Who Was Knocking on My Window?

Fear licked at his mind. His trembling hand could barely hold the flat box glowing with white light.

From its feel and shape to its glow, it had been made to resemble something familiar to Kraft. And yet it was utterly strange. Only its hollow exterior had been imitated; its empty interior could provide no more than a pale light, too weak to illuminate its surroundings.

Kraft turned the glowing side facedown on the floor and kicked it away. With a faint scraping sound, the strange object that looked so much like a phone slid toward the wall and let out a low, crisp clack.

The only light left in the room was a sliver of moonlight.

He slowly backed away, reaching behind himself until his hand touched the rough, cold wall. His mind raced, trying to figure out what the thing in his hand had been and why it had appeared here.

This was probably what a familiar stranger was like. The familiar parts only made the object seem more abnormal. It had a similar shape, yet was completely different in reality, as if its maker had cut corners because of limited abilities.

The appearance of something that should not exist filled Kraft with a profound sense of unreality. Doubt began to grow, and he questioned whether the scene was real.

He felt he must be trapped in some bizarre dream. He knew what was happening to him, yet could not wake up, and was stuck for the moment in an illusion. But everything felt so real. The rough texture of the wall, the sounds he heard—all the details were vivid and complete.

I was too reckless when I kicked that thing away, Kraft thought. I should stay quiet in unfamiliar surroundings.

That was part of his grandfather's teachings, too. The shock of this abnormal situation had thrown him off his usual rhythm. He should have been more careful.

Still, things weren't too bad. When he had flopped onto the bed, he'd forgotten to unbuckle the scabbard at his waist. His most trusted weapon was still with him.

He pressed his left hand against the metal buckle holding it in place, kept his back to the wall, and silently moved toward the door. A place where he could quickly relocate and create obstacles was always the first thing to consider, whatever the situation.

His outstretched right hand found the door bolt. It was right where it should be. If anything went wrong, and he didn't know what was happening, the best choice was always to open the door and run.

His vision gradually adjusted to the darkness. The cells in his retina needed time to switch to night vision, shifting from the clear images of a well-lit place to a less distinct mode suited to dim surroundings.

The outlines of the table, chairs, and wooden bed emerged. The room seemed unchanged; there was no clichéd "unfamiliar ceiling" scene.

It was simply too quiet. The silence was so deep that Kraft could hear his heart pounding like a drum and his deliberately slowed, restrained breathing. Blood rushed through his body, carrying oxygen and rousing his powerful motor system to face whatever unknown threat might be lurking in this abnormal situation.

Normally, even in the middle of the night, there would be some noise from other rooms that wasn't suitable for all ages, and the innkeeper downstairs would be shifting the tables and chairs around.

If Old Wood were here, he would lower his voice and say, in the same deep tone he always used to tell his mysterious tales, "The dead don't make a sound..."

Kraft was long past the age when a silent night could scare him, but the more he thought about all this, the more it chilled him. A strange object had appeared on his body, and the inn was unnaturally quiet. It practically screamed that something was very wrong.

After pressing down the door bolt, he stopped moving altogether. He stayed where he was, calming his heartbeat and breathing, and waited for anyone or anything lurking in the dark and silence to give itself away.

Patience was something Kraft had learned in military training. Trading time for his life was never a bad bargain.

In the silent darkness, he met silence with silence. It was an instinct engraved in his genes, born from bizarre tales of impulsive kin vanishing into the darkness in ancient times. Human beings had an instinctive reflex to stay quiet when all was still.

He waited, nerves taut, his keen senses sifting through an endless stream of information. His sense of time played tricks on him; in the stillness, it was hard to tell a few seconds from several minutes.

After what felt like an endless wait—or perhaps only a short while—he noticed that the moonlight on the floor had changed. That sliver of white light had grown brighter and stretched farther across the floor. At first, it had been some distance from the bed. Now it had reached the foot of it.

It seemed the light source was shifting, drawing closer to his window. It was coming toward him, slowly and steadily.

[That isn't the moon.]

His mind stirred, revealing what the light source really was.

[You've seen it before.]

That pearly, gentle light was drawing closer, soft and mild. Unless he watched carefully, he would never notice how far it had moved, lulled by an illusion of peace and calm.

Kraft slowly drew back the door bolt with his right hand. He couldn't stay in this room any longer.

The light grew stronger. It streamed through the gap, and the thin strands of white light on the floor widened, changing from faint lines into bands that shone almost blindingly.

But that warm, gentle quality stubbornly remained, like a disguise of soft fur that could never be shed, never changing with the seasons and appearing at any time, no matter how out of place.

The door bolt came free. Kraft felt for the handle and carefully began pulling the door inward, little by little.

