Chapter 4: The Digital Ghost

The tapping had become Michael's unwelcome metronome, marking time in three-beat intervals that carved away at his sanity. Four days had passed since his return from the mountains, and the sound came every night at exactly 3:30 AM, lasting until dawn. He'd stopped trying to sleep in his bedroom, instead collapsing on the living room couch with all the lights blazing, but it didn't matter. The thing found him wherever he was.

Dark circles ringed his eyes like bruises, and his hands had developed a permanent tremor from too much caffeine and too little rest. His manager had called twice, increasingly concerned about his extended sick leave, but Michael couldn't even begin to explain why he couldn't return to work. How do you tell your boss that something impossible is stalking you?

By the third sleepless night, desperation had driven him back to what he knew best: technology. If logic and reason couldn't explain what was happening to him, maybe the internet could. He'd been a systems analyst for six years—finding information in digital haystacks was what he did for a living. There had to be someone, somewhere, who had experienced something similar.

Michael set up his laptop on the kitchen table, as far from the bedroom window as possible, and began his search. He started with the obvious terms: "tapping on window," "invisible stalker," "supernatural harassment." The results were mostly clickbait paranormal websites and forum posts about neighborhood pranks.

But as he refined his search, diving deeper into the darker corners of the internet, he began to find fragments. Scattered across obscure forums, buried in deleted Reddit threads, hidden in the comments sections of conspiracy blogs—there were others who had encountered something similar.

A post from two years ago on a paranormal investigation forum: "It started with footsteps around my house. Then the tapping. Three knocks, always three, at exactly the same time every night. I tried everything—cameras, motion sensors, even hired a private investigator. Nothing showed up on any of the recordings, but I could hear it clear as day. If anyone has experienced something like this, please respond. I'm losing my mind."

The post had seventeen replies, but when Michael clicked on the user's profile, it showed as deleted. The account had been active for three years before going silent abruptly after that final plea for help.

Another fragment, this one from a blog about unexplained phenomena: "The thing about the Tapper is that cameras can't see it, but mirrors can. Tried to get proof for weeks using direct recording. Nothing. Set up a camera pointed at a mirror reflecting the window where the tapping comes from. The footage is... I can't even describe it. Uploading now before—"

The post cut off mid-sentence. The blog hadn't been updated since.

Michael found similar stories scattered across a dozen different platforms. People describing identical experiences—the methodical tapping, the invisible presence, the growing sense of being hunted by something that defied rational explanation. But every single account ended the same way: with the author's digital presence simply vanishing.

No goodbye posts. No explanations. Just active accounts suddenly going silent, as if their owners had simply ceased to exist.

The pattern was too consistent to be coincidence. Whatever was stalking these people—whatever was stalking him—seemed to claim them before they could share too much information. But fragments remained, scattered breadcrumbs left by the desperate and the doomed.

One post, buried deep in a forum dedicated to "digital archaeology," caught his attention: "If you're reading this, you've probably found the others. The deleted accounts, the cut-off posts, the digital ghosts left behind by the Tapper's victims. I've been collecting their stories, trying to piece together the pattern. There's a way to see it—not directly, never directly, but through reflection. Water works best. But for God's sake, don't try it unless you're absolutely desperate. Some things are worse than not knowing."

The post was signed "DigitalDetective1987" and dated six months ago. Like the others, the account had gone silent immediately afterward.

Michael stared at the screen, his tired mind trying to process what he was reading. These people—these victims—had found a way to actually see their stalker. Not directly, but through reflection. Water works best.

It was insane. But then again, invisible creatures tapping on third-floor windows were supposed to be insane too, and that was happening every night with mechanical regularity.

The kitchen sink was stainless steel, useless for his purposes. But he had a large mixing bowl in one of the cabinets—dark blue ceramic that would hold water like a mirror. His hands shook as he filled it, the simple act feeling like he was preparing his own execution.

Michael carried the bowl to the living room and set it on the coffee table, angling it so that it would reflect the area near the bedroom hallway where he'd sometimes heard subtle sounds during the day—soft scraping, like fingernails on wood, always just at the edge of his perception.

The water settled into perfect stillness, its surface becoming a dark mirror that reflected the ceiling light above. Michael positioned himself on the couch where he could see both the hallway entrance and the bowl's reflection simultaneously, then waited.

