The Shadow Beneath the Floorboards

Merriweather Manor was an old Victorian house situated in the quaint town of Eldridge, encircled by rolling hills and beautiful forests. Spirits of people from a time long forgotten, so the townspeople said, haunted it. For twenty years it had sat abandoned, its windows blacked out, the grass growing over into the yards, until one brave family tried to make the house their home.

A family of Thompsons wanted restoration: Sarah was a brilliant teacher and a mother, while Tom was a reasonable husband, being a carpenter, and their curious ten-year-old son was Ethan. The antiquity and grandeur of the estate drew them in, yet neither was to escape the sinister atmosphere of the house. As the family began to live in the new residence, strange things started happening.

First, the whispers were heard by Ethan. For, traveling some dusty halls, he had always heard faint murmuring apparently from beneath the floor-so that often he thought a distant conversation was in process, which always he was just about to overhear. And when the house did really creak and groan loudly, he supposed it must have been one of his mental games. But in a couple days the voices grew louder, clearer. They shouted and whispered his name, and he had to go check what they were doing.

As his parents were so busy with the moving, one evening Ethan found himself wandering into the dark attic. The air in that room was thick with mildew and grime; the only incoming light was from a small window. He finds an old, worn notebook from over a century ago that belonged to a girl named Eliza. Her memoirs spoke of loneliness and a wretched childhood. The last line was "I hear them again, the shadows beneath the floorboards." They want to leave. I'm scared.

While he was charmed by this, it sent a shiver down his spine. Further, when Ethan told his parents about what he had seen, they brushed off his problem as childish. "The ominous name this abandoned mansion has given your imagination plenty to work with, son," Tom said. But when Sarah saw that her kid was really upset with the problems, she promised to probe further into the matter.

These stories began to coalesce over many weeks into strange occurrences: flashing lights, movements of objects, and a sudden, radical drop in temperature within specific locations. One night, with a little flashlight in hand, Sarah crept up into the attic, trying to make some sense of what or who was behind the noises. As she rummaged among the relics of bygone ages, she felt a cold breeze on her flank, and the murmurs grew almost deafening.

Help us," they yelled out muffled from below. Terrified, she somehow kept holding onto Eliza. Through the years, she had come to believe that the shadows were indeed not only echoes but ghosts of children who once had lived here and had stayed under the floor, yearning to be set free.

Curious about the property's history, Sarah did her research on the background of the place and found a really sad tragedy. In that case, the house allowed children if there was a virus outbreak. Many of them died down there-as their spirits could not rest. One of the remaining children was Eliza, who tried getting out, but then stopped, and that's whose notepad it was.

And Sarah, so keen to help, had a suggestion. She gathered the family and explained the situation. Tom resisted at first but gave up when he saw the fear in Ethan's eyes. The candles whirled excitedly about their séance in the attic. She assured Eliza and the other spirits that they could continue.

Whispers turned to excruciating sobs as the temperature continued dropping during the treatment. With shadows shifting across the walls, yes, this old house had much presence. It took guts to call on the spirits for the release of their pain and to be left from this home that was imprisoning them.

A great gust of wind swept through the garret, and the candles went out. In the darkness, a faint glow began to leak through the floorboards. One by one, the shadows retreated, an ebbing tide, and revealed the wan bodies of children, whose faces, tempered by pain, relaxed gratefully, as a single breath was drawn by the family in its entirety, between terror and hope.

Eliza replied with a voice radiantly silent, "Thank you." "At last, we can go home."

A great wonder touched everything as spirits ascended and lightened the attic. The house started to shake, and melancholy started to break. The Thompsons stared aghast as the shades raced into the sky now finally free from the earthly bonds which had imprisoned them.

Merriweather Manor used to be something different. The whispering ceased, the stillness warmed the house, bit by bit. Ethan was no longer plagued by shadows, and the family formed a new identity. He would race to the attic, where it should have stayed in memory for a life lived and now in the past.