Ten year passed.
Emma never told anyone what she had truely seen that morning.
The police called it a break-in attempt. The Muddy footprints were blamed on a group of Bandits. The stra ge image caught by the security camera dissapered that day itself. Every official explanation sounded reasonable.
None of them explained why Emma woke at 3:00 a.m. every night particularily.
For years she slept with her lights on.
She never lived in the same house more than 6 months. She covered every window with curtain and never answered a call after sunset, no matter who it is.
Peopke called her paranoid.
She let them.
It was easier than telling them the truth.
Eventually, she became a criminal pycologist, hoping to understand fear than let it rule her.
She studied the human mind, convinced herself that monsters existed only in niggtmares, and slowly built a normal life.
Or at least something that looked normal.
At a rainy evening, Emma returned to her apartment.
As she locked the apartmemt door, she noticed something lying on the welcome mat.
An old photograph.
Her hands froze.
It was the same security camera picture from ten years ago.
The faceless figure still stood outside her childhood bedroom window.
But, this time there was a little girl behind him.
She stood inside the bedroom, staring directly at the window.
Emma's breath got caught in he throat.
He little girl wasen't there before.
She turned the picture around.
On the back, something was written in red, lookibg ike blood.
"|ㄒ 卄卂丂 丂乇乇几 ㄚㄖㄩ 几ㄖ山 ㄒㄖㄖ"
The lights in tge hallway flickered.
Her apartement building went silent.
No footsteps.
No elevaters.
No voices.
Only silence.
Then...
𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐂𝐊. 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐂𝐊. 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐂𝐊.
Emma didn't move.
Three more taps were followed.
Exactly, the same rhythm she remembered from childhood.
Her pulsed raced, but she forced herself to stay still.
"I'm not opening it" she whispered.
The knocking stopped.
Relief washed over her for a second.
Then came another three knocks.
Not from the door.
From the window.
Emma's apartement was on the twelfth floor.
There was no balcony.
No fire escapes.
Nothing outside the window except open air.
The sound came again.
𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐂𝐊. 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐂𝐊. 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐂𝐊.
She reached for the curtains but remembered the photograph.
"𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑐𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑎𝑦"
Slowly she turned away from the window.
Instead, she looked towards the hallway mirror.
Her reflection stared back at her.
Behind her was...
...The same figure stood.
Emma spun around.
Nothing.
The apartment was empty.
The mirror still showed the picture.
Then the reflection smiled.
Not Emma.
The thing.
A smile stretched across his black face as if they're were invisible lips.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Somewhere in the apartment...
Someone laughed.
Softly.
Patiently.
As if, it had waited then years for Emma to come.
Emma refused to scream.
Fear had ruled her childhood now she didn't wanted to let it rule ber anymore. She will rule herself now.
Her trembling hands took out tge flashlight kelt in the kitchen drawer. She turned it on and looked around.
Then came a sound again.
𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐂𝐊. 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐂𝐊. 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐂𝐊.
Not from one place.
From everywhere. Her bedroom. Drawing room. Kitchen. Everywhere.
Emma pressed her hands over her ears.
"Leave me alone!" she screamed.
The knocking stopped.
The silence was worse.
Then came a whispee.
"𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒆𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒘𝒂𝒚..."
Her blood froze.
That was what the creature had wanted all these years.
Not for her to open the door.
Not for her to look at the window.
It wanted her to stop watching 𝐢𝐭.
The apartment grew dangerously cold.
The flashlight's batterey died.
Through the moonlight she saw...
...Six toes.
Every print led towards her.
None led away.
Emma slowly stepped back until her shoulders bumped into the wall.
There's nowhere to run now.
The shadows gathered in the center of the room.
Then they asembled and formed a black figure.
Tall.
Silent.
Instead of attacking, it pointed behind her.
"No" she whispered. "I'm done looking where you want me to look"
For the first time, the creature hesitated.
Its head tilted.
Then came a voice behind her.
"Pumpkin..."
Her father's voice.
She closed her eyes.
"You aren't my father"
Then the voice changed.
"Emma...please"
Her little brother.
Then her mother.
Then her 𝐨𝐰𝐧 voice.
Every word begged her to look around.
Tears rolled down her face, but she remained still.
"I know what you are"
The creature took another step.
"You feed on fear", Emma said, forcing each word through tremblibg lips. "You intimate the people we love. You make us look away. But, you only have power when we choose fear.
Cracks formed on his face.
The knocking returned, louder than it was.
The walls shook.
The windiws maked noise.
The apatment growned as it would collapse any second.
Emma did not move.
She stared directly at the creature.
"I see you"
The faceless figure's body started crumbling, until they're was clear air, no darkness.
A scream came in the room, not from a mouth but from everywhere.
The knocking came fastly and more loudly than it was.
𝐁𝐀𝐍𝐆. 𝐁𝐀𝐍𝐆. 𝐁𝐀𝐍𝐆.
Then...
Nothing.
Silence.
Warm.
Peaceful.
Sunlight spread through the room.
The apartment looked normal.
No footprints.
No shadows.
No faceless creature.
Only an old photo lying on the floor.
Emma picked it up.
The faceless figure was gone. The window reflected only anempty yard beneath the morning sky.
For the first time in ten years, she smiled.
Months passed.
No knocks came.
She believed that whatever had hunted her family was gone, 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫.
Years later, Emma wrote a book about fear, not ghosts, but the way fear tricks her mind into believing darkness as ghosts.
People often asked what inspired it.
She always gave the same answer.
"Some doors should never be opened"
The book became a bestsellar.
Most readers bwlieved it was fiction.
Only Emma knew the truth.
And, every year on the anniversary night of that terrible night, she would wake up at 3:00 a.m.
She would listen.
No knocking.
Only silence.
Then she would smile, close her eyes, and go back to sleep.
Because the bravest thibg a person can do is...
...Refuse to answer whem darkness cones knocking on your door.
