The Hole in the Corner of the Dining Room Floor
My piece-of-shit cousin Brice waved the card in front of my face for just a minute too long, each wag building the pressure bit by bit. I stared blankly ahead. My body became a bubble, holding back an unspeakable rage with the thinnest of films.
“Finders keepers,” he sneered.
The bubble popped. It was inevitable.
“Give. It. Back!”
The words escaped as an animalistic screech. Brice’s eyes widened in terror. I lunged toward him, but he took off.
“Reece is trying to kill me,” he screamed as I chased him through the house, howling like a bobcat.
He was a few years older than me. The extra height gave him too much of an advantage. I couldn’t catch up.
“Boys!” my grandma yelled from the patio, where the adults sat and smoked. “Quit the rough-housing.”
I didn’t care. I was tired of Brice picking on me. Calling me names was one thing, but taking my stuff was another. I cornered him in the dining room and unleashed an onslaught of indiscriminate slaps as our wails mixed into an unholy cacophony.
“Give me my fucking card,” I screamed.
It surprised even me that I cursed.
“Fuck you.” Brice, no stranger to the word, spat it out with much more confidence. He curled up into the fetal position, shielding the card from my prying hands.
“Enough,” a voice boomed behind me. I turned to see my dad, red-faced with his arms crossed. His presence was enough to startle me into submission. Brice, seizing the opportunity, lurched to the side and dropped the card into a small crack in the floor by the baseboard.
There was a moment of silence as I realized what he’d done. I drew my hand back in a fist and swung it with righteous fury. Before I could make contact, Dad grabbed my wrist and yanked me to my feet.
“I said enough, boy!” He dragged me away.
Brice just laughed.
I wanted to go home, but Dad said he and Mom had plans. Brice wouldn’t go home either, so we both had to sleep in the bunk room. Each chipboard-paneled wall had a bunk bed, except for the one at the end of the room that had a square hole cut where a window should be, covered in plastic until Grandma could afford new glass.
The heat didn’t quite reach back to the bunk room—a combination of faulty ducts and poor insulation. In the middle of the room, they put one of those space heaters with a metal grate on the front and a red light that bathed the room in a hellish glow.
At night, one side of you’d be warm, and the other would be cool. Usually, I’d toss and turn throughout the night, enjoying the fluctuation. That night, however, I was staring directly into the heat across the room at Brice, sleeping like a log.
Lost in my rage, half asleep, I almost missed it.
Sticking up between the slats of the floorboards, my card was only a few feet in front of the heater. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It was definitely the same card: an ultra-rare blue-mouthed dragon. The holographic foil glinted.
Thinking it must be a prank, I looked around, but Brice was still in the top bunk opposite me. Lain, his little brother, was out cold in the bottom bunk by the closet.
I hopped down. The card retracted back into the space below the floor.
“What are you doing?” Brice hissed.
I jumped, then opened my mouth to respond. The card popped back up, this time behind the space heater. Brice saw it too. Our eyes met. He hopped down next to me.
We followed the card as it popped in and out of the floorboards all the way out of the bedroom and down the short hall. Neither of us said a word as it neared the corner of the dining room.
The crack where Brice dropped the card was now a small hole, about the size of a softball. The card was sticking straight up in the middle of the opening.
“Are you going to grab it?” Brice whispered.
“No.” I was shaking, staring at the card from the safety of the hallway.
“Pussy.”
I glared at Brice. He would never let me live it down if I chickened out. Swallowing my hesitation, I tiptoed toward the hole.
With each step, the card sank downward bit by bit. By the time I got to the corner, it had retreated entirely into the darkness.
I got down on the floor and peered into the hole. The card was still there, suspended a few inches below the floorboards. It was difficult to make out, but I could just barely see a pair of fingers clutching it at the bottom.
I looked at Brice. He shrugged, his face as pale as mine felt.
I looked back at the card, still hanging in the air. My fingers felt numb. I reached into the hole. The card sank further down into the dark, but I leaned forward and snatched it.
Then a hand grabbed my wrist.
I held back the scream, but I definitely yelped. It yanked downwards, pulling my forearm into the hole, my skin scraping along the edge of the floor.
I scrambled, putting my feet against the wall, but it kept pulling. A second hand wrapped around my wrist, its skin just as crusty and greasy as the first. I looked back over to the hallway, and Brice was gone.
