KNOCKING
by
Ronald Malfi

Picture it: a squalid, self-depreciating little bungalow wedged like a rotting tooth in a mouthful of rotting teeth along the poorest side street of North London.  Skies terminally gray, where the textured hues of an early morning are practically indistinguishable from those of a premature dusk, this little bungalow sat, undaunted, unfettered, deprived of everything yet feeling nothing in such depravity.  On the outside the building looked like a construct stretched out of shape to resemble something from some child’s fleeting nightmare.  It looked gray and tired, the exterior stucco sheathing overcome by corded veins of ivy and ginseng where, in the springtime, sparrows nested.  Despite the previous occupants’ insistence to the contrary, the entire building canted slightly to the left.  While ample space was provided for one to traverse the ivy-encrusted alleyway that separated our home from the building to our left, upon looking up while standing in this very alley, the proximity of our roof to the neighboring roof appeared to be less than six inches apart.  Surely, following the passage of a few more years, the two roofs would eventually touch, the buildings bowing together like united lovers over an abyss.  The listing was even more noticeable when glasses of water or bottles of wine were abandoned on tabletops, countertops, coffee tables throughout the place: it did not take much scrutiny to observe the not-so-subtle tilt to the surface of the given liquid.  It was not something you felt, although both Tara and I found it difficult to fall asleep the first month of our occupancy, and after some casual discussion, we both decided our insomnia was due to our bodies acclimating themselves to the structural misalignment. 

The interior of the bungalow was shabby and colorless, the atmosphere at times overtaken by a sort of chronic fatigue.  The windows were too small, like the portholes in a ship, the panes dulled to cataract opaqueness.  Standing in the center of the foyer and looking up revealed a gutted hollow that yawned to the second floor and, beyond that, the cathedral ceiling.  It was like living in the gullet of some prehistoric reptile.  The walls were an ancient alabaster, the woodwork and molding so old and arthritic, it seemed almost criminal to attempt any restoration, lest we upset some divine plan. 

And for a while, it was perfect.

“This works, yeah?”

“It works,” Tara said.  “It all works.”

“Tell me one thing you love about living here.”

“One thing?”

“Just one.”

She considered.  “I love the way everyone says ‘bloody.’  It’s very British.” 

I laughed.  “All right,” I said.  “Now tell me one thing you hate.”

She said, “I hate the bloody weather.”

We moved to London from the States near the end of May, on our one-year wedding anniversary.  It was different and new, all of it.  I’d grown up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. while Tara had spent her youth with a family of seven in the sun-baked scrublands of the Midwest.  We had a good life in the States, but we were young and anxious and ready to take on as much of the world as we could.  So we found the decrepit little flat in North London, and despite its ugliness (or maybe because of it), we loved it.  We suffered the expected tribulations associated with any relocation—such as a missing box of dishes, a busted table leg, the discovery of items previously thought lost weeks after taking up residency—but in all, it went off without a hitch.  Tara knew nothing about London but proved a quick study.  She made it a point to venture into Camden, to patronize the neighboring shops and cafés and pubs in order to soak up the local custom.  The discrepancy between U.S. dollars and British pounds was a cause for some mild frustration, but she soon got the hang of that as well.  For the most part, we found the people to be mutually polite and reserved, displaying a sense of propriety and a respect for personal space that would have been mistaken back home for haughtiness or, in the least, some form of social maladjustment.  I took a job teaching English at the university and Tara studied for her doctorate in child psychology while working part-time as a waitress at the Algerian.

Summer, the smell of the Thames was unrelenting.  We would sleep with the bedroom windows open, falling asleep to the scent of the city.  (This routine was abandoned, however, after a series of seemingly unrelated murders in the Heath transformed this humble pleasure into an act of recklessness.)  We had a washer and dryer, but Tara took to hanging the clothes across a stretch of clothesline from the patio windows to the deck railing at the rear of the bungalow.  One warm afternoon, we picnicked at Highgate Ponds and got drunk on cheap red wine.  We laughed ourselves into stomach cramps when a group of middle-aged male locals appeared and stripped out of their clothing to sun themselves in the open quarter.  Their nudity was severe and white, all ribs, stomachs, and wiry pepper-colored pubic hair.  

The bungalow sustained two bedrooms off the ground floor, a foyer that communicated with a den that, in turn, fashioned off into a quaint kitchenette.  The second floor contained the bathroom and another room that could have been forged into a cramped bedroom or an equally cramped study.  At her pleading, I awarded the second-floor room to Tara, which she fashioned into a handsome little study of obsessive-compulsive neatness.

Once we’d settled into our respective roles, with North London starting to not feel so alien, I quickly immersed myself into the mix at the university.  Tara attended her classes during the day, leaving the bungalow brooding and empty in our absence.  On the nights she worked at the Algerian, I would sometimes visit for a pint; other times, I would stay home alone and listen to the encroaching silence of the bungalow while invisible clocks ticked in shadowed background.

