Who Can It Be Now?

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Men At Work – Who Can It Be Now?

Every single night the knocking comes, and every single night there’s no one there. Stuck renovating his father’s old country house, these nightly visitations are driving him nearly to madness. But are they pranksters, ghosts, or something even less explicable?

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Just like last night, and the night before, and every night for a week before that, the pounding starts at my front door. No voices, no demands, just a hammering fist that makes the door leap in its frame. Even though I’m tired after a long day of doing demolition and hauling debris out to the dumpster, I’ve been too tense to relax. I look at the table beside me, at the phone, and the gun. The phone has a signal, even if it feels like the house is in the middle of nowhere. Compared to my old place, it is in the middle of nowhere. But I’ve called the cops twice already about this problem. Both times they came out and hunted around the property but found no trace of any trespassers. They’d taken it seriously but the second time I saw them looking at me a little like, what? Wary? Like I was the crazy one? Maybe even pitying, like they thought I’m not man enough to handle being out here all alone. Like maybe I was hearing things.

I pick up the gun instead. It was my father’s gun which I’d inherited, I guess, along with this house. He kept it in the drawer beside his bed, loaded. I don’t know why, before he died we’d not spoken more than once every three months and none of those conversations dragged on for longer than five minutes. I’ve started to wonder if these late night visitations had something to do with it. A brutish sort of Colt revolver with a nickel finish. The sandalwood hilt feels smooth in my grip.

Stalking across the front room, I first glance around the curtain covering the front window. The porch light is on but I can’t see anything out there. The pounding comes again all the same.

“Who is it?” I cross to the front door.

There’s no answer. After a pregnant pause, they knock again. I’ve installed new locks, a row of them down the inside of the door. No one is getting through those, the door itself is solid as well, but I hadn’t thought of putting in a peephole.

“Who is it? God fucking damnit, I’ve got a gun!”

Quickly as I can, I ratchet several of the locks open. Sure, I could stay safe behind them but I can’t stand not knowing. If they really want to hurt me, they wouldn’t be knocking. They must want to scare me and I hate that it’s working. I hate them and I hate myself for it. In defiance, I hurl the door open and step through the doorway with the gun tight in my fist.

Of course, there’s no one there. There never has been. Only one night I managed to ignore the knocks completely, hoping it would make them give up. Every other night I’ve answered and every time I’ve found nothing but nothing. Light from the porch spills into the emptiness that stretches across the yard. It’s too dangerous to go wandering around out there. The property surrounding the house is rutted with holes and ditches and covered in rusty junk my father collected. I’ve only added to the obstacle course with building materials and junk of my own while I’ve been renovating the place. It’s a cloudy night, dark, and not the kind of dark we got back in the city. This is country dark, black as the bottom of a mine shaft beyond the reach of the porch light. Anybody could be waiting out there. Anything.

The knocking returns back inside the house. I know this next part of the game as well. Banging on the windows and the walls. I slam the door closed and most of the locks reengage themselves. I check them anyway then storm across the house. There aren’t many places to hide, I’ve already gutted most of the internal walls to make way for an open floor plan. I’ve ripped away the drywall and insulation, leaving only the skeletons of pine frames. Crossing to one of the windows, I throw aside the curtain. Nothing outside but blackness. My own goggling face, eyes wide, mouth open like a fish, reflects back at me from the glass.

“Who’s out there? What do you want from me?”

Nothing, no answer. Night after night, the knocking keeps happening with no answers. Taking the gun and my phone, I retreat to the room I’ve designated as my bedroom at the back of the house. Most of the furniture is gone. My father’s kitchen and bathroom are a shattered ruin. In the bedroom, I have a cot in one corner and a folding table in the other. My bathroom is a camping toilet and a hose in what remains of the bathroom. To renovate and flip the house with maximum profit, I’m living like a prisoner. I’ve poured all my money into this. I can’t leave. Sitting on the cot, I wait until the knocking fades away and eventually sleep overtakes me.

xXx

I’ve become a familiar face to the owner of the hardware store in town. I’m there almost every day buying tools or supplies. I’ve gone to him for pieces of advice as well, since this is my first time doing a total and complete renovation. He knew about the problems I’ve been having with the trespasser or trespassers. Still, his eyebrows climb as I drop several wireless cameras onto the counter.

“Still having problems with those kids? Knocking or whatever it was?” he asks.

“Yeah, I guess so. Kids or whoever they are. They keep knocking every single night.”

“Long way out to go just for some prank, cameras should solve it.”

“Cops thought I should get some,” I say.

The local police suggested I get the cameras the first time they came out. The second time, I told them I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. But part of me worries what the cameras will show. What if there really is no one out there? Does that mean it’s all in my head? Even the hardware store guy doesn’t believe me, I think. Talking about how my father’s place is too far out to go for a prank. But I can’t go on like this, and I can’t leave without losing all my savings.

I spend the rest of my afternoon hooking up the cameras. They send alerts and footage to my phone after I turn them on. A camera over the front door, another over the back door, two more positioned to watch the sides of the house where I’ve heard banging on the windows.