My stomach dropped.
It yanked me further in.
My heartbeat raced. Adrenaline surged through my system, and with all my strength, I pushed my legs against the wall. The tendons in my neck strained until they almost popped. My shoulder screamed in pain, but I wrenched my arm out of the hole.
The thing still clung to me like a rusty vice, crushing my wrist with its grasp. Its arm was covered in what looked like oily scabs, smears of red that smelled like infection.
Brice came barreling around the corner, lugging the space heater. Lifting it overhead, he slammed it down on top of the ghastly arm. Its flesh sizzled against the metal grate. The smell of burned hair clogged my nostrils. It held on for a few more moments before it finally let go and slinked back into the darkness.
“Thank you,” I panted.
Brice didn’t say a word. He just collapsed to the floor. We both stared at the hole, waiting for the hand to come back. It didn’t.
The card was lying on the floor a few inches from the hole. It was a little greasy but fine. Adrenaline was still coursing through my veins, but I smiled. Brice started laughing, and I laughed too.
It all felt unreal until we looked over and saw Lain standing in the hallway, on the verge of tears.
Lain was too scared to sleep by himself, so Brice let him sleep on the top bunk with him. In the morning, we tried to tell Grandma what had happened, but as soon as we mentioned the man under the floors, her eyes glossed over.
“There’s nothing under the house,” she whispered.
“It’s a person. There’s somebody under there. He tried to drag me in.” I showed her the marks on my wrist. She looked away.
“Quit it with the nonsense.”
“Brice saw it too.”
“Yeah.” He stared at the floor. “There was something there.”
“Enough!” Grandma’s jaw clenched tight. Her eyes fluttered for a second, then she shook her head and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to hear any more of this. There’s nothing for you to be worried about.”
Dad didn’t believe me. Neither did Mom. The card wasn’t enough proof, so I searched for evidence every time we went to Grandma’s. The hole continued to grow bit by bit, but I never found any.
I became so invested that I missed that everything was crashing around me.
In the span of a month, the bank seized Brice’s house. They all moved in with Grandma. A couple of weeks later, Mom and Dad announced their divorce. Mom kept the house; Dad moved into Grandma’s too. I had to be there every weekend. With Brice.
“Why don’t you give that shit up?” Brice asked me while I was in the middle of my research, sitting in front of the now basketball-sized hole with a disposable camera, taking a picture with the flash every ten or so minutes.
“I’m going to catch it on film.”
“You’re wasting your time.”
I glared at him.
“At least I care.”
“Bullshit,” he scoffed. “You just have this weird need to be right all the time. No. It’s not even enough for you to just be right. You want everyone to know how right you are, but I was right too. I saw the same shit you saw, but you don’t see me begging for people to believe me.”
“It’s dangerous.” I set the camera down next to the hole. “Someone could get hurt.”
His face scrunched up.
“Okay?”
I crossed my arms.
“I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Nobody’s going to get hurt.” He rolled his eyes. “They don’t let nobody go near the hole. It’s not like a safety hazard; it’s just a little hole.”
“It’s not the hole I’m worried about.”
“You’re scared of the scab man?”
My cheeks burned.
“No.”
“You are.” Brice nodded his head and smirked. “It’s okay. Personally, I’m not going to waste my life looking for him. He can’t even crawl out. I don’t give a shit.”
“Then don’t give a shit, Brice. Why are you even bothering me? Just leave me a—” I looked back at the hole. “It’s gone.”
“What?” Brice laughed.
“The camera… It was just here. I just set it down. It’s gone.” The gaping hole practically bled out darkness. A cool draft wafted up, smelling like mildew and rot. I shuddered.
The smile fell from Brice’s face.
We stood there. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Silence flooded the room, drowning out any remaining tension. We shared a knowing look, then went to bed.
Once I stopped searching for hard evidence, I could see it everywhere. It seemed everybody knew about the man under the house. An open secret, like an open wound. We let it fester.
The hole in the floor grew until it consumed the entire corner of the dining room. We pushed the dining table against the outside wall and ignored it. Lain started tossing quarters in the hole like a wishing well. At night, I could hear it rummaging around beneath us. Things went missing all the time.
It was normal.
For a while.
There was nothing we could do.
No matter how much we denied it, it took its toll on us all. Dad was grumpy all the time. Grandma’s eyes remained distant. Uncle Ron day-drank in bed. Lain developed night terrors and stopped talking. We could barely get a word out of him during meals. He’d just stare at the hole and tremble.