One evening toward the close of summer, a soft rain falling in the streets, Tara appeared in the doorway to my home office door.  I was perched over my desk, grading papers from my summer school class.

“Hon,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“There’s something upstairs.”

“Hold on.”

I scribbled a note in the margin of the paper I was reading then turned to face her.  “There’s what?”

“I don’t know.  Just come look.”

I followed her up the winding staircase to the second floor.  Through the slats in the balustrade, I looked directly down the gaping maw of the narrow little house, straight down to the foyer below.  A soft rain pattered against the windows.  I could hear a dog barking far off in the distance.

“Where?” I said.

“In the study.”

We entered her study.  The room was brightly lit and there was a Paul Desmond CD playing low on the stereo.  Against one wall was Tara’s desk, stacks of papers filed neatly on top.  A spare bed, in case we ever found ourselves entertaining guests from far away who would require spending the night (though we could not see this happening any time soon), was pushed against another wall.  Above the bed, twin windows glared at us like eyes.

“In the closet,” she said.

“What is?”

“The noise.”

“What noise?”

“The noise,” she repeated with more emphasis, as if this would clarify anything.  When I looked at her, she only shrugged.  She’d dropped her voice to a whisper now, too.

I turned off the stereo and we stood together in the silence, unmoving.  All I could hear was the fall of the rain against the roof.  As if part of the conspiracy, the dog had ceased barking outside, too.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said.

“Harold, it was in the closet.”

So I went to the closet and pulled the door open.  Two file cabinets were tucked away here, as well as a plastic garbage bag full of winter clothes we had no room for in any other part of the house.  But that was all.

“What did it sound like?”

“Like there was someone in the closet,” Tara said.  “Someone moving around in there.”

“Who would be in the closet?”

“I’m just telling you what I heard.”

“Well there’s obviously no one here,” I said, backing away.

Back downstairs, I poured what was left of the coffee into my mug and reheated it in the microwave.  Standing in the darkened kitchenette, I watched the rain sluice against the window over the sink.  The dog had resumed its tune, sounding closer now than it had before.  When the microwave finally chimed, I carried my steaming mug back through the kitchenette and down the corridor toward my office.

Tara stood in the hallway, staring at me.

I paused.  “What?” I said.

“Don’t give me what,” she said.  “I know it’s you.”

“Me?”

“Cut it out.”

“What?” I said.

“You’re trying to scare me.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Liar.”

“I swear it.  I was making coffee.”  And I took a long, noisy sip to bolster my innocence.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re doing, or how you’re doing it, but cut it out.  I’m trying to study.”

Back upstairs, I stood before her open closet door, peering inside.  “I don’t understand,” I said.  “What does it sound like?”

“Shuffling around.  Sometimes like a knock, too.  Like someone moving against the door from the inside.”

“Well, then leave the door open.”

“But that doesn’t make whatever is doing it disappear, does it?”

“Maybe it’s outside,” I suggested.  “Maybe it’s the storm.”

“It’s not outside and it’s not the storm.”  She was seated on the edge of the spare bed, looking past me and into the closet.  “I heard it.  It was right inside the closet, Harold.”

I leaned forward and wrapped the old shave-and-a-haircut on the doorframe.  “Wait for it,” I said.  “Wait…”

“Don’t make fun,” Tara said.

I sighed.  “What would you like me to do, Tara?  I don’t hear anything.”

“Do you promise you’re not trying to scare me?”

“Of course I’m not.”

“Because if it’s you, just stop.”

“It’s not me.”

“Swear it,” she said.

“I already have.”

“Swear it again.”

“I swear it’s not me,” I promised.

“Harold?”

“Yeah?”

She said, “I feel funny.”

* * *

As it will, time passed.  Somehow, despite our hectic schedules, we managed to celebrate a reclusive yet cozy Thanksgiving together, fielding the customary telephone calls from our respective families overseas, and prepared for Christmas with the giddy excitement of two children set loose in a toy store.  We were saving money—that was our promise to each other that year—and would keep gifts to a minimum.  Pleased with myself, I managed to locate a well-made but inexpensive gold locket on a slender chain which I outfitted with a tiny photograph of Tara and me, taken back in the heyday of our courtship.  I wrapped this gift in my pedestrian way (for the life of me, I could not wrap a gift) and decided to stow it in the attic of our little bungalow—a place, I was certain, Tara would never venture voluntarily. 

I climbed the stairs and entered the dark maw of the attic.  I had left Tara downstairs, busy decorating the Christmas tree; the house was draughty, the walls and floorboards thin, and the din of her soft, cheerful humming could be heard even against the whine of the wind in the eaves and the sigh of the cold winter’s night against the framework of the house. 

