The Hollow Rapping

The night air hung thick with the scent of pine and damp earth, pressing against the windows of our cabin like a curious intruder. It was the third night in a row that the knocking had come, and this time, it was my turn to feel the cold dread creep up my spine. The clock on the nightstand read 1:00 AM, and the sound was unmistakable—three sharp raps, then a pause, then two more, as if whoever was out there knew a secret rhythm. My younger brother, Theo, stirred in the bunk below me. He whispered, ‘Did you hear that?’ I didn’t answer. I was too busy staring at the door, my heart hammering louder than the knock. The cabin was miles from any neighbor, buried in the heart of the Blackwood Forest, and the only road in was a gravel path that swallowed headlights whole. Our parents were away at a conference, leaving us with our grandmother, a woman who believed in ghosts and omens, and who had been telling us stories all week to keep us from wandering into the woods. But now, as the knock came again, harder, the wood of the door trembling, I wondered if her stories weren’t just warnings but something closer to a confession.

The next morning, Grandmother Ada sat at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a chipped mug of tea, her eyes fixed on the window where the forest pressed its dark fingers against the glass. Theo and I exchanged glances. She hadn’t slept—her face was pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. ‘It was the door again,’ she said, her voice thin. ‘Three raps, then two. That’s the pattern he used.’ I asked who, and she just shook her head, muttering about the old lumber camp that had been here before the forest grew back. She claimed the camp had been swallowed by a fire that no one survived, and that the land was still waiting for someone to come home. I wanted to believe she was just trying to scare us into doing our chores, but my father had called earlier and said he hadn’t been in the hallway that first night when Theo heard footsteps—slow, shuffling, like someone dragging their boots. Dad had laughed it off, blaming the party our nearest neighbors, the Murphys, had thrown that night. But the Murphys lived four miles down the road, and there was no way their knocking would carry through the woods and over the lake. Grandmother Ada refused to talk about the knocking after that, saying only that it was ‘a matter for the dead to decide.’

That afternoon, I found an old journal in the attic, buried under a pile of moth-eaten blankets. It belonged to a man named Elias Thorne, a logger from the very camp Grandmother Ada mentioned. The entries were barely legible, written in a shaky cursive, but one page stood out. It described a ritual for calling back the spirits of the lost—a pattern of knocks on a door, three then two, repeated at the witching hour, meant to open a path between worlds. The last entry, dated November 15, 1932, read: ‘The knocking does not stop. I fear they are not the ones I called. They are the ones who answer.’ I shoved the journal under my mattress, a cold knot forming in my stomach. Theo later told me he had seen a figure in the woods that evening—a tall, gaunt thing with branches for arms, watching our cabin. I wanted to dismiss it as a trick of the light, but when I looked out the window, the forest had gone silent. Not even the crickets dared to speak.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, counting the minutes until 1:00 AM, when the knocking would come again. But it didn’t. Instead, I heard a whisper from the hallway, soft and sibilant, like someone breathing out my name. I crept to the door and peered through the keyhole. The hallway was dark, but at the far end, near my grandmother’s room, I saw a shape—a shadow that didn’t quite align with the furniture. It was tall, and it seemed to be swaying. I watched as Grandmother Ada’s door creaked open, and she stepped out, her bare feet silent on the wooden floor. She walked to the front door, unlocked it, and opened it wide. The wind rushed in, carrying with it the smell of ash and something rotting. She stood there, her silhouette framed by the pale moonlight, and she spoke in a voice I didn’t recognize—low, guttural, not her own. ‘Come in, then. He’s been waiting.’ The shape in the hallway moved, and I scrambled back to my bed, pulling the covers over my head, my breath shallow. I heard the front door click shut, footsteps dragging along the hall, and then Grandmother Ada’s door closing again. The silence that followed was heavier than any sound.

The next morning, Grandmother Ada was gone. Her bed was untouched, the blankets neat, as if she had never slept. I found her outdoor shoes by the door, and the journal from the attic was missing from under my mattress. Theo claimed he heard knocking again that night, but this time it was from underneath the cabin, like something was trying to dig its way up from the earth. I didn’t tell him that I had seen our grandmother walk into the forest at dawn, her body moving stiffly, her head bent as if in prayer. The police searched the woods, but they found nothing except a trail of broken branches that led to an old well, long dried up, its stones covered in moss. Even now, as I write this from a hotel room miles away, I can still hear it—that insistent, rhythmic knocking, three raps then two, echoing in my skull. I don’t know if it was my grandfather, or a ghost from the old camp, or something else entirely that lives in the deep, patient dark beneath our cabin. But I know one thing: whatever answered that knock, it wasn’t done with us. It’s still waiting, and it knows my name.