The only one who seemed to be holding it together was Aunt Lynn. She was the only one who brought home groceries, the only one to help Grandma clean. She was quiet, kept mostly to herself like me, but I didn’t notice anything strange.
Brice did.
“So what is happening?” I asked him as he fumbled his fingers.
He was being too vague. I think something’s wrong. There’s something weird. She’s been off. I tried not to get annoyed, but I just wanted him to spit it out.
“I don’t know how to explain it.”
His voice was quiet. He wouldn’t look at me.
“Like she’s depressed?”
“No.” He shook his head, his eyes searching in the dark for something. “If she were depressed, it would make more sense.”
“So what’s happening?” I bit my tongue. “Can you just tell me?”
“She’s been… weird.”
“No duh.” I let out a groan.
“They’ve been fighting. Mom and Dad.”
“That’s not new.”
“No.” His voice wavered. “But it’s different. When they fought, it used to be for something. I don’t know. Like it seemed like they at least wanted to get along or at least it seemed like Mom wanted it to end. Now… it’s like she’s trying to make it worse.”
“Is that it? What are they fighting about now?”
“No. Like, they’re fighting about money. It’s almost always about money, but it’s not even just the arguing. It’s like she’s here but she’s not here. Like she’s going through the motions, but she’s gone. She’s just not there.” His voice cracked. “She hugs me, and it’s like she’s hugging an object. She won’t even look at me.”
“I’m sorry.” I suddenly felt like a jerk, watching him cry.
“It’s fine. I just… don’t know.” He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “I catch her lying on the floor all the time.”
My stomach sank. Brice stared into the floor, his eyes unblinking.
“What is she doing?”
He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but stopped. I sat down on the floor next to him, shook his shoulder. He looked at me with bloodshot eyes. I could see the fear.
“I think she’s been talking to it.”
As annoying as Brice could be, I couldn’t sit back and do nothing, not when he came to me for help. Not knowing who to tell or what else to do, we followed her to observe.
On three separate occasions, as she passed through the kitchen, she stopped, dropped to her knees, fiddled with the baseboards, then moved on. We investigated, but there was never anything there.
Occasionally, she would lie on the floor, saying she needed to rest for a minute, but she never lay on the couch or any other furniture. It was always the floor. She’d look around the room, swoop her long hair behind her ear, then press the side of her head against the floor. She’d lay like this with her eyes closed for up to an hour, always “resting.”
One night, Uncle Ron couldn’t find his liquor money and started tearing into her. He rattled off a long string of obscenities while she stared blankly at the floor. He was nearly foaming at the mouth. She almost smiled. Suddenly, she just stood up and locked herself in the bathroom for three hours.
“Look,” Brice said. “Check under the door. What is she doing?”
I rolled my eyes.
“It’s your mom. You look.”
“Fine,” he grumbled, but he got down on the ground and peered under the crack. “She’s just lying on the ground,” he whispered. “She’s still fully dressed.”
It was obvious she was listening to it. At least it was to us. Maybe even the others, though no one acknowledged it. We just couldn’t figure out why, so we decided to hold a stakeout and stayed up every night, sleeping in shifts while the other kept watch.
It took a few weekends, but we finally caught her in the act.
Hiding under the dining table, obscured by the gingham cloth, we watched as Aunt Lynn tiptoed across the living room over to the hole. She kneeled by the edge, bit her lip, then swung her legs around to where they were dangling in the darkness.
Smiling, giddy, she looked around the room, then pulled out a wad of cash from her pocket. Brice made a noise, not quite a sigh nor a groan. Her fingers flipped through the cash before snatching the top bill, a twenty. She held it over the hole and dropped it in.
She giggled.
Brice slammed his head against the table on his way past me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Aunt Lynn jumped, pulled her feet out of the hole, and flung herself against the wall, clutching the money against her chest.
“Nothing,” she whispered.
“No.” I think he was crying. “What are you doing? You’re just— What the fuck? You know I need fucking lunch money, right? I’ve needed it for weeks. You know that, right?”
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes were darting between Brice and the hole.
“Are you? You’re sorry?” He lunged toward the money, but she stood up and turned away from him. “Really?”
“I’m sorry.” Her eyes were wide, frantic. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“What the fuck, Mom? What is happening?” His voice broke.
