The Hollow Floor

On the last night of October, after a day of relentless trekking through the red rock maze of Canyon de Chelly, my family and I stumbled into the Thunderbird Lodge, a hulking adobe structure that had stood for over a century. The sun had set hours ago, and the desert cold had seeped into our bones. We were the last ones in, and the lobby was eerily silent. No clerks behind the check-in desk, no guests lounging in the leather armchairs, no one at all. The only sound was the low hum of a fluorescent light flickering above.

Just as we exchanged uneasy glances, a child’s voice, high and thin, drifted from the mezzanine above: ‘Mommy? Daddy?’ We looked up to see a small figure in a flannel nightgown dart across the wooden railing and disappear into the dark corridor beyond. My heart lurched. It was near midnight, and no child should be awake. I told my wife, Lena, and our ten-year-old son, Toby, to stay put, and I climbed the creaking stairs.

The mezzanine was a long hallway lined with doors. The girl was nowhere to be seen. I called out, ‘Hello? Is everything all right?’ No answer. I checked the nearest doors, all locked. I assumed she had slipped back into her room, and I returned downstairs to my family. We were exhausted, our legs heavy from the hike, so we decided to head to our room and sleep. We found our room on the third floor, at the end of a corridor that smelled of old wood and dust. We collapsed into bed, too tired to even unpack.

In the middle of the night, I was jolted awake by a strange sound: a rhythmic thumping, like someone pounding on the floor below us, but muffled, as if from under a carpet. I sat up, listening. It stopped. I lay back down, but then it came again, closer now. It was coming from directly beneath our bed. I looked over at Lena, but she was fast asleep, and Toby was snoring softly in the cot by the window. I decided it was just the old building settling.

Then I heard the voice again, not from the mezzanine, but from inside our room. ‘Mommy? Daddy?’ It was a child’s whisper, but it was coming from under the bed. I froze. I whispered back, ‘Who’s there?’ The voice giggled, a soft, breathy sound. Then I saw a hand, small and pale, reach out from under the bed, grasping at the edge of the mattress. I didn’t move. The hand retracted.

I woke the next morning to sunlight streaming through the curtains. I felt a cold dread pooling in my stomach. I checked under the bed: nothing but dust. I told myself it was a nightmare. But then I noticed the floorboards. In the center of the room, there was a large, square section that was a different color, lighter, as if a rug had been removed. I knelt down and knocked on it. It sounded hollow.

Over breakfast, I asked the hotel manager, an old Navajo man named Bahe, about the room. He grew pale. He said, ‘You stayed in Room 314? That room is not rented out often. There was an incident a long time ago. A family… they had a little girl. She died in that room. She fell through the floor, into the crawlspace below. They never found her body. The floor was patched, but they say she still looks for her parents.’

I felt a chill run down my spine. I didn’t tell Lena or Toby, but I couldn’t shake it. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake, listening. At 3:33 AM, the thumping started again, this time right under our bed. And then I heard the voice, clearer than ever, ‘Mommy? Daddy?’ I knew then that she wasn’t calling for us. She was calling for the ones she lost, and she thought we were them.

I got out of bed, trembling. I pulled back the sheets and pressed my ear to the floor. I could hear something moving down there, a scraping sound. I found a loose floorboard and pried it up. Below, in the darkness, I saw a small face looking up at me. It was pale, with wide, dark eyes. It smiled. ‘You found me,’ it said. I slammed the board back down. I woke my family, screaming, ‘We have to leave now!’

We ran out of the hotel in our pajamas, into the cold desert morning. As we drove away, I looked back at the hotel. In a window on the third floor, I saw a small figure in a flannel nightgown, waving. And then I realized: in our haste, I had left my phone on the nightstand. But I didn’t care. I would never go back.

Weeks later, we received a package in the mail. It was my phone, wrapped in brown paper, with a note in childish handwriting: ‘Thank you for staying. Please come back soon.’