Chapter 2 - The Sound Beneath the Wood
"Jimena, stand up," Rebeca commanded sharply, setting the coffee tray down on the low marble coffee table with a clatter that made the ceramic cups ring out like alarm bells. She hurried across the room, her elegant linen trousers swishing softly against her ankles. "Jime, honey, don’t sit on the floor like that, you’ll ruin your cute dress, and the wood wax is still fresh—"
"Don't touch her," Mateo said.
His voice wasn't loud. It wasn't raised in anger. But there was a dead, heavy flatline to his tone that made Rebeca stop dead in her tracks, her hand hovering just inches from Jimena’s pink cardigan.
Rebeca blinked, her composure instantly sliding back into place, though a faint, nervous twitch fluttered at the corner of her left eye. "Mateo, what is wrong with you? She shouldn't be crawling around on the floor, I have white rugs coming in tomorrow and—"
"She said her brother is under the floor, Becky," Mateo interrupted, his eyes finally lifting from the wood to lock directly onto his sister’s face.
For a single, micro-second, Rebeca’s gaze darted downward—not toward Jimena, but toward the exact center of the room, right where the floorboards met the edge of the large wool rug. It was a guilty, calculating look, the instinctive reaction of someone checking to see if a trapdoor was securely latched.
Then, her expression smoothed over into deep, practiced concern.
"Oh, Mateo..." Rebeca sighed, bending down and putting on her best sympathetic aunt voice. "The poor darling is still having nightmares. It breaks my heart. You know how children process grief—they manifest these wild, imaginative coping mechanisms. We should really get her back into therapy, Jime. Auntie Rebeca has some wonderful contacts in Querétaro who specialize in pediatric trauma—"
"She isn't imagining things, Rebeca," Mateo whispered, his voice dangerously low.
He leaned down beside his daughter, ignoring his sister’s protests, and pressed his own ear firmly against the pale wooden planks.
At first, the house offered only its usual ambient soundtrack: the low, mechanical hum of the state-of-the-art refrigerator in the kitchen, the muffled barking of a golden retriever somewhere out on the manicured street, and Rebeca’s breathing—which had suddenly grown remarkably fast, shallow, and uneven.
Mateo closed his eyes, shutting out the minimalist decor, the lemon scent, the polished perfection of his sister’s carefully curated life. He focused every fiber of his being into his sense of hearing, stripping away the noise of the world until there was nothing left except the wood pressing against his cheek.
Thump.
Mateo’s eyes snapped open.
Thump... thump.
It wasn't the settling of timber. It wasn't the expansion of pipes or the wind shifting against the exterior walls.
It came from directly beneath them. Slow. Heavy. Hollow.
And then, unmistakably, came three distinct, agonizingly weak knocks.
Tap. Tap... tap.
From below the floorboards.
Jimena began to cry. It was the most heartbreaking sound Mateo had ever heard—not a screaming, theatrical tantrum, but a silent, weeping surrender, her small body shaking as tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped onto the pristine wood.
"Mateo..." Rebeca breathed, her voice cracking for the first time. She took a panicked step backward, her manicured fingers flying up to clasp her mouth. "You... you shouldn't be listening to that. It’s just the foundation settling. These newer developments are built on marshy land, the contractors warned me about seismic shifting, it’s just the concrete foundation cracking under—"
"Shut up," Mateo snarled, standing up so abruptly he nearly knocked Rebeca over.
The polite, broken-hearted brother who had spent the last year wandering through fog was gone. In his place stood a man whose entire universe had just been violently upended by a sound he never thought he would hear again.
Mateo grabbed the corner of the heavy, cream-colored wool rug and yanked it with every ounce of strength in his body.
The heavy rug dragged across the floor with a loud, abrasive screech, scraping the coffee table and sending a decorative ceramic bowl crashing to the floor, where it shattered into a hundred jagged pieces.
"Mateo, stop it right now!" Rebeca shrieked, lunging forward and grabbing his forearm with both hands. Her fingernails dug desperately into his skin, sharp enough to draw blood. "You are destroying my home! Get out of my house! Get out right now!"
"Let go of me!" Mateo roared, shaking her off with a force that sent her stumbling backward against the pristine white wall.
He dropped to his knees and stared directly at the exposed floorboards.
At first glance, the wood looked uniform, beautiful, and expensive. But as Mateo’s frantic gaze swept across the grain under the direct glare of the afternoon sun, the horrifying truth began to reveal itself.
Almost all the boards were locked together with seamless perfection.
Almost.
Near the base of the white-paneled wall, about six feet from where Jimena had been kneeling, one seam was slightly darker, thicker, and visibly out of alignment with the rest of the pattern. The wood had been cut with a handheld power saw—the jagged edges poorly disguised with dark wood filler and a heavy coat of polyurethane gloss. It looked like a patch job done in frantic, trembling haste, by someone who had prayed in the dark that no one would ever look too closely under the right lighting conditions.
Mateo’s breath hitched. He reached out with trembling fingers and pressed down hard on the suspicious plank.
It didn't bounce like normal subflooring. It gave way with a soft, hollow clack, sliding slightly on hidden metal hinges.
And then, a smell hit Mateo’s nostrils that made his stomach violently heave.
It wasn't lemon cleaner. It wasn't vanilla or roasted coffee.
It was the thick, unmistakable, stomach-churning stench of damp earth, stale sweat, urine, and old, suffocating fear.
Mateo’s hands began to shake so violently he could barely curl his fingers into fists. He looked down into the narrow gap between the mismatched floorboards. The space beneath was pitch black, a lightless abyss hidden beneath the luxury of Querétaro’s finest gated community.
And then, in the dim, dusty shadows just inches below the surface, Mateo saw something pale, small, and sickeningly familiar.
A tiny, curved human fingernail, caked in dirt, resting on the edge of a jagged piece of cut timber.
Mateo slowly turned his head around to face his sister.
Rebeca was pressed flat against the white wall, her chest heaving beneath her linen blouse, her eyes wide, glassy, and completely unhinged. She looked less like a successful, elegant interior designer and more like a cornered animal caught in a hunter's headlights.
"What did you do?" Mateo whispered. His voice didn't sound human anymore; it sounded like a jagged piece of glass scraping across stone.
Rebeca opened her mouth. Her lips parted, her jaw trembling violently.
May you like
No words came out. Not a single sound.
And somehow, that horrific, guilty silence was infinitely worse than any confession she could have screamed aloud.
