He had tried to forget the park throughout the entire day, burying it beneath classes, conversations, homework, anything that could anchor him to the idea that daylight still represented safety. But even as the sun moved across the sky in its predictable arc, a part of him remained stuck under those silent trees, waiting for the next sound his mind could no longer unhear. Every time someone tapped their pen on a desk or a shoe tapped rhythmically on the floor, he felt his muscles tighten before he forced himself to breathe and pretend none of this was changing him.
Night came again before he was ready for it, and once every window in the house had gone dark, the tension returned as if it had been waiting just outside the door, patient and confident that he would come back. His room no longer felt like his territory; the familiar shapes of posters and shelves turned jagged, and the air cooled faster than it should have, as though night had slipped in early just for him. He didn't turn his room's light on because illumination didn't feel comforting anymore; it felt like stepping onto a stage where something waited for the cue to watch.
He sat on the edge of his bed, listening to the quiet house where his parents breathed behind their own door, unaware that another presence lurked somewhere beyond their understanding. The cola bottle was still on his desk, a silent reminder of the moment he stepped into danger and didn't walk away unchanged. He stared at it too long, then looked away sharply, angry at himself for letting an object gain control over his focus.
He had made a mistake last night by acting like prey, running without thinking, and he knew fear had a scent, a pulse, a rhythm. If the creature hunted rhythm, he needed to break his patterns. He shifted his weight slowly, knees bent, both feet placed on the floor like he was preparing to react without the sound of his steps giving him away.
The first click came from outside.
Not close — distant, cautious, testing the boundary of his awareness.
He froze, counting the seconds between his breaths, waiting for another.
Click.
Slightly closer, but still respecting the walls of the house, like it wanted him to confirm its arrival before it moved in. He imagined the thing perched overhead again, maybe on the roof tiles, maybe clinging to the gutter with too many joints bending the wrong directions, watching his window with the patience predators earned through centuries of perfecting fear.
He leaned forward just enough to see the curtains sway faintly, not from wind but from the shifting air pressure of something outside that breathed too quietly to hear unless you listened with terror sharpened into instinct. He wanted to grab his phone and search for strategies, theories, anything from the SCP community that could give him an advantage against something like SCP-4975 — something that measured time by ending it — but opening the screen would create a glow and that glow might become a signal that he was ready to be seen.
Instead he kept to darkness, fingertips resting on the floor so he could feel vibrations, hoping that if it climbed the walls the movement wouldn't go unnoticed. He imagined the creature calculating his location in the house, adjusting its approach to his changed behavior. It wasn't just following him anymore; it was studying the distance between his courage and his fear, testing exactly how far he could bend before breaking.
His heartbeat became a conflict again — too loud inside his own skull yet somehow not loud enough to warn anyone else. He tried to keep the rhythm uneven, breaths broken into strange intervals so the clicking couldn't synchronize with him like it once had. The world outside responded with silence, the kind that felt staged, like the whole neighborhood had paused just to let the next sound have meaning.
A new click — above his window.
A tap of something hard against the glass.
No rhythm this time — just a single knock of intention.
He didn't move.
His muscles locked into stillness not out of panic but out of calculated restraint, because prey that flinches gives its position away and prey that gives up rhythm becomes easier to strike. He kept his breathing shallow, forcing his eyes to adjust to every shifting shade of darkness around the window.
The glass turned reflective, catching what little light the night offered, and in that faint surface he almost saw movement — not a face, not a shape fully formed, but the suggestion of a silhouette pressed close enough to see him if he revealed one more detail about where he stood.
The tapping resumed, slower this time, like a finger with too few joints trying to mimic human communication, each strike spaced far apart as though asking a question in a language older than speech.
Then silence again.
But silence didn't mean safety — silence meant the next phase.
He backed away from the window without turning the curtains, careful not to create any sudden visual cues. The room's darkness felt thicker now, a pressure gathering around him as if the night inside the walls deepened to match something waiting outside. He reached his closet with slow steps, gently twisting the knob so it wouldn't rattle. He didn't want to hide; hiding wasn't survival, hiding was waiting to be found. He needed a place to see without being seen.
He left the door cracked just enough to slip inside and lowered himself into the narrow space between hanging clothes, allowing the fabric to drape over him like a shield that might break the silhouette of his body. He pressed his ear to the closet wall that faced the outside, letting the vibration tell him what sound could not.
Faint clicks climbed the siding of the house.
Not fast.
Confident.
Every joint snapping softly like a metronome without a conductor — time keeping itself.
The sound reached the roofline, paused, then the pressure shifted again, as if something large crouched above the doorway into his room. The ceiling creaked just once, wood bending under weight not meant to exist in a place built for humans.
He closed his eyes, not to hide but to control focus.
He counted.
One breath, uneven.
Two breaths, slower.
Three —
The clicks stopped above him.
For the first time since this began, he understood the truth:
It wasn't just hunting him.
It was waiting for him to prove he understood the rules.
And tonight, he did.