After night falls, I wait and wonder what the cameras will show. The hardware store guy was right, it’s a long way to come out, night after night, for a prank. I can’t imagine why anyone would do it. Maybe someone who was upset with my dad and has decided to take it out on me now that he’s dead? My most solid theory is that someone is trying to scare me off so they can buy the house and land for cheap before I’m done renovating. But I haven’t had any offers and that sounds like some Scooby Doo shit, people inventing ghosts so they can run real estate scams.

Suddenly, the door jumps in place. Someone hammers at the other side, I can see it vibrating from across the room but my phone hasn’t sent me any kind of alert. Nestled in my palm, it’s switched on but inert, not vibrating or dinging.

“Oh, fuck.”

Opening the phone, I swipe to the newly installed app for the cameras. From there, I can swipe from feed to feed. The front door feed shows me a wide and unobstructed view of the ramshackle porch. The light is switched on. I should be able to see anyone who is standing there but as the pounding comes again I can’t spot anything on the feed.

“Come on, come on!”

I pace and circle the bare floorboards, unsure of what to do. Cycling through the feeds, I study the back door and the sides of the house but see nothing. The hammering comes again and then I hear one of the windows rattling.

“Nothing, nothing,” I say. “How the fuck is that possible?”

xXx

I check the cameras again and again and again the rest of the night, even taking some recordings and watching them back. Nothing, again and again. I’m starting to think I must be crazy. Eventually, I put the phone aside and sleep.

Morning light sobers me up. Last night, I heard the knocking but there was no one there. The cameras showed nothing. If I’m hallucinating, could it be some sort of medical issue? Maybe I should go to the hospital. But it occurs to me that while the cameras showed nothing they should have picked up any audio, if there was anything there.

In the app, I bring up the camera recordings. When I play them back, I turn the volume all the way up. The footage shows nothing but an empty porch, a circle of light with blackness outside of it. But I listen, and with the volume turned up I can hear the knocking all the same. The bang, bang, banging on the door, just below the camera.

“It’s there! It’s there, I’m not crazy!”

I flick through the other recordings. They wouldn’t prove anything to anyone else, the hammering simply comes from somewhere offscreen, but to me it proves that I’m not hallucinating. I’m not just hearing things that aren’t there night after night.

“How? Assuming it’s not some kind of ghost, then fucking what is it?”

I think about what else could possibly be making the noise. Maybe pipes. Or if there’s someone behind it, maybe some kind of remote controlled device.

I’ve been intending on ripping up the front porch after I’m done with the interior. Starting off to one side of the front door, I begin ripping up planks. I dig at the gaps with my claw hammer and peel the planks away from the frame. Rotting wood crunches into dust. Rusty nails bristle. Eventually, I create enough of a gap to bend through and get a look under the porch.

I’ve been imagining some kind of power tool mounted beneath the deck. Or something like a massage gun on a remote trigger, with a domed head aimed so that it could pound on the underside of the doorframe. Scooby Doo shit. Holding myself upside down, I twist and turn but I can’t see anything but dust and spider webs.

“What the fuck?”

I take my phone and turn on the flashlight then use it to study the rest of the crawl space beneath the porch. I still can’t see anything out of place.

“There has to be something!”

Circling the house, I head to the window where I usually hear banging right after the front door. I attack the side of the house with my hammer. Planks splinter and pull away. Sticking my head through the hole, I tear away chunks of insulation but can’t see anything there either. The back porch is smaller than the front. I hack away several more planks, revealing more batches of nails and splinters, but I can’t find any kind of device.

“There’s got to be something,” I say. “There’s got to be some way they’re doing this. Throwing the sound or something, hitting the door with-, air, or sound blasts, or something!”

That night, I wait across the front room, unable to even distract myself as the light fades. One ear stays on my phone on the folding table beside me, listening for alerts. Next to the phone sits a flashlight and my father’s gun. If I catch whoever is behind all this, I won’t even need the gun though. I will happily strangle them with my bare hands if I get the chance.

Time loses all meaning by the point the banging begins. I’d started to fall asleep, my eyes getting heavy, but as soon as the noise starts I jerk awake in my chair. My first instinct is to grab the phone but it’s useless, it isn’t showing any alerts. Instead, I grab the gun in one hand and the flashlight in the other.

I hurry to the door, not even bothering to check the window. Shoving the flashlight under my armpit, I unlock the door and throw it open. Some of the locks snap back into place. Gun raised, I throw myself through the doorway. Of course, there’s no one there. I cross the porch and scan the blackness instead.

“Where are you?” I shout. “Show yourself! How are you doing this?”

I switch the flashlight on and bring it up alongside the old revolver. The circle of light trails over the dumpster I’ve been using for waste and old furniture. It sketches the rutted ground, bits of junk jutting out of the dirt. Nothing moves out there. No one runs for cover. My closest neighbours are glittering lights in the distance, between them and me there’s nothing but darkness.

“Where are you?”

