The House Beneath the Floorboards

The first thing Nessa Vale noticed about Great-Aunt Orla’s house was that it had too many keys.

There were keys in bowls, keys on hooks, keys in drawers and one enormous iron key hanging from a red

ribbon beside the pantry.

“Don’t touch that one,” Mum said.

Naturally, that was the one Nessa remembered.

They had come to empty the house before it was sold. Great-Aunt Orla had moved into a smaller apartment,

leaving behind eighty-three years of furniture, teacups, books and objects nobody could identify.

Nessa had been assigned the upstairs study.

“Three boxes,” Mum told her. “Keep. Donate. Rubbish.”

“Can I have a fourth box marked Mysterious Objects That May Become Important Later?”

“No.”

This was unreasonable, because the study was full of mysterious objects.

There was a brass telescope with no glass in it. A clock that ran backward. A jar labelled BUTTONS

containing no buttons at all.

And inside the bottom drawer of Orla’s desk, Nessa found a wooden box no bigger than her hand.

It had no lock.

It had a keyhole.

Nessa sat back on her heels.

“No,” she told herself.

From downstairs came the scrape of furniture.

The iron key hung beside the pantry.

Nessa lasted eleven minutes.

The key was much too large for the little box.

It fit perfectly.

The moment Nessa turned it, something clicked beneath the floor.

Not inside the box.

Beneath the floor.

A shiver ran through the room.

The desk rose.

The chair rose.

The walls rushed upward.

Nessa grabbed the edge of the rug as the world expanded around her.

Then everything stopped.

The wooden box beside her was now the size of a garden shed.

Nessa stared at her hands.

“Oh, excellent.”

She was approximately four centimetres tall.

From somewhere downstairs, Mum called, “Nessa?”

Nessa shouted back.

Her voice disappeared into the enormous room.

Mum called again.

“Nessa?”

Footsteps approached.

Each one trembled through the floorboards.

Nessa ran.

She had no idea where she was running. Away from being stepped on seemed sufficient.

A shadow crossed the doorway.

Nessa dived beneath the desk.

Mum entered.

From floor level, her trainers looked like buildings.

“Nessa?”

Nessa screamed and waved both arms.

Mum walked straight past.

A gust of air from her step knocked Nessa flat.

“This,” Nessa muttered, “is a problem.”

Mum left.

Nessa stood, brushed dust from her jeans and looked toward the wooden box.

The iron key still stuck from its side.

If turning the key had shrunk her, perhaps turning it back would fix her.

Simple.

Except the key was now longer than a bus.

Nessa walked to the box.

The carpet fibres reached her knees.

A dropped paperclip lay ahead like a bent metal railing.

She climbed it, crossed the wooden floor and reached the box after what felt like half an hour.

The key projected from the lock far above her.

Nessa craned her neck.

“Still simple,” she said.

It was not simple.

She tried climbing the carved side of the box.

She slid down.

She tried throwing a loop of thread over the key.

The thread fell on her head.

She found a pencil and attempted to lean it against the box like a ladder.

The pencil rolled away and nearly flattened her.

“Fine.”

Nessa sat on the floor.

That was when she heard the tapping.

Tap-tap.

Pause.

Tap.

Pause.

Tap-tap-tap.

It came from the crack between two floorboards.

Nessa moved closer.

“Hello?”

The tapping stopped.

A tiny brass hook rose through the crack.

Attached to it was a string.

Then a folded paper platform appeared.

Nessa stared.

Someone below was operating a lift.

On the platform, written in pencil, were three words.

GET ON, GIANT.

Nessa looked around the enormous room.

“Rude,” she said.

Then she stepped aboard.

The platform descended between the floorboards.

The light vanished.

For several seconds Nessa saw only darkness and the pale string beside her.

Then the space opened.

Warm golden lights appeared below.

Nessa forgot to breathe.

Beneath Great-Aunt Orla’s study was a settlement.

