The Static Beneath the Floorboards

The night air in Tucson had a way of clinging to the skin, even when the sun had long surrendered to the desert dark. I was 17, sprawled across my bed with my laptop balanced on my stomach, the familiar glow of the screen painting the ceiling in pale blues and whites. My room was on the second floor of our creaky old house, and the only sounds were the whir of the fan and the occasional groan of the cooling house. I’d been chatting with my friend Max about some stupid meme when the silence started to feel too loud. So I got up, switched off the fan, and killed the light, plunging the room into a velvet blackness only my laptop could puncture. I plugged in my earbuds, scrolled to a playlist I knew by heart, and let the music wash over me.

It was about an hour in, just as my favorite song was building to its crescendo, when the sound hiccupped. Not a normal skip, but a stutter, like a scratched CD. Right before I could jolt, I heard it—a soft, dry cough, like a child clearing their throat. And then a chuckle. Low, almost amused. The sound wasn’t in the music; it was somehow layered just behind it, as if the earbuds had picked up a signal from another room. My heart did a weird flutter, and my thumb stabbed at the pause. The silence that followed was worse. I yanked the earbuds out and stared at the dark shapes of my room, half expecting to see a small silhouette in the corner by the closet.

I typed to Max, my fingers trembling just a bit. ‘You okay?’ he asked. I told him what I heard. He laughed it off. ‘Probably just a glitch in your music file, man. Ghosts aren’t real.’ I wanted to believe him. I put my earbuds away, but a nervous energy kept me from closing my laptop. I kept typing, trying to convince myself, and him, that it was nothing.

Three minutes later, the cold came. It wasn’t a gradual chill; it was like stepping into a walk-in freezer. The air around me dropped so sharply that I saw my own breath plume in the glow of the screen, a ghostly wisp. My skin prickled, the hairs on my arms standing at attention. I typed, ‘Max, it’s freezing in here. Like, I can see my breath.’

‘That’s not good,’ he replied. ‘Maybe your AC is busted?’ But the AC unit was outside, and it hadn’t kicked on. The cold was localized, clinging to me, seeping into my bones. I pulled my blanket up to my chin, but it didn’t help. My teeth began to chatter.

Then the laptop screen flickered. The video call I had minimized—with Max’s face—began to pixelate. For a split second, the image warped, and I could have sworn I saw a different face staring back. A child’s face, pale, with hollow eyes. Then it was gone. ‘Max, did you see that?’ I typed frantically.

‘See what?’ came his reply, along with a scrolling stream of question marks.

I turned my head, scanning the corners of my room. My bookshelf, my desk, the window with the blinds half-drawn. Nothing. But the cold had a direction now, a presence. I could feel it radiating from under my bed. A sound started, barely audible at first, but growing: a rhythmic scratching, like fingernails on wood. It was coming from the floorboards beneath me.

My heart hammered. I thought of the stories my grandmother told about the old house, about the family who lived here before the war, and their little girl who died of fever. I always dismissed them as old wives’ tales. But now, the scratching was unmistakable, and it was moving. It traveled from under my bed to the footboard, then up the wall, as if something was crawling just beneath the surface, searching for a way in.

I slammed my laptop shut, plunging myself into complete darkness. The silence that followed was worse than the noise. I could hear my own heartbeat, my ragged breath. Then, a whisper, so faint it might have been a distant radio signal: ‘Your name is Riley. I know where you sleep.’

The voice was right in my ear, too close. I screamed, vaulting off the bed and fumbling for the light switch. When the fluorescent lights blinked on, flooding the room with harsh white, the cold vanished instantly, like it had never existed. My room was exactly as I’d left it—fan off, lights off, laptop shut on the bed. But I noticed something new. The ceiling tiles above my bed, which were usually white, were now dotted with dark, wet spots, forming a pattern. I squinted, backing up gradually. They arranged themselves as a childish handprint, small and smeared, as if pressed against a window from the other side.

I bolted from my room, down the stairs, and didn’t stop until I was standing on the front porch, barefoot, panting in the warm desert night. The house loomed behind me, silent. But as I stood there, I heard it again—a faint, rhythmic knocking coming from my bedroom window, three taps, a pause, then a child’s giggle.

I haven’t slept since. And I’ve moved to the garage, but the cold follows me. Last night, I swear I saw a small shadow pass under the gap of the door, and the static on my radio, even when it’s off, crackles with the sound of a child breathing.