Chapter 3: The Lover's Knock

Chapter 3: The Lover's Knock

Thud.

The sound vibrated up through the floorboards, a physical manifestation of her terror. It was on the fourth step now. Each step was a deliberate, perfectly timed beat in a symphony of dread. He wasn't rushing. He was savoring this.

Lisa’s thumb hovered over the glowing screen of her phone, her entire being locked in a state of primal fear. The simple act of dialing, of pressing three numbers, felt as monumental as lifting a mountain. Her mind, a maelstrom of panic just moments before, had gone eerily calm, focused on the single, terrifying rhythm of his ascent.

Thud.

The seventh step. More than halfway.

The calm shattered. With a choked gasp, she jabbed at the screen. 9-1-1. The call connected almost instantly.

“911, what is your emergency?” The dispatcher’s voice was a woman’s, calm and professional, a voice from another world, a world where monsters didn't break into your house.

“Someone’s in my house,” Lisa whispered, the words scraping against her raw throat. She pressed the phone so hard to her ear she felt the plastic creak. “He’s… he’s coming up the stairs.”

“Ma’am, what is your address?”

Thud.

The tenth step.

“14 Hawthorne Lane,” she breathed, her eyes glued to the bedroom door, to the massive oak dresser she’d shoved against it. It looked so flimsy now, so inadequate. “Blackwood Creek. Please, you have to hurry.”

“Okay, Lisa, help is on the way. I’m Lisa Miller. My car broke down on Ridge Road, he chased me through the woods…” The story tumbled out in a disjointed, frantic whisper, a desperate attempt to make the woman on the other end understand the scope of the nightmare. “He broke the bathroom window. He’s inside.”

“Lisa, are you in a secure location?”

Thud.

The final step. He was on the landing now. The wooden floor of the upstairs hallway was older, and she knew every board that groaned. She waited for the tell-tale creak of the third board past the top of the stairs.

Silence.

A new kind of terror, thick and suffocating, descended. The silence was worse than the footsteps. The footsteps had a direction, a purpose. The silence was infinite, full of horrifying possibilities. He was just standing there, at the top of the stairs, listening. Could he hear her? Could he hear the tinny voice of the dispatcher on the phone?

“Lisa? Lisa, are you still there?” the voice on the phone asked, a thin thread of sanity.

Lisa couldn’t answer. She held her breath, straining to hear anything over the frantic thumping in her own chest. She heard a faint scuff, the sound of a shoe turning on the wooden floor. Then, the soft, almost silent tread of his approach. He knew exactly which boards to avoid. He was walking down the hallway. Towards her door.

Her blood ran cold. He knew the layout of her house.

The footsteps stopped. He was right outside. Standing so close she could almost feel the heat of his body through the thick wood of the door and the dresser. She squeezed her eyes shut, imagining him there, a faceless shadow in her hallway, a predator who had finally cornered her. The desire to scream, to pound on the door and fight, warred with the instinct to stay absolutely still, to pretend she wasn't there, to become so small she might just disappear.

This was the obstacle. Not the man, but the door between them, and the unbearable tension of what he would do next. Would he throw his shoulder against it? Would he kick it in? Would the wood splinter and shatter and reveal the monster from her nightmares?

But the assault never came.

Instead, a new sound reached her ears. A sound so unexpected, so jarringly out of place, that her mind struggled to process it.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

It was a knock. Soft. Gentle. Polite, even. It wasn’t the knock of a stranger or the police. It was the intimate, familiar knock of someone who has been to your door a hundred times before.

Lisa’s breath hitched in a strangled sob. The phone slipped from her sweaty grasp, clattering onto the floor beside her. The dispatcher’s voice, now a distant, squawking buzz, was lost to the horrifying reality of the moment.

“Lisa?”

The voice was a whisper, a low, masculine murmur that slid through the keyhole and the cracks in the doorframe like smoke. It was distorted by the wood, but there was a cadence to it, a lilt that was chillingly, terrifyingly familiar. A ghost from a life she thought she had left behind.

“I know you’re in there, my love.”

My love. The endearment, spoken in that voice, was a violation. It twisted a word meant for affection into a weapon, a brand of ownership. The horror was no longer random. It wasn't about a break-in or a faceless attacker. It was personal. He knew her name. He was calling her his love.

“Open the door, Lisa,” the voice crooned, closer now, his mouth likely pressed right against the wood. “There’s no need to be frightened. It’s just me.”

Her mind raced, desperately trying to place the voice, to connect this terrifying figure with someone from her life. Her past was a gallery of faces—friends, customers, neighbors—but none of them fit. And yet, the familiarity was undeniable, a phantom itch in her memory she couldn't scratch. It was a voice she had once listened to for hours, a voice she had once… trusted.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispered, and the words were laced with a possessive, wounded quality that made the fine hairs on her arms stand on end. “I went to a lot of trouble to see you tonight. Don’t you want to see me?”

The turning point wasn't a crash of violence, but a whisper of poison. The monster wasn't a stranger. The monster was someone she knew. Someone who had once called her his love and meant it, or so she had thought. And as his voice continued its soft, insidious campaign against the door, a single, horrifying memory surfaced with the force of a physical blow. A memory of a cheap carnival prize, a small, smiling clown trinket, given to her on a summer night long ago.

The voice outside her door was the voice that had given it to her.