Not a fairy village.

Not a mouse town.

A human one.

Tiny staircases climbed the joists. Platforms had been built from matchsticks and thin pieces of wood.

Bridges crossed pipes. Bottle caps became tables. Thimbles hung as lamps.

Most astonishing of all were the signs.

NORTH PASSAGE.

LIFT THREE.

ORLA’S MAP ROOM.

Nessa stepped off the platform.

A boy stood waiting.

He was about her age and exactly her size.

He wore a faded red hoodie and carried a sewing needle like a walking staff.

“You took your time,” he said.

Nessa stared at him.

“You’re tiny.”

“So are you.”

“I noticed.”

“I’m Finn.”

“Nessa.”

“I know.”

That was worse.

“How do you know my name?”

Finn pointed behind her.

Pinned to the wall was a yellowed photograph.

Great-Aunt Orla stood in the study as a young girl.

Beside her was another girl Nessa did not recognize.

Across the bottom, in faded ink, someone had written:

ORLA AND MAYA. SUMMER OF THE SMALL YEAR.

Nessa looked at Finn.

“What is this place?”

Finn’s expression changed.

“The reason your aunt never sold this house.”

He led her through the settlement.

Nobody lived there now.

Dust covered the tiny tables. Thread-rope bridges sagged between beams. Shelves held emergency

supplies: sugar cubes, pins, folded foil, candle stubs, bits of chalk.

“Orla built some of it,” Finn said. “Maya built more. Other people added things later.”

“Other tiny people?”

“Temporary tiny people.”

Nessa stopped.

“Temporary?”

“Usually.”

Usually was not a comforting word.

Finn opened a narrow door cut into a wooden support.

Inside was a room covered in maps.

The floorboards above had been drawn from below. Red lines connected the study, pantry, staircase and

walls.

At the centre was a sketch of the wooden box.

Nessa moved closer.

Underneath it, Orla had written:

THE BOX DOES NOT SHRINK PEOPLE.

THE HOUSE DOES.

“That seems like an important distinction,” Nessa said.

Finn nodded.

“The box wakes it up.”

“What is ‘it’?”

Finn pointed to a second drawing.

A web of black lines spread through the walls and floors like roots.

At several points were circles marked with key symbols.

“The house was built by a clockmaker,” Finn said. “Orla thought he made some kind of mechanical system

inside the walls. Nobody knows why.”

“And you?”

Finn looked away.

“I opened the box six days ago.”

Nessa stared at him.

“Six days?”

“My family was viewing the house. I wandered upstairs.”

“Do they know you’re here?”

“They think I ran away.”

The words landed heavily.

Nessa imagined Mum searching the garden, the street, the town.

“How long before we grow back?”

Finn was silent.

“Finn?”

“Orla’s notes say the first change lasts one hour.”

Nessa checked the tiny watch on her wrist.

She had been small for at least forty minutes.

“Good.”

“The second lasts one day.”

Nessa stopped smiling.

“The third lasts until the house is reset.”

“How many times have you shrunk?”

“Three.”

Nessa looked at him.

“Oh.”

Finn tapped the map.

“I’ve been trying to reach the reset.”

A red circle marked the pantry.

The enormous iron key.

Nessa understood.

“The key isn’t for the box.”

“It’s for the house.”

They returned to the settlement’s main platform.

Above them, the floor groaned.

Dust sifted down.

“What was that?” Nessa asked.

Finn went pale.

“Someone moved the key.”

They ran to a viewing crack.

Far above, through the slit between floorboards, they could see part of the pantry.

Mum stood beside a packing box.

The red ribbon hung from her hand.

The iron key was gone.

“No,” Nessa whispered.

Mum dropped the key into the box.

She wrote something on the lid.

DONATE.

The box was carried away.

Finn looked at Nessa.

“When does the house get reset?”

“Before the key leaves the property.”

“And if it leaves?”

Finn did not answer.

He did not need to.

