The Space Between

The print inside Bram’s front door pointed toward the hall.

He stopped on the porch with the pry bar in his hand. The door stood open against its jamb, rocking slightly in the draft. Behind him, Hettie came up the steps and caught his sleeve.

“Wait,” she said.

Bram looked down at the print. Dust had settled into the floorboards around it, but the mark itself was dark and sharply pressed. A bare heel, the ball of a foot, five narrow toes. It faced the unfinished room.

“It’s already in,” he said.

Hettie’s hand tightened once on his sleeve, then let go. She looked past him into the house. “Can you see more?”

He leaned through the doorway without stepping over the sill. A second print marked the hall runner, farther in. The runner bunched against the wall where someone had shoved it aside. Beyond that, the floorboards showed no clear track. Dust was thin there. His own boots had tracked grit all the way from Hettie’s porch.

Bram shifted the pry bar into his left hand and entered.

The house smelled of old plaster and cold wood. He kept his eyes on the floor, moving slowly enough not to scuff away whatever the figure had left. Hettie followed, close behind but not touching him now. The door remained open at their backs.

A third print appeared past the runner. Then a fourth, lighter at the toes. They led toward the unfinished room.

Bram’s throat tightened. He swallowed and kept walking.

The tracks ended at the room’s doorway. The gap he had cut through the threshold board lay open and bare. No lath crossed it. No offcut, no nail, no strip of floor covering. The marks stopped on the hall side, the last heel pressed deep into the dust.

In the room, the exposed studs stood in rows. His grandfather’s crooked paired-angle cuts marked the timber nearest the doorway. The far wall seemed darker than the rest, though the light from the hall reached it cleanly.

Hettie edged up beside Bram. “Don’t put anything over it.”

“I know.”

He lifted the pry bar to set it against the wall. The hooked end slipped against his glove. The bar dropped, struck the floor, and landed across the opening.

The sound rang once through the house.

The last footprint darkened.

Bram stared at it. Dust lifted in a fine line along the gap. Something pressed down on the pry bar from the other side. The metal bowed slightly, its center dipping toward the floor.