The Stained Floorboards

In the sweltering summer of 2003, I was sixteen, and my family had chosen a remote coastal village called Portharrow for our annual holiday. My best friend, Mira, had been allowed to join us, and we were both buzzing with excitement as our car wound down the narrow, cliff-hugging roads. The village was a cluster of whitewashed cottages huddled around a grim, stone church, and the sea beyond was a slate grey, churning against black rocks. Our accommodation was a solitary, two-story cottage at the edge of the village, named ‘Seacliff’ but it was a misnomer, for it sat not on a cliff, but in a shallow, damp hollow, shrouded by overgrown hawthorn bushes.

Our landlord, a sallow man named Mr. Thorne, met us at the door. He was all long limbs and twitchy fingers, and his eyes never quite settled on our faces. ‘The place has been recently renovated,’ he said, his voice thin and reedy. ‘New everything. But the floorboards in the sitting room are old. They creak. You’ll get used to it.’ He handed us the keys and left without another word, his car sputtering away up the lane.

We unpacked, and I couldn’t shake a cold that seemed to seep from the walls. Mira, ever the pragmatist, laughed it off. ‘It’s just an old house, Elara. Get over it.’ But that night, as we lay in our respective beds, the floorboards above our room—the ones Mr. Thorne had mentioned—began to creak. Not the random settling of wood, but a measured, deliberate pacing. Step. Pause. Step. Pause. It went on for hours, and when I finally dozed off, I dreamed of a woman in a long, water-logged dress, her face obscured, dragging her feet across the floor above.

The next day, we explored the village. We visited the church, with its faded frescoes of saints and a single, trembling candle before a statue of the Virgin. The old priest, Father O’Malley, seemed anxious when we mentioned Seacliff. ‘That house has a history,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘They say a woman named Morwenna lived there. She was a healer, a cunning woman. When the village turned on her, they… well, they took her to the shore and held her under until she stopped breathing. They said she cursed the house as she drowned.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘It’s just a story, mind you. But I’d keep to the daylight hours.’

That night, the pacing was worse. It was not confined to the floor above; it seemed to come from everywhere—the walls, the ceiling, even from beneath our beds. Mira was visibly shaken. ‘It’s just the wind,’ I said, but I didn’t believe it. We tried to sleep, but the sounds grew more insistent. Then, I heard a woman’s voice, low and guttural, whispering, ‘You don’t belong here.’ I sat bolt upright. Mira was fast asleep, her breathing steady. I convinced myself it was a dream.

On our third night, I woke to find Mira standing at the window, staring out into the blackness. Her voice was flat, hollow. ‘She’s down there. At the gate. She wants in.’ I rushed to her side, but the garden was empty. The gate was ajar, swinging slowly in the night breeze. ‘Come back to bed, Mira. You’re sleepwalking.’ She turned to me, and for a moment, her eyes were not her own—they were a milky white, like a fish’s belly. Then she blinked, and normalcy returned. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.’ We talked for what felt like hours, trying to rationalize the events. But both of us knew something was deeply wrong.

Determined to get to the bottom of it, we decided to investigate the house’s past. The local librarian, a woman with thick glasses and a love of gossip, found a tattered newspaper from 1901. The headline read: ‘Local Healer Drowned at Portharrow.’ The article claimed Morwenna had been accused of witchcraft after a farmer’s pigs died. She had been dragged from the house by a mob, and her last words were, ‘I will return to this house, and I will make it my own again. The floorboards will drink my curse.’

The floorboards. Of course. We tore away the carpet in the sitting room, and beneath were the original oak planks, dark with age and stained with great, irregular blotches. Some were dark brown, but a few were an ominous black, as if the wood itself had been burned. As we stared, the stains seemed to shift, forming vague shapes—a face, a hand. Then, a whispering rose from the wood, a chorus of voices, all saying one word: ‘Leave.’

We tried to flee, but the doors wouldn’t budge. The windows were sealed as if painted shut. The landline was dead, and we had no mobile signals. We were trapped. That night, we sat in the sitting room, huddled together on the sofa, watching the floorboards. The stains began to spread, creeping outward like spilled ink, and with them came the wet, sucking sound of a body being dragged. The pacing started again, but this time it was directly beneath us, as if something was under the floor, moving.

Suddenly, the boards creaked and groaned, and a section began to bulge upward. With a splintering crack, a plank burst free, and a dark, oozing sludge bubbled up from the cavity below. The sludge smelled of brine and rot. It began to form a shape—a woman, crouched, her hair clinging to her skull, her eyes socketless hollows. She rose, dripping, and turned her head toward us. ‘You have come to my home,’ she rasped. ‘Now you will stay, as I did.’

We backed away, but the sludge reached out with shapeless arms. Mira grabbed my hand, and we ran for the stairs, but the stairs were now a river of black water, churning and cold. We couldn’t see the top. Desperation lent us speed, and we splashed upward, the water rising to our knees, then our waists. The house was filling with the sea, and the woman’s voice was all around us. ‘My curse is strong. You will not leave.’

We burst into a bedroom and barricaded the door. The water seeped through the cracks, but we found a small window that overlooked the village. We could see the lights, the church, the pub—so close. But the window was too high, and we had nothing to break it. Then, in the corner of the room, I saw an old iron bedpost, loose from its frame. With a strength I didn’t know I had, I wrenched it free and smashed the glass. Sharp shards rained down, and we climbed out onto the roof just as the door splintered behind us.

We scrambled down the drainpipe, the night air a shock after the stifling house. We didn’t stop running until we reached the church, where we collapsed on the stone steps, panting. When we looked back at Seacliff, the windows were dark, and a thin mist curled from the chimney, even though the fire was unlit. We spent the rest of the night in the church, and at dawn, we retrieved our things and drove away without a word to Mr. Thorne.

That was twenty years ago. I have never returned to Portharrow. But sometimes, at night, I still hear the pacing of the floorboards, and the whisper of Morwenna’s curse. And I know that somewhere, in that accursed house, the floorboards are waiting, stained with the promise of eternal guests. I can only warn others: if you ever stay in a house with old floorboards, listen. Listen for the stain that spreads. And leave before it finds you.