Nessa took a breath.

“Where’s that box going?”

“Front hall first.”

“Then we have time.”

Finn gave her a look.

“You’ve been tiny for less than an hour and you’re already saying things like that.”

“I’m trying not to think about the alternative.”

They studied Orla’s maps.

The quickest route from beneath the study to the front hall crossed the heating pipe, descended the wall

cavity and followed an old bell-wire channel.

“Lift Three gets us to the pipe,” Finn said.

“Then?”

“Then we improvise.”

Nessa smiled despite herself.

“Finally, a plan suited to my talents.”

They moved fast.

Lift Three was a spool suspended on thread.

The heating pipe was warm beneath their shoes and curved like a silver road through darkness.

Halfway across, the boiler started.

The pipe trembled.

Finn dropped flat.

Nessa grabbed a loop of wire.

A deep metallic knock travelled toward them.

“What is that?”

“Expansion.”

The pipe jumped.

Nessa’s feet left the metal.

Finn caught her wrist.

For one awful second she hung over the black gap between joists.

Then he hauled her back.

“Still enjoying the perspective?” he asked.

“Ask me later.”

They reached the wall cavity.

The old bell wire descended almost three metres at their scale.

Finn clipped a thread loop around it.

“You first.”

Nessa looked down.

“No.”

“You said you improvise.”

“I improvise horizontally.”

A crash sounded from the front hall.

The donation box.

Nessa grabbed the loop.

“Fine.”

She slid.

Fast.

Too fast.

The thread smoked against the wire.

Nessa hit the bottom in a heap.

Finn landed beside her seconds later.

“You scream very quietly,” he said.

“I was saving air.”

They crawled through the bell-wire channel.

Ahead, daylight shone beneath the skirting board.

Voices rumbled beyond it.

Mum.

A removal worker.

The front door opened.

Cold air swept into the channel.

“The box is moving,” Finn said.

They burst into the hall.

At full size, it was only a few metres to the donation box.

At theirs, it was a field.

Shoes crossed the floor.

A trolley wheel rolled past like a black tower.

The cardboard donation box sat beside the open door.

The red ribbon hung over its edge.

Nessa pointed.

“There.”

They ran.

The removal worker lifted the box.

The floor vanished beneath it.

“No!”

Nessa grabbed the ribbon as it swept upward.

Finn grabbed Nessa.

Both of them rose into the air.

The box tilted.

Books slid inside.

A lamp cord swung.

The iron key lay at the bottom beneath a stack of old magazines.

They dropped onto the cardboard edge.

Outside, a van waited.

“We need the key before this box reaches that van,” Finn said.

“Helpful.”

They climbed down the inside wall using the ribbon.

The box lurched.

A book crashed sideways.

Finn jumped clear.

Nessa squeezed between two picture frames.

The key was still buried.

She pulled at a magazine.

Nothing.

Finn joined her.

Together they shoved.

The magazine shifted.

The iron key appeared.

At their size it was absurdly heavy.

“We can’t carry that,” Finn said.

“We don’t need to.”

Nessa looked at the red ribbon tied through the key’s handle.

Then at the top of the box.

“Climb.”

They scrambled upward.

The removal worker lifted the box again.

Nessa looped the ribbon over the cardboard flap.

“What are you doing?”

“Making gravity useful.”

She kicked the key.

It tipped.

Finn kicked too.

The key slid across the magazines.

The ribbon tightened.

The key rose slightly, swung—

and smashed through the bottom of the box.

The removal worker shouted.

The box dropped.

The iron key hit the hall floor with a clang.

Mum hurried over.

“What on earth?”

Nessa and Finn clung to the torn cardboard.

Mum picked up the key.

“Maybe not donate,” she murmured.

Nessa almost laughed.

Mum carried it toward the pantry.

Finn stared at Nessa.

“Did we just win?”

“Not unless she puts it in the right place.”

They slid down the ribbon and ran after her.

