Chapter 5 - What Crawls Beneath
The floor vibrated beneath Mark's bare feet. He jumped back toward the couch, sweeping Toby into his left arm while keeping the heavy bronze bookend raised in his right.
""Clara, wake up! Please, Clara!"" Mark begged, shaking her shoulder with his elbow.
She remained unresponsive, caught in a coma-like stupor. Toby leaned against Mark’s neck, his small cheek resting on his father’s collarbone. The boy wasn't crying. His tiny heartbeat was rapid, fluttering like a hummingbird's wings, but his breathing remained steady, measured, almost disciplined.
A floorboard near the kitchen entrance creaked loudly. The vintage nails groaned as they pulled out of the joists. A gap opened between two planks of aged oak, and from the narrow darkness below, several blackened fingertips curled upward into the living room, gripping the edge of the wood.
Mark’s stomach dropped. The space between the subfloor and the cellar ceiling was barely a foot deep—mostly filled with fiberglass insulation and wiring. Nothing human could fit into that narrow crevice unless its limbs were contorted beyond nature.
""Go away!"" Mark roared, throwing the bronze bookend with all his might.
The heavy metal struck the emerging fingers with a dull, sickening thud. A wet, guttural hiss reverberated through the floorboards, but the fingers didn't recoil. Instead, they tightened their grip, the knuckles cracking with the sound of dry kindling.
Toby wriggled out of Mark’s grip, dropping lightly onto the rug.
""Toby, no!"" Mark reached out, but the toddler moved with uncanny purpose. He grabbed the television remote again and walked directly toward the gap in the floorboards.
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Before Mark could lunge to grab him, Toby held the remote downward, right over the blackened hand, and pressed the red power button.
A blinding flash of ultraviolet light burst from the remote’s tiny infrared emitter, accompanied by a high-pitched screech that shattered the glass in the bay window behind them.