She looked at him one last time.
“I love you,” she said, then jumped into the hole.
It was so sudden.
We were frozen. Like somebody stopped time, we held our breath, waiting for reality to catch back up to us. It only lasted a moment.
My body felt numb as I watched Brice fall to his knees and crawl to the edge.
“Mom!” he screamed into the hole, the veins bulging in his neck. There was a commotion down the hall. People were coming.
“Mom!” he screamed again, leaning over the opening. Tears were rolling down his face while he open-mouth sobbed. I wanted to say something or to pull him away.
There was a click.
Then a flash.
It took his picture.
The entire house awoke and coalesced in the dining room. I tried to explain what happened, but Uncle Ron blew up.
“I can’t believe that bitch left,” he screamed, pacing back and forth, his face brick red.
He picked the lamp up off the table and threw it against the wall. Dad tried to calm him down, but he wouldn’t listen. Brice was inconsolable, crying in a fetal position. Lain kept rubbing his head, trying to comfort him, not yet understanding what had happened.
“She jumped in the hole,” I said again, but none of the adults even looked in my direction.
“She can’t have gone far,” Uncle Ron said, grabbing his keys.
He slammed the door shut on his way out, but Dad opened it and ran after him.
“Such a shame.” Grandma clicked her tongue and shook her head. “She was a pretty one.”
Brice’s sobs had only begun to die down. Grandma stepped over him and went back to bed. Besides Brice’s whimpers, everything was silent.
You could hear a pin drop.
Or a small voice.
“What was that?” Brice jolted upright and whipped his head around.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
We waited.
“Brice.”
It came from the hole. A woman’s voice. It was Aunt Lynn.
“Mom!” He leaned back over the edge. “Mom! Are you okay?”
“It… it hurts…”
The words were so faint; it sounded like they were coming from deep within the earth.
“Get a light. Get something,” he said, then turned back to the hole.
I got up and ran for the toolbox Dad kept in his room. I rummaged through it until I found a little flashlight.
“Here.”
I knelt down next to him and looked over the edge. He clicked on the light, but the hole had become so deep that we couldn’t even see the bottom.
“Hold on.” Tears welled in Brice’s eyes. Lain looked confused and scared, but there was no time to explain to him. “We’re going to get you out of there. Just wait.”
“How?” I whispered.
I’d always seen Brice as the more mature one, but now he looked like a scared kid.
“We need a rope.” He nodded his head. “We need to get a rope. And we can pull her up.”
“We’re not strong enough for that.”
“Shut up. She’s not that heavy. Between the two of us, we can lift her. Just go. Go get the rope.”
“Where?” His face clenched in frustration and stress.
I thought he was going to break down, but he took a deep, shaky breath.
“I think my dad has one…” He banged his fists against his temples. “It’s with his towing stuff.”
I kicked beer cans and dirty clothes out of my way in their bedroom until I found the bag of equipment. It was mostly clamps and straps, but I dug until I found a long orange rope. It had to be at least fifty feet long. That had to be enough. It had to be.
It was all loose and tangly in the bag. I wrapped it up the best I could, then hauled it back to the dining room. Brice snatched it from my hands.
“Get behind me. Help me pull when I need it.” I picked up some of the slack behind him and wrapped it around my arm for leverage. “Mom! Grab the rope.”
The rope went taut. She had a hold.
“I want to help too,” Lain whined.
“Shut up,” Brice snarled.
Lain stomped his foot.
“Just keep a hold of the rope,” I said, and Lain picked up the slack behind me.
“Pull!” Brice yelled as he started.
His jaw clenched and his shoulders shook as he strained. I pulled with all of my strength too. We lifted her a couple of feet. Brice adjusted his grip, and I followed suit.
“Pull!” he yelled again.
The rope coiled behind me as we brought her closer to the edge. Lain couldn’t pull, but he just wrapped the rope around his waist and smiled like he was helping.
I smiled back.
“Pull!” Brice yelled again.
We could see her, holding on tight to the rope. She was looking down at the void below, her long black hair covering her face. Her dress had some stains, but she looked okay.
“We’re almost there. Pull!”
She came closer to the edge. Brice was crying. We’d almost saved her.
Then I noticed her hands were red.
“Brice,” I started to warn him, but she lifted her head.
It wasn’t her.
