By: Kody Hanor
It was past midnight when the house finally went quiet. Three cousins — one boy and two girls had spent the evening telling ghost stories and laughing until they felt their abdominal muscles kicking in. After getting tucked in, the boy went to his room across the hall while the girls whispered under their blankets with a flashlight, the moonlight spilling in through the curtains.
A few minutes later, the door to the girl’s bedroom had burst open. The boy stood there, pale and trembling.
“I heard knocking,” he whispered. “On my window.”
Before either girl could respond, a faint tap-tap-tap echoed through the room. All three froze. The sound again, louder this time, from their window.
One girl swallowed hard and turned her head. The window, fogged from the cold night air, showed something pressing against it — a face. Translucent. Hollow eyes. A mouth hanging open in a silent scream and hands cupping against the glass.
The boy inched closer, heart pounding. The ghostly figure tilted its head, skin pale as paper, eyes flicking from one cousin to the next. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, it raised a bony finger and tapped the glass again.
They were on the second floor.
Downstairs, the front door creaked open. The cousins shifted their attention to the bedroom door then back to the window. The face was gone.
And from the hallway leading to the bedroom, they heard the same soft tap-tap-tap.
