The Voice Beneath the Boards

November 9, 1871

The hum hasn’t stopped since last night.

It hides now beneath the floorboards — a steady, deliberate rhythm, pulsing up through the soles of my boots. I told myself it was rats, or wind, or the house settling as the night cooled. But the sound doesn’t scatter when I move. It follows.

Before dawn, I knelt in the parlor, ear pressed to the wood. The boards were cold and slick with morning damp, smelling faintly of mildew and old ash. Beneath them, something breathed — slow, measured, patient. Not a whisper, not quite a sigh, but the sound of someone drawing air only when I did, as though the house had lungs of its own.

I asked — foolishly — Are you there?

The answer didn’t come from the dark. It bloomed behind my eyes. Three syllables — Sha’veth am ulth’ra. A voice like smoke curling through a keyhole, pressing words into my skull until I felt them settle behind my teeth. My hand moved before I knew it, scrawling the shapes across the page. The letters gleamed blacker than ink should, as if the pen drank the light.

I burned the page. The fire hissed and went out.

Now, when I walk across that patch of floor, the mark on my wrist flares — a pulse within a pulse. I can feel it calling downward, deeper.

Something underneath has begun to stir.