The last bus of the night hissed to a stop, its doors folding open with a sound like a sigh. Liam stepped out into the damp, clinging air of a town that slept too deeply, leaving him alone under a halo of sputtering yellow light. The streetlights further down the road were already winking out, one by one, like a line of dying embers. The town was called Oakhaven, a name that evoked gentle, rolling fields, but tonight it felt less like a sanctuary and more like a cage of rotting wood.The silence was the first thing to get under his skin. It wasn't the kind of quiet that follows the rush of a day's end, but a deep, pressurized absence of sound, as if the entire town was holding its breath. Liam's footsteps echoed unnaturally loud on the pavement, a rhythmic, solitary beat against the backdrop of an impending dread. He quickened his pace, the worn-out soles of his shoes slapping against the concrete.He passed the old library, its dark windows reflecting the streetlights like blank, unblinking eyes. He passed the butcher shop, a single, disturbingly white bone ornament hanging in the window. And then, he passed the houses.
They were all identical, two stories of grey stone with neat, symmetrical windows. The unsettling thing wasn't their uniformity, but the fact that every single window was perfectly, impeccably dark. No late-night readers, no soft blue glow of a television, no nightlights in the children's rooms. Just black squares, watching.A gust of wind, smelling of wet earth and something unpleasantly sweet, rattled the bare branches of a nearby tree. He glanced up and saw it, or thought he did. A figure standing on the porch of a house a hundred yards away. A woman in a long, dark dress, perfectly still. He squinted, trying to make out details in the gloom, but the distance and the failing streetlights made it impossible. When he looked again, she was gone.Liam wrote it off as a trick of the light, an overactive imagination fueled by the eerie quiet. But as he continued on, he started noticing them again. A woman in a dark dress, on a porch. And another. And another. All of them standing in the same rigid, unsettling posture.
They weren't moving, and they weren't looking at him. They were looking at their own front doors, as if waiting for someone to answer.He was close to his own street now. The knot in his stomach tightened with each step. He fumbled for his keys, the cold metal a small, comforting weight in his shaking hand. When he finally reached his own house, he saw her. A woman in a long, dark dress, standing on his porch. But this time, she wasn't looking at the door. She was looking straight at him.Her face was a smear of darkness, devoid of features, but he could feel her gaze. It was a physical weight, pressing in on him. He froze, his key half-inserted into the lock, a cold sweat beading on his forehead. The woman didn't move. She simply stood, watching. The silence returned, more absolute and terrifying than before.Finally, with a tremendous effort of will, Liam wrenched his gaze away from her and shoved the key into the lock, twisting it with a frantic, desperate motion. The door swung open and he stumbled inside, slamming it shut behind him, the heavy thud echoing through the unnaturally silent house.
He fumbled for the light switch, his fingers shaking too violently to find it.Then, he heard it. A gentle, insistent knocking on the other side of the door. Knock. Knock. Knock. He held his breath, his heart hammering against his ribs. The knocking stopped. He let out a slow, shuddering exhale.And then, he heard a new sound, a tiny, rhythmic tapping coming from a different direction. He followed the sound, his legs feeling like lead, and found himself in the living room. The sound was coming from the window. He peered through the blinds and saw her again, the woman from his porch, now standing on the other side of the glass.She raised her hand. Not to wave, not to knock, but to press her palm against the window. He saw the imprint of her five-fingered hand against the glass. He stumbled backward, his blood turning to ice. The tapping began again, this time on the glass, following a familiar rhythm.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It was the same rhythm as his heartbeat.He backed away from the window, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The tapping continued, relentless. He covered his ears, trying to block out the sound, but it was inside his head now, a sickening drumbeat marching in time with his own pulse.He fled to the basement, locking the heavy steel door behind him. The sound of the tapping was fainter now, but it was still there. He huddled in a corner, hugging his knees to his chest, his eyes darting around the dusty, cobweb-filled room. He was safe here, he told himself. Nothing could get to him here.He felt something touch his hair. He looked up, his terror a solid, frozen block in his chest. Hanging directly above him, from a single, frayed rope, was a woman. Not the one from the porch, but one he knew intimately.
His own mother, long dead, her face a serene, familiar mask. She was suspended upside down, her long hair brushing his scalp.Her eyes were open, and in their cloudy depths, he could see a reflection. Not of him, huddled and terrified in the corner, but of a woman in a long, dark dress, standing on his front porch. The woman looked up and smiled, a dark, gaping wound in the center of her face.And then, Liam felt the tapping on his shoulder.