Laughing like a jackal, the scab man tilted its head back, exposing its oozing wound of a face, its teeth yellow and jagged. The scalp slipped off its head, tumbled down its shoulders, and fell into the darkness.
“I love you,” it whispered in Lynn’s voice as it started climbing up the rope.
“Drop it,” Brice yelled.
The thing was fast, already almost to the edge.
We let go.
The rope whipped around us like a live wire as the thing plummeted back into the pit.
Lain yelped. The rope was still tangled around his waist. Before we could react, he was pulled in with it.
Brice didn’t say a word, just went to bed. He didn’t cry. He just stopped. His face stopped showing any emotion.
Uncle Ron and Dad barely noticed Lain was gone. I don’t remember if I tried to explain what happened, but at some point the adults decided that Lynn walked out and took Lain with her.
Brice stopped talking—to me, to Ron, to anybody. Ron caught him drinking. There was a big scene. He threatened to kick Brice’s ass at first, but eventually, he caved. From then on, they spent most of their days drinking together.
Weeks later, I tried to talk to Brice about the scab man. He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about and went back to drinking.
I felt like I was the only one who could still see it: the floorboards falling away, the walls cracking up from the base, the roof caving in toward the middle. The space heater didn’t even work in the bunk room anymore. It was just cold all the time.
It was inevitable.
“It’s happening,” Brice said one night, standing on the floor in front of my bunk.
I wiped the sleep out of my eyes. Then I felt it. The house trembled, shaking my bunk like a small earthquake.
“No.” I shook my head, trying to wake myself up.
“What’s happening? Brice?” I yelled, but he walked out of the room without looking back at me.
Another tremor shook through the house, rattling the windows. Glass crashed against the kitchen floor. Furniture fell over with a hollow thud.
I jumped out of bed. As I ran to the dining room, the house shook, causing me to stumble. I stepped in the wrong place. My foot fell through the floor. I landed on my hip. The pain knocked the wind out of my chest, but I stood back up.
“Brice?” I yelled.
I could see through the kitchen window; he was outside. So were Dad and Ron, all standing in a row, like they were watching a sinking ship from the shore. My throat went dry. The house shook again, and large chunks of wood crashed into the earth below with a resounding boom. I turned and started to run for the door.
Grandma was still sitting at the dining room table, sipping a cup of coffee.
“Grandma, we need to leave.” I ran to her, pulled on her wrist, but she snatched her arm away. “Grandma, please.”
“Stop it.” She waved me off.
Another tremor caused a bit of her coffee to spill.
“Grandma, we have to go. The house is collapsing.”
“Nonsense.”
She shook her head, grabbed a couple of napkins, and started soaking up the coffee. Another tremor shook her body, the table, me. More coffee spilled. She sighed and grabbed another napkin.
“Grandma.” I grabbed her wrist. She looked at me, her eyes pointed. “Please. We need to go, please.”
“Leave me alone,” she snapped, but I wouldn’t let go of her wrist.
I tried to pull her out of the chair.
“Grandma! Leave. Please.”
The house shook, and with a crunching tear, the kitchen floor fell into the abyss below.
“Stop it.” Her lips pursed together. Her voice went stern. “You listen to me. I was born in this house. I will die in this house. That is the end of it.”
“No.” I cried.
I sobbed. I screamed. I fell to my knees, but she wouldn’t budge. The walls were caving in. The support beams groaned, threatening to snap.
“Please,” I whimpered, but she just took another sip of coffee.
I couldn’t do anything but cry. The floor tilted down toward the pit. I’d all but accepted my fate when a hand grabbed my shirt collar.
I looked up to see Brice.
“Stand up.”
I shook my head. My legs were limp. It was useless.
“Stand the fuck up,” he yelled at me, but I just cried. Looping his arms under mine, he half-carried, half-dragged me out the door.
“Grandma!” I screamed one last time as we crossed the threshold.
She smiled and waved, then Brice flung me into the grass outside. The roar of collapsing infrastructure filled the air as Brice landed next to me. I scrambled to my feet, ready to run back in, but it was gone.
The house was gone, swallowed entirely, now nothing but a gaping hole.
About the Author
Odin Meadows is a first-generation graduate with a BA in English from Yale University currently living in the midwest with his husband and two dogs, not too far from the rural town where he grew up. His work has appeared in Baubles from Bone, ergot., Fraidy Cat Quarterly, and more.