By the time they reached the pantry, Mum had rehung the key beside the door.

Finn groaned.

“That’s not reset.”

Nessa looked at Orla’s map in her memory.

The red circle.

Not the hook.

Lower.

Behind the pantry baseboard.

“There.”

A tiny keyhole was set into the wood near the floor.

At full size, it looked decorative.

At theirs, it was a doorway.

“How do we get the key down?” Finn asked.

Nessa looked up at the red ribbon.

Then at the cat.

Great-Aunt Orla’s ancient tabby, Crumpet, sat in the pantry doorway watching them.

Finn went still.

“Is that cat friendly?”

“At our current size? I don’t want to find out.”

Crumpet’s eyes fixed on the dangling ribbon.

Nessa smiled slowly.

“Oh, I do.”

She ran beneath the key.

“Nessa—”

She jumped and slapped the end of the red ribbon.

Crumpet’s pupils widened.

The cat pounced.

One paw caught the ribbon.

The iron key flew from the hook.

It crashed to the floor.

Crumpet fled.

Finn stared.

“That was your plan?”

“That became my plan.”

Together they pushed the key.

It barely moved.

Nessa wedged a teaspoon beneath one side.

Finn leaned on the handle.

The key rolled onto the spoon.

They used it like a lever, inch by inch, until the tip entered the hidden keyhole.

But they could not turn it.

Nessa looked at the ribbon.

“Again?”

“No cat.”

“Better.”

They wrapped the ribbon around the key’s handle, then around a pantry knob.

Finn climbed the ribbon and threw his weight backward.

Nessa pushed from below.

The key turned.

Once.

The house answered.

A deep ticking began inside the walls.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The floor trembled.

Black lines of dust lifted from the baseboards as hidden mechanisms woke after years of silence.

Finn grabbed Nessa’s hand.

“Is this supposed to happen?”

“Absolutely no idea.”

The pantry stretched away.

Or perhaps Nessa was growing.

The spoon shrank beneath her hands.

The key shrank.

Finn shot upward beside her.

For a dizzy second they were both too large for the space they occupied.

Then—

THUMP.

Nessa landed on the pantry floor at full size.

Finn landed beside the flour bin.

The iron key sat normally in the baseboard lock.

Mum screamed.

Nessa screamed.

Finn screamed because everyone else had.

Crumpet ran away for the second time.

There was a long silence.

Mum looked at Nessa.

Then Finn.

Then the hidden keyhole.

Then the teaspoon.

“Nessa,” she said carefully, “why is there a boy in the pantry?”

“That is a surprisingly long story.”

Three days later, Great-Aunt Orla came home.

She listened without interrupting.

Finn’s family sat beside him on the sofa, alternating between hugging him and demanding explanations.

When Nessa finished, Orla sighed.

“I wondered when that dreadful box would be found again.”

Mum stared at her.

“You knew?”

“I hid the key.”

“You hung it beside the pantry.”

“Yes. I’m old, not infallible.”

Orla took them upstairs.

The wooden box was gone.

In its place lay a note.

Thank you for the repairs.

Nessa read it twice.

“Who wrote this?”

Orla smiled.

“The clockmaker died in 1912.”

“That does not answer my question.”

“No,” said Orla. “It really doesn’t.”

Before they left, Nessa returned to the study one last time.

She knelt beside the crack between the floorboards.

Far below, the abandoned little settlement waited in darkness.

She thought of matchstick bridges, thimble lamps and maps made by children who had once stood where

she had stood.

Tiny.

Terrified.

Resourceful.

Nessa lowered a fresh battery lantern through the crack on a length of string.

Then she added a new sign to the lift platform.

It read:

IF YOU CAN READ THIS, DO NOT PANIC.

ALSO, DO NOT OPEN THE BOX.

She considered that.

Then added:

SERIOUSLY.

The floorboards gave one soft tick.

Nessa stood.

This time, she left the mysterious object exactly where it was.