The Knocking at Number 42

I’m not the type to believe in things that go bump in the night. I’ve always been the skeptic in my group, the one who rolls their eyes at ghost stories and finds the bumps to be more of an inconvenience than a mystery. So when I moved into the old Victorian on Maple Street, I laughed at the rumors. ‘The house has a personality,’ they said. ‘It’s got a history,’ they warned. I just wanted a cheap place to write my novel, and the rent was a steal. That should have been my first clue.

The house was a labyrinth of creaks and groans, with a musty smell that clung to everything. I’d been there for about three weeks when the first knock came. It was a Tuesday, I think, sometime after midnight. I was at my desk, staring at a blinking cursor, when I heard it: three distinct knocks, like a polite visitor asking to come in.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs. I lived alone. My neighbors were an elderly couple next door, and the street was dead quiet by midnight. I tiptoed to the front door and peered through the peephole. Nothing but the dim glow of the porch light and the empty sidewalk. I chalked it up to the house settling.

But then it happened again. Every night, at around the same time, three knocks. Sometimes on the front door, sometimes on the bedroom door, sometimes on the wall right behind my headboard. I got used to it, mostly. I’d been told that old houses make noise, and I was a grown man, I wasn’t going to let a few creaks scare me. But then the whispers started.

Not in my head, but in the walls. Low, guttural murmurs, like a conversation happening just out of earshot. I’d press my ear to the plaster, but it would stop. I started leaving the lights on at night.

One evening, I was heating up a can of soup in the kitchen, when I saw something in the hallway. A shadow, just at the edge of my vision. When I turned, it was gone. I told myself it was a trick of the light, but my hands were shaking.

I called my friend, Maya, who was into all that spiritual stuff. She asked me if I’d done anything unusual to agitate the spirits. I laughed and told her I’d just moved in, and the only thing I’d done was paint the bathroom. She was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Maybe it’s not the house. Maybe it’s you.’ That didn’t help.

Then came the night everything changed. I was in bed, reading a book to calm my nerves, when the knocking started again. But this time, it was different. It was rapid, frantic, like someone was pounding on the door, desperate to come in. And it wasn’t coming from any door. It was coming from everywhere. The walls, the floor, the ceiling. The noise was deafening.

I panicked. I grabbed my phone and ran to the front door, ready to flee. But when I threw it open, the porch was empty. The porch light flickered and died. And in the sudden darkness, I heard a voice. Not from outside, but from inside the house, from behind me.

‘Why did you let them in?’

I spun around, and there was a figure standing at the end of the hallway. Tall, thin, with arms that hung too long, and a head that was tilted at an unnatural angle. It wasn’t human. It was like a scarecrow made of shadows. And it was staring at me with two hollow eyes.

I shouted, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ But it just took a step toward me, and the floorboards beneath its feet warped and creek as if they were in pain.

I turned and ran out of the house, not stopping until I reached my car. I drove to a 24-hour diner and sat there shaking until sunrise. I told myself it was a hallucination, that I was overworked, that I just needed sleep. But when I tried to go back to the house to get my stuff, the key wouldn’t turn in the lock. The door was jammed.

Through the window, I could see the hallway. And there was the figure, standing in the middle, with its head now tilted the other way. It raised a hand and tapped the glass three times.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I haven’t been back since. I’m at a motel now, writing this on my laptop. I don’t know what that thing is, but I know this: it wasn’t the house that was haunted. It was me. I’ve been carrying something with me, something that liked the new house, something that was waiting for me to let my guard down.

I don’t know how to make it stop. And I’m terrified because last night, I woke up to find three knocks on my motel room door. And when I looked through the peephole, all I saw was a shape, tall and thin, with a head tilted at an angle, waiting for me to let it in.