The Floorboards Speak

By eleven-thirty, the storm outside had escalated into a furious gale, but the sounds of the wind and crashing waves were not what kept Elias awake. He lay rigid in his bed, staring up at the cracked plaster of his ceiling. The heartache that usually exhausted him into slumber was currently held at bay by a creeping, primal dread.

It started as a vibration. A low, rhythmic thrumming that traveled up the wooden pillars of the house and settled into the marrow of Elias’s bones.

He sat up, throwing off his quilt. He pressed his bare feet against the floorboards. They were vibrating.

Then came the voice.

It was guttural, wet, and completely inhuman. It sounded like Silas, but distorted, as if the man were speaking through a throat full of thick mud. The syllables were jagged and wrong, a chanting cadence that twisted Elias’s stomach into knots. The language defied comprehension, yet it conveyed a profound, ancient malice.

* Ph'nglui mglw'nafh...*

Elias covered his ears, but the sound wasn't just in the air; it was resonating through the very architecture of the house. He couldn't stay in this room. Driven by a desperate need to protect whatever was left of his sanity, and a terrifying suspicion about his mother's final days in this awful house, Elias grabbed a heavy brass flashlight from his nightstand and crept out into the hallway.

The house was pitch black. The power had been cut, though Elias hadn't noticed the lights go out. The stench of the dead ocean was thicker here, suffocatingly dense.

He followed the chanting down the main staircase. Each step he took felt heavier, as if the atmospheric pressure inside the home was increasing. The chanting led him past the living room, through the dark, cavernous kitchen, and to the narrow door tucked away in the back pantry—the door to the basement.

It was always padlocked. Silas insisted the cellar was unsafe, prone to structural weakness. But tonight, the heavy iron padlock hung open, discarded on the floor.

Elias swallowed hard, his throat dry. He wrapped his fingers around the cold brass handle and pulled.