The Thing That Knocks, Page 2

mind that he should accept his early death, it did stop.

  All of it.

  Everything.

  All the pain left his body like the air from his bike tires when he would get a flat.

  Proof!

  He lay there for nearly a minute as his heart rattled against his ribcage. His breathing, however, slowed down as he tried to stay calm. Everything was alright now, he told himself, but this only slightly helped, because just then, he remembered that there was something at the door.

  The cold flooring of Francis’ bedroom floor had sent him spiraling back into the reality that he had momentarily slipped away from. That realm where the knock on his door made sense was no longer there.

  Francis knew that it wasn’t his mother or his father at the door, because they never knocked. His mother hadn’t even started letting him close his door until last year, and that had been a big step. His father sometimes knocked, but only once, and then he would just come in. It was almost like a warning that said, “Hey, I’m coming in, if you’re naked, say something!”

  But he never got that with his mother. She would come flying through that door like nobody's business whether Francis had his little hinny hanging out or not.

  Whoever was at the door lacked both of the qualifications that needed to be meet for him to deduct that it was one of his parents.

  The three knocks had been slow, and heavy. Replaying the sound in his head—which wasn’t too hard to do—it sounded as if someone had taken a hollow stick to his door. A slightly distinguishable sound from that of a closed fist would have made. The image of man whapping a piece of bamboo on his bedroom door came to mind. Only, he imagined it as if it were taking place in slow motion, like in the movies. It rang like a bell in his head, so much so that for a short second he thought that he heard the knocking again, but he didn’t.

  When Francis got to the door, he wasted no time. He tore it open. Unsurely, but promptly.

  Francis looked, and seen nothing. At first, he thought there was no one there, even though it was too dark to tell. He could faintly see the hallway wall across from him. Nothing stood between him and the wall.

  Then, out from the midst of the dark hallway, he heard its voice.

  It came slow, and time even seemed to stop when it spoke.

  “Fraaaaaaaaancissssss,” it hissed.

  He stepped back into his room. He continued on taking steps back until he came in contact with the wall next to his window, and he fell when trying to step back even more but couldn’t.

  It’s all in your head! You’ve been reading too much of that book! YOU SHOULD HAVE STOPPED! He criticized himself, yelling inside his head.

  But he wasn’t sure about this. He wasn’t sure if it was all in his head or not.

  He heard it again: Fraaaaaaaaancissssss. But it was only his mind recreating the sound.

  Just the memory of the voice gave him the shivers.

  Then his mother's voice spoke in his head, almost as loud as the hissing had, and this calmed him slightly: Monsters are not real, Francis. Nor demons, or ghosts, or any other hocus pocus.

  Uneasy, and exasperated, Francis ran for the door that hung part way open, only leaving a small gray area where he could see the wall outside in the hallway, hoping he could shut it in time. Before whatever was out there . . . could get him.

  But he couldn’t shut the door. He had gotten only a few feet from it, his hands already reaching out to push the door shut, when the door swung open all the way, smashing the doorknob clean into the wall to its side.

  Francis fell back on the floor, and stayed there for a while; shaking. But nothing came into his room—

  (OH MY— OH MY— OH MY— was all he had time to think)

  —until something did.

  For the first time, Francis saw it. He saw the monster. For years he knew it was there, waiting for the right moment. Now, he was staring right at it, and it was very much real. Just as real as he was, he knew. He wished he didn’t know, and he was going to try everything to convince himself that he was wrong, and his mother was right.

  The head of a deformed cow skeleton with deteriorating flesh still stuck to it peered out from the darkness. Its eyes were dark pits, and its teeth were that of a shark, only they pointed outward seeming to droop from the head; the head which was mounted on a body that looked as though it were nothing but hovering rags, like a scarecrow’s, only completely black.

  For a moment, when the seemingly lifeless figure swayed itself into Francis’ room, as he looked into those eyes, he could have sworn that they were darker than the darkness itself. Darker than the deepest shade of black he had ever seen, and when he looked into them, the back of his own eyes began to itch, and a sharp pain started at the center of his head and shot down into his teeth.

  Francis clenched his fist in pain, and blood came gushing from his mouth, spilling through the air.

