The Tape Under the Floorboards

My grandmother left us her old farmhouse in the bristlecone pines, a place where the wind never stops its low, dry moan through the cracks. I moved in after the divorce, seeking quiet. My father, a retired engineer, came to help me renovate. He had a practical explanation for everything: the creaks were the house settling, the cold spots were drafts, the flickering lights were faulty wiring. I wanted to believe him.

One evening, we found a box in the attic filled with old reel-to-reel tapes from the 1970s. Among them was a blank one, still sealed. My father, in a fit of nostalgia, set up his vintage recorder and insisted we try to capture the ‘ghost of the farmhouse’ as a joke. He had me speak into the microphone, my voice flat and uncertain, asking if any spirit was present. We let the tape run for an hour, then forgot about it until the next day.

The next night, my best friend, Lena, came over. We gathered around the recorder, the house silent except for the wind. We pressed play. There was a hiss, then my voice, thin and tentative: ‘If anyone is here, please say something.’ A long pause. Then, a sound I had never heard before—a wet, rhythmic scraping, like something being dragged across the floor, followed by a voice that was not mine or my father’s. It was low, gravelly, and spoke in a language I didn’t recognize. It ended with a distinct click, as if the tape had been deliberately cut.

My father laughed, calling it a hoax, but Lena and I exchanged glances. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I heard the same scraping sound coming from the hallway outside my room. I crept to the door and peered through the crack. The hallway was empty, but the floorboards were wet, as if something had been dragged through water. The next morning, my father found a scratch mark on the inside of the front door, deep and fresh, as if made by claws. He blamed it on a raccoon, but the door was locked from the inside.

Over the next week, the activity escalated. The tape would play on its own at odd hours, the voice growing clearer. It began to speak in English, with a raspy, distorted tone: ‘You let me in. Now I will take my place.’ My father finally admitted he was scared. He tried to burn the tape, but the fire in the fireplace turned green and produced a stench like rotting meat. The tape remained intact, unharmed, and the next morning we found it lying on the kitchen table, as if it had been placed there.

Lena suggested we record ourselves asking what it wanted. We set up the recorder in the living room, all windows and doors sealed, and left it running overnight. When we played it back, we heard a conversation we never had. My voice said, ‘I don’t want this.’ The other voice replied, ‘It’s not a choice. You are the one who summoned me.’ Then Lena’s voice, trembling: ‘What are you?’ The voice laughed, a sound like gravel grinding, and said, ‘I am the hole that was here before the house. I am the floor beneath the floor. And I have been waiting for someone to speak my name.’

We dug under the floorboards in the hallway, where the wet mark had appeared. We found a small, rusted tin box. Inside was a photograph of a woman with hollow eyes, and a handwritten letter, dated 1972, addressed to my grandmother. The letter was in the same language as the original voice, but we later translated it. It was a confession. My grandmother had been part of a group that attempted to contact a spirit to save her dying child. The ritual went wrong, and the child died anyway. The spirit was bound to the house, trapped in the foundation, waiting for someone to call it forth.

Now I know why my grandmother never spoke about the past. The tape is my inheritance. I cannot destroy it, for it is tied to the house, and the house is tied to me. The voice now whispers to me at night, not from the recorder, but from the floorboards themselves. It says, ‘You are mine now, like she was. Like the child was. You will keep me company.’ And I know, with a certainty that chills my bones, that when I finally pass, the tape will be silent for a time, but the scraping will continue, waiting for the next one who dares to ask if anyone is there.