The hole in the floor

When I moved into my new house I expected the usual problems; removalists being late, the bank not releasing the money, stuff getting broken, forgetting where I put what. You know, all that stuff that happens in every single move ever.

I’m pretty sure it’s an unwritten rule that something has to happen. That there can never ever, ever be a smooth move. It hasn’t happened in the history of mankind. Even as far back as the neanderthal days they probably had issues moving from cave to cave, stuff like his favourite hunting spear snapped or the removalists lost his haystack.

Anyway, I expected those problems, what I didn’t expect was to find a hole in the floor of the living room. In fact, I am sure it wasn’t there when I inspected the house.

This was my first house, after 27 years of living with mum and dad I finally moved out. I scrimped and saved and now I finally had my own house. It was more of a townhouse than a house. But it was mine.

Living with them for so long wasn’t so bad, sure bringing a girl home could be a bit awkward...or so I tell myself. I never really had a chance to bring a girl home. Couldn’t “seal the deal” as the kids say these days.

I think.

The house was two-storeys, tall and narrow with the kitchen and entertainment rooms on the ground floor and three bedrooms on the first. And there was also a basement. A creepy, dark basement with exposed pipes, exposed insulation, exposed wires and the hot water tank. It was the perfect place for a serial killer to hide out.

But back to the hole in the floor in the living room. The house had polished floorboards and the hole was small, as round as a coffee cup and black, like a void. It was weird and unexpected and definitely not there when I inspected the house.

I think.

Surely, I would have noticed a hole in the floor?

I decided to ring mum.

“Mum, when we inspected the house there wasn’t a hole in the floor was there?”

“No, why?”

“Oh, no reason.”

And I hung up.

I sat on the couch, staring at the hole with a deep frown. Thinking.

How did a hole get there? Did the previous owner drill it? If so, why? To annoy me. I was actually mildly annoyed by it. Whenever I came into the room, it drew the eye. I thought about getting a rug, but I knew it would be there and that would annoy me.

I crashed that night. Completely exhausted, which was to be expected after a big move (even if I didn’t have much stuff) and I woke up early the next morning to the sun shining and the birds singing. It was straight out of a Disney movie, and I had a smile on my face. There was no noise in the house, no sound of mum vacuuming at six in the morning. No sound of dad playing the morning news loud to compensate for his failing hearing.

It was bliss.

Then I remembered the hole in the living room and the smile faded. I decided I would get some wood filler and plug the hole, sand it back, put a rug on top and laugh maniacally at my genius plan and smooth floor.

Happy with the plan, I got up and headed into the living room.

And froze.

The hole was still there, which was no surprise. Who ever heard of a hole mending itself? No, the problem was the hole was bigger now. It was no longer a mug-sized hole, it was a frisbee-sized hole. 

I stood there dumbfounded. This made no sense. Grabbing my phone, I turned on the torch and lay on the floor beside the hole. I examined it closely. It was a perfect circle. I ran my finger around the edge and found it flat and smooth. Not a single splinter, not a speck of sawdust.

I looked into the hole, expecting to see the creepy basement, the pipes and insulation and water heater, but no. I saw nothing.

Which was impossible because physics is a thing and the only thing, I could possibly see was the basement. But no, instead it was just black. A black so black it made normal black seem bright. Like a void. I felt like I was looking into nothing and my light couldn’t penetrate it.

At a loss, I decided to call the experts in.

Mum and dad.

They arrived before lunch and I told them about the hole, and how it had expanded overnight. They didn’t believe me, but they saw the hole and that’s all that mattered. Dad brought his torch. It was a super powered one that made the bat signal look like a candle, and he shone it into the hole.

I figured a combination of my phone light being poor and the basement having no real light source made it look like something impossible. There would be a simple explanation, I was sure of it.

“I have no idea,” Dad said.

“What?”

He got up, dusting himself off, and shone his super powered torch light on the hole. “I’d say it was cut with a hole saw, it’s perfectly round, but you should see the basement, and…” he shrugged. “You can’t.”

“What do I do?” I asked.

“Call someone else.”

“Like who?”

“Isaac Newton.”

I rolled my eyes. Leaving the mystery of the black hole for now, mum and dad stayed for lunch and left before dinner. I ate alone, watching TV with a towel over the hole. At night, it was creepy, and I thought something might crawl out of it. Something freaky like a mouse or Freddy Kruger.

The next morning the hole had grown to the size of a large pizza. I called Jess, my best friend, and she came over. She was into the weird and wonderful and this was surely something that she had read about on some conspiracy forum somewhere.

“I have no idea what this is,” she said, looking into the deep, black hole. “It should be the basement, right?”

I nodded.

“But it’s not.”

