The Tile’s Cold Arithmetic

I never trusted the cold of that living room floor. Not the way it seeped through my shirt and pressed against my ribs like a patient hand. We moved into my grandmother’s old house in Batangas in 2011, after she passed and left it to my mother. The house was beautiful in that decaying, tropical way—capiz windows, narra floors upstairs, but the downstairs living room had been redone in cheap, glossy tiles that always felt cooler than they should, even at noon.

I was twenty, home for the summer, and prone to lying on that floor with my laptop, trying to escape the heat that clung to everything like a second skin. My dog, a scrappy mongrel named Tikboy, would curl up against my thigh, his small body a warm anchor. One night, around midnight, I was scrolling through articles about some archaeological dig in the north, when the light above the staircase flickered—just once, a hesitant buzz. I didn’t look up, too absorbed, but I felt the air shift, a heaviness that pressed down on the room like the moment before a storm breaks.

Then Tikboy lifted his head, ears pricked, and growled low in his throat. He stared at the empty armchair across from me—my grandmother’s favorite, a bulky thing upholstered in faded floral fabric. I followed his gaze, but saw nothing. The chair was empty, the shadows pooling beneath it. ‘What is it, boy?’ I whispered, and he whined, then rested his head back down, but his eyes stayed open, tracking something I couldn’t see.

I tried to ignore it, but the temperature in the room dipped, and the cold from the tiles began to creep up my arms, into my bones. I shivered despite the sweat on my forehead. Then I heard it—a soft, rhythmic scratching, like fingernails dragging across the tile, coming from the guest room at the end of the hall. The door was ajar, blackness beyond. Tikboy’s growl deepened, and I sat up, my heart thudding a stupid, primal beat.

My mother had told me about the guest room. She said my grandmother used to keep her sewing machine in there, and that on some nights she’d hear the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the needle, even though the machine was unplugged for decades. I never believed her, not really. House settles, old wood creaks, the wind plays tricks. But that scratching wasn’t the wind. It was deliberate, and it was moving toward the door.

I got to my feet, my legs shaky. I told myself it was just a rat, a big one that had gotten in through the gap under the door. I flicked on the overhead light—a bare bulb that swung slightly, casting long, sliding shadows. The scratching stopped. I stood there, breathing hard, willing myself to walk to that door and close it. But my feet wouldn’t move. Tikboy stayed frozen beside me, his hackles raised.

Then, from the guest room, a voice—not loud, but clear as a bell, and completely calm. It was my grandmother’s voice, the one I remembered from childhood, with that particular lilt she had when scolding. ‘It’s late, anak. Go to bed.’

I bolted up the stairs, not even remembering how I got there. I called my mother, who was in Manila, and she laughed, saying I was finally hearing things like she did. ‘Just an old house,’ she said. ‘Your grandmother loved you. She would never scare you.’ But I didn’t sleep that night, lying in my old bed, staring at the ceiling, Tikboy pressed against my side, both of us listening.

The next day, I avoided the living room. I made excuses, ate in the kitchen, walked quickly past the open guest room door without looking in. But at night, lying on my bed, the sounds returned—not the scratching, but something worse: the murmur of voices, low and unintelligible, rising from the room directly below mine. My guest room, where I had my desk, where I sometimes napped. The voices were not two, but many, layered like a dissonant choir. I put my headphones on, but the sound was inside my head.

It went on for three nights. On the third night, Tikboy refused to come into my room. He whined at the door, scratching at it, and when I finally opened it, he ran down the stairs, tail tucked, and hid under the sofa in the living room. I followed him, angry and scared, and that’s when I saw the light in the guest room slicing through the crack under the door—a warm, amber glow that hadn’t been there before. I hadn’t turned on any light in there.

I approached, my bare feet numb on the cold tile. I pressed my ear to the door, and the voices grew clearer. They were speaking in Tagalog, fragments of prayers, of lullabies. And then, a child’s voice, giggling. A cold draft slid through the keyhole, and I saw the knob slowly turning from the inside.

I staggered back, tripping over a stray slipper, and landed hard on the floor. The door creaked open, revealing the guest room bathed in a sickly yellow light. The room was empty, but the sewing machine—the ancient one my grandmother swore was broken—was running, the needle pumping up and down with a rhythmic thump-thump-thump, and on the glass tray beneath it, a scrap of black fabric was being stitched, needle piercing it over and over, forming a pattern of tiny, neat crosses.

I screamed, and the machine stopped. The light flickered out. The room went dark, silent. Tikboy came to me, licking my face, and I crawled to him, shaking.

I never went into that guest room again. I stopped lying on the living room floor. But sometimes, on hot nights, I still feel that cold tile against my back, even in my own bed, and I hear the faint thump-thump-thump from the room below, followed by a soft, amused laugh—my grandmother’s laugh, patient and knowing, as if she were waiting for me to finally understand something I never could.