black earth, was a child’s toy—a plastic soldier, its paint worn away, its arms raised as if in surrender or defense. I touched it, and the coldness that shot up my finger was not from the metal, but from something else. A deep, animal panic filled me, and I quickly pressed the linoleum back down, as if I could unsee it.

Dad came home that night, and I didn’t mention the soil or the toy. But that night, the humming returned, louder this time. It was coming from directly beneath my bed. I lay rigid, my breath shallow, as the hum morphed into a faint, wet, rhythmic squelching, like a giant mouth working something soft. The door to my room was ajar, and I could see a sliver of the hallway, but I was too terrified to close it. Then I heard the voice. It wasn’t a voice from the air; it was a voice that seemed to bloom inside my skull. It was soft and lisping, like a child’s, but with an undercurrent of something ancient. It said, ‘You touched him. Now he knows you can help.’

I didn’t sleep. I stayed up, huddled under my blanket, my eyes fixed on the ceiling, listening to the sounds below. The next day, I told my dad I didn’t want to stay there anymore. He looked at me with that tired, resigned look he’d had since the divorce. ‘It’s just a phase, Elise,’ he said. ‘You’re just feeling things differently now.’ But I knew it wasn’t a phase. He refused to move, saying it was a good deal and he couldn’t find anything cheaper. I started finding excuses to stay at my mom’s on weekends, but the pull of the place was strong. It was like the house was calling me, and I could feel it from across town, a nagging whisper at the back of my mind.

One night, about a month later, I woke from a nightmare with a start. I was back at my dad’s, having come to pick up some things. The room was dark, but I could see a faint, greenish light coming from under the door to his workshop. The humming was a constant drone now, and the air felt thick and heavy. I crept out of bed and padded down the hall. The door to the workshop was a crack open. I peered through. The room was empty—no furniture, no workbench. The floor was gone, replaced by a pit of that black soil, which seemed to undulate, like it was breathing. From the middle of the pit, a shape began to rise. It was vaguely humanoid, but its skin was the color of rich, wet earth, and its hands were too long, and its eyes were pale, like river stones. It turned its head, and it looked directly at me, and it opened its mouth, and inside there were no teeth, just more of that dark soil, falling out like rain.

I screamed and stumbled back. I heard my father’s voice from behind me. ‘Elise? What are you doing up?’ I spun around. He was standing at the end of the hallway, ghostly in his pajamas. I tried to speak, but the words were stuck. He walked past me toward the workshop door, and as he did, I saw that the hum had stopped. The door was closed again, the black pit gone. ‘It’s just the old furnace,’ he said, his voice oddly flat. ‘Go back to bed. And whatever you do, don’t go in there. That room is not for you.’ I nodded, my skin crawling with a sense of danger that was both immediate and immense. He walked to his bedroom without another word, and I stood alone in the hall, my heart thundering.

The next morning, I packed my bag and never went back. My dad moved out a few months later, telling us he’d found a job in Alaska. I never learned what happened to the duplex, but I sometimes see it in my dreams. In the dreams, I am older, maybe the age I am now, and I am standing on the porch, and the front door is open, and from inside comes the hum, and a child’s voice calling my name. And I know that if I step inside, I will sink into that soil, and I will join the others who are down there, waiting for the next lonely kid to feel the wrongness and come looking. In the waking world, the memory of that black soil and the shape that rose from it still troubles me. It taught me that some things are not just haunted; they are hungry. And they never forget the ones who looked but didn’t help.