Echoes Beneath the Floor Boards

The key turned with a stubborn click, and the door of Cwymp Cottage groaned open like it hadn’t welcomed a guest in decades. The air inside was dry but heavy, as if it held its breath. Eliza Merrin stepped into the dim hallway, dragging her suitcase behind her and squinting at the dust motes dancing in the slanted afternoon light.

She had three months. Three months to finish the novel she had promised to her agent, her publisher, and—most of all—herself.

Nestled at the edge of a Welsh forest, the cottage was idyllic by description and isolation. No phone signal. A single pub in the village, half a mile away. The kind of place where time softened, and silence became a companion.

Eliza unpacked sparingly: laptop, notebooks, pens, a stack of dog-eared drafts, and a photo of her late mother—her biggest supporter. She placed it by the fireplace and whispered, “Let’s see if we can do this.”

That first night, she wrote two thousand words. Then the floorboards creaked upstairs.

She froze. She was certain the room above was empty—she hadn’t even opened it yet. Brushing it off as old wood settling, she pressed on. But the sound came again. A slow, deliberate step. Then another.

Eliza climbed the narrow staircase with a candle. The bedroom door stood ajar.

Inside: nothing.

She checked the wardrobe, under the bed, the small attic trapdoor—everything was empty and still. Shaking her head, she laughed nervously. “Too many ghost stories as a kid,” she muttered.

But that night, her dreams twisted.

She saw a woman sitting at her desk, her fingers tapping the typewriter rhythmically. Rain lashed the windows. The woman turned to her—and Eliza recognized her own face. Yet the eyes were hollow, bleeding ink.

She awoke gasping.

---

On the second week, Eliza noticed something odd. Her manuscript—saved on a USB, untouched during her day off—now contained a new paragraph. A vivid description of a man with a red scarf watching from the woods. She had no memory of writing it.

She shrugged it off. Stress, perhaps.

But it happened again. More scenes appeared: a candle left burning all night, a woman in the mirror smiling when Eliza wasn’t. The entries matched her writing style. Her themes. Her tone. But not her memory.

Curiosity overtook caution. She began researching the cottage.

What she found was unsettling.

A writer named Margot Ellery had rented Cwymp Cottage five years ago. Known for a single, haunting novella titled The Hollow Season, she had disappeared before finishing her second book.

The last person to see her was the local innkeeper, who described Margot as “drained, like something had peeled her soul out.”

Her final manuscript? Never found.

Eliza’s stomach turned.

---

That night, Eliza recorded herself sleeping.

The next morning, she played the video. At 3:42 AM, she sat up in bed—eyes open but glassy. She stood, walked to the desk, and typed. She typed with both hands, fast and mechanical, then returned to bed.

She had no memory of it.

The document she typed was titled: “Chapter Nine: The Writer Who Would Forget.”

She read the text, heart pounding. It described her exact movements—her arrival, her dreams, her fear—up to that very morning.

In the story, a woman named Eliza realized the house was writing her story before she could.

She deleted the file in a panic. But it reappeared.

---

The final week began with rain.

Eliza no longer slept. Her eyes were rimmed with shadows. She stopped writing manually. What was the point? Every time she tried, something else would fill the page first. Descriptions of her thoughts before she thought them. Sentences she hadn’t spoken yet.

The floorboards creaked constantly now, even when she was upstairs. Whispers slithered behind the walls.

She decided to leave.

She packed frantically, stuffing pages and drafts into her suitcase. But when she reached the door, it wouldn’t open. The key wouldn’t turn.

She screamed.

The whispers grew louder.

In the living room, the typewriter she never brought stood on the desk. It clicked once. Then again. Pages fed themselves through as if powered by ghosts.

She approached slowly. Her hands trembled. The latest page read:

“She thought she could escape. But stories don’t let go of their characters so easily.”

---

Three weeks later, the innkeeper noticed the cottage light on again.

A new writer had arrived. Said she’d heard the place had "good energy." Wanted somewhere peaceful to write.

When she asked the locals about Eliza, they only shook their heads. “Another one?” someone muttered.

The innkeeper handed the newcomer a dusty envelope. No return address.

Inside was a single manuscript page. The title?

“Echoes Beneath the Floorboards”

Beneath it, in Eliza’s handwriting:

“Don’t try to finish the story. Let the story finish you.”

THE END