I nodded again.

“Why?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Jess shook her head, black dreadlocks rustling like branches on a windy day. “No idea. Are you going to go in?”

My eyes widened, “What! No way!”

“Why not?” her bright eyes danced with excitement.

“Because I could die.”

“What? Why would you die?”

“I-I don’t know.” I didn’t have a good reason, but that doesn’t mean I dive headfirst into a void. “What if it goes to another dimension?”

“Oh man, that would be so awesome!” Jess said.

“Then you go.”

“Hey, it’s your hole,” Jess said defensively.

I shook my head with a wry smile, “I’m not going down.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“No idea. Dad suggested I get a carpenter in.”

“Your dad…?”

“Yeah. They came over yesterday.”

“They did?”

I nodded. Then an idea came to me, and I spoke before Jess could, “I should call the real estate agent.”

Jess nodded absently while I grabbed my phone. As I dialled, I turned around to see Jess with her hand in the hole down to her wrist, “What are you doing?” I shouted, almost dropping my phone.

“Hello?” came the stunned, feminine voice from the other end of the line.

“Sorry,” I said into the phone, watching Jess as she pulled her hand out of the hole and wriggled her fingers. She grinned at me and I glared at her. I returned to the phone, “Hi, sorry. It’s Zach, I bought that house on Harris St”

“Oh right. Yes. Is there something wrong?”

I suddenly realised I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject, “Well...there’s a hole in the living room floor.”

“A hole?”

“Yeah, and it’s getting bigger.”

“Bigger?”

“Yeah.”

“There wasn’t a hole in the floor when we did the last inspection.”

“I know.”

“How did it happen?”

I shrugged and realised she couldn’t see me, “I don’t know.”

“Did the removalists drop anything?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Have you had any work done?”

“No.”

There was a pause. “Did you do it?”

I blinked, “Why would I do it and then ring you about it?”

The agent huffed and said, “You wouldn’t be the first person to damage a property and then claim it was existing and try to get some money back.”

“I-“ I began, but she cut me off, fully embracing the huffiness

“Look Mr…” she paused and then realising she’d forgotten my name, powered on, “the sale is final. Whatever happens after the fact is on you.”

She hung up.

“Nothing?” Jess asked.

I tossed the phone on the couch, “Nothing,” I confirmed.

“Abseiling?” Jess asked hopefully after a minute's silence as we stared at the hole.

“Not a chance.”

“You’re so boring,” she grunted, slumping onto the couch.

We sat in silence staring at the hole, waiting to see if it would get bigger, or if the hole would get wider or if some demon from hell would climb out of it.

Then Jess snapped her fingers, “I got it! I have a GoPro. We’ll set it up and film the hole, see how it’s getting bigger.”

With no better idea I agreed and Jess hurried home, while I stared at the hole in my living room.

The next morning I woke up to a hole the size of one of those spinny-things you see at kids’ playgrounds. And my couch was missing. 

Now the hole was stealing my stuff. This was getting personal.

Jess arrived soon after, bright and perky and carrying a backpack.

“What’s in the pack?” I asked as she brushed past me.

“Climbing ropes, harness and...whoa!” she said when she saw the hole. “That hole has gotten a lot bigger.”

“Oh really, I hadn’t noticed,” I said.

Jess tutted me and she grabbed the GoPro from the shelf. “Alright, let's see what this bad boy captured.”

We headed into my bedroom where my laptop was and Jess pulled out the memory card and slotted it into the computer. Taking control, she pulled up the file and opened it. The video popped up, showing my living room with the hole. Jess sped up the video and we watched the light change on the same image as the sun set and night came on.

We watched and watched and just when I was about to give up and walk off, the video flickered and became static.

“What’s going on?”

Jess shrugged, “I have no idea.” She pressed some buttons but the screen remained fuzzy. “This is strange,” she said, clicking at random points along the video until the image came back up near the end. It was the same image with the same fuzzy-darkness of the night vision except the hole was the size it was now.

“Well that’s a bust,” I sighed and walked away. This was frustrating, I was hoping we would get an answer, but it was just another mystery. I should have known though. Every time you think you’d outsmarted the supernatural by videoing it, the video fuzzes out. This is horror movie 101.

I found my way back in the living room where the hole greeted me. I stared at it, the void like an absence of colour, of existence, of reality. I felt it drawing me and I took a step towards it.

Then another.

Zach…

I could hear a faint whisper calling my name. It sounded familiar. 

Zach…

I was outside my body, watching a zombie version of myself shuffle towards the hole. I watched myself getting closer to the edge and I tried to stop, tried to pull myself back but I couldn’t. The void had a hold of me. I tried to reach out for my own body and pull it back.

