The Wet Floorboards

When I first moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of Katanning, Western Australia, I was six months pregnant with my son, and my younger brother, Ethan, had come to stay with me while our parents were on a month-long caravan trip up the coast. The house was built in the 1890s, a relic of the gold rush era, with corrugated iron walls and a wide veranda that creaked in the wind. It sat on a few acres of dry, red earth, surrounded by paddocks that had long since gone to seed. I loved it—the sense of history, the quiet—but from the start, there was a feeling I couldn’t shake, especially in the bathroom.

That bathroom was a narrow, windowless room off the kitchen, with a claw-foot tub and a cracked porcelain sink. The floorboards were always slightly damp, no matter how dry the season, and the air hung heavy with the smell of old timber and something else, something like damp earth after rain. I’d often hear noises while I was in there—footsteps in the hallway, the soft brush of a hand against the wall—but I chalked it up to an old house settling. Ethan, being younger and more imaginative, was less convinced.

One evening, I came home from my shift at the local hospital to find Ethan white-faced and shaking. He’d been in the bathroom, brushing his teeth, when he heard the front door open and close, and then the unmistakable sound of footsteps crossing the living room and into the kitchen. He called out my name, expecting me to appear, but when I didn’t, he stepped out of the bathroom to find the kitchen empty. The front door was still locked from the inside. He was so rattled that he refused to go into the bathroom alone for a week.

A fortnight later, I was taking a late-night bath. The rain drummed on the iron roof, a steady, rhythmic sound that almost lulled me to sleep. Ethan had gone to bed an hour earlier, and I was sinking into the warm water, my eyes closed, when I heard the familiar creak of his bedroom door. Then footsteps padded down the hallway, through the living room, and into the kitchen. They passed the bathroom door—I saw a shadow slip past the crack—and continued into the laundry room, where the toilet was. The door clicked shut, and I heard the unmistakable sound of vomiting, harsh and violent.

I sighed. Poor boy must have eaten something bad. I called out, ‘Ethan, are you alright?’ There was no answer, just the sound of water running in the sink. I waited a few minutes, then heard the toilet flush and the footsteps retreat back down the hallway. I heard Ethan’s bedroom door shut, and all fell quiet.

I finished my bath and got out, wrapping myself in a towel. I padded into the kitchen to fix a cup of tea, and as I passed the laundry, I noticed the floor was wet—not just damp, but soaked, as if someone had spilled a bucket of water. There were wet footprints leading from the toilet to the hallway, but they were too small to be Ethan’s, and they seemed to be made by bare feet. I followed them down the hallway to Ethan’s door, which was ajar. I pushed it open. Ethan was lying in bed, asleep, his breathing even. The windows were closed. The floor in his room was dry.

I went back to the kitchen, uneasy. I decided to check the toilet, and when I opened the door, the air hit me—a stench of decay, like rotting leaves and stagnant water. The toilet bowl was filled with a thick, black liquid that bubbled slightly, as if something were alive in it. I slammed the door shut and stood there, my heart pounding. I heard a faint scratching sound from within, like nails on porcelain.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in the living room, wrapped in a blanket, watching the door to the kitchen. Near dawn, I heard the bathroom door creak open, and the sound of footsteps on the wet floorboards, walking slowly, as if searching. The footsteps stopped outside the living room. I held my breath. After a long minute, they retreated, and I heard the bathroom door close with a soft click.

The next morning, Ethan came out looking pale. He said he’d had a nightmare about a woman in a white dress standing in the corner of his room, whispering his name. I told him it was just a dream, but I couldn’t shake the image of those wet footprints. I called a plumber to check the pipes, but he found nothing wrong. He did notice, though, that the floorboards under the toilet were rotted through, and there was a strange, dark stain on the ground beneath, as if something had been buried there long ago.

I started sleeping with a light on. But the sounds only grew worse. I’d hear knocking in the walls, the sound of a child crying in the laundry, and the constant, wet footsteps that never seemed to go anywhere. One night, I woke to find the bathroom door open, and the tub full of black, murky water. The taps were off, but the water was cold and still. I leaned over to drain it, and as I did, I saw a face in the water—a woman, her eyes wide, her mouth open in a silent scream. I recoiled, and the water rippled, and the face vanished.

I called my parents and told them I was selling the house. They thought I was being hysterical, but they didn’t argue. The day I moved out, I noticed that the floorboards in the bathroom were dry for the first time since I’d arrived. But as I locked the door and walked away, I heard a single, soft creak from inside the house, like a footstep on a floorboard, and the faint sound of a voice, calling my name.

I never went back. But sometimes, in the dead of night, when the rain drums on my roof, I hear wet footsteps in the hallway, and I know that the floorboards are wet again, and I am not the only one who hears them.