Beneath the Floorboards

The corridor narrowed the deeper they went, walls pressing in like the ribs of something long dead. Theo moved ahead of Sloane, her hand in his as the air thickened with silence.

He remembered this stretch.

Not as a map, but in echoes. A smell of stone dust, the way the light refused to follow. As a boy, he’d run here when he wasn’t supposed to. He’d been chasing a sound of soft feet on old wood, a lullaby humming under breath. When he turned the corner, he’d seen her… standing barefoot at the end of the hall, white dress too thin for winter, her face turned toward him like she’d been waiting.

He blinked.

And she was gone.

Sloane’s voice brought him back. “You stopped.”

Theo didn’t answer immediately. He stared down the corridor to where the wall should have ended but didn’t. Not for him. Not for her.

“I came here once,” he said, voice low. “When I was a child.”

Her grip on his hand tightened. “Did you see her?”

He nodded.

They didn’t speak after that. Not until they reached the wall.

He pressed his palm to the surface and felt it give just slightly. The door sighed open, soundless, and released a breath of cold iron and mildew.

The room was low-ceilinged, more cellar than chamber. Brick floor and pale plaster. A single cot in the corner. On the wall were drawings. Dozens of them, smeared in charcoal and chalk, layered as if someone had kept drawing over the same themes for years.

Sloane stepped past him slowly, her gaze moving from the cot to the stained walls. She looked less afraid but more aware. As if something deep inside her had already prepared for this moment.

Theo’s eyes fell on the drawings. Skewed hallways. Windows that looked more like eyes. Faces drawn blank, then scratched out. But one face was clearer than the rest.

A girl.

Not a child, not exactly.

Sixteen? Seventeen?

Her hair was loose. Her shoulders tense. The line of her mouth familiar.

Theo’s chest went still.

“Sloane,” he said quietly, “come here.”

She joined him, and when she saw it her eyes widened. It was herself, younger. She didn’t gasp, didn’t deny it. Her breath simply left her, like she had been holding it for years.

“That’s me,” she whispered. “I drew this.”

“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”

“But it’s mine. That sketch. I had a journal I used to…”

Her voice faltered.

She looked at the other drawings more closely now. Not just observing them. Recognizing them.

Theo knelt beside the cot, something catching the light beneath the mattress. He pulled out a small silver locket. Time-tarnished and delicate. It clicked open in his palm.

Inside were two painted portraits. A man, and a girl.

He didn’t know the man, but the girl—

Sloane crouched beside him. “It’s her,” she said.

The girl from the mirror.

And the hallway.

And the dreams she had never spoken aloud.

Theo turned the locket over. No initials. Just wear and silence.

“I think she knew you were coming,” he said, almost to himself.

“Why?” Sloane asked. “Why me?”

His answer was slower, unsure. “Maybe because you’re the only one who would come back.”

She looked up at him, eyes searching. “I’ve never been here before.”

Theo stared at her. He wasn’t so sure.

Sloane rose and drifted to the far wall. Dust clung to her fingertips as she brushed it clean. Something faint emerged, scratched just above the brick line.

Lenore.

She whispered the name aloud, and the air shifted to cooler, heavier.

Theo stepped beside her.

“You said you saw her,” she murmured. “When you were a boy.”

He nodded, slowly.

“What did she do?”

Theo hesitated.

“I followed her,” he said. “Down here. She was standing by this wall.”

Sloane turned to him.

“And?”

“She didn’t speak. Just… looked at me. Like she already knew what I’d become.” His voice dropped. “I thought it was a dream for years. Until I came back.”

A silence stretched.

Then Sloane looked toward the wall again, at the crude but eerily familiar sketches. “What if this place doesn’t forget anyone it wants to keep?”

Theo said nothing.

But his hand found hers again.

It was instinct. Not reassurance. Not possession. Just contact.

The light gleaned behind them subtly, not dramatic, hushed more than a sound.

The door they’d entered through was closed again.

Theo turned toward it.

No breeze. No click. Just sealed, as if it had never opened in the first place.

Sloane didn’t flinch. “She’s not finished.”

“No,” he agreed. “But neither are we.”

Her eyes met his.

Something sparked, unspoken, but real.

Not fear.

Not just curiosity.

A recognition that ran older than either of them.