Thumbing the hammer back, I aim at nothing and fire. The clap of the shot echoes into the dark. Recoil jumps against my wrist. I sweep around with the light in case the gunshot scares someone out of hiding. When nothing happens I fire again. The bullet rings off something made of metal, some piece of junk, and whines into the night.

“Fuck!”

I round the house at a distance, flashlight beam cutting across the shadows. The gun stays ready in my hand. Even with the light, I stumble and almost trip over obstacles. Nothing and no one moves. I can’t hear anything over the ringing the gunshots have left in my ears.

Coming around the front of the house, I realise the front door has swung closed behind me. The keys are inside. In a kind of blind fury, I storm up the steps. Sure enough, when I take hold of the handle I find it locked. I rattle and shove but it doesn’t budge.

“Shit!”

Raising a foot, I drive it into the door in frustration. The effort throws me off balance. Without thinking, I stagger sideways and straight into the hole I created in the porch when looking for remotely controlled devices. The ground disappears from under my left foot. I drop, my right leg twisting underneath me. Nails rip through my flesh. I drop the flashlight as I fall forward. The slip drives my right elbow into the porch and my arm also buckles in on itself. The barrel of the gun slams into my ribs and suddenly, with a muffled bang, it erupts in my hand. I feel the blow like a punch in the chest. A smell of burnt cloth, burnt hair, and burnt skin fills the air.

“Oh, oh, shit, fuck!”

The gun drops out of my nerveless fingers, falling against the side of the hole and disappearing under the porch. Blood pumps through my shirt, rapidly spreading. I crawl forward and pull myself back onto the porch. The effort seems far greater than it should be. Nails tear furrows out of my leg but the sensation barely penetrates my shock. Gradually, a tear starts to radiate from deep inside my chest. It burns and rasps. Two parts of me slide apart, the flesh stretching and snapping. My heart labours and my lungs fight to draw breath against a wet, unfamiliar weight.

“Fuck, fuck.”

My phone is inside as well. Unable to think of anything better, I drive myself against the door again. Blood smears the handle but the locks I installed out of fear of intruders hold. If I can just get inside, to the phone, I can call for help. Mindless with desperation, I hammer against the door. There’s no one inside to hear me, of course, but I try several times before moving on.

Perhaps I can break a window instead. I stagger off the porch and around the corner with blood pooling down my legs. By the time I reach the window, however, I feel so weak that all I can do is bang on the glass. The back door might be unlocked, I think, and I move around the house. Occasionally I beat against the walls and the windows. I find the back door locked as well and stagger on.

“Who is it? God fucking damnit, I’ve got a gun!”

The shouts don’t come from me. They come from the front of the house. Staggering on, without the strength to even question what I just heard, I round the corner. I’m just in time to see the door swing shut.

“Wait, wait!” I gasp.

Someone is inside. They can help me. The pain in my chest is unbearable and a terrible cold spreads from the tips of my fingers and toes up my arms and legs. I drive myself on to one of the windows. It’s only then that I realise the truth.

A body sprawls in the grass. My body, face down, with blood soaking through the clothes I’m wearing. While my physical form has dropped, something else, my spirit, my ghost, carries on.

In the nearest window, a curtain twitches aside. A face appears behind the glass with eyes wide and mouth gaping like a fish. My face, of course. A third self, one from my recent past.

“Who’s out there?” that other me asks. “What do you want from me?”

I would answer if I could but I’m beyond such complicated thoughts. I raise my hands to start hammering at the walls again. Inside, I can’t remember why anymore. I just want to be inside.

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Sean: Fuck I hate present tense. If you’ve read a lot of the stories on this website you might have noticed that sometimes I like to do something different stylistically because I think it suits the story or just to challenge myself. Present tense really forces me to pore over every single word choice, which is the point, of course, but I still hate it. Two stories in a row of first person perspective too, what’s that about? I don’t think I’ve got any more of that lined up in the foreseeable future. Don’t tell me if I’ve fucked up any of the tense changes in this one. Or maybe do, I don’t know!

If you’ve been reading the stories on the site, I’ve got a favour to ask! Like any writer, I’m trying to build an audience to get as many people reading as possible but I’m just not good with social media. So if you enjoy what you’ve seen and you have an account on any of these, please give me a follow!

I’m not good at it but I do share things that aren’t just a link to one of my stories sometimes, and would really appreciate a follow, a like, a share, anything! If not, tell a friend, a neighbour, scream about a story you like on public transport, write about me in a manifesto before you do something that’s going to make them see, make them all see, anything would be awesome.

One more thing, if you just can’t get enough US news and politics from an Australian perspective, there’s my podcast US of Ed.

I’ll tell you right now, the only other way I’ve been trying to build an audience is I printed off a bunch of bookmarks and I left a heap in books that I donated to the Lifeline book fair in Sydney. Plus I keep leaving them in this one street library near my house. Extremely limited edition. I am not good at advertising.

Oh, and don’t forget there’s the Mixtape playlist on Spotify if you’d like a taste of what’s coming up or want to listen along…

Next Track: The Dresden Dolls – Coin-Operated Boy