Bram spent the first hour of the morning measuring the hall.
He marked the footprint’s position with a strip of blue tape, then measured from the print to the unfinished room’s doorway, to the stairs, and to the front door. The hall floorboards ran straight beneath all three. The print sat between the crooked threshold board and the stairs, its toes pointed away from the room.
He took the measurements twice. They stayed the same. The footprint stayed too.
The house had settled unevenly. That was still possible. Dust could fall from a joist and collect in a shape that resembled a heel. The print’s depth was harder to account for, and Bram had no useful explanation for the direction it pointed. He kept those facts separate from the ones he could test.
He tested the boards around it. They were sound under his weight. No loose nails. No soft spots. When he laid a straightedge across the hall, the floor dipped less than an eighth of an inch.
He stopped with the straightedge in his hand. The footprint remained untouched. Each time he looked at it, he found himself checking the doorway behind him.
His first plan had been to put the threshold back. He had already learned what happened when he tried to undo his earlier repair. The figure had come closer. A second attempt, done with more care, could still be the same mistake.
The board was crooked by less than a quarter inch. It had been crooked before he touched it. The gap beside it was narrow enough to look accidental.
Bram went for his pry bar.
He set the tool beneath the threshold board and eased up on the handle. The wood lifted with a dry groan. He stopped at once and watched the room’s doorway. Nothing moved there. The hall held still, though the air had the stale smell of a cellar that had been shut for a season.
He eased the board higher. One nail came free. The second bent and dragged through the wood, leaving a bright scratch. Bram worked the pry bar down the length of the plank, careful not to split it. The board came loose in a single piece.
The doorway had no sill beneath it. Just the cut ends of the floorboards, the dark seam between the hall and the room, and a strip of bare subfloor where the threshold had rested. Bram had expected dust, perhaps a gap into the basement. He found neither. The wood beneath was solid.
He laid the board on the hall floor, parallel to the doorway. The room looked more exposed without it. So did the hall.
Bram returned to the footprint. It was still there, just beyond the doorway. He checked the tape marker and the distance to the stairs.
Next
Tomorrow, Hettie will show Bram the unfinished place in her cellar and begin explaining why Sallow Ridge keeps its houses flawed.
A small sound came from the unfinished room. A tap, close to the floor.
He looked up. The marked stud stood where it had before, its old crack beside the brace. The figure did not show itself. Bram counted to ten, then gathered his tools and backed toward the front door. He didn’t see another print.
He slept in his truck that night with the seat tipped back and the front windows cracked. At dawn, he went inside again.
The strip of blue tape still marked the hall. The footprint had not moved. Neither had the board he’d pulled free. He had left it across the doorway, partly covering the opening, and the room looked unchanged.
Bram brought in a work light and aimed it low across the boards. The shallow grooves and dust stood out under the hard beam. He examined the footprint from the side. Its heel had pressed deep enough to displace fibers in the floor’s old finish. No heel pattern showed in the dust beyond it.
He set his tool bag down and picked up the removed board. It was straight and solid, with a clean edge where it had rested against the floor. Putting it back would take a few minutes. He could drive the bent nail out, replace it, and make the threshold fit tight.
The thought made his hand pause above the doorway.
A scrape came from the unfinished room. Slow, low, as though something had shifted its weight against the framing. The work light’s beam trembled when the cable settled. Bram held still until the scrape stopped.
He put the threshold board down again.
The cut ends of the floorboards would splinter if he left them exposed. He could protect them without restoring the threshold: a narrow cut across the board, a rough edge, enough open space that no one could call the doorway finished. It would be a poor repair. It would also be hard to mistake for an accident.
Bram measured the space and set a circular saw to a shallow depth. He checked the blade, checked the mark, then laid down a straightedge. It was a small cut. Ordinary work.
The saw started with its usual sharp whine. Halfway across the board, the sound dropped as the blade bit into a knot. Bram eased forward. The motor strained, then the cut finished. The short section fell against the subfloor.
Something struck the inside face of the room’s wall.
The blow was heavy enough to shake dust from the framing. Bram jerked the saw away. The blade wound down. He kept both hands on the handles until it stopped, then set it down on the hall floor.
The figure stood in the unfinished room.
Its shoulders were clearer than the last time Bram had seen it. The head had a human outline, but the light did not find features. It stood behind the marked stud with one arm lowered. Bram could see the exposed boards through the middle of it.
He stepped back. His heel came down on the removed length of threshold. It rolled under his boot, and he caught himself against the wall.
The figure moved. One step toward the doorway.
Bram’s breath held in his chest. The foot came down on the room’s floorboards. The figure leaned forward, and its arm reached into the opening. Its fingers—or the dark shapes where fingers ought to have been—pressed against the cut end of the floor.
It stayed there.
Bram looked at the gap. The open seam was barely wider than the width of his hand. It could not have stopped a person. He had no reason to believe it had stopped anything else.
The figure’s arm drew back. Its shape thinned against the bare framing, losing the shoulder first, then the head. The room was empty again.
Bram crouched to check the floor. Nothing had cracked. The fresh-cut wood was pale and rough. He ran a fingertip along the edge and picked up a splinter.
A knock came from the front door.
He went to answer it with the splinter still in his hand. Hettie stood on the porch with her bandaged palm tucked against her coat. She looked past him into the hall.
“You pulled it out,” she said.
“Part of it.”
“Did it stop?”
Bram let the door stand open. From there he could see the footprint and the gap. “It came up to the opening. Then it went away.”
Hettie looked at the pale cut in the board. She did not step inside. Bram had the sense she was watching his hands, so he set the splinter on the porch rail.
“I can put a board over it,” he said. “A loose cover, if the gap’s the important part.”
“Leave it open.”
Her voice was quiet, but her eyes stayed on the threshold. Bram thought of the cut he had made. The house was his. The repair was his to choose. He had no useful evidence that Hettie knew what the gap did, only the way she kept her injured hand close to her body.
He stepped aside to let her see the hall more clearly. “You said every house here keeps something unfinished. I need to know why.”
Hettie looked toward the porch, where one board near the outer corner stood slightly raised. Then she looked back at the broken threshold.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Come to my cellar. I’ll show you what we leave undone.”
Bram glanced at the footprint. It remained beyond the open seam, facing away from the room. Hettie still did not cross into the house.
He nodded. “Tomorrow.”
She went down the steps, keeping her bandaged hand tucked against her coat. Bram watched her reach the road, then turned back to the hall. The gap in the floor was narrow, crude, and impossible to call a repair. He left it that way.