The Last Cigarette

I never thought much about the old farmhouse when we moved in. The porch sagged, the stairs creaked, and the wallpaper in the hallway was a faded floral pattern that looked like a disease. But the price was right, and my wife, Ellen, fell in love with the rusty weather vane on the barn. We were city people, but we wanted a change. We got more than we bargained for.

It started with the pipes, or so I told myself. A rhythmic knocking from inside the walls, always between noon and half past. It came from the living room, behind the fireplace, a steady tap-tap-tap like a Morse code for something patient. I’d press my ear to the plaster, but it would stop. Ellen said it was raccoons. I said it was the house settling. We were both wrong.

After a few weeks, the knocking changed. It moved to the kitchen, to the door that led down to the root cellar. That door had a rusty latch and a thick layer of dust, and we never opened it. The knocking was harder, more insistent, as if something on the other side was trying to get out. I bought a rosary from a shop in town, a cheap thing with plastic beads, and hung it on the door handle. Ellen laughed, but I noticed she never touched the door either.

Then, one day, the knocking stopped. Silence. At first, I was relieved. I told Ellen that the raccoons had moved on. But the silence was worse. It was heavy, like the air before a storm. I found myself holding my breath at noon, waiting for the sound that never came. I took to sitting in the living room, watching the clock, feeling a cold knot in my stomach.

The whispers started three days later. I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, when I heard a man’s voice, low and gravelly, right next to my ear. It said, ‘You don’t belong here.’ I spun around, but there was no one. The water was still running. My reflection looked pale. I told myself it was the wind, or my imagination, but the voice was too clear, too close.

That night, I saw the figure. I was coming down the hallway, and the bathroom door was open, letting out a sliver of light. In the dark at the end of the hall, where the linen closet was, a shape materialized. It was tall, taller than any man, and black as coal. It didn’t move. It just stood there, and I could feel it staring at me even though it had no face. I froze. My heart hammered. Then it was gone, like a wisp of smoke.

I didn’t tell Ellen. I didn’t want to scare her. But she must have felt it too, because she started sleeping with the bedside lamp on. And she started carrying that rosary everywhere she went, even though she’d never been religious. I bought a box of sage and burned it in every room, but the smell just made us cough.

A week passed. No knocking. No whispers. But the figure came back every night. It stood a little closer each time. First at the end of the hall, then just outside the bedroom door. I could feel it watching us, waiting. I began to have nightmares. In my dreams, I was in the root cellar, surrounded by darkness where something breathing waited just beyond my reach.

I decided I had to do something. I remembered the old farmer who sold us the place. He’d been eager to move to his daughter’s in the city. I drove to the county records and found his name. He lived in a gray apartment building. When I knocked, he opened the door, and the look on his face said he knew why I’d come.

He sat me down with a cup of bitter coffee and told me about the previous owner. A man named Grady. He was a recluse who lived alone with his dogs. One winter, he got sick, real sick. He didn’t have anyone. He died in that house. They found him in the root cellar, next to a pile of empty whiskey bottles and a pack of cigarettes. They said he’d been dead for days. His dogs were still in the house, starving. They had to shoot them.

‘He never left,’ the farmer said. ‘I’ve seen him, too. He just wants company. But he’s got a mean streak. He’ll try to get you to do things you don’t want. Don’t listen to him.’

The farmer gave me one more piece of advice. He said, ‘When he knocks, you knock back. Three times. It confuses him.’

I drove home with the sun setting, a cold dread filling me. I walked in the door, and the house was quiet. Ellen was at work. I went to the kitchen, to the cellar door, and I knocked. Three times. A pause. Then three knocks came back, stronger, closer. I felt the floor vibrate.

That was yesterday. Today, at 12:31, I was standing in the living room, trying to hum a tune to calm my nerves, when the knocking started again. But this time, it wasn’t from the cellar. It was from the attic above me. I looked up at the ceiling, and the knocking moved, over to the left, then right, as if something was pacing above. Then I heard it. A voice, muffled but clear, from inside the wall: ‘Let me in.’

I grabbed my jacket and ran out of the house. I stood on the porch, breathing hard, feeling the heat of the sun on my face. But even outside, I could feel it. The house was watching me. And I knew, deep in my bones, that the knocking would never truly stop. It would just find new places to echo. And one day, I’d have to answer it on my own.

I think about Grady, alone in that cellar, and I wonder if this is how it starts. I bought a pack of cigarettes, the same brand they found in his hand. I haven’t smoked in years, but I keep them in my pocket, like a talisman. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just getting ready for the day I stop running.