The Three Scratches

When I was eight, my family moved to a small, isolated house on the edge of a dried-up lake bed. The house was old, with creaking floorboards and a constant draft that made the curtains whisper, but I had my own room, which was a novelty. On my third night there, I lay in bed, not yet asleep, staring at the pale square of my window, which overlooked the vast, cracked mud flats. The moon hung high, casting long shadows across the ground, when a sudden tapping sound came from the glass. Tap-tap-tap. It was not the wind; it was deliberate, like knuckles rapping, but too high-pitched for a human hand.

I sat up, my heart already beginning to race. At the sill, on the outside, something was perched. It was small, no larger than a three-year-old, but it was impossibly thin, its limbs like sticks wrapped in gray, papery skin. Its head was too large for its body, round and bald, and its eyes were huge, black-red, like pools of dried blood, staring straight at me. Its mouth was open, revealing rows of needle-like teeth, too many for its small jaw, all sharp and glinting in the moonlight. I remember thinking it looked like a starving child, but wrong, all wrong. I dove under my covers, pulling them tight around me, and stayed there, trembling, until the first light of dawn crept through the gaps. That night I did not sleep a wink.

In the morning, I told my mother. I described the creature in detail, but she laughed it off, saying I had a nightmare, and that the wind against the old window could play tricks. She told me to get ready for school, and I did, but I said nothing to anyone else. I was afraid they would think I was crazy, or that they would call me a liar. So I kept it to myself, but I couldn’t get the image out of my head.

That afternoon, after the bus dropped me off, I went straight to my room. I stood before the window, my breath fogging the glass, and looked out. There, on the outside of the pane, were three thin scratches, the width of a fingernail, but longer and deeper, as if something had dragged its claws down the glass. They ran diagonally from the upper left to the lower right, about the size of my own hand. I touched the cold glass with my fingertip, and a chill ran down my spine. I knew then that what I had seen was real, and that it had left its mark.

I tried to tell my father that evening, but he was tired from work and brushed me off, saying, “It’s just a scratch from a bird or something, maybe a cat. Don’t fuss.” They didn’t believe me. But I knew better. So I began to keep a secret journal, writing down every detail, and I started watching the window at night, from behind my curtains, holding my breath, waiting. And every night, just as the moon reached its highest point, I would hear it. Tap-tap-tap. Three taps, always the same rhythm. And when I dared to peek, there it would be, perched on the sill, its black-red eyes fixed on me, its teeth bared in what might have been a smile. It never spoke, never moved, just sat there, watching.

A week passed. The scratches grew longer, deeper, as if something was trying to get in. The glass began to feel thinner, the air in my room colder. I started having nightmares of the thing crawling through the window, its claws reaching for my face, its needle teeth snapping at my throat. I would wake up screaming, but my parents would only say I was having night terrors. No one listened.

Then one night, I decided to face it. I pulled back the covers and walked to the window, my legs shaking. I placed my hand flat against the cold glass, and it pressed its own palm against mine from the outside. Its hand was so small, so bony, but it felt like a block of ice. Its eyes locked with mine, and in that moment, I felt a strange sense of sorrow emanating from it. It seemed lonely, lost, as if it had been waiting for someone to see it, to acknowledge it, for a very long time. And then, it raked its claws across the glass one final time, leaving three more scratches, parallel to the first, angling upward, and it vanished, leaving only a faint, bitter smell behind.

When I woke the next morning, the sun was bright, and the window was clear. The scratches were gone. The window was smooth and unharmed, as if they had never existed. My parents were already up, bustling about with breakfast. I didn’t tell them about the night before. I just went to school, and for the rest of my time in that house, I never saw the creature again. But I still feel it sometimes, in the quiet moments, a presence at the edge of my vision, a tapping sound that echoes in my memory, and I know that it was real. I know that it left its marks on me, not on the glass, but somewhere deeper, and that it will always be there, waiting, at the window of my mind.

Years later, I moved far away, but the fear never fully faded. I find myself avoiding windows at night, and every time I hear three taps, I freeze, my heart pounding. The doctors say it’s just anxiety, but I know better. There are things in this world that we don’t understand, and some of them are watching us from just beyond the pane. I still have that old journal, tucked away in a box, and sometimes I read it, to remind myself that I wasn’t dreaming. And on certain nights, when the moon is full and the world is still, I can swear I hear a faint tap-tap-tap at my window, and when I look up, for just a split second, I see those black-red eyes, and I know that it never really left. It just found a new window to wait at.