Late at night, the Thompsons’ cozy suburban home hummed with the soft glow of a single lamp in the living room. Outside, the streets were deserted, the kind of stillness that felt staged, like the world was holding its breath. The clock on the mantle ticked softly, each second swallowed by the thick quiet. Mark and Lisa had just settled into bed, their voices dropping into sleepy murmurs as they drifted toward the pull of dreams.
Then it came. The faint creak from the back door. It was the kind of sound you didn’t mistake for old wood shifting or a gust of wind nudging the frame. It was deliberate, weight shifting on hinges, a pressure applied with care. Mark froze mid-sentence. His first thought was a burglar, but there was something odd about the sound, a slowness that made it feel… patient.
He swung his legs off the bed and reached for the baseball bat leaning against his nightstand. Its smooth handle was familiar, comforting in a way, though his palms had already grown damp. “Stay here,” he whispered to Lisa, keeping his voice low enough that even the dark seemed not to notice. She nodded stiffly, clutching the blanket up to her chin.
As Mark crept down the carpeted hallway, the air seemed to thicken, as though the house itself knew something had entered. Halfway down the stairs, he caught it—the metallic scent of wet soil, sharp and clinging, like the air after a fresh grave had been dug. His chest tightened.
From the kitchen, a shadow darted across his vision, moving with a jerky, unnatural rhythm. It was too tall to be human, its limbs too thin, like something hastily assembled from wrong parts. Mark’s heart hammered so loudly he thought it would give him away. Before he could take another step, the lights flickered twice and went out, plunging the house into a suffocating blackness that seemed thicker than night itself.
He heard the sound of something wet sliding along the tile. A sudden scream tore through the air from upstairs—Lisa’s. It wasn’t the startled kind, but the kind that came from seeing something your mind rejected.
Mark bolted back up the stairs, every step a sprint against his own dread. When he reached the bedroom, he found Lisa pressed against the far wall, her trembling hand pointing toward the window. Outside, framed by the faint glow of the streetlight, a figure pressed its warped face against the glass.
Its eyes were hollow pits, the kind of emptiness that didn’t just lack light but seemed to drink it in. Its mouth was stretched into a lipless grin, too wide, as if the skin had been pulled back and stapled into place. The grin never wavered as it tapped the glass with a long, bony finger.
“Tap….”
“Tap….”
“Tap….”
Mark’s grip on the bat faltered, and it slipped from his hands, landing with a dull thud. The thing didn’t flinch. The tapping continued, slow, deliberate, each knock syncing perfectly with another sound—some heavy thing thudding from inside the walls, moving upward, closer.
The front door slammed open downstairs, the crash echoing up through the stairwell. Mark knew they had locked it. He had checked it himself before bed. Wet, uneven footsteps began to ascend the stairs, each one followed by the squelch of something dripping onto the wood.
The tapping at the window stopped. The grinning face melted back into the shadows outside, disappearing as though it had never been there. But the footsteps in the hallway grew louder, pausing just outside their bedroom door. For a moment, the only sound was the ragged breathing of both Mark and Lisa. Then came the knock.
It wasn’t the timid knock of a guest or the pounding of a desperate intruder—it was slow, patient, the same rhythm as the tapping on the glass. Tap… tap… tap… The doorknob twitched once, twice, then fell still. The next thing Mark remembered was the dark swallowing everything.
By morning, the sun poured weak light over the quiet street. The neighbors noticed the Thompsons’ front door was hanging open, the back door torn partially off its hinges. Muddy handprints smeared the frame and trailed deep into the house, fading into the carpet like stains that didn’t want to be cleaned.
Inside, the air was damp and cold, the kind of cold that clung to the skin. The kitchen chairs were overturned, the living room lamp smashed, the walls scarred with deep, jagged scratches as if something had tried to claw its way deeper inside. Upstairs, the bed was unmade, sheets tangled like a struggle had taken place. The baseball bat lay splintered in two, as if it had been bitten clean through.
On the bedroom wall, scratched deep into the plaster in letters that seemed too uniform to have been made by human hands, were the words:
WE LIVE HERE NOW
There was no sign of Mark or Lisa. No blood, no bodies. Just absence.
When the police arrived, they searched every room, every closet, and finally the attic. From below, the officers swore they heard a faint, rhythmic tapping from above. But when they climbed up, the sound faded into silence, leaving only the smell of wet earth and something faintly metallic.
For weeks, investigators came and went. They found no forced entry beyond the broken doors, no fingerprints on the windows, no footprints that could be traced. The only thing they agreed on was that whatever had been in the house didn’t break in, it came in.
Now, the Thompsons’ house sits empty. Realtors tried to sell it, but each showing ended the same way. Buyers stepping inside, pausing, and suddenly deciding they weren’t interested. Some said the air felt wrong, too heavy, like walking into a room after a fight where no one spoke. Others swore they caught movement in their peripheral vision—a tall, thin shadow slipping between rooms.
At night, passersby whisper about the house. Some claim to have seen a pale face staring from the upstairs window, its grin wide and unblinking. Others hear faint tapping on the glass as they walk by, even when the curtains are drawn.
But the strangest stories come from those who live closest. They say that, sometimes, when the street is quiet and the wind dies down, you can hear the front door creak open, footsteps moving slowly through the hallways, and the attic tapping starting up again.
It never lasts long. Just enough to let you know whatever claimed the Thompsons never left.
And it’s only a matter of time before the house isn’t satisfied with staying empty.
