Dear Creepypasta [#Wattys2016]

Song of the siren

This was not here yesterday, Richard thought to himself as he stepped on the bulge in the hardwood floor. He leaned forward onto his right foot, placing as much force as he could on the raised area to test if it would give beneath his weight. It did not budge no matter how much he bounced in place.

He discovered the irregularity after spilling a cup of cold coffee that had been sitting on his living room table all day. He noticed how the puddle ran away from the raised spot, and while wiping up the mess he could feel the small mound with his hand. Richard wasn't sure what had caused the deformation, but he thought it may have had something to do with the heating ductwork that ran against the bottom of the floor in the crawlspace below, subjecting the woodwork to years of expansion and contraction. With the spill cleaned up, he went off to bed for the night and decided that he would just keep an eye on it to make sure it didn't progress.

In the middle of the night Richard was startled awake by a loud cracking sound. In the fog of sleep he wasn't sure what he had heard, or if he had even heard anything at all, as opposed to having dreamt the sound. He lay there in the dark for several minutes, listening so intently that all he could hear was the ringing in his own hears. He managed to convince himself that the noise was just a byproduct of his dream state, and he was just about to drift back to sleep when the cracking sound came again. This time the sound was unmistakably real, and was a much longer and drawn-out splintering noise that ended abruptly in a loud pop – the sound of wood slowly bending until it breaks.

"What was that?" Richard whispered as he bolted upright in the bed. He could tell that it was coming from the living room. It took several minutes before he worked up the courage to get out of bed and investigate the sound. He grabbed a baseball bat that was leaning against the wall in his closet and headed through the bedroom door.

"Who's in here?" he said loudly as he switched on the hallway light. The hall was empty and the house was silent. He slowly worked his way to the living room and turned on another light, baseball bat readied over his right shoulder. There was no intruder in the house, but he did find the source of the noise. The bulge in the wood floor had grown – so much so that it had splintered and cracked. Richard cautiously stepped toward the mound. The bulge was now about four inches high, by his best estimation, and the planks had produced a series of jagged shards at opposing angles where the separation occurred.

Realizing there was no one else in the house he let his guard down and leaned the bat up against the wall. He approached the cracked boards and stood over them. They were not separated enough to see through the subfloor. Richard puzzled over what could possibly be beneath the surface that would cause this. He glanced up at the clock – 3:43. "Well, it's going to have to wait until tomorrow. There's no way I'm going into the crawlspace tonight."

Richard left all the lights on and retreated to his room, but did not sleep. He heard more creaking and groaning from under the house, as well as a few more pops in the living room floor. At the first sign of dawn, he got up to check the bulge again. The mound had grown to approximately seven inches tall. The sub floor had begun to splinter and was coming through the finished hardwood planks. However, there was still not enough of a gap to see down below and determine what was causing the damage. As much as he dreaded doing so, Richard knew he had to go into the crawlspace to investigate. At least by now daylight was breaking.

The rusty metal door broke loose after several minutes of swearing and prying with a crow bar. Once free, Richard moved it aside and propped it against the house's concrete block foundation. He pointed his flashlight into the opening and switched it on. Richard hated having to go in there. He'd only been inside on two other occasions – once for a burst water pipe – and the other to kill a pesky colony of sugar ants that would not stop infiltrating his kitchen.