The Wooden Teeth of the Third Floor

The Old Mill House had stood for over a century, its red brick darkened by soot and rain, its windows like hollow eyes. My grandmother, Elsie, and my grandfather, Bert, had lived there since the sixties, and my mother, Margaret, and her siblings had grown up in its creaking corridors. The house always felt older than it was, as if it had secrets it was waiting to reveal.

One autumn evening, when Margaret was twelve and her sisters, Ruth and little Penny, were nine and six, Elsie and Bert decided to go to the village dance. They told the girls to go to bed early, and the house soon fell into a hush. The girls shared a room on the second floor, and after the front door clicked shut, they sat up in the dark, whispering about the ghost of Old Man Holloway, who had supposedly hanged himself in the attic.

They spoke of how sometimes, at night, you could hear the creak of the attic door, and the thud of his wooden teeth dropping to the floor. It was just a story, but they thrilled at the fear. Then, a sound split the silence: the toilet upstairs flushed. The pipes groaned and gurgled, and water rushed.

Margaret froze. ‘Who’s up there?’ she whispered. Ruth shook her head. ‘Penny’s here with me,’ she said, pointing to the small girl curled beside her. Penny was asleep. Margaret felt a cold knot in her stomach. No one else was in the house. She had seen her parents leave. The flush had come from the bathroom on the third floor, directly above them, where the old water tank hissed and sighed.

They lay in the dark, listening. The house settled, but the silence was wrong. It was too thick, as if the walls were holding their breath. Then, footsteps crossed the ceiling, slow and heavy, from the bathroom to the room that had once been a study, then to the attic stairs. They stopped. A low creak, as if the attic door had swung open.

Margaret remembered the stories her mother had told her when she was older, about standing at the top of the stairs and watching shadows move below, when no one else was home. She remembered the study, with its mahogany desk and leather chair, and the feeling that someone was standing in the doorway, just out of sight, watching.

On that night, Margaret and Ruth huddled under their covers, too frightened to sleep. At some point, the footsteps returned, descending the stairs from the attic, crossing the second floor landing, and pausing outside their door. They held their breath. The brass doorknob turned, a quarter turn, then released. Then the footsteps continued down the main staircase, and the front door opened and closed.

When Elsie and Bert returned at midnight, the girls were pale and trembling. They told them what they had heard. Bert laughed, said they must have been dreaming, but Elsie went silent. She walked to the third floor, and when she came back, her face was drawn. ‘The attic door was open,’ she said. ‘But we never go up there.’

They never spoke of it again, but Margaret never forgot. Years later, when she inherited the house, she found a photograph in the attic, tucked in a box of old letters. It showed a young woman in a long white dress, standing in the study. On the back, in faded ink, were the words: ‘For Henry, my love. I’ll always be with you.’

Margaret moved in with her own family, and the house resumed its quiet watch. But sometimes, when she climbed the stairs, she felt the air shift, and she could swear she saw the study door ajar, and just beyond the threshold, a shadow that lingered a moment too long. And on certain nights, when the house was silent, she would hear the toilet flush on the third floor, and the slow tread of footsteps that had nowhere to go.