The Stained Floorboards

I’m thirty-eight now, and I’ve spent half my life trying to make sense of what happened in that house. My name is not important, but the story is. I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, a place that baked in the summer and froze in the winter, flat and endless. My family moved around a lot when I was a kid, always chasing work, and in 1984 we ended up in a town called Dry Creek, population barely a thousand. It was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone’s business, and the only thing older than the oak trees was the gossip.

Our house was a single-story farmhouse, a relic from the turn of the century. It had a wraparound porch that sagged in the middle, and the paint was peeling like sunburned skin. The inside smelled of dust and something faintly sweet, like rotting fruit. My room was at the end of a narrow hallway, and the floorboards there were stained a dark, reddish brown, as if something had soaked into the wood and never quite dried. I asked about the stain once, and my mother said it was ‘just old wood.’ But I knew better.

I was thirteen when the first thing happened. I woke up in the middle of the night to a sound like something being dragged across the floor above my head. But there was no second floor—the ceiling was directly under the attic. I lay there, heart pounding, listening to the scrape-scrape-scrape, and then it stopped. A moment later, I heard a whisper, so faint I couldn’t make out the words, but it was a voice, and it was coming from inside the room, not from outside. I pulled the covers over my head and stayed like that until dawn.

The experiences grew more frequent. I’d see a shadow dart around a corner, always just out of sight. Doors would creak open on their own. One time, I found all the kitchen drawers pulled out and the silverware arranged in a neat circle in the middle of the floor. My parents blamed it on the wind or rats, but I knew. I started to feel like I was being watched, not just in the house, but everywhere. Even in the bright sunlight of the schoolyard, I’d get the feeling that something was waiting for me back home.

I tried to tell my best friend, a girl named Rosa, but she just laughed and said I had an overactive imagination. So I kept it to myself, and the house began to feel like a living thing, breathing in the silence, watching me with its dark windows. I stopped walking on the stained floorboards in the hallway, taking a wide berth around them, as if stepping on them would trigger something terrible.

One evening, my parents went out for dinner, leaving me alone for the first time in weeks. I sat in the living room, trying to read, but the silence was too heavy. I heard a creak from the hallway, and then a distinct footstep. Not the ghost of a sound, but a solid, heavy footstep. I called out, ‘Hello?’ No answer. Another footstep, closer. I got up, my legs trembling, and peered around the corner. The hallway was empty, but the stained floorboards were wet, as if someone had just spilled a bucket of water. But it wasn’t water. It was dark, almost black, and it was spreading, seeping from the gaps between the boards.

I stepped back, and the lights flickered. Then, from the attic above, I heard a child’s laughter. It was high and innocent, but it sent a chill down my spine. I ran to the back door, but it was locked. I fumbled with the lock, and the laughter grew louder, closer. I turned, and there, at the end of the hallway, stood a figure. It was small, like a child, but its features were blurred, as if seen through frosted glass. It pointed a finger at the stain on the floor, and said in a voice that was both young and ancient, ‘They’re still wet.’

I screamed and ran through the door, which somehow gave way, and I didn’t stop running until I was outside, gasping in the cool night air. My parents found me huddled on the porch, shaking. They thought I was just scared of the dark. They never asked about the stain again.

We moved out of Dry Creek three years later, when I turned sixteen, and I thought I’d left that behind. But I still dream about the house, about the wet floorboards and the child’s voice. And sometimes, when I’m walking on a wooden floor, I feel a slight give, a softness, and I look down, half expecting to see the dark stain seeping up. I’ve never told anyone the full story, not until now. I write this to ask: has anyone else experienced something like this? Because I can’t shake the feeling that the stain wasn’t just a stain. It was a door, and I’m afraid that someday, it’ll open again, and I’ll be the one who has to walk through it.