Scrambling for the dangling pull-cord that hung from the light fixture in the ceiling, my right hand swatted blinding in the dark.  I managed a step forward.  The pull-cord brushed by my face, sending tremors down my spine.  I yanked the light on.

The whistling wind was a constant.  I could hear the house groaning and creaking and rocking in its foundation.  Fleetingly, I wondered if this would be the year our roof decided to crumble into our neighbor’s. 

I heard something move behind me.  Spinning around, my eyes still adjusting to the gloom, I peered down the shadowy length of the attic, the ceiling low, the beams crisscrossing before me like the rank of raised swords in a military wedding.  I could see nothing.

Yet unlike in the movies, where the protagonist must turn away from the noise before he hears it again, I heard it again: a labored, breathy sound, very much like respiration.

My own breath seized in my throat. 

Then another sound: a dull thud.  A knock.  This was it—this was the sound Tara had heard coming from behind the closet door in her study.  Quickly, I unfolded a mental blueprint of the bungalow and, sure enough, that section of the attic was positioned directly above Tara’s second-floor study.

With mounting desperation, I was suddenly trying to recall whether or not the police had ever arrested anyone in connection with those unsolved murders in the Heath, and I was coming up blank.

Steeling myself, I walked along the floor beams toward the opposite end of the attic, toward the noise.  The shadows deepened as I approached, but I no longer heard anything—

Something tittered and I caught a glimpse of a fleeting shadow swim across the far wall.  This was not my imagination.  I was certain of it.

Taking a deep breath, I reached the far wall and hunkered down to examine what appeared to be a narrow abyss in the attic floor, where the floor should have met the far wall.  My fingers digging into the beam above my head for balance, I peered down into that narrow cut of darkness in the floor.

Poor construction.  That’s what I was looking at.  Poor construction and, no doubt, the tilting of the house had caused the beams to split, to come apart, leaving a narrow little arroyo in the floor that just happened to drop down behind the wall of the closet in Tara’s study.

The respiratory sound was undoubtedly the wind shuttling against the eaves.  With such a separation in the framework, sound was bound to echo.  That evening in bed, I explained what I had discovered to Tara, though she did not seem comforted by my revelation.

“I don’t like that room,” she said.  “I don’t like the noises that come from it, Harold.”

* * *

Christmas came.  I gave Tara the gold locket and she presented me with a handsome leather briefcase.  We had a quiet dinner together in the drafty house then watched television until Tara went upstairs for bed.  My own eyelids growing heavy, I pulled an afghan up over my body and muted the television.

When Tara appeared staring down at me several moments later, I thought I was dreaming at first.

“What?” I muttered.  “What is it?”

“It’s back.  Upstairs.  Come listen.”

Once again in the second-floor study, we both stood before the open closet doors, peering in at nothing by a couple of metal filing cabinets.

“That’s the wind,” I explained again.  “If you’d seen the gap in the attic boards…”

“That isn’t the sound I heard before.”  Tara looked frightened.  “It was like something moving around on the other side of the drywall.”

“Darling, there’s nothing there.”

“What if it’s an animal come in from the cold?  Living in the walls?  A raccoon, maybe?”

“There’s nothing up there, Tara.”

She shivered beside me.  “I feel funny.  Strange.  Like something is trying to get at me.”

“Get at you?”

“Eat me.”

“Tara, honey, there are no wild animals up in the attic.”

“Harold, please…”

I sighed and promised her I would check again first thing in the morning.

But morning brings with it a breed of clarity that night disallows, and it took the passage of several more evenings before I agreed to once again climb up into the attic.  Armed with a flashlight, a hammer and nails, and a few planks of wood, I promised Tara I’d chase out any animal intruder then board up the narrow gap in the floor, putting an end to this nonsense once and for all.

In the attic, I traversed the narrow beams until I reached the gap where the floor met the outer wall.  Setting my implements down, I clicked on the flashlight and dumped the beam down into the open shaft.

Things twinkled at me from below.

The distance was too great to make out what they were, or to simply reach down and scoop them up.  My curiosity mounting, I decided to climb down there and see what those items were.  It was a tight squeeze, and I utilized the exposed beams as hand- and footholds on my way down.  The dry smell of insulation caused me to sneeze.  When I touched my feet down on solid flooring again, I was packed firmly behind the closet wall of Tara’s second-floor study.

I trailed the flashlight’s beam along the floor, illuminating those twinkling objects scattered about my feet…

Some items were easily identifiable as jewelry—necklaces, earrings, what appeared to be a collegiate ring with the jewel missing from the setting—while others were as enigmatic to me as matter floated down from space.  There were also a few screws and things that resembled hammered ball bearings.  I gathered up all these items and stowed them away in the pockets of my trousers.  Then, climbing back up out of the gap, I covered the opening with the planks of wood.  If any animal had sought refuge in this crevice, there would be no more re-entry.