The light source had drawn closer. As its brightness reached its peak, there came a faint creak. The light leaking through the gap shivered and shifted. Something was pressing from outside, bending the flimsy wooden board.

But the window was latched from the inside and opened outward.

Kraft had already eased the door open wide enough to squeeze through. He turned sideways and slipped out. He would move to the first floor, where he would have more room to maneuver. The tables and chairs arranged in rows would favor someone quick on their feet.

He slipped through the gap nimbly, without making a sound. Before leaving, he took one last look at the window. The light source was still outside, and it hadn't moved.

"Knock, knock."

A rhythmic tapping came from outside the window. From the sound alone, it could have been a polite visitor. The gentle, courteous knocks made Kraft think of Romeo calling on Juliet in the middle of the night. Restrained, yet meant to draw attention, they inspired an inexplicable trust.

But this was the second floor. Only a victim whose mind was muddled, halfway between sleep and waking, would entertain a visitor at the window.

He slipped the door bolt into his pocket. The piece of hardwood had some heft to it; it would work well if he had to make quick contact with someone who got in his way.

"Knock, knock, knock!" Another round of tapping sounded, more urgent this time.

Kraft eased the door shut and backed toward the stairs. He still hadn't figured out how to cross the unstable stretch without making a sound.

A teeth-grating creak came from the room, probably from the window. Something was forcing it, and he could imagine the flimsy board bowing, on the verge of breaking.

The thing clinging to the outer wall had far less patience than Kraft. That was good news. It suggested that it acted on instinct rather than having anything like human intelligence—not even as much as some of the cunning beasts in the forest.

As he backed toward the top of the stairs, a sharp crack of splitting wood joined the sound of crushing and bending. Splinters flew, struck the half-closed door, and skittered across the floor.

It had chosen to gradually increase its strength and crush the whole thing, rather than repeatedly ram into it. That counterintuitive approach made Kraft suspect it didn't have anything like a mammal's muscles and bones.

The sounds showed that it was still applying more force. More sharp cracks rang out, and the overwhelmed window frame was torn from the wall and slammed to the floor.

A fine, grating noise filled the air. It was no longer the sound of wood being crushed, but a low, vaguely familiar murmur, impossible to make out. It came from an unknown vocal organ, vibrating and echoing through the space.

White light spilled from under the door. It had entered Kraft's room through the window, accompanied by a sticky sound like a paste brush slapping against a wall. Rather than entering, it was more like something soft and slimy being poured inside.

The nauseating sound was like a bucketful of stinking soft-bodied sea creatures, reaching rotted tentacles out to slap against the bucket's sides. It mixed with the indistinct murmuring, while somehow giving off an incomprehensible temptation that seemed to come from the mind itself.

Kraft lightly bit the tip of his tongue, enduring the nausea that made him want to vomit, and gripped the railing as he crept downstairs. He hoped it wouldn't realize it needed to open the door just yet.

The first floor, usually lit by a brazier, was pitch-black. The night receptionist was nowhere to be seen. Kraft could only tread lightly on the wooden steps, leaning most of his weight on the handrail to keep any loose board from letting out a shrill squeak.

Those dozen or so steps had never felt so agonizing. He had to use every footwork technique he'd ever learned, keeping up his speed while staying perfectly silent, so as not to attract its attention.

The light beneath the door shifted erratically. The light source was wandering around the room.

His mind used the sounds it had gathered to picture it as a gigantic soft-bodied creature. The mucus on its surface muffled the friction of its movement, while soft appendages helped it crawl along flat surfaces.

Something sharp scraped across the floor. It might have been wood chips, or the sharp teeth of a predatory organ set within contracting, writhing tissue.

Kraft didn't know how it had found him. Perhaps it had marked him during his shallow dream in the Salt Tide District during the day, then silently crept up to his window at night.

Had it entered the real world, or was he being hunted in some dream he could never wake from? He bit down, felt the pain in his tongue, and still couldn't tell whether it was real.

There were nineteen steps in all. Kraft counted down in his head. Only two remained. Once he was off the dangerous second floor and on the first, he could hide in the kitchen or escape through the front door.

His body, practiced in the technique, leaned back with ease. The last two steps weren't high. According to his memory, he could take them both at once and land on the floor.

Resistance came from beneath his foot. It wasn't the floor he had expected; he had stepped into a layer of liquid. Coldness and movement flowed around his foot, seeping into his boot through its stitched seams.

Kraft realized he had stepped into water up to his knees, but it was already too late. His delicate balance was gone. Even with his exceptional sense of balance, he stumbled backward twice through the water before steadying himself. Water splashed across his face.

The sound of water was unmistakable.

After two seconds of silence, the crushing and cracking noises suddenly erupted from the second floor.

Kraft turned and ran.