Hettie came over just after noon, carrying no bread this time. She stopped at the foot of Bram’s porch steps and looked past him toward the open room.
“You said you wanted me there,” she said.
“I want another set of eyes.” Bram glanced at the toolbox by the door. “There’s a loose board at the threshold. Someone could catch a toe in it.”
Hettie looked at the tools. “You can leave it loose.”
“It’s a trip hazard.”
“I know what it is.” Her gaze settled on his face. “I’ll stand in the hall. I won’t come into that room.”
Bram let her choose the distance. He had no interest in forcing her to cross a line she’d drawn, especially when the point was to have a witness. He took his level, a drill, and a short screw from the box. The screw he had pulled from the marked stud sat in a jar on the workbench, turned point-up like a small, dull warning. He had left it there rather than throw it away.
The loose board lay just inside the doorway. Its near edge lifted under a shoe and settled when Bram stepped off. He measured the gap beneath it, then checked the joist through the exposed floor framing. The joist was sound. The board had warped slightly at one end, enough to make the movement irritating but easy to fix.
Hettie stood in the hall with one hand around the door casing. She kept her eyes on the board.
“See?” Bram said. “Nothing under it but the joist.”
“I see the joist.”
He marked the screw point with a pencil. This was a small job. One fastener, driven into known wood. No new framing, no patching the marked stud, no covering anything. If the room reacted, he would have a useful comparison. He knew how that sounded, even to himself. Still, he set the screw and brought the drill into position.
“Bram.”
He paused. Hettie had not raised her voice. The name came out with the same plain urgency she had used on the porch.
“I’m watching,” he said.
She tightened her grip on the casing. “So am I.”
The screw bit. The board pulled down against the joist. Bram kept the drill steady and watched the seam close. Nothing shifted in the framing. The timber beneath the floor gave no complaint. The driver clicked once as the head seated.
The board stopped rocking.
A single, finished task. Bram set the drill down and pressed his boot along the board. Solid. The result was exactly what he expected from the materials.
Then someone knocked from below his feet.
Next
Bram knows a minor repair strengthened the room’s presence, and he must decide what to do about the unfinished room while finding out why Hettie chose to widen her porch’s damaged corner.
The sound came through the floor, low and hard. Bram’s heel lifted from the board. Across the room, the marked stud gave a faint answering tick.
Hettie moved away from the casing. “Come out.”
“It could be the joist settling.”
The board bowed upward beneath Bram’s boot. The screw head remained flush. He stepped back, staring at the seam. Dust trembled along the exposed framing, sifted loose from the underside of the floorboards.
A second knock came from the room’s far wall.
Bram looked toward the marked stud. Its split had not widened since yesterday. The old cuts in the timber held their crooked paired angles. Beyond them, the darkness between the studs seemed to have gathered into a human outline.
The figure stood where the single footprint had appeared. Its shoulders were narrow. Its head tilted toward Bram. He could make out the shape of a coat, or something hanging from it, and the pale suggestion of a face turned toward the doorway.
Last time he had seen a shape, it had pressed through a crack and vanished when he moved. This one occupied the space from floor to ceiling. It was still less like a person than a silhouette cast by a badly placed light, except that no light in the room could have made it.
Bram’s hand found the edge of the threshold. He leaned toward the window, checking for a reflection. The glass showed the room behind him, the bare framing, Hettie in the hall. The dark figure remained where it was.
“Can you see it?” he asked.
Hettie did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the figure.
The board under Bram’s hand jolted. Its far edge rose, lifting the screw head with it. Wood fibers stretched around the fastener. He reached for the board, instinct ahead of judgment, and the figure moved.
It took one step.
The floor made a strained creak beneath the empty space between it and Bram. A new footprint pressed into the dust, heel first, then the front of a foot. It appeared without a shoe, without a body that Bram could make himself believe in. The outline was deeper than the single print he had found before.
Hettie crossed the threshold.
“Get back,” Bram said.
She seized the back of his coat and pulled. The board snapped upward at the edge. A length of wood sprang loose, whipping across the doorway. Bram stumbled into the hall with Hettie. The splintered end caught her palm. She swore and clamped her hand shut.
The board crashed down again. The screw remained in it, bent sideways, its point still caught in the joist.
Bram grabbed Hettie’s wrist. “Let me see.”
“It’s a scratch.” She opened her hand enough for him to check. A thin cut crossed the heel of her palm, already beading blood. He fetched the clean rag from his pocket and wrapped it around her hand. She watched him tie it without looking away from the room.
The dark figure had not followed them out. It stood behind the threshold, clearer than before, its head angled as though listening to the small noises of Bram’s hands.
Bram finished the knot and let go. “You saw it.”
“Yes.”
The answer left no room to blame the glass or the light. He looked at the broken board. The screw had bent when the wood tore free. That part was ordinary. He had seen nails shear in old flooring. He had never seen a floorboard jump up under a screw driven into a sound joist.
He leaned forward to retrieve the bent fastener. Hettie caught his sleeve.
“Leave it.”
“It’s loose.”
“Leave it.” Her voice stayed low. Her uninjured hand held his sleeve hard enough to wrinkle the cloth. “You got your proof.”
Bram pulled his gaze from the screw. The figure remained. He did not know what the proof established. He knew Hettie had seen it, and that the board he had just repaired had become the first thing in the room to strike back with enough force to draw blood.
He shut the toolbox and carried it out to the hall. Hettie waited while he checked her bandage, then stepped onto the porch without asking for help. The cut was shallow, but he told her to clean it when she got home. She nodded once.
“You’ve seen this before,” Bram said.
Hettie looked down the road toward her place. “I’ve heard enough.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
She turned back to him. For a moment, he thought she might explain. Instead she said, “Keep the door open. Don’t put anything over that board.”
Bram looked at the doorway behind him. “I won’t work on it again.”
He meant it for the afternoon. He had no plan for the rest of the house, and no explanation for the figure. The promise was smaller than Hettie wanted and larger than the one he’d made himself that morning.
She walked home with the rag wrapped around her palm. Bram watched from the porch until she reached her own. Her house was tidy, white-painted, with a low porch roof and a corner where two boards did not meet. The gap showed a triangle of dark beneath the eaves. He had noticed it before and assumed the wood had shrunk.
Hettie stopped there. She set her bandaged hand against the sound board beside the gap, then took a small pry bar from a hook under the window. With her good hand, she lifted the board’s end away from its nail. It came free with a dry pop.
She did not look toward Bram. She laid the board beside the porch steps and went inside, leaving the corner open wider than before.
Bram stayed on his own porch. Behind him, the repaired board had split around the bent screw. From the unfinished room came one soft knock, then silence.