The Left-Sided Visitor

I was eight when we moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of Morrow County, a place where the cornfields stretched like a golden sea and the wind never stopped whispering through the dry stalks. My room was in the attic, converted into a bedroom by the previous owners. The bed was a wooden loft bed, with a desk underneath, and the only window faced the west. I remember the first night I lay in that bed, staring at the exposed beams above me, and I noticed that the wall to my left was bare timber, dark with age and smelling faintly of pine tar.

My mother had hung a string of cheap fairy lights along the ceiling, but they did little to dispel the gloom that seemed to collect in the corners. I was a restless sleeper, but I soon developed a habit of facing the wall. It felt safer somehow, as if by turning my back on the room, I could pretend I was somewhere else. The first week was uneventful, but then, late on a Tuesday, as the wind battered the window panes, I felt it. A tap, right on my left shoulder blade. Not a feather touch, but a distinct, deliberate tap, as if someone was using a single finger to get my attention.

I was half asleep, so I wrote it off as a muscle twitch. But it happened again, and again, and each time I felt a jolt of cold run down my spine. I would lie rigid, my heart pounding, and I would force myself to breathe slowly. I told myself it was just the house settling, or a mouse in the walls. But the taps were always in the same spot, always with the same rhythm: tap, tap, tap. It was like a secret code.

One night, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to see what was there. I counted to three, then flung myself around, my eyes wide, ready to scream. The room was empty. The fairy lights flickered gently, casting dancing shadows, but there was no one there. I lay back, my heart still racing, and I stared at the ceiling. When I turned back to the wall, the taps started again, but this time they were accompanied by a low creak, as if the floorboards were shifting under an unseen weight.

I told my mother, but she just smiled and said it was just my imagination. She gave me a nightlight, as if that would help. But the taps continued. I started to feel a presence on the other side of the wall, a coldness that seeped through the timber. I began to sleep with a pillow over my head, but the taps would still find their way through, muffled but insistent. One night, in desperation, I pressed my hand against the wall, as if to push the source away. The moment my skin touched the wood, the temperature dropped, and I swear I felt something on the other side pressing back.

Weeks passed, and the taps became a nightly ritual. I grew used to them, almost welcoming them as a strange companion. But then, one night, they stopped. The silence was worse. I lay in bed, waiting, but nothing came. I felt a wave of relief, but also a strange loneliness. I turned over to face the dark room, and for the first time in weeks, I saw the outline of my own reflection in the window, but it was not alone. Behind my reflection, there was a taller, darker shape, standing just behind me, with two pale, elongated fingers raised, as if about to tap. I froze, unable to turn around, unable to scream. The reflection in the window showed a face, but it had no features, just smooth, pale skin, like a porcelain mask.

For a long time, I just stared, my breath shallow. And then, slowly, it raised one hand and waved. Not at me, but at itself in the reflection, as if it knew that I could see it. And it smiled. A wide, impossible smile that split its featureless face. I finally screamed, and I woke up in the morning in my own bed, my mother shaking me. She asked me what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell her. I just pointed to the wall. She looked at it, and I saw her face go pale. On the wall, written in what looked like perfect charcoal, were the words: ‘I tap for you. Now you must answer.’

I never slept in that room again. We moved a month later, and I tried to forget. But even now, as an adult, whenever I lie in bed and face a wall, I feel a faint tap on my left shoulder blade, always at the same spot, always in the same rhythm. And I know, somewhere, it is waiting for me to answer.