The Whisper Beneath the Floorboards

When I first saw the old townhouse at the end of Wicker Street, I wasn’t looking for beauty. I was looking for quiet. The kind of quiet that fills the air after heartbreak, when your own thoughts become too loud to bear. The landlord, a weary man with half-moon eyes and nicotine-stained fingers, handed me the keys with a warning:

“Don’t mind the creaks. This house remembers things.”

I smiled politely, pretending to understand. But that night, I learned exactly what he meant.

The first sound came just after midnight—a faint moaning beneath the wooden boards. It wasn’t wind, and it wasn’t pipes. It was softer, wetter. Like someone sighing through a mouth full of dust. I froze, my hand clutching the blanket. The noise came again—drawn out, like a word that couldn’t quite be finished.

I told myself it was just the house settling, a trick of old timber and nerves. But the next night, it said my name.

“Eli…”

I sat upright. The sound crawled from the corner near the dresser, a whisper bleeding through the cracks. My heart slammed against my ribs. I grabbed my phone, shining the flashlight over the floor. Nothing. Just the same scratched boards and a faint outline of dust.

Sleep didn’t come easily after that. I started sleeping on the couch downstairs, telling myself it was temporary. But every night, no matter where I moved, the whisper followed. Always soft, always patient.

By the fourth night, I began to recognize a rhythm in it. Words. Fragments of sentences. Pleas.

“Help me.”

“Down here.”

“Please.”

I was a man of reason. I believed in logic, not ghosts. But reason started to crumble under exhaustion and fear.

So I decided to end it.

I fetched a crowbar from the shed out back. The air was sharp that night, and the moonlight poured into the room like silver blood. I kneeled where the voice was loudest—the same corner near the dresser—and pried the first board loose. The smell that escaped was ancient and foul, like rotting paper soaked in old perfume.

Beneath the board was a small cavity, about the size of a shoebox. Inside, wrapped in faded cloth, lay an envelope sealed with red wax.

My hands trembled as I opened it.

Inside were photographs.

The first was of a woman, early thirties, standing in this very room. She had kind eyes and a smile that looked forced. Her arm was wrapped around a man whose face was cut out—literally, a jagged hole where his head should be. On the back, in smudged ink, was a single word: “RUN.”

The whisper came again, louder now, desperate.

“Please.”

I pulled up more boards, driven by fear and curiosity. Beneath the next one was a small chain bracelet—silver, broken at the clasp. Then a ring. Then something I wish I’d never seen.

A lock of hair. Still braided. Still tied with a blue ribbon.

That was when the whisper changed. It wasn’t pleading anymore. It was angry.

“You shouldn’t have looked.”

The air thickened. The temperature dropped so fast that my breath fogged in front of my face. I stumbled backward, clutching the crowbar like a weapon. The shadows in the corners seemed to stretch and curl toward me.

Then the lights flickered out.

For a moment, the room was utterly dark, except for the sliver of moonlight cutting across the hole I’d made in the floor. Something moved inside that hole. Something pale. A hand.

I ran.

I don’t remember leaving the house. I just remember the sound of my boots slamming the pavement and my breath tearing through my chest. When I looked back, the upper window was open. The curtain shifted slightly, as if someone was watching.

The landlord called me two days later. He said he found the place empty, the floor torn up, and a broken ring on the dresser. I told him to keep it. I didn’t want anything from that house.

Last night, though, I heard something.

I was lying in my new apartment—bright, modern, no wood anywhere—when I heard the faintest creak. I froze, every nerve alert.

Then a whisper, soft and familiar, came from under the bed.

“Eli…”