The Thing That Knocks

THE THING THAT KNOCKS

  BY DUKE THOMPSON

  THE THING THAT KNOCKS

  Copyright © 2015 by Duke Thompson

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission from the author.

  THE THING THAT KNOCKS

  Every day for the past three years Francis came home from school looking forward to sinking back into his soft bed and letting his mind slip into his novels. This was his time to let the real world fade into the back of his mind where it would become a non-existing vapor for three or four hours. First, though, he had to perform his homework. What most would describe as “doing” was really just a performance, after all; most things in life are.

  Reading wasn’t a performance, however, and that was something Francis discovered right away. Reading was an escape from the circus of a world he lived in, because when Francis picked up that novel, he was doing it for the pure pleasure of letting a new world grow inside of his head, and although it was through the carefully constructed words of someone else, he was in control of just as much of the story as the author was, because it was happening inside of his own mind.

  Performing his homework wasn’t the only thing he had to do before he could begin his daily reading. He also had to participate in something his mother called “family interaction.” Some parts of that were not bad, but most times he would rather have been up in his room, nose stuck between the pages of one of his adventure novels. Luckily, the majority of family interaction time was sitting at the dinner table, and although there had to be at least some conversation during or after their meal, he could take his time eating, making it feel as if he were not participating in any family interaction at all, because . . . a boy must eat.

  It was one night in late November that Francis couldn’t fall asleep after reading a new type of novel he had never read or ever heard of before.

  That night was also the night the shadow was gone.

  The family across the street moved in about six months before that night. It wasn’t long before they installed two security lights above their two fancy cars that were never there during the day. Most people got a dog, or perhaps a gun, to protect themselves, but they seemed to think that their big bright lights would keep away any intruders.

  Francis never understood what the lights were for. He thought maybe they were really big night lights that keep the monsters away. For this reason he grew fond of the lights.

  Francis' mother often told him that the monsters were not real, and that he was too big to be believing in monsters, or demons, or any other hocus pocus.

  But Francis knew that the monsters were real. He could sense them. He had never seen one, but he knew that they watched him when he slept.

  Although Francis had blue drapes over his bedroom window, the light came right in, turning his room a glimmering blue shade. Between the two lights outside and his green lava lamp on his bedside table that was just begging to be pushed off by the massive pile of disheveled paperback books—mostly westerns—Francis thought that he had enough light to keep all the monsters in the world from creeping into his room and snatching him up for dinner.

  It was only a few weeks after the people across the street had installed that bright light that a very bizarre thing occurred. They would come on after dark, maybe thirty minutes after the street lights. The light came right through the window, over the bed, and plastered itself across the gray wall above Francis’ toy box. However, a single shadow, long and thin, ran from the ceiling to the floor, as if something blocked the light, but—as far Francis could tell—nothing did. Besides, there was nothing in his room of that size or shape.

  So Francis got out of bed to investigate. He went over to peek out his window, looking at the light. It hurt his eyes, but that had no bother on Francis. What did have a great bother on Francis was the fact that there was nothing between him and the light, meaning whatever was making that shadow was coming from inside his room. There was also no shadow on the curtain, which had further proved that the source of the shadow couldn’t have been coming from outside. He even walked over to the shadow one night, a while after, and he waved his hand right in front of it—only an inch away from the wall. The light hit his hand, but never the wall.

  When Francis walked all the way in front of it, the light would pat him square in the chest. When he moved away, the light would never hit the wall, as if someone had sprayed light repellant right in that spot. He was sure that whatever had been in the way of the light couldn’t have been between him and the wall. Could it? He was flat against it.

  The wall looked as if it had been painted black in that spot, but it hadn't. The wall was the same shade of gray all the way across during the day time. The shadow only showed up after the lights came on.

  When Francis went to bed that first night of the shadows appearance, he turned around and looked at the shadow with cold fear in his eyes, but only for a moment before running and leaping into his bed, then tossing his Adventure Time comforter over his head.

  That shadow stayed there on the wall for the next five months. Occasionally Francis would peer out from under his blankets to look at that shadow, and he could almost swear, that for a moment, it started to lean towards him.

  Soon Francis seemed to get used to the bizarre shadow that lingered about his wall. Until that cold night in November, that is. Because on that night, the shadow was gone.

  Over the years Francis had read all kinds of novels, but more recently, reading stories that took place in the 1800’s was liking going back in time. A simpler time. One that his ten year old mind could understand.

  Francis had just finished one of his western novels that night, and his thoughts ran deep.

  “Boy o’ boy, that was a good one,” he whispered to himself, as he thought about the book's keen storyline.

  He was scared though. The western he had read wasn't one of his normal ones. On the back of the book on the left hand side where it told you the genre that the book fell under, it said: HORROR WESTERN. Whoever came up with the good idea to cross the two genres was an utter genius, he thought.

  Francis tried to sleep but found himself unable. He kept thinking about a line from his Horror Western where one of the guys had said, “If you see a black creature running at you in the night, with glowing red eyes, don't run, and don't panic, because it feeds off of your fear.”

  When a ten year old is spooked, and it's 11:06 at night, he starts to hear sounds that he normally wouldn't: The tree's outside scraping on his window, the sound of the refrigerator running from down stairs, and even the spider making its web in the corner of the room.

  But then came a sound that really put him into a staggering stun and sent his ten year old brain into a wonder of possibilities regarding the sound. As if in that moment, when his resting head snapped to his right, and his eyes grew twice in size, he had been zapped into another realm; a realm where that sound could have made some kind of sense. Because he wanted it to, so badly, he did. Because if it made sense, he just might have been okay.

  The sound: Knock, Knock, Knock.

  The knocks came from his closed bedroom door, and at the sound, he nearly peed himself.

  A sense came over Francis. A sudden and absolutely horrible feeling. One he would remember for the rest of his life. That was, if he even lived past tonight.

  First, chills ran down his spine, down his arms, legs, and even each one of his toes. The fierce chills only subsided for a moment before it turned into an itching sensations. The thought of tiny bugs making nests inside of his bone marrow jumped to mind. His jaw tightened. He couldn’t move. The itching spread to under his fingernails, quickly turning into blistering hot pain.


  Francis opened his mouth, very wide, like he did when he went in for a dentist visit, and tried to scream, but nothing happened. No sound sprang from his voice box.

  It only made the pain worse. The pain was all he could think about while sweat spilled from his flesh. He couldn’t even squirm. He could only think about the pain, and pray to the heavens that this unbearably ruinous agony would soon come to an end. His shoulders tightened, and the pain became more inflamed. Never in his life had pain came on so suddenly . . . so unexpected . . . with no apparent cause.

  The second thing that happened after the knock on the door—the knock he had now forgotten about; something he wouldn’t have done if it wasn’t for the misery he was in—came only moments after the burning, itching, mantra of madness. Suddenly he was unable to breath. For a moment, he forgot all about the feeling of ice cold bones and insufferable itchy flesh, but only because he was suffocating.

  Although he was completely unable to use his lungs, his chest still moved up and down. But it was his heart that caused this movement.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud . . .

  His mouth hung open, still trying to take in air, still trying to scream, trying to do something . . . he didn’t know what. He just wanted it to stop.

  And just when he thought he had no chance, and a brief thought came to