The Hollow Tap

The tapping began on the third Tuesday after we moved into the old farmhouse at the edge of the Saltmarsh. It wasn’t a knock, not really—more like the impatient drumming of a finger against the glass of the study window, which faced the abandoned orchard. At first, I dismissed it. The wind plays tricks with loose branches, and the house, with its settling bones, often groaned. I mentioned it to my wife, Clara, over breakfast, laughing about some drunken prankster from the nearby village. She rolled her eyes and told me to stop dwelling on the past.

By the fourth night, I was annoyed. I was deep in a manuscript, a historical novel set in the 1800s, and the rhythm of the tapping kept syncopating with my thoughts, destroying my focus. I had a soundtrack of crackling jazz vinyl playing low, but the sound cut through it like a needle. I resolved to catch the culprit. I crept to the window, but the glass was fogged with condensation from the cold. I drew the curtain aside, but saw only my reflection, pale and tired. The tapping stopped. The next morning, I inspected the ground below. The mud was soft from recent rain, yet there were no footprints, no marks, nothing. The window itself was clean, not even a smudge.

As the weeks passed, the tapping became a nightly ritual. At 11:48 PM, precisely, it would start—three sharp raps, a pause, then two more. I tried ignoring it, wearing earplugs, even sleeping in the guest room. But it followed me, always the same window, the same relentless pattern. Clara began to hear it too, and her fear was palpable. She begged me to find the source, to do something. I called a handyman to check for rodents or faulty wiring. He found nothing. He suggested it might be a ghost, and I laughed, but his joke chilled me more than I’d admit.

One night, I decided to wait it out. I sat in the dark study, the curtains open, the window before me. The tapping began, and I saw it—a shadowy shape just beyond the pane, pressed close. It was tall, gaunt, with a head that seemed too large for its body. It raised a long, thin arm and tapped again, as if beckoning me. I froze, my heart pounding. Then it spoke, its voice a dry rustle that passed through the glass as if it were paper: ‘You have the key.’ I had no key. I panicked and slammed the shutters, waking Clara, who found me shaking.

The next day, I dug through the house’s history. It was built in 1893 by a sea captain named Elias Thorne. Legend said he’d murdered his family and buried them in the orchard, but no bodies were ever found. The house had been sold to my predecessor, a reclusive artist named Marchetti, who disappeared a year before we moved in. I found a loose floorboard in the study, and beneath it, a rusted iron key. That night, as the tapping came, I held the key up to the window. The shadow pressed its face to the glass, and I saw its eye—milky, unblinking. ‘Open,’ it said. I didn’t.

From then on, the tapping grew frantic, a wild drumroll. The shadow multiplied—five, ten, a chorus of them, all converging on the window. The house began to tremble. Clara begged me to leave, but I couldn’t. I was trapped by curiosity, by the weight of the key. I finally unlocked the window. The moment I did, the taping stopped. The shadows seeped through the gap, filling the room with a cold that bit to the bone. They converged on me, and I felt hands—cold, bony, pulling me toward the glass. The last thing I saw was my own face reflected in the darkness, and then the world went silent.

Now, I am the one tapping. Every night at 11:48 PM, I stand at the window of that old house, waiting for someone new to move in, someone foolish enough to answer. The key hangs around my neck, but I no longer need it. The tapping is my call, my hunger. And I will not stop until I find a soul to take my place.