The house had always been quiet. Not just quiet in the usual way—no, there was something deeper about the silence that filled its narrow hallways. A kind of emptiness that made your skin prickle. Aya never liked coming home to it. She would rush inside, flick on the lights, and turn the TV to the loudest channel, filling the room with noise as if she could chase the silence away.

But the noise never lasted. Not really. Lately, it felt like the quiet had been creeping back in faster, swallowing the sounds before they could even settle.

Then, one night, it started.

It was barely audible at first, just a faint tap-tap-tap beneath her feet. Aya had been sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the TV. The noise made her glance down, but the floor beneath her bare feet was still. She chalked it up to old pipes, the creaking of a house that had stood for over fifty years.

But then it happened again. The next night. A little louder this time. Tap-tap-tap.

Aya froze. The sound was unmistakable now. It wasn't coming from the walls. It was coming from under the floor.

She knelt down, pressing her ear against the cold, wooden boards. The faint tapping continued, steady, rhythmic, like fingers drumming against the floor just below her. She tried to tell herself it was some animal—rats, maybe. But the pattern was too deliberate, too slow.

Over the next few nights, the sound grew louder. The tapping was no longer the soft drumming of fingers. It became a scraping noise, like something was being dragged across the floor below her. It started in the middle of the night, waking Aya from uneasy dreams, filling the room with a muffled, grinding sound. She could almost feel the vibrations through her bed frame.

She told herself she would call someone. An exterminator, a contractor—anyone who could look under the house and tell her what was happening. But the thought of someone else stepping into her home, hearing that sound—it filled her with an inexplicable dread. Like letting someone in would make it real. As long as it was just her, alone with the noise, she could pretend it wasn't happening.

One night, the sound changed.

Aya was lying in bed, her blanket pulled tight around her shoulders, when she heard the usual scraping beneath the floorboards. She clenched her eyes shut, willing herself to sleep. But then, it stopped. The silence that followed was thick, suffocating. She felt her heart pounding in her ears.

And then—a knock. Three slow, deliberate knocks, coming from directly beneath her bed.

Aya sat bolt upright, her breath caught in her throat. The knocking was impossibly clear, as though someone was standing right beneath her bed, knocking on the floorboards. She scrambled out of bed, her feet hitting the cold wood. The knocking stopped.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

She stood there, trembling, the room heavy with the weight of the silence. She didn't dare move. She didn't dare breathe. Her eyes drifted to the floor beneath her bed, and for the first time, she noticed something strange—the floorboards were slightly raised, as though warped from underneath.

Aya knelt down slowly, her fingers trembling as she touched the raised board. It wobbled slightly under her touch. The wood was loose.

She yanked her hand back, her heart racing. She had never noticed it before, but now that she saw it, it felt glaringly obvious. The boards had been disturbed. Recently.

A sickening realization crept over her. Something had been moving under her house.

She hesitated for a moment, her mind screaming for her to stop, to leave the house, to never go near the floor again. But she couldn't leave. Not without knowing.

Slowly, she wedged her fingers between the loose boards and pried them up. The wood creaked and splintered as she lifted it. Beneath the floorboards was a dark, gaping hole—no crawl space, no foundation, just blackness stretching down into the earth.

But what caught Aya's eye wasn't the hole.

It was the hand.

A pale, twisted hand, the fingers unnaturally long, with nails sharp and jagged. The skin looked bloated, like it had been submerged in water for too long. The hand was pressed flat against the underside of the floor, as though it had been trying to push its way up through the wood.

Aya stumbled backward, her mind blank with terror. The hand didn't move. It stayed there, perfectly still, as though frozen in time.

Then—the knock. Again. Right beneath her.

This time, it wasn't just a knock. There was a voice. Soft, barely a whisper, but unmistakable.

"Let me in."

Aya's heart pounded in her chest, her throat dry. She stared at the hand, unable to move, unable to breathe. The voice came again, a sickly sweet tone that sent shivers down her spine.

"Let me in, Aya."

The hand twitched.

Aya screamed, slamming the floorboard back into place, her hands shaking violently. She pressed her weight against it, her mind reeling, tears streaming down her face. The knocking continued, more frantic now, the voice growing louder, more insistent.

"Don't go. Let me in. Let me in."

Aya bolted from the room, out of the house, her feet slapping against the pavement as she ran into the night, the voice still ringing in her ears. Muted footsteps echoed behind her. Insistent. Persistent. She screamed.

Then she felt something clammy clamp around her ankle, dragging her face first into the asphalt, and back into the—

Don't go, Aya.

Let me in.