The Hollow Floor

The night the power went out, I was crouched over my CFA textbooks, the glow of my laptop the only steady light in the room. The hostel, a converted nineteenth-century school building in the old quarter of Jaipur, had always felt heavy with history. The walls were thick, the corridors long and dim, and the floorboards in our room creaked even when no one walked them. I had laughed at my roommate Priya when she complained about it—’It’s just old wood settling, not ghosts.’ But that evening, after she left for her engagement in Udaipur, I began to doubt my rationality.

At first, the silence was a relief. Priya’s constant humming and the rustle of her saris were gone, and I could finally focus on the formulas. But as the hours crept by, the quiet grew oppressive. The occasional scurry of a rat in the walls was normal, but then came a sound I had never heard before—a low, rhythmic thumping from directly beneath the floor, like someone was knocking from the ceiling of the room below. The room below was the storeroom, locked and rarely used, filled with old desks and broken chairs. I had seen it once when the warden showed us the premises. The floor there was cement, not wood. So how could a sound come from the hollow space under our floorboards?

I told myself it was my imagination, or perhaps the boiler in the basement, but the rhythm was too deliberate. I turned up my music to drown it out, but the thumping grew louder, matching the beat of a song I didn’t recognize. Then, at exactly 11:47 PM (I remember because my watch glowed in the dark), the power surged and died, plunging the room into an oily blackness. The thumping stopped. I fumbled for my flashlight, but it rolled off the desk, and I heard it clatter somewhere in the dark. I froze, listening to my own labored breathing.

When my eyes adjusted, I saw a faint, sickly green light pooling in the corner of the room, near the old wardrobe. It pulsed, slow and rhythmic, like a heartbeat. I felt a chilling draft, even though the windows were sealed airtight. The word ‘hollow’ echoed in my mind, unbidden—not a thought, but a whisper that seemed to come from the floor itself. I took a step back, and my heel hit something soft. I looked down, and there, in the weak light, was a child’s sock, impossibly small and white, lying on the floor. I had never seen it before. I picked it up, and the fabric was damp, sticky with a dark substance that smelled of rust.

My scream was silent. I dropped the sock and backed toward the door, but the door was locked from the inside, and my key was on the desk. I fumbled in the dark, my fingers brushing against the cold metal of the key, but then the thumping started again, this time from inside the walls. It traveled, moving clockwise around the room, as if something was circling me beneath the plaster. The green light grew brighter, and I saw the outline of a small figure standing in the corner—a child, no taller than three feet, with wispy hair and hollow eye sockets, its mouth open in a silent wail. It pointed at the floor, and I saw that the floorboards had shifted, a crack forming, widening, revealing a cavity beneath.

Inside the cavity, I saw a bundle of old rags tied with twine. The child pointed at it, then vanished. Without thinking, I knelt and pulled the bundle free. It was heavy, and inside I found a diary wrapped in a yellowed cotton cloth. The diary was dated 1962, written by a girl named Meera. She had been a student here, when it was a boarding school. Her entries spoke of a punishment she had endured for talking after lights out—she was locked in this room, and she heard a voice from under the floor, calling her name, promising to show her something wonderful. The last entry was blank, save for a smear of dried blood.

I dropped the diary as the thumping returned, now deafening, and the floorboards began to bulge, as if something beneath was pushing upward. I grabbed my key, unlocked the door, and fled. I ran down the corridor, but the corridor had changed—the walls were no longer painted institutional green but exposed brick, and the air smelled of coal dust and chalk. At the end, I saw a door that was not there before, a heavy oak door with a brass plaque reading ‘STOREROOM.’ I had passed this door many times, but now it was ajar, and a faint green light emanated from within. I knew I should run, but curiosity, that old curse, pulled me forward.

I pushed the door open with my palm. Inside, the storeroom was not a storeroom. It was a classroom, frozen in time. Desks were overturned, papers strewn like leaves, and chalk dust hung in the air, shimmering in the light from a single bare bulb swinging from a frayed cord. At the front, on a blackboard, someone had written in chalk: ‘MEERA WAS MY FRIEND.’ Beneath it, a child’s handprint in black. I turned to leave, but the door slammed shut, and the light went out. I heard a child giggle from the corner, and then a voice, soft and innocent, said, ‘Play with me.’ I screamed, and the last thing I saw was the floor opening beneath me.

I woke up in my own bed, drenched in sweat, the morning sun streaming through the window. The diary was gone, but my hands were stained faintly with that rust-colored substance. I tried to tell the warden, but she dismissed it as a nightmare. Priya returned the next day, and I never mentioned it. But I this I know: the thumping continues, every night at 11:47, and sometimes, I find small white socks in my shoes. They are never mine. The hollow floor knows my name now, and it will not let me go.