13 Knocks

The house I grew up in was… odd, to say the least. I knew it, but I always hoped none of my friends did.

A friend of mine stayed with me one Friday night. For the sake of the story, we’ll call him Peter. We watched movies and had pizza that evening. After hours of talk and laughter, we got ready for bed. We didn’t sleep, however. We continued talking about classmates and classes for several hours longer. We kept my bedroom door closed so we wouldn’t wake anyone.

Suddenly, a knock at the door interrupted us.

We fell silent and listened.

My mother was the only other person in the home, and she’d gone to sleep hours earlier. Shortly thereafter, another knock came. We looked at one another, uneasy.

The knocks were slow and deliberate, not like someone asking to enter the room.

Another knock came, and we grew more afraid.

We looked at one another.

I counted out thirteen slow, deliberate knocks.

Then they stopped.

I crept to the door. I was terrified, but made myself continue. I opened the door to find… nothing.

My mom was asleep, and the hall outside my bedroom was empty.

I will never know what caused such steady knocks, or why they lasted so long.

The episode never repeated again.