The Single Chime

The autumn wind rattled the windows of my small apartment, and the rain streaked down the glass like tears. I was alone, wrapped in a threadbare blanket, watching a grainy documentary about the history of the town’s old asylum. It was October 30th, the night before Halloween, and I’d always felt a strange pull toward the macabre. My roommate, Lena, was out of town visiting her parents, so the place was silent except for the television’s low murmur.

At precisely 9:47 PM, the doorbell rang. But it wasn’t a full ring. It was a single, sharp ‘ding’ that sliced through the air, then nothing. No ‘dong’, no second chime. The sound was so precise, so deliberate, that it felt like a pin dropping in a vacuum. I froze, my heart stuttering. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Lena was hours away. The neighbors rarely bothered me. I set down my mug of tea and peered through the peephole, but the hallway was empty.

A cold draft slithered under the door, and I shuddered. I checked the chain, double-locked it, and tried to dismiss it as a malfunction. But the silence that followed was heavier than before. I couldn’t focus on the show. Every creak of the old building made me tense. I called Lena, but her phone went to voicemail. I was alone, and that single chime had opened a door in my mind.

That night, I barely slept. I kept replaying the sound, trying to figure out what had made it. The doorbell was wired to the apartment’s intercom, which was ancient and prone to glitches. But I’d never heard it do that before. I told myself it was a sputtering wire, a brief surge, but a nagging feeling lingered.

The next night, Halloween, the same thing happened. At exactly 9:47 PM, a single ‘ding’ rang out. This time, I was in the kitchen, making tea. I rushed to the door, my heart pounding. The peephole showed the empty corridor again. I yanked the door open, but the hallway was bare, the lights flickering weakly. I stood there, staring at the peeling paint, feeling a presence that was just out of sight.

On November 1st, I decided to investigate. I traced the doorbell wires to the basement junction box. As I unscrewed the panel, I noticed something strange: the wires were frayed, but they didn’t look old. They looked cleanly cut, as if someone had deliberately sliced them with a knife. And there, taped to the inside of the panel, was a small piece of paper. It was damp, and the ink was smudged, but I could make out a single word: ‘Until.’

My blood ran cold. That word didn’t make sense alone. I re-examined the doorbell unit itself. It was one of those chime boxes that play two tones. But when I opened it, I found that the dong solenoid had been removed. Someone had deliberately disabled it, leaving only the ding. The bell was a trap, a signal, a countdown.

I started to notice other anomalies. A window in the bathroom that would rattle even when the wind was calm. A shadow that stretched from the closet floor at 3 AM, though nothing was there. And the word ‘until’ appearing in my own handwriting in a notebook I’d never opened. I was losing my grip.

On November 7th, a week after that first chime, I found a voicemail on my phone from Lena. She’d left it at 9:47 PM the night she left. Her voice was distorted, barely intelligible, but I caught fragments: ‘… the clown …’ ‘… don’t …’ ‘… it’s not …’ The call had cut off with a sound that might have been a scream. The timestamp was October 29th, the night before the first chime. I had never listened to it until now.

Terrified, I called the police, but they found nothing. My phone had no record of that voicemail. My doorbell was in perfect working order, the solenoid intact. The basement was spotless, no tape, no note. Even the scratches on the door frame had vanished. I realized then that whatever was happening was deliberate, unpredictable, and centered on me.

That night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. At 9:47 PM, the doorbell rang. Not a single ‘ding’ this time, but a loud, long ‘DONG’ that shook the walls. It was followed by a pounding on my door, so violent that the hinges seemed to strain. I screamed, pressing my hands against my ears. Then, silence. I crawled to the door, my breath shallow. When I peered through the peephole, I saw a face. A pale, grinning face, with eyes like black pits, inches from the lens.

The next day, I moved out. I rented a room across town, in a different neighborhood, far from that apartment. But as I tried to sleep in my new bed, I heard it. A single ‘ding’ from the doorbell. Then, a faint whisper, coming from the floorboards: ‘Until next time.’