The Tuesday morning shift at the Northwood Police Precinct was a slow, quiet river of paperwork and lukewarm coffee. For Officer Davis, it was a familiar rhythm. Then, the phone rang, and a sound unlike any other trickled through his receiver—the sound of a child’s heart breaking.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” Davis said, his voice clipped and professional.
A small, thin voice, fragile as spun glass, answered through a series of hitched sobs. “Hello… please… you have to help. My daddy… he’s under the floor…”
Davis paused, his pen hovering over a report. He frowned, exchanging a weary glance with his colleague across the desk. It was likely a prank, or a child’s overactive imagination. “Under the floor? Honey, are your parents there? Can you put your mom on the phone?”
“Daddy’s been gone for days,” the little girl whispered. “And Mommy… Mommy says I’m making it up. She says I’m telling stories. But I know he’s there. He told me.”
This sent a small jolt of alarm through Davis’s practiced calm. A missing father was one thing, but this was something else entirely. “Wait a minute,” he said, his tone softening, becoming more serious. “How could he tell you that, sweetheart, if he’s not home?”
There was a pause on the line, filled only by the sound of the child’s shaky breathing. “I saw him,” she whispered, her voice laced with a strange, solemn certainty. “In my dream. He said he had to go far away… but that he was still close. He’s lying under the floorboards…”
The line went quiet. At first, the officers who had overheard the call shared a look of sad dismissal. It sounded like a deeply troubled child, a case for social services, not a police investigation. They were about to log the call and pass it on.
But something in the girl’s voice stopped them. It wasn’t just fear or fantasy; it was a desperate, profound sincerity. It was the sound of a truth so terrible, it could only be spoken in the language of a nightmare.
“We should send a car, just in case,” a senior detective, Miller, said from his desk. “Humor the call. What if she’s not wrong?”
The address led them to a quiet, suburban cul-de-sac. The house was immaculate, a picture-perfect model of domestic tranquility. The lawn was perfectly manicured, the windows were spotless, and a row of cheerful marigolds lined the walkway. It was a house that kept its secrets well hidden.
When Detective Miller and Officer Davis knocked, the door was opened by a woman in her late thirties. She was neat and composed, her hair pulled back in a tidy bun, but her eyes held a frantic, nervous energy. This was Eleanor, the girl’s mother.
She was surprised by their visit, but she plastered on a polite, strained smile and let them in. The little girl, Lily, stood silently behind her mother’s legs, clutching a worn-out teddy bear so tightly her knuckles were white. Her large, fearful eyes immediately darted to a specific spot in the living room, by the far wall. Right over a section of brand-new, gleaming laminate flooring.
The house smelled faintly of bleach and fresh paint.
“Officers, is there a problem?” Eleanor asked, her voice a little too high-pitched.
“We received a call, ma’am,” Miller began gently. “From your daughter. She seems… concerned about her father.”
Eleanor’s smile tightened. She shot a furious, warning look down at Lily. “Oh, that. I am so sorry you were bothered. She has a wild imagination. Her father and I just had the floors redone, and she’s been having nightmares about it. Children, you know.”
Miller knelt down to Lily’s level, his voice soft. “Lily, can you tell me your father’s name?”
Lily flinched at her mother’s glare but whispered, “Mark.”
Miller then turned back to Eleanor. “Ma’am, where is your husband, Mark?”
“He’s on a business trip,” Eleanor answered quickly, her words slightly rushed. “He travels for work constantly. He’s in Europe… I think in… Serbia. Or was it Slovenia? I get them mixed up. It was a last-minute arrangement.”
“And you can reach him by phone?” Davis asked, pulling out a notepad.
“His phone died, I think,” she stammered, avoiding his gaze. “The reception there is terrible. He said he’d call when he could.”
While Miller continued to speak with Eleanor, Davis stepped outside to make some calls and question the neighbors. The story began to unravel with alarming speed. No one had seen Mark in over a week. His car was still in the garage.
He hadn’t shown up for work. No one had heard from him. And a quick check with the airlines confirmed it: no one by his name had boarded any international flights in the last two weeks.
Detective Miller walked back inside, his expression now grim. He looked at the pristine new floor, then at the terrified little girl pointing at it, and then at the mother who was beginning to look cornered.
“Ma’am,” Miller said, his voice now devoid of its earlier gentleness. “We have reason to believe your husband is not on a business trip. We’d like to take a look under these floorboards.”
Eleanor’s composure finally shattered. Panic flashed in her eyes. “Absolutely not! We just finished this renovation! It cost a fortune! Do you have any idea how much damage you’ll cause? Who is going to pay for this?!”
Her furious outburst was the final, damning piece of the puzzle. Her concern was for the cost of the floor, not the whereabouts of her husband.
“If we don’t find anything, the department’s insurance will cover the repairs,” Miller answered coldly. “But right now, this is a potential crime scene.”
He signaled for a forensics team, who arrived minutes later with crowbars and cutting tools. Eleanor was ushered into a chair in the kitchen, where she sat, trembling, refusing to watch. Lily, however, stood by the doorway, her teddy bear held up to her face, her eyes wide with a terrible, knowing sadness.
The technicians began their work at the exact spot Lily had indicated. The sound of the crowbar prying at the first board was a loud, sickening groan that echoed through the tense silence of the house. Splinters of fresh wood flew into the air.
They pulled up the first board, then a second. Underneath was the concrete subfloor, but it looked… wrong. It was uneven, and in one section, a lumpy, hardened mass of expanding foam and rough concrete had been poured. It was a clumsy, hasty patch job.
One of the officers knelt down, chipping at the hardened foam with the end of his tool. After a few moments, he stopped. He stared into the small hole he’d created.
Then, a horrified scream cut through the air. The officer scrambled backwards, dropping his crowbar with a loud clang. He was pale, his eyes wide with shock.
In the dead silence that followed, his words fell like thunder from a clear sky.
“We found him… My God, we found a body.”
Underneath the pristine laminate floor, they uncovered the body of a man. He was wrapped tightly in thick, black construction plastic, the kind the renovation workers had left behind. The clumsy concrete patch had been poured over him, a crude and desperate attempt to form a modern tomb.
There were almost no signs of a struggle. The coroner would later confirm he died from a single, massive blow to the temple, delivered with a heavy, blunt object.
The truth came out during the interrogation, tumbling from Eleanor in a torrent of resentful confessions. The renovation had been a source of immense tension. They had argued constantly about the spiraling costs. During one final, explosive fight in the half-finished living room, Mark had threatened to cancel the whole project.
In a fit of rage, Eleanor had picked up a heavy hammer left by the workers and struck him. Just once. She watched in horror as he fell, realizing in an instant that he was gone. Panicked, she decided to hide her crime in plain sight, using the ongoing renovation as the perfect cover.
She told the workers she wanted to “fill in a dip in the subfloor for better insulation.” They thought the request was odd, but she was the client. They poured the foam and concrete for her, never suspecting they were helping to entomb a man beneath his own living room floor.
And Lily… Lily really did see her father.
Later, when a child psychologist was gently speaking with her, she described the dream in perfect, heartbreaking detail. Her daddy wasn’t scary or angry. He had come to her while she slept, standing in her room, bathed in a soft, sad light. He smiled at her, the way he always did.
“Don’t be scared, my sweet girl,” he had told her, his voice a gentle echo in her mind. “You have to tell them. I’m right here, under the new floor. I’m still close. Just tell them where I am.”
And she did. She told them.
