Knock Knock

Lovely, that was the name given to the apartment on the first floor of the Riverbank building. No one had set foot inside the apartment in years. None of the neighbors knew who the owner was o what had happened to him, but something was for sure, the apartment was not empty.

Every Christmas a light would switch on, music would resonate throughout the building and just as the clock hit twelve all would shut off. The doors and windows were locked, there was no sign of any life, but still, something about the scratched pine door and the cloudy windows gave the house a life of its own.

It wasn’t until the beggining of December, when a young man by the name of Edward moved into the apartment next to Lovely, that the lights didn’t switch off. Everybody warned their new neighbor about the mystery of the flat with the scratched pine door, some said it was haunted, others that there was a problem with the wiring. Whichever was the real reason, they all had something in common, there was something wrong with that room.

Edward was sure that his neighbors where crazier than whatever was next door, therefore he settled into his new home without a second thought. Just as the clock on the kitchen wall hit six in the evening there was a knock. Edward opened the door, but no one was there. He decided that what he heard was probably someone dropping something on the corridor. Not a minute later there were three more knocks, harder this time, but no one was at the door.

Thinking that all this knocking was one of the neighboring kids playing games on him he decided to ignore the next set of hits. What was strange, he realized, was that the knocking seemed to come from the wall, not the door, but they sounded like wood not concrete. Edward turned the TV of and decided to wait for the next knock to track the source.

This time the knock was softer, but the homeowner was able to find its source. It seemed like the sound was coming from behind the bookcase. Edward knocked on the wooden shelves and received an immediate response. The knocks where a pattern, Edward realizes. He knew that type of code, he had learned it when he was in the military, it was Morse code.

He tapped “who are you?”

Time passed and there was no response, it wasn’t until he was about to get up that he heard light tapping “My name is Lila” it said. Edward was surprised, if someone was talking to him from behind that wall it meant that the abandoned apartment was not so uninhibited after all.

Communicating in Morse code was hard, it took too long to send and translate. But Edward was too curious about the mysterious girl next door that he opened one of his still-packed boxes and took out a hammer. He knocked “step back” and then started hitting the