  “Gaaaaa,” he screamed.

  The figure—The Monster—was coming for him. Coming right at him! His movement was similar to a puppet tied to strings. A funny image came to mind: A giant hand hovering above the monster, twisting its fingers rapidly, and using the strings to hurdle this monster towards him.

  The shape of the monster coming at him was slender, just as the shadow on his wall had been. It must have been almost eight feet tall, too.

  Still swaying back and forth, the beasts’ steps began to slow, and it peered forward, craning its head down, and down. At any moment Francis thought it would swoop back up into the air like a hawk and pounce on him, but that didn’t happen.

  When it took its last step, to Francis it sounded like the beast was wearing clogs, like the Dutch wore. It never occurred to him they might be hooves—or straight up bone.

  Only one of the monster's arms were visible. It contorted in nasty bends from out of the beasts’ side, as if it were constructed with Play-Doh by an eight year old. It was long and droopy, thin and fat, and in multiple areas it appears to be rotting.

  The other arm, if this thing even had one,—and if it did it was nothing but a stub—was hidden in the mysterious cloth that seemed to consume the beast. If the cloth wasn’t the beast itself, that is.

  As the creature’s face finished dipping and came level with his own, Francis’ eyes grew so wide that he thought they were going to burst from his head at any moment.

  Suddenly, it got very warm in the room.

  A sound came from within the monster. Not from its mouth, no. Its mouth never moved—if you could even call it a mouth. But it literally came from within. As if Francis were reading its mind. The sound that came from within was a low clicking sound.

  It stopped, and it was replaced by a new sound: the voice.

  The one he had heard moments ago; which now seemed like days.

  “Fraaaaaaaaancis,” it hissed again.

  With a shudder, the grotesque arm hanging from its body flung around and latched onto Francis’ shoulder. As it happened, a rush of blood gushed from his nose.

  “I am death!” The voice came louder, shrieking. It was so surreal that the sound waves seemed to bend their way through Francis, vibrating everything around them.

  If Francis could have compared its voice to anything, it would have been the hissing of a snake, but . . . Its fowl hissing was deep as the blue ocean itself. As if Darth Vader had risen out from the poster pastured on the wall behind Francis’ bed and screamed the words into a microphone, only to be echoed a thousand times over.

  “I’ve come for you, Fraaaaancis!”

  It was at that moment, all of the sudden, that Francis knew. He knew he was going to die tonight, because the monsters that his mother had told him were not real were in fact real. And this particular monster had come to eat him. He must have sharpened his needle-like teeth before he came.

  “Are you going to . . . to eat me?” Francis asked, shaking.

  The cow like scull with the hairless snout and butcher-knife-sharp teeth lunged forward even closer until Francis could f
eel the creature's cold breath on his neck. It felt like brutality blazing ice crystals piercing his skin. The feeling made him sick.

  Then, just when Francis thought the creature was about to scream, “YES I’M GOING TO EAT YOU,” and gobble him up like a turkey dinner, the monster flew backwards and its shoulders hunched up to its horns.

  A new sound emerged from the beast. A sound he had heard from many humans before. His father, mother, grandfather . . .

  It was laughter.

  Eerie and guttural chuckling, to be more precise.

  It chilled Francis’ spine.

  The gruff laughter only stopped after a long moment and the beast stood over him still. It cocked its head, but its shoulders did not seize to puff up as if he were a black crow ready to take flight. In its usual raw hissing, it said, “I like the way you think!”

  Terrified, Francis pushed himself back into the wall. Although it wasn’t much of a push. “No!” he cried. Tears began to spill from his eyes.

  “No?” mocked the beast.

  “I don’t want to die!”

  “Well, then. I suppose I could just snack on your feet. You’ll live!” At this, the chuckle returned, and it was every bit as lurid. It was a taunting laughter that burst through every bone in Francis’ body. This laughter triggered something inside the boy that made him feel dead already. Maybe that was just how death made you feel when it was nearby, as if it were saying, “This is what the rest of eternity is going to be like!”

  “No!” He screamed louder.

  “Shhhhhhhhhhh,” said the beast. “Not so loud. Do you want to get