The narrator, however, begins to hear a faint noise. As the noise grows louder, the narrator hallucinates that it is the heartbeat of the old man coming from under the floorboards. This paranoia increases as the officers seem to pay no attention to the sound, which is loud enough for the narrator to admit having heard. Shocked by the constant beating of the heart and a feeling that the officers must be aware of the heartbeats, the narrator loses control and confesses to killing the old man and tells them to tear up the floorboards to reveal the body.