The Voice Beneath the Floorboards
August 7, 2025
The wind howled through the broken windows of the old Whitaker house, moaning like a grieving widow. The structure had rotted with time, its timbers sagging and its soul long since evacuated. Yet tonight, as the last streaks of twilight bled into darkness, someone returned.
Jonah Reeves had heard the stories all his life—of the Whitaker girl who vanished in 1963, of the father who went mad and disappeared into the woods, and of the house that had never stopped whispering.
But Jonah didn’t believe in ghosts. He believed in abandoned property, quick flips, and desperate buyers. The Whitaker place had stood untouched for sixty years. He planned to fix that.
He stepped inside, flashlight in hand. Dust danced in the beam like disturbed spirits.
“This place is a tomb,” he muttered, stepping over a fallen beam.
The silence felt… wrong. Not like emptiness, but like a breath held too long.
He made it to the parlor and pulled out his phone to record the layout.
Creak.
He froze.
Then chuckled. “Old floorboards, calm down.”
He turned back to the front door and froze again.
The door was closed.
He hadn’t closed it.
He walked to it, hand on the knob. Twisted. Locked.
“What the hell?”
The knob wouldn’t budge. The air thickened, as if the house was exhaling against him.
And then he heard it.
A whisper.
Faint. Beneath the floorboards.
He crouched low, pressing his ear against the dusty wood.
“Jonah…” the voice came.
He recoiled. “Nope.”
He stood, turned to leave—and stopped.
In the center of the room, a trapdoor sat where there hadn’t been one moments ago.
He stared at it, heart beating faster.
“I didn’t see that before,” he whispered.
“Jonah… come down…” the voice sang again.
“No,” he said, voice shaking.
But his feet moved on their own. As if compelled.
The trapdoor creaked open. Stairs descended into pitch darkness.
Jonah aimed his flashlight.
The beam flickered.
Then went out.
He banged the flashlight. “Come on—”
It sparked. Dimly, briefly. Enough to see something at the bottom of the stairs.
A face.
But not a human one.
Its eyes were too wide. Its smile too long. Its skin sagged like wet paper.
Then the light died again.
He slammed the trapdoor shut and backed away.
Footsteps echoed below. Slow, heavy.
“Jonah… please… I’m lonely.“
The voice was young. A girl’s voice. Sweet. Pleading.
He turned and ran for the door again, shaking the knob.
It wouldn’t budge.
A thud behind him. The trapdoor was open again.
He turned.
The room was empty.
The whisper came again—closer this time.
“Come see me… please…“
He screamed and ran upstairs. He found a room with a broken bedframe and curled into the corner, panting, holding his dead flashlight like a weapon.
“None of this is real,” he told himself. “I’m tired. I imagined it.”
Something scraped against the wood outside the room.
A soft dragging sound.
He held his breath.
“Are you scared, Jonah?” the voice said from behind the wall.
He leapt up and backed into the hall. The wallpaper trembled. Bulged.
Something was pressing against it from the other side.
He turned and ran again—down the stairs, past the open trapdoor.
Then stopped.
A girl stood in the parlor.
Maybe ten years old. Wearing a white dress stained gray with time. Her hair matted. Her eyes… impossibly wide.
“Please don’t leave,” she said.
He backed away. “You’re not real.”
She tilted her head. “You heard me. You answered. You made me real.”
He shook his head violently. “No. No—”
“You opened the door, Jonah.”
She stepped forward. He stumbled back.
“I didn’t—”
“You listened. And now I’m hungry.”
Her mouth opened too wide.
Rows of teeth. Not human teeth—needle-thin, spiraled like drills. The flesh of her face tore as the mouth expanded. Her jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
Jonah turned and ran.
He dove into the kitchen and slammed the door. No lock. He shoved a cabinet in front of it.
Footsteps came. Light. Bare.
Then—
Silence.
He waited. Ten seconds. A minute.
Then—
Rustle.
He turned.
The cupboard door beside him slowly creaked open.
Something slithered out.
Thin and long. Like a centipede made of fingers.
It coiled toward him, dragging something from the dark cupboard.
Another hand. Then another. Then a smiling face.
The girl again.
She didn’t walk. She unfolded. Like a puppet with too many limbs.
“You can’t run from what you invited,” she said.
He screamed, throwing himself through the window. Glass tore at his arms and legs. He landed hard outside.
The night air bit his skin.
He ran through the overgrown yard toward his truck.
Keys. Keys. Where were the—
There. In his pocket.
He fumbled them, slipping with blood. Got the door open.
Inside. Locked. Engine on.
He exhaled, trembling.
The house stared back at him. Still. Quiet.
He laughed.
Madness. That’s what it had been.
Then he felt it.
Breath.
On his neck.
He turned.
The girl sat in the passenger seat. Her head tilted, her eyes vacant.
“Going somewhere?”
He screamed and threw himself out of the truck. He ran down the dirt road, not looking back.
Two days later, the sheriff found the truck.
Still running. Doors open.
No sign of Jonah.
But there were scratches on the inside windows.
Dozens of them.
And written in the dust of the dashboard, with a child’s finger:
“THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME OUT.”