Minutes passed. Then an hour. His eyes burned from staring at the water's surface, and his neck ached from the awkward angle. Maybe this was just another dead end, another desperate theory from someone who'd lost their grip on reality.

Then he saw it.

Not in his peripheral vision, not in the hallway itself, but reflected in the water—a tall, impossibly thin silhouette standing in the doorway to his bedroom. The reflection was wrong, distorted, like looking at something through old glass, but the basic shape was unmistakable: elongated limbs, a hunched posture that suggested a frame bent by impossible proportions, and something that might have been a face turned in his direction.

Michael's breath caught in his throat. He forced himself to keep looking at the reflection, to not turn toward the hallway where his rational mind insisted nothing could be standing. In the water, the figure swayed slightly, as if moved by currents of air he couldn't feel.

Then it began to move.

The reflection showed the thing stepping into his living room, its movements fluid and wrong, like a marionette operated by someone who had never seen a human walk. It approached the coffee table where Michael sat frozen, drawn toward the bowl like a moth to flame.

In the reflection, he could see more details now. The pale, waxy skin that seemed to hang loose in places. The arms that were far too long, ending in fingers that scraped the floor with each step. And the face—or what passed for one—a collection of shadows and suggestions that hurt to look at directly, even in reflection.

The thing stopped at the edge of the coffee table, looming over the bowl. In the water's surface, Michael could see it leaning down, studying its own reflection with what might have been curiosity. For a moment, the two reflections—predator and prey—stared at each other through the liquid mirror.

Then the thing in the reflection slowly straightened and turned to look directly at Michael.

Even through the distortion of the water, even filtered through reflection, the contact was like an electric shock. Those hollow spaces that served as eyes locked onto his, and Michael felt something fundamental shift in the air around him. The temperature dropped ten degrees in an instant, and the taste of copper flooded his mouth.

The thing smiled.

It was the most horrible expression Michael had ever seen—a stretching of that too-wide mouth that revealed rows of teeth that seemed to have been filed to points. The smile was knowing, satisfied, like a collector finally finding a specimen they'd been seeking for years.

Michael spun around to look directly at the living room, but saw only empty space. When he looked back at the bowl, the reflection showed the thing standing directly behind his chair.

The water began to ripple, then to churn, as if something was disturbing it from below. The reflection fragmented into a dozen dancing images—multiple angles of the creature surrounding him, studying him, reaching toward him with those impossibly long fingers.

Michael grabbed the bowl and hurled it against the wall, ceramic shattering and water spraying across his apartment. The sudden silence that followed was deafening after hours of staring into that liquid mirror.

But he could still feel it watching him.

The thing was in his apartment now, had been there all along, invisible to his eyes but present nonetheless. The reflection had simply allowed him to see what was already there, stalking him through his own home while he went about his daily routine in blissful ignorance.

Michael backed against the wall, his eyes darting around the room, looking for telltale signs of the invisible presence. A slight depression in the couch cushions where something might be sitting. Dust motes moving in patterns that suggested a large figure passing through them. The subtle play of shadows that might indicate something blocking light sources.

Now that he knew what to look for, the signs were everywhere.

His phone buzzed with a notification, and Michael glanced at the screen with numb fingers. A new post had appeared on one of the forums he'd been monitoring, posted just seconds ago by an account called "MichaelHayes_Denver."

But he hadn't posted anything.

The message was brief, written in his own username but not by his hand: "Found a way to see it. The water trick works. It's been here all along, watching, waiting. If you're reading this and experiencing the tapping, don't try to see it. Some knowledge is worse than ignorance. It knows I've seen it now. I can feel it getting closer. The tapping isn't coming from outside anymore—it's coming from inside my head."

Michael stared at the post in horror. He hadn't written those words, hadn't even been on that forum tonight. But there was his username, his location, posting in real-time about his experience with details only he could know.

The thing wasn't just stalking him physically—it was inside his digital life too, speaking with his voice, posting with his identity. His reflection in his laptop screen flickered, and for just a moment, he could swear he saw not his own face looking back, but something else entirely.

Something with hollow eyes and a too-wide smile, grinning at him through his own reflection.

The tapping began again, but this time it wasn't coming from the window.

It was coming from inside his skull.

Tap. Tap. Tap.