By Swetha Amit
That night, the knock on the bedroom door in the treehouse we stayed in for spring break was a soft tapping noise, so soft that it felt like I had imagined it.
“Did you hear it?” my voice quivered as I shook my husband.
“Must be the wind,” he muttered sleepily.
I lay on the bed staring at the reflection of shadowy silhouettes of the still tree branches on the glass window. I didn’t think it was the wind, but I felt uncomfortable about getting up and opening the door. Besides, I didn’t want to broach the topic further, afraid it would annoy and push him further away from me.
The next night, the knock was a little louder. My breathing became rapid, and my forehead erupted into beads of sweat. My husband was asleep like the dead. I could imagine the logical engineer in him asking me who would knock on our door at midnight. It could not be the lodge staff or other guests. Why would they disturb us at this hour? His thick, bushy eyebrows would furrow into a frown, creating creases on his large brown forehead. Yet those snippets from a conversation I overheard a couple of days ago at the resort lobby triggered unease in my mind like rip currents in the ocean. Dance, full moon, spirit, girl. He dismissed it as futile gossip when I initially tried telling him and focused on his laptop instead. His stony silence in the room made it colder than usual.
On the third night, the knocking sounded like someone hammering nails on the wall. I jolted awake, and my heart pounded like I’d run fast up those hills we’d hiked earlier that morning. I shook my husband violently until he awoke.
“Hear that now?” I hissed.
He rubbed his eyes and looked at me, annoyed.
“Hear what?”
The knocking became louder. He switched on the night lamp beside him and listened intently, his face growing pale with every knock before he decided to holler and ask.
“Who’s there?”
The knocking stopped. There was a sound of feet shuffling, followed by a light jingling noise of anklets. A chill ran down my veins.
“Someone is playing a prank,” my husband reasoned, albeit hesitantly, like he was trying to convince himself. “Must be those bratty teenage kids we saw fooling around the lake.”
Then he hollered again.
“Next time you knock, I’ll complain to your parents. You hear me?”
There was silence outside the door. After a few minutes, he relaxed and began reminiscing about his adolescence. I listened intently, chuckling over the shameless pranks he played. It was nice to have this easy flow of conversation between us after a long time. Then, the discussion veered towards unruly kids and the hazards of parenting, something we had been procrastinating for the past five years despite the pressure from our families. After that unsuccessful brief period of attempts and an unexpected termination, I wasn’t sure we were ready. Yet that incident created this impenetrable wall between us. He’d begun to immerse himself in work until I forcibly suggested this retreat, to which he reluctantly agreed.
Later, a coyote’s howl pierced through the night’s silence. My husband closed his eyes while I watched the glaring white blur of the moon outside the window. I tossed and turned, my artistic mind stretching its imagination and mulling over the probability of that story being true.
The knock came as a thunderous blow on our last night. This time, we both sat upright in our bed, shivering under our blankets, fearful of the door breaking. He surprisingly held my hand, looking at my face, which probably spelled terror. We then reached for our phones. The batteries were drained despite putting them on charge. The sound of flapping wings and hooting reverberated in the air. My husband grabbed a walking stick and a flashlight and jumped out of bed in his white pajamas.
“Just wait until I get my hands on you,” he yelled.
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “Don’t leave me alone.”
He turned and stared at me. Traces of compassion were in his eyes, making my heart leap in hope until another knock disrupted this tender moment.
“Those tiresome kids,” my husband muttered, rushing to the door and motioning me to follow him.
I got out of bed wearing my pink polka-dotted nightgown. When he opened the door, a wave of cold air greeted us. There was nobody there. We stood there gaping into the darkness except for a patch where the silvery moonlight kissed the ground. We heard a wailing sound in the distance like some animal had been wounded. Or was it a lost child? Goosebumps pricked my skin. My husband ran down the ladder and sprinted towards the direction of the sound.
“Wait,” I called out, my voice echoing in the night. My head swirled with a zillion thoughts. What if it was the spirit I heard those lobby folks talk about? Was there a hidden secret in this lodge? Or an unseen force that was seeking revenge or some redemption? And why knock on our door? I didn’t have a reason not to believe in supernatural forces, even though I grew up in a house of bankers and lawyers who scoffed at such tales as mere folklore. But I heard of my friends’ families encountering strange occurrences in their hometowns, which I couldn’t dismiss as mere human figments of imagination. I continued chasing my husband, my bare feet running on the cold, muddy ground, with tiny stones poking them.
“Don’t leave me behind,” I cried.
He didn’t stop. I could still see his white pajamas glittering in the moonlight. My quads ached, my chest felt heavy, and my feet began to hurt and were probably bleeding. I continued running in search of an explanation behind that persistent knock. I continued running to bridge the distance between us until a cascade of darkness enveloped me in its arms.
* * *
Swetha is the author of two chapbooks, Cotton Candy from the Sky and Mango Pickle in Summer. An MFA graduate from the University of San Francisco, her works appear in Had, Flash Fiction Magazine, Oyez Review, etc.(https://swethaamit.com). Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.