🩸 The Tap, Tap, Tap

> I never meant to lie about the knocking.

It started three nights ago—tap, tap, tap—from inside the kitchen wall.

I told Sam it was just the pipes. He believed me. Or pretended to.

But tonight, he’s not home.

And the tapping’s spelling my name.

---

The first time it happened, I had just set down my tea. Earl Grey. No sugar. That matters, I think, because now the cup feels like a fixed point. A marker of before. Before things shifted. Before the strange began to crawl in.

Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap.

It wasn’t loud, but it was wrong. You know how you can feel when something is off, even if you can’t say why? Like when your favorite shirt smells different, or when the silence in a room gets... heavy?

That’s what the knocking was. Too soft to be threatening, too rhythmic to ignore.

---

Sam said I was overworked. “You need a break, Liv,” he told me, rubbing the back of his neck like he always does when he wants to avoid a fight. “It’s just old pipes. Or next door’s kid with a drum kit.”

We don’t have neighbors with kids.

Still, I nodded, because it was easier than admitting I was scared. Because the fear had a smell now — something stale and metallic — and I didn’t want to explain that.

He stayed with me that night, in the kitchen, arms crossed, pretending not to hear it.

When it came again—

Tap. Tap. Tap.

—he looked at me like I’d imagined it.

---

Last night, it followed me.

I left the kitchen light on. I curled up on the couch. But the knocking... it moved. It traveled with me, slow and deliberate, like someone dragging their fingers along the inside of the wall.

Tap... tap... tap...

From the hallway.

From behind the bathroom mirror.

From the bedroom wall.

I whispered, “Who’s there?” just once, stupidly. The way a child does when they’re trying to convince themselves they’re brave.

And then—

Tap.

---

Sam didn’t come home today.

He called around six, said something about staying late at the office. His voice sounded tight, distracted. I don’t know if it was guilt or fear.

I didn’t ask.

Now it’s 11:12 PM. The lights are off. I’m sitting in the kitchen with the tea again—same cup, same spot, same flavor. Everything the same as three nights ago. I want to see if the knocking comes back when I recreate the moment exactly.

It does.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap.

I grab my notepad. I scribble the rhythm. It’s not random. I recognize it.

Morse code.

L. I. V.

My name.

---

That shouldn’t be possible.

I back away from the wall slowly. My breathing is loud in my ears. I don’t make a sound. I hold still.

Then, from the same place in the wall, clear as someone whispering through a vent:

> “Let me out.”

I screamed. I couldn’t help it.

---

The police didn’t find anything. Of course they didn’t.

They knocked on the wall, shrugged, wrote it off as stress. “Could be rats,” one said. “Or pipes settling. These old buildings make all kinds of noises.”

But they didn’t see the scratches.

When I moved the stove to show them where the sound was loudest, I saw them. Etched into the plaster, shallow and frantic:

LET ME OUT. LET ME OUT. LET ME—

Cut off mid-word.

They didn’t even look.

They left me a number for a therapist and drove off.

---

I didn’t sleep last night. I couldn’t.

At some point, I closed my eyes just to rest them. When I opened them again, the tea was gone. The cup—clean and dry—sat in the middle of the table.

There were fingerprints on the rim.

Not mine.

Not Sam’s.

Too long. Too thin.

---

I’ve started to hear it even when I leave the house. Just faintly. Tap. Tap. Tap. In stairwells. On elevator doors. Once, behind a mirror in a store. I thought it was following me. But I’m starting to wonder if it’s not following me at all.

Maybe it’s already inside me.

---

I asked Sam not to come back. I told him I needed space. That it was too much.

It was a lie. I didn’t want him here because something in the walls wants him more.

I hear it now, even as I write this. In the floorboards. Under the sink. Above the ceiling tiles.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

It’s not asking anymore. It’s angry.

---

If you’re reading this, I want you to understand.

This isn’t a ghost story. It’s not a joke.

It’s a warning.

Don’t talk to it.

Don’t give it your name.

Don’t answer the tap.

And whatever you do—

Don’t let it out.