The Hollow Floor

In the autumn of 2001, a fresh government had just taken the reins in the capital city of Veyra, and the press office of the Presidential Palace was a hive of controlled chaos. I was among a dozen information officers seconded from various agencies to form what they called the Core Communications Unit. Our job was to manage the flow of information for the new president’s trips and public appearances, and we operated out of a crumbling colonial relic—the Casa de la Reina, a guesthouse adjacent to the palace grounds, which had once housed visiting dignitaries but now served as our barracks and nerve center.

We were housed in the east wing, a labyrinth of narrow corridors and high-ceilinged rooms that smelled of mothballs and old wood. The windows overlooked a courtyard where a gnarled acacia tree cast twisted shadows even at noon. We worked in shifts, but the building never slept—typewriters clacked, phones rang, and the hum of a faulty generator was a constant companion. We were given meals in a cavernous dining hall where the portraits of past presidents stared down at us, their eyes seeming to follow our every move.

My name is Mara, and I was assigned to the night shift with three others: a lanky photographer named Julian, a stoic editor named Esteban, and a cheerful but nervous newbie named Lucia. Our supervisor, a sharp-tongued woman named Doña Carmen, had been with the palace for decades and knew every creak and groan of the place. She warned us on our first night: ‘Stay out of the basement. The floor below the kitchen has been sealed for a reason.’ We laughed it off, attributing her words to old-wife’s tales meant to scare the rookies.

But the first sign that something was wrong came during our third week. I was alone in the filing room, organizing press releases, when I heard a rhythmic thumping from below—like a fist pounding against a door, muffled and urgent. I pressed my ear to the floorboards, and the sound stopped. When I reported it to Esteban, he shrugged. ‘Old pipes. This house settles. Don’t let it get to you.’ But his eyes betrayed a flicker of unease.

Then the dreams began. Each night, I dreamed of a long corridor lined with doors, all painted a sickly green. At the end, a single door stood ajar, and from it spilled a pale light and a voice whispering my name. I would wake drenched in sweat, the name still echoing in my ears—but it was a name I didn’t recognize, a soft, sibilant ‘Mara’ that seemed to come from the walls themselves. Lucia confided that she had similar dreams, but in hers, the corridor was filled with water, and a child’s hand reached out from beneath a door.

It was on a foggy Tuesday that we discovered the basement. A loose tile in the kitchen pantry gave way, revealing a narrow stairwell that descended into blackness. Against regulations, we decided to explore—Julian armed with a flashlight, Esteban with a crowbar, and Lucia and I clutching each other’s sleeves. The air grew thick with dust and the smell of decay. At the bottom, we found a vast room lined with shelves of old ledgers and filing cabinets, all coated in a fine grey powder. In the center stood a heavy iron door, padlocked and rusted.

Julian jimmied the lock with the crowbar, and the door swung open with a groan. Inside was a small chamber, empty save for a single chair and a tape recorder on the floor. The tape recorder was old, with reels of magnetic tape, and it was still running—the red light flickering. Esteban pressed the play button, and a woman’s voice filled the room, singing a lullaby in a language none of us understood. The song was hauntingly beautiful, but each note seemed to press into our skulls like a needle. Then the voice stopped, and a child’s whisper took over, repeating a phrase that sounded like ‘The floor remembers.’

We fled, but the tape recorder followed us—in our minds. The dreams intensified. I began to see a girl in a white dress standing at the end of my bed, her face obscured by hanging hair. She would point toward the floor, and when I looked, the floorboards would ripple like water. Lucia stopped sleeping altogether, her eyes ringed with dark circles. Julian started muttering to himself, his camera capturing images that showed no one—but a faint outline of a child’s silhouette in every frame.

One night, I couldn’t take it anymore. I returned to the basement alone, my heart pounding. The iron door was ajar, and the tape recorder was gone. But on the chair lay a tarnished locket, its clasp broken. Inside was a faded photograph of a young woman in a servant’s uniform, and on the back, a date and a name: ‘Isabel, 1954.’ I realized then that the room had been a servant’s quarters, and the floor above—our filing room—was exactly where the woman must have slept. And the thumping I had heard was a rhythmic code, as if someone were trying to communicate from below.

I took the locket to Doña Carmen, who paled at the sight of it. She confessed that in 1954, a housemaid had been found dead in the basement, her throat cut, and her young daughter had vanished. The official report said she killed herself, but the servants whispered that the lady of the house was jealous. The child had been seen wandering the halls for years after, never aging, always humming that same lullaby. The floor in the filing room was later reinforced, and the basement sealed—but the spirits never left.

That night, as I lay in my cot, the locket cold against my chest, I heard the thumping again—but this time, it was clearer. It spelled a message: ‘She is here.’ I looked up, and the girl in white stood at the foot of my bed, her hair parting to reveal a face that was a hollow void. She pointed to the ceiling, and through the floor above, I heard the sound of small footsteps running, and then a child’s laughter that grew into a scream. The lights flickered, and the door of my room slammed shut on its own.

I do not know how I survived that night. But in the morning, I found Julian dead in the filing room, a look of terror on his face, his camera still in his hands. The photograph on its screen showed a girl in white standing behind him, her fingers outstretched. We were evacuated from the Casa de la Reina, and the palace ordered the east wing demolished. They said it was due to structural damage, but I knew better.

Years later, I still hear that lullaby in the silence of my own home, and sometimes, when I look at the floor, I see the planks ripple. I have never told anyone the full story, for fear they would think me mad. But I carry Isabel’s locket always, and the name the girl whispered in my dreams—it is my true name, one I never knew. She is still there, waiting under the floor, and she will not rest until we are all part of her hollow world.