The Rotten Floorboards

I was seven when I first noticed the way the air changed near the back of our property. My parents had bought the old Whitfield house, a fixer-upper in a quiet cul-de-sac, and my father, a contractor, had poured months of sweat into renovating the main structure. But the shed, a sagging wooden box at the edge of the yard, remained untouched, a relic of the previous owner’s neglect. It wasn’t just the peeling paint or the shattered window that repelled me; it was the sense that the shed watched me, its empty socket of a window tracking my every move from the corner of my eye.

Our new home had a past I learned about later, from neighborhood gossip. The previous owner, a man named Gerald, had run a meth lab in that shed, and the police had found enough evidence to send him away for a long time. My parents, though aware of the history, were undeterred; they saw potential in the property and a good investment in the renovation. They never bothered to tear down the shed, perhaps out of a strange respect for the past, or maybe just because it was out of sight. But it was never out of my mind.

I remember the first time I dared to approach it. The grass around the base was brown and stunted, and the air was thick with the smell of damp wood and something else, something acrid that stung my nostrils. I peered through the grimy window, expecting to see spiderwebs and scattered debris, but instead, I saw a dark, gaping hole in the floorboards, as if something had burrowed through from below. The sight made my stomach drop, and I ran back to the house, my heart pounding.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, convinced I heard a faint creaking from the direction of the shed. I told my parents the next morning, but they dismissed it as rats or the wind. My father offered to spray for pests, but I refused, too terrified to go near the shed again. Instead, I avoided that part of the yard entirely, sticking to the front lawn or the small patio near the kitchen door.

But the shed didn’t leave my thoughts. I began to notice odd things. Small, perfectly round holes appeared in the lawn, as if something had thrust a thin pipe into the ground at even intervals, forming a trail from the shed to the back fence. My father dismissed them as mole hills, but I knew moles didn’t make round holes. I also found a strange, powdery substance on the windowsill one day, gray and fine as talc, that crumbled to dust when I touched it.

One afternoon, while digging for worms to go fishing with my brother, I unearthed a small, tarnished locket buried near the hedge. It was old and ornate, with a faded photograph inside of a woman with a stern face. I had never seen her before, but something about her gaze unsettled me. I shoved the locket into my pocket and forgot about it until that night, when I accidentally dropped it, and it snapped open. A thin, rolled-up piece of paper fell out, and upon unrolling it, I found a single word written in spidery handwriting: ‘Stay.’ That word kept echoing in my mind, and I became convinced the locket was from the shed, a message from whatever lurked inside.

Determined to unravel the mystery, I gathered my courage one summer afternoon and returned to the shed. The door was slightly ajar, creaking on rusty hinges, and a foul odor, like decay and chemicals, wafted out. I stepped inside, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. The floor was a patchwork of broken planks, and the hole I had seen from the window was larger than I remembered, yawning open like a mouth. I edged closer, peering into the darkness below, when I saw a faint glimmer, like eyes reflecting light. I stumbled backward, tripping over a rusty tool, and landed hard on the floor. The impact caused the sagging shelf above me to collapse, sending a cascade of rotten wood and shattered glass onto my head.

As I scrambled to my feet, I noticed a loose floorboard near the wall, and beneath it, a dark, narrow cavity. With trembling hands, I pried it up and found a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. Inside was a small, leather-bound journal, its pages yellowed and brittle. I opened it to the first page and read the scrawled handwriting: ‘Gerald’s log, day one. The digging has begun.’

I flipped through the pages, encountering entries about ‘the soil, too rich, too dark,’ and ‘the foundation, wrong somehow.’ One entry read: ‘The thing under the shed is getting bolder. It scratched the underside of the floorboards all night. I’m afraid to sleep. I don’t know what I’ve awakened.’ The final entry, dated a week before Gerald’s arrest, said: ‘It’s learned my name. And it doesn’t want me to leave. There’s a hole in the floor, and it’s coming through.’

I shoved the journal into my pocket and ran, not stopping until I reached the back door, slamming it behind me. But the shed’s influence had already seeped into the house. That night, I heard scratching from within the walls, and my closet door creaked open on its own. I told my parents, but they attributed it to the house settling, and my father chalked the scraping to a raccoon in the attic. He offered to put down traps, but I begged him not to.

Days turned into weeks, and the noises grew louder. I started sleepwalking, waking up in the backyard near the shed, my bare feet caked with dirt. Once, I found a handful of gray powder in my bed, and I knew it had been left there as a message. I finally confronted my father, showing him the journal and the locket. He frowned, reading through the entries in silence. Then he sighed, rubbed his temples, and admitted that he had always known the shed had ‘bad history,’ but he had assumed the danger had passed with Gerald’s imprisonment. He said, ‘I’ll tear it down tomorrow.’ His resolve was firm, but I saw the fear in his eyes.

The demolition crew arrived early the next morning. They worked swiftly, pulling the shed apart board by board. The air was filled with the sound of ripping wood and the grinding of machinery. I stood on the porch, watching, my arms wrapped around myself. As they tore up the floorboards, the hole beneath them became a vast, gaping pit. The workers halted, peering into the darkness. One of them shouted, ‘There’s something down here!’ My father said, ‘Careful!’ But it was too late. The ground seemed to give way, and the worker slipped, his leg vanishing into the pit. He screamed, a terrible, guttural sound, and then he was hauled out, his leg lacerated with long, thin cuts, as if someone had raked razor-sharp claws across his skin.

They called off the demolition, and the police and fire crews were summoned. But by the time they arrived, the pit was empty, save for a few scattered bones. The authorities concluded it was an animal den, but I knew better. I stayed up that night, staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence. And then, just as dawn began to break, I heard it: a faint, wet slithering sound, coming from the corner of my room. I turned on my lamp, but saw nothing. Yet on the floor, there was a new, perfectly round hole, matching the ones in the yard, trailing from the corner of my room to under my bed. And from that hole, a whisper, ‘C’mere, boy.’

I didn’t sleep. I never slept in that house again. My parents, shaken by the incident, sold the property at a loss, and we moved to a clean, modern apartment with no yard. But even now, I sometimes see those round holes, and I feel the weight of that buried thing, patient and hungry, waiting for the next occupant to dig too deep.