“Zach!” Jess’s voice reverberated around the house. I blinked and I was back in my body, right on the precipice of the hole.

“Zach!” Jess called again and I was back in the bedroom in no time.

“What?” I said.

Jess was sitting with the laptop. She was pale, like she’d seen a ghost. 

“What’s wrong?”

She pointed at the screen. The video was frozen, half the picture in static, showing the hole with someone standing next to it.

And not just any someone.

“You see it, right?” Jess asked. “That’s...”

I nodded. It was unmistakable. 

“My dad.”

----------------

“How is this possible?” I asked, circling around the hole like water circling a drain. “It’s not possible, right?” I looked at Jess who was leaning against the wall.

“No, it’s not,” she said quietly.

“I saw him a couple of days ago. We had lunch. He and mum, they left.” I pointed at the hole, “He can’t be in this...this whatever the hell this is.”

“Zach…”

“Give me the harness,” I demanded. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

I stopped circling the hole and looked at her, “It was your idea.”

“Yeah, it was. But that was before we saw your dad come out of that hole. We both know it’s not possible.”

“Exactly why I’m going in.”

“It might be dangerous,” she said, as I grabbed the pack and pulled out a tangle of ropes and a harness. 

“Just give me a hand,” I demanded.

We worked on getting the ropes untangled and, despite Jess’s protests, we secured the harness and threaded the rope around a timber post. 

I stood at the edge of the hole.

“Zach, I need to tell you…”

“Later,” I said and dropped into the hole. Jess had given me a quick rundown on how to abseil, squeezing the rope and all that. But it turns out I didn’t need it.

I dropped through the void, Jess disappearing from sight and I felt like I’d been transformed into another world.

As soon as I descended below the lip of the hole, it disappeared. Like a lid had been closed over me, and it was dark. Darker than dark. The air was still, and I had no idea if I was falling or floating or what.

It was a surreal feeling and I wondered if this is what it was like to be in space.

“Jess,” I called. I expected an echo or my voice to boom but it was dulled, like it was smothered with an invisible blanket.

“Weird,” I said and waited, unsure if I was moving or not. “Dad?”

I don’t know what I expected but I waited. I had time. Perhaps all the time in the world. Time didn’t exist here. I felt like I’d been here for both five minutes and five hours. 

I waited and waited and just as I was about to give up…

“Zach.”

The voice was in my ear and I jumped in shock. I spun around on my rope and there was a door. A glowing, white door. Like any house door.

And standing in front of it was my dad, with my mum.

“Mum? Dad?” I whispered.

“Hello Zach.”

“What are you doing here? I asked. In the glow of the door, they looked different. Old, haggard and the light from the door was so bright it made them look faint, translucent.

“This is purgatory,” Dad said.

“Purgatory?” I repeated dumbly. 

They nodded.

“But...but how? Why?”

Mum smiled, “You know how. You know why.”

“I do?”

She nodded, the smile still on her face. “You do. You just have to accept it.”

“You can’t go on living like this, son,” Dad said, putting a hand on my shoulder. I felt the reassurance of it, and he gave it a squeeze. Just like he used too. 

Like he used to…why didn’t he do it anymore?

I caught a waft of something, like disinfectant. And…sickness? Death?

A hospital. 

“You remember now?” Mum asked with a sad smile. 

I remembered the tubes. The breathing machine with its rasping sound as it breathed for them. The beeping heart monitors. Both of them in sterile rooms. Sterile beds. Because of the crash. 

The one I walked away from without a scratch.

I remembered thinking. Hoping. Praying they’d get better. 

And then they did. They suddenly woke up, all smiles. Telling me everything was ok. And we all went home, living happily until I moved out. 

But that’s not what actually happened. They never woke up. We never lived happily until I moved out. 

They never left the hospital.

Tears came running down my face. “I kept you here?” I whispered. Afraid of the answer I knew was coming. 

Mum smiled, “It’s not all bad. We got to spend time with you. Longer than we had any right. But it’s time for us to move on. Time for you to move on.”

“How?”

They turned and faced the door. That glowing, white door.

“But what if I can’t?”

“You have to son. You can’t live your life in stasis,” dad said.

“And we can’t live on in a memory,” mum added.

“Let us go and live your life.”

The tears were flowing freely, and I wiped them away, nodding. I grabbed hold of the doorknob. It was icy cold. “Will you be ok?” I asked them.

They both smiled at me, and dad said, “We’ll find out soon enough.”

We hugged. It could have been for a second or a lifetime, I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to let go. But I had to.

I twisted the knob and pulled open the door. White light greeted me and I had to close my eyes against the intense, sun-like brightness.

“We love you.”

When I opened my eyes, I was in my living room. 

The hole was gone.