* * *

For whatever unexplained reason, I felt compelled to hide the items I’d found in the gap from my wife.  I put them all in a gym sock, which I stuffed toward the back of my underwear drawer.

* * *

It was very early morning, the sun not yet fully up, when I awoke in bed alone.  Tara’s side of the mattress was cool.  I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, awaiting her return from the bathroom.  But she never returned.  And when I checked the bathroom, I found it empty and unused.

I searched the bungalow, calling her name.  When the clock on the landing struck 5:15 AM, a dreadful panic had already set in.  Hastily, I checked the windows and the doors—all of which were locked—and once again began thinking of last year’s murders in the Heath.  It was still an ungodly hour of the morning when I found myself pounding on neighbors’ doors, asking if they had seen my wife.  They all scowled and assured me they had not.  Trembling, I returned home to call the police.

Two uniformed officers came, took notes, and conducted a cursory and disinterested scan of the bungalow.  “Maybe,” one of the officers suggested before leaving, “she just got bored, mate.”

I called out of classes for the day and sat on the sofa for most of the afternoon, anticipating—hoping—that Tara would walk through the front door at any minute. By late afternoon, with a gray rain falling in the streets, I contemplated driving around town to see if I could spot her.  I even pulled on my clothes without the benefit of showering and was in the process of lacing up my sneakers when I heard a banging sound echo down the stairwell from the second-floor landing.

“Tara!” It leapt from my throat in a strangled cry.

Racing up the stairs, I entered Tara’s study to find the room empty.  I listened again for the banging noise but heard nothing.  My respiration was shuddery, my vision beginning to fragment.  The closet doors stood open, the twin filing cabinets leering at me.

And then I heard it—a muted thump, like someone on the other side of the closet wall, pounding a fist.  I pressed my ear against the drywall and listened, holding my breath.  Nothing.  Again, I called my wife’s name.  No response.

I grabbed the flashlight from the kitchen drawer then climbed up into the attic.  When I turned the flashlight on, the beam shook in my unsteady hand.  The attic appeared empty.  Again, I called out Tara’s name and received no answer.  Crossing the catwalk of two-by-fours to the far wall, I wondered if somehow Tara had fallen down the gap between the walls.  It was ridiculous, of course—what would she have been doing up here after all?—but what other explanation was there?

But no: the planks of wood were still nailed down over the opening.

I stood there, my heart slamming in my chest.

And thought I heard movement down below, in the gap.

“Tara!”

I dropped to my knees and began wrenching the planks of wood loose with my bare hands.  Once I’d made a large enough opening, I directed the flashlight beam into the gap while holding my breath.

Of course, the space was empty.  Had I really expected to find Tara down there?

My hands quaked.  The flashlight’s beam vibrated across the flooring at the bottom of the gap.

Again, something twinkled up at me.

After prying away more boards, I descended the gap as I had done once before, and crouched down to retrieve what I had seen from above.

Tara’s locket.  The one I’d given her for Christmas.

A terrible sickness overtook me.  I thought I would pass out.  Nothing made sense.

There were other things on the floor as well.  Things similar to the hammered ball bearings I’d found previously…

* * *

I sit now on the spare bed in Tara’s study, facing the open closet.  In my lap is the notebook, in which I have detailed all that has happened, no matter how bizarre.  Beside me is Tara’s locket.  The picture is no longer inside it; where it has gone, I have no idea.  It’s been three days since Tara’s disappearance, and I am hearing the knocking behind the wall regularly now, much as Tara had.

What had she said?  I feel funny.  Strange.  Like something is trying to get at me.  But not just get at her.  Eat me, she had said.

I’m done writing now.  I’ll sit and wait and see what happens.  Tara was right—there is something here.  Maybe not something behind the walls.  Maybe it is the walls.  The bungalow itself.

I don’t know.

What I know is that I am scared I will never see my wife again.

What I know is that I am terrified of what is making that knocking sound.

What I know is that those hammered ball bearings I found are actually fillings from teeth.

# # #

Ronald Malfi was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1977. Along with his family, he eventually relocated to Maryland where he spent most of his childhood growing up along the Chesapeake Bay. He professed an interest in the arts at an early age and is also known to be a competent artist and musician. In 1999, he graduated with a degree in English from Towson University. For a number of years, he fronted the Maryland-based alternative rock band Nellie Blide.

Most recognized for his haunting, literary style and memorable characters, Malfi's horror novels and thrillers have transcended genres to gain wider acceptance among readers of quality literature.

He currently lives along the Chesapeake Bay.

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