Attic Floorboards

The first sound wasn't a voice. It was a scrape. Metal dragging across concrete.

Tracey sat on the top step of the basement stairs. The wood edge dug sharp into her thighs. It was April. The window at the top of the landing let in a harsh, aggressive square of afternoon sunlight. The world outside was busy thawing. The winter snow had melted into a wet, muddy swamp across the front yard. The smell of wet mulch and dead leaves drifted through the screen door. The neighborhood was waking up. People were planting flowers. People were washing their cars. People were stubbornly, violently normal.

Inside the house, time had stopped in December.

One hundred and twelve days. That was the math. One hundred and twelve days since the police tape went up over the door frame of Troy's bedroom. One hundred and twelve days since the flashing red and blue lights painted the living room walls. One hundred and twelve days of suffocating, crushing silence.

Tracey's phone vibrated against her hip. A text from Sarah. Another check-in. Another string of heart emojis. Tracey didn't look at it. Her brain felt like a radio tuned to dead air. Just static. A constant, low-level hum of exhaustion and adrenaline that made her teeth ache.

She heard the scrape again.

It came from the bottom of the stairs. It was distinct. Heavy. Real.

Tracey stood up. The wooden stair groaned under her weight. She gripped the handrail. The wood was sticky with old varnish. She walked down, one step at a time. The air in the stairwell dropped ten degrees. It smelled like damp earth, old laundry detergent, and standing water. The spring thaw always flooded the drain near the water heater.

She reached the bottom. The basement was a massive, unfinished rectangle of gray cinderblocks and exposed wooden joists. The furnace sat in the corner, a giant metal lung waiting to breathe.

Sitting dead center on the concrete floor, three feet from the bottom step, was a yellow metal dump truck.

Tracey stopped breathing. Her chest locked up.

It was Troy's Tonka truck. The one he used to smash into the baseboards in the hallway. The one Dad had thrown into a cardboard box in January when he decided to purge the living room of anything a six-year-old boy might have touched.

Tracey looked around the empty basement. The shadows were long and thick. "Hello?" she said. Her voice sounded thin. Stupid.

Nobody answered. The water heater ticked.

She walked over to the toy. She crouched down. Her knees popped in the quiet room. The truck wasn't just sitting there. It was coated in a fine, powdery white layer.

Tracey reached out. Her hand was shaking. She pressed her index finger to the roof of the metal cab. The powder stuck to her skin. She rubbed her thumb and finger together. It was gritty. It felt like crushed chalk.

Drywall dust.

She looked up. The ceiling joists were a mess of silver aluminum ductwork and electrical wires. Directly above the truck, the main trunk line of the HVAC system ran straight across the room. At one of the seams, the silver foil tape had peeled back. A thin, perfectly vertical dusting of white powder dusted the air, drifting down to the concrete floor.

Someone had moved the truck. Or something had pushed it out of the vent.

Tracey picked it up. It felt heavy. The wheels squeaked. The bed of the truck was empty, but the yellow paint was completely muted by the white dust.

She turned and ran up the stairs. She didn't look back into the dark corners of the basement. She took the steps two at a time, her converse sneakers slamming against the wood.

The kitchen was painfully bright. The sun glared off the white quartz countertops, making Tracey squint.

Mom was standing at the island. She was aggressively chopping celery. The heavy chef's knife hit the wooden cutting board with a rapid, rhythmic thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. She was wearing a perfectly pressed beige sweater. Her hair was pulled back into a tight, neat ponytail. She looked like a stock photo of a mother making dinner.

Dad was sitting at the kitchen table. He was wearing his black noise-canceling headphones. He was staring at a spreadsheet on his laptop. He had been staring at spreadsheets for four months. He never actually typed anything. He just scrolled.

"Mom," Tracey said.

Mom didn't look up. The knife kept moving. "I am making a salad for dinner. We have to eat the spinach before it wilts. The expiration date was yesterday."

"I found Troy's truck."

The knife stopped.

Mom stood perfectly still. Her shoulders went rigid under the beige sweater. The silence in the kitchen stretched out, tight and fragile like a rubber band about to snap.

Then, she resumed chopping. Faster this time. The thuds blurred together.

"Put it in the basement box, Tracey."

"It was in the basement," Tracey said. She walked closer to the island. She slammed the metal truck onto the quartz counter. The noise was loud. A sharp, ugly clatter of metal on stone.

Dad flinched. He pulled one ear cup off his head. He glared at Tracey. "What is going on?"

"She brought that thing up here," Mom said. She didn't look at the truck. She pointed the tip of the knife at it. "Tell her to put it away."

"Tracey, put his stuff away," Dad said. He reached to pull the headphone back over his ear.

"No, look at it," Tracey said. Her voice was rising. The panic was bubbling up in her throat. "It was at the bottom of the stairs. It was covered in this." She held up her hand, shoving her dust-coated fingers toward her mother's face. "It's drywall dust. It came from the vents."

"The house is settling," Mom said. Her voice was entirely flat. Dead.

"Houses don't settle and drop metal toys onto the floor, Mom."

"Take it away, Tracey. Please."

"Someone moved it," Tracey insisted. She grabbed the edge of the counter. "Dad, look at it. There is fresh dust on it. I heard a noise down there."

"It is the wind," Dad said. He sounded tired. He always sounded tired now.

"It is not the wind. It was inside the house. Inside the metal pipes."

"Drop it, Tracey," Mom snapped. She turned away from the island and walked to the sink. She turned the faucet on full blast. The water pounded against the stainless steel basin. "I am not doing this today. I am not having a breakdown today. I have to make dinner."

"I am not asking you to have a breakdown," Tracey yelled over the water. "I am asking you to look at the evidence. The police missed something. He didn't wander outside. The deadbolt was locked, Dad. You know it was locked."

"There is no evidence," Dad shouted. He stood up. His chair scraped violently against the tile floor. "He is gone. The police searched the house. They brought the dogs. They searched the neighborhood. They searched the woods. He is gone. Stop bringing trash up from the basement and torturing your mother."

"It is not trash!" Tracey screamed. Her eyes burned. Her chest heaved. "It is his truck!"

Suddenly, the air conditioning unit outside roared to life. The compressor whined, and a second later, the rush of cold air flooded the kitchen.

The metal grate of the vent above the refrigerator rattled.

Tracey froze. The argument died in her throat.

She stared at the white metal slats on the ceiling.

A sound bled out of the vent. It was faint at first, buried under the rush of the rushing air. Then it grew louder.

It was a voice.

"You never listen, David! You never fucking listen!"

Tracey's mouth dropped open. Her heart slammed against her ribs. She looked at Mom.

The voice from the ceiling was an exact, pitch-perfect replica of Mom's voice. The exact inflection of rage. The exact break in the syllable on the word 'fucking'. It was a playback of a fight they had in November. A fight they had in the living room while Troy sat on the stairs and cried.

But it wasn't a recording. The cadence was wrong. The breath behind the words was too short. It sounded like someone with small lungs trying to scream like an adult.

"Did you hear that?" Tracey whispered. The skin on her arms erupted in goosebumps.

"Hear what?" Mom said. She was furiously scrubbing a perfectly clean frying pan under the running water. She didn't look up.

"The vent," Tracey said, pointing a trembling finger at the ceiling.

Dad sighed heavily. He rubbed his eyes. "It is just the fan motor, Tracey. The bearings are shot. I need to call the HVAC guy."

"It was speaking," Tracey said. She walked slowly toward the refrigerator. She stood on her tiptoes, leaning her ear toward the cold air blowing down. "It sounded exactly like you, Mom."

"Stop it," Mom snapped. She threw the sponge into the sink. Water splashed onto the floor. "Just stop it. Go to your room. I cannot look at you right now."

"You are ignoring this," Tracey said. Her voice broke. "You are literally pretending this is not happening."

"There is nothing happening," Dad said. He sat back down. He pulled both headphones firmly over his ears. He stared at his laptop screen. The glow of the monitor reflected in his glasses.

Mom went back to the island. She picked up the knife. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Tracey grabbed the yellow truck off the counter. Her knuckles were white. She wanted to smash the truck through the sliding glass door. She wanted to shatter the perfect, numb bubble they were living in. Instead, she turned and walked out of the kitchen.

Her internal clock was ticking too fast. The house felt alive. It felt like a giant machine, breathing in and out, watching her.

Tracey ran up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. She went into her bedroom and slammed the door. She locked the deadbolt. She dropped the truck onto her unmade bed. The white drywall dust smudged against her dark blue duvet cover.

She walked to her closet. She got down on her hands and knees and shoved aside a pile of dirty sweatshirts, a pair of winter boots, and a broken tennis racket. In the back corner of the closet was a brown cardboard box labeled 'Electronics' in Dad's messy handwriting.

She dug her nails under the packing tape and ripped the box open. She pulled out tangles of black charging cables, an obsolete internet router, and a digital camera from ten years ago.

At the bottom, buried under bubble wrap, she found it.

The old Motorola baby monitor.

It was made of cheap white plastic that had yellowed from years of sitting in the sun. It had two separate pieces: a transmitter base and a portable receiver.

Tracey pulled them out. She untangled the power adapters. She plugged the transmitter unit into the wall outlet right next to her bedroom door. A tiny green LED light blinked to life.

She dragged her wooden desk chair over to the wall. She stood on the seat. She pulled a roll of silver duct tape from her desk drawer. She ripped off two long strips with her teeth. She pressed the transmitter directly against the painted metal slats of the air return vent near the ceiling. She taped it tight. The microphone was pointing directly into the dark shaft.

She stepped down from the chair. She took the receiver unit and plugged it into the outlet next to her nightstand. She turned the small plastic volume dial all the way up until it clicked.

A harsh, aggressive hiss of white static filled her bedroom.

Tracey sat cross-legged on the floor next to her bed. She stared at the receiver. The front speaker grill was stained with a tiny drop of dried coffee. A row of five LED lights arched across the top of the unit. They bounced up and down in the green zone, reacting to the ambient static.

She waited.

Outside her window, a neighbor started a lawnmower. The engine sputtered and caught. The smell of freshly cut grass and gasoline drifted through her screen. It was infuriating. The world outside was so sunny. So oblivious.

Inside the bedroom, the air felt heavy.

Tracey looked at her phone screen. 3:14 PM.

She looked at the yellow truck on her bed.

The static on the baby monitor hitched.

Tracey stopped breathing.

The hissing sound dropped out completely. It was replaced by a hollow, rushing wind. It sounded like a microphone had been dropped into a deep, empty well.

Then, a wet, heavy breath echoed through the plastic speaker.

Tracey's stomach plummeted. The nausea hit her instantly. She leaned closer to the receiver.

"David," the voice whispered through the speaker.

It was Mom's voice again. But the distortion was worse this time. The pitch spiked at the end of the word. It cracked. It sounded like a parrot mimicking human speech without understanding the emotion behind it.

"I cannot do this anymore, David," the voice said.

Tracey covered her mouth with both hands. She knew exactly what this was. It was a Tuesday night in October. Dad had lost his keys. Mom had blamed him for leaving the side door unlocked. Troy had been sitting at the top of the stairs, clutching his knees, listening to them scream at each other.

The monitor crackled. The hollow wind sound returned, rushing past the microphone.

Tracey leaned in until her nose was an inch from the plastic grill. "Troy?" she whispered.

The static spiked violently. The LED lights on the receiver slammed from green straight into the red zone. A loud, piercing shriek of audio feedback filled the bedroom.

Tracey winced and covered her ears. She reached out blindly to turn the volume dial down.

Before her fingers touched the plastic, the screeching stopped.

Dead silence.

Then, a new voice.

Not Mom's. Not Dad's.

"Tracey."

It was a tiny, raspy whisper. It sounded like it was coming through a mouthful of wet dirt.

"Tracey."

Her name. The voice was saying her name.

Tracey shoved herself violently backward. Her shoes slipped on the carpet. She hit the floor hard, her elbows slamming into the baseboard. She scrambled backward until her spine hit the closet door. She stared at the yellowed plastic monitor on the nightstand.

"Come down," the voice whispered.

Then, the heavy clunk of the house's furnace engaging echoed from the basement. The rush of air filled the ductwork. The monitor immediately returned to a steady, meaningless stream of white static.

Tracey sat frozen on the floor. Her chest was heaving. Her brain was moving a million miles an hour, firing useless signals, but her body felt paralyzed.

Come down.

It meant the basement. It meant the dark spaces under the house.

Tracey forced herself to stand up. Her legs felt like water. She unlocked her bedroom door and walked out into the hallway. The house was quiet again. The kitchen downstairs was silent. Mom must have finished chopping the celery.

Tracey walked down the stairs. She didn't stop in the kitchen. She walked straight to the basement door. She opened it and flipped the wall switch. The bare incandescent bulb at the bottom of the stairs flickered, buzzed, and cast a weak yellow glow across the concrete.

She walked down the wooden steps.

She stepped over the clean spot on the floor where the yellow truck had been sitting.

She walked to the back of the basement. She walked past the ticking water heater. She walked past the towering stack of cardboard boxes filled with old winter clothes and Christmas decorations.

Underneath the main floor staircase, there was a small alcove. At the very back of the alcove was a square cutout in the drywall foundation. It led to the unfinished crawlspace that ran directly beneath the living room addition.

In January, two days after the police officially scaled back the search, Dad had gone down here with his tools. He had cut a piece of thick, heavy plywood. He had placed it over the hole and driven six heavy screws into the framing to seal it shut. He told Mom it was to stop the winter drafts from freezing the floorboards. But Tracey knew the truth. Dad couldn't stand looking at the black void. The police dogs had barked at that hole. The officers had crawled around in the dirt for three hours with flashlights, digging up the soil, looking for a body. They found nothing. But the hole remained a gaping wound in the house.

Tracey walked over to Dad's messy workbench. She grabbed his yellow Dewalt drill. It was heavy in her hand. She checked the battery indicator. Two green bars. She rummaged through a plastic organizer bin until she found a metal Phillips head drill bit. She snapped it into the chuck.

She walked back to the alcove. She knelt on the cold concrete in front of the plywood.

There were six black drywall screws holding the wood in place.

She pressed the drill bit into the top left screw and pulled the trigger. The motor whined aggressively loud in the empty basement. The metal bit ground against the screw head, caught the groove, and backed it out. The screw popped free, fell to the concrete, and rolled into the dark.

She moved to the next one. Her hands were sweating. The drill slipped twice, stripping the soft metal of the screw head before finally catching hold.

She worked fast. Her breath was coming in short, panicked gasps. She removed the third screw. The fourth. The fifth.

She pressed the drill to the final screw at the bottom right corner. She pulled the trigger. The screw squealed as it backed out of the dry wood.

Tracey dropped the drill. It hit the concrete floor with a heavy, hollow thud.

She wedged her fingers behind the rough edge of the plywood. Splinters dug into her skin. She braced her sneaker against the cinderblock wall for leverage and pulled hard.

The wood was stiff, swollen from the damp basement air. She yanked again, throwing her entire body weight backward.

The plywood gave way. It crashed forward onto the concrete floor, kicking up a thick cloud of gray dust that coated her shoes.

A wave of cold, stagnant air rolled out of the dark square.

Tracey gagged. The smell hit her like a physical blow. It smelled like wet potting soil, rust, and old copper. It smelled like blood and rot.

She pulled her phone out of her back pocket. She tapped the flashlight icon. She pointed the bright white LED beam into the dark square.

The crawlspace was only three feet high. The floorboards of the living room hung just above the dirt. The ground was packed earth, covered in a thick layer of translucent white visqueen plastic sheeting. The plastic was ancient. It was torn in several places, exposing the dark brown dirt underneath. Thick silver ductwork snaked through the tight space, resting directly on the dirt in some areas, suspended by thin metal straps in others.

Tracey knelt on the concrete edge. She shined the light back and forth, panning across the space.

Nothing. Just dirt, plastic, and pipes.

"Troy?" she whispered into the dark.

Her voice sounded dead. The loose dirt absorbed the sound immediately, killing the echo.

She put her hands on the rough bottom edge of the cutout. She hoisted herself forward. She crawled headfirst into the hole.

The claustrophobia was instant. The air was heavy and thick, pressing down on her chest. Dust motes swarmed violently in the beam of her phone light, looking like snow. She army-crawled forward, her elbows sinking into the soft, yielding dirt beneath the torn plastic sheeting. The wooden floorboards above her were so close she had to duck her head to avoid scraping her skull against the rusted nails poking through the subfloor.

She crawled deeper. Ten feet. Twenty feet. She was directly under the center of the living room now. She could hear the faint, muffled sound of the television playing upstairs. Dad must have given up on his spreadsheet and turned on the news.

She pointed her phone light at the main trunk of the ductwork running parallel to her. It was a massive rectangular box of shiny sheet metal.

Tracey noticed something on the side of the metal trunk.

The thick layer of gray dust coating the top of the ductwork was disturbed. There were long, parallel streaks wiped clean through the dust. Like something heavy had been dragged across the metal.

She crawled closer to the metal trunk. She pressed her bare palm against it. The metal was freezing cold. She could feel the faint vibration of the air rushing through the hollow space inside.

She shined the light past the ductwork, aiming toward the far cinderblock wall that made up the exterior foundation of the house.

The bright beam hit the gray blocks.

Tracey stopped breathing entirely. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a violent, painful rhythm that made her vision pulse.

There, right in the dead center of the cinderblock wall, about two feet off the dirt floor, was a mark.

She crawled forward. She ignored the sharp rocks cutting into her knees through her jeans. She ignored the nails above her head.

She held the phone steady.

It was a handprint.

A perfect, tiny handprint pressed firmly into the thick gray dust that coated the cinderblocks. Five small fingers. A small, rounded palm.

It was not a dusty print. It was a wet print.

The moisture had turned the gray dust on the wall into dark, black mud. It was completely fresh. The edges of the mud were still glistening, catching the harsh LED light of her phone.

Tracey stared at it. Her mind short-circuited. She could not process the visual information. The police had been down here in November. They had scoured this exact wall with high-powered flashlights. They had taken photographs. There had been no handprint.

She reached out slowly. Her hand was trembling so violently she almost dropped her phone into the dirt. She brought her index finger toward the cinderblock.

She pressed her fingertip against the center of the muddy palm print.

It was wet. It was freezing cold.

And it was thick. Like wet clay mixed with syrup.

Tracey pulled her finger back. She pointed the phone light at her hand.

The thick mud coating her skin was dark red.

A sudden, deafening slam echoed through the crawlspace.

Tracey shrieked. She whipped her head around in a panic. She slammed the crown of her skull hard against a low-hanging wooden floor joist. A blinding flash of white pain shot behind her eyes.

She pointed the flashlight back toward the entrance.

The square of yellow light from the basement was gone.

Someone had picked up the heavy piece of plywood. Someone had put it back over the hole.

"Mom!" Tracey screamed. Her voice tore at her throat. "Dad!"

She scrambled backward in a blind panic. Her jeans tore on a stray nail. She kicked dirt up into the air, choking on the thick dust. She reached the plywood barrier and slammed her fists against the rough wood.

"Hey! I am in here! Open the door!"

The wood did not budge. It was solid. Unmoving.

She pressed her ear against the plywood. She could hear the faint, electrical hum of the basement lights on the other side. She listened for footsteps. She listened for her father's heavy boots on the concrete.

Nothing.

Then, a sound behind her.

Deep in the darkest corner of the crawlspace.

A wet, heavy dragging sound. Flesh sliding against plastic sheeting.

Tracey slowly turned her head. She pointed her phone flashlight into the dark expanse of the crawlspace. The beam cut through the swirling dust, illuminating the silver ductwork.

The dragging sound stopped.

The heavy sheet of plywood slammed shut behind her, plunging the crawlspace into total darkness just as a wet, ragged breath echoed from the silver ductwork right beside her ear.