Floorboards
A Thursday Prompt story
© 2023 by Walter Reimer

Thumbnail art by  marmelmm


Prompt: underneath


I told him.

I told him the same thing I told them all.

I tried – believe me, I tried – to warn him.

But he didn’t listen.

None of them listened.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t go downstairs to the room in the basement.” I told him, “It’s not a good place. Things happen there, because it is there, waiting.”

But they didn’t listen.

They would go downstairs to the basement.

And they would vanish.

I mean, there are other rooms here in the house, other rooms where they could sleep, and eat, and play video games. They don’t need to go downstairs.

But they do go downstairs.

And they vanish.

Me? Yes, yes, yes, I’ve gone downstairs.

And I’ve come straight back, because I can hear it.

There’s something there, under the floorboards. Something.

Yes, yes, I know there’s concrete under the floorboards, and under that the ground.

But I tell you – I keep telling you – there is some thing there.

Waiting.

Hungry.

I heard it once, when I went downstairs.

No, I’ve never seen it, or smelled it, or spoken to it.

But I heard it.

A gentle scratching, like your claws against wood. Gentle, soft, not urgently, not like it was trying to get out but trying to lure you, draw you closer . . . to it.

The last guy who stayed here with me . . . I warned him, too, of course I did. But he didn’t listen either. He went downstairs.

And I heard it.

The scratching.

And I heard him walking across the floorboards.

And then – oh, God - I heard him scream.

I ran there, but I couldn’t go all the way down the stairs. I was so afraid that I couldn’t get more than halfway down the stairs.

But I saw . . .

There, there was this smear . . . maybe of blood, maybe something else, I don’t know . . . around a seam between two floorboards, as if – as if, something had grabbed him and pulled in through that seam in the floor!

Yes, I know how it sounds! I’m NOT CRAZY! I SAW IT! I TELL YOU I SAW IT!

I’m not.

No, I’m not a murderer, no matter what you say or the cops say or anyone says.

It wasn’t me.

It isn’t me.

I know you dug up the floor; I know you dug up the concrete.

But it’s there. It’s still there. I know it.

Waiting.

Getting hungrier.




end