Dad, my brother is tapping from below,” my five-year-old daughter whispered in the new living room at my sister’s house; everyone said it was imagination, but I lifted the rug, grabbed an iron bar, and broke through the boards in front of my mother, not knowing that beneath that floor was the secret my family had hidden for 11 months.

The iron bar slipped from my hands and clattered against the splintered wood. The sound echoed through the sterile living room, loud and violent, shattering the artificial calm that my sister had meticulously built over the past eleven months.

—Mateo! —I screamed, my voice cracking, tearing through my throat like sandpaper.

I didn’t care about the nails flying into the air, nor the jagged edges of the newly laid pine boards tearing into my palms. I dropped to my knees, clawing at the dark, narrow opening I had just created. A heavy wave of dense, stagnant air rushed up from below—a sickening mix of damp earth, old dust, stale water, and the faint, unmistakable metallic tang of human presence.

—Andrés, stop! You don't know what you're destroying! —Verónica shrieked.

Her voice had lost all its polished, sophisticated composure. She lunged forward, her manicured fingers clawing at my jacket, trying to pull me away from the hole. For a moment, the pristine, perfect sister I had known vanished, replaced by a desperate, terrified stranger.

—Get off me! —I roared, shoving her back with such force that she stumbled and fell against the marble coffee table, sending a vase crashing to the floor.

Camila didn’t scream. She just sat a few feet away, her wide, unblinking eyes fixed entirely on the dark gap in the floorboards. She pulled her knees to her chest, her small body trembling.

I jammed my fingers into the splintered gap and heaved upwards. The entire section of flooring gave way with a loud, groaning snap.

I leaned over the abyss, my heart hammering violently against my ribs. Total darkness greeted me, save for the faint sliver of light bleeding in from the living room windows.

—Mateo? —I whispered, tears blurring my vision. —Mateo, are you there?

For a terrifying second, there was only silence. The heavy, suffocating quiet of a tomb. My breath hitched. Had I imagined it? Had grief and desperation played a cruel trick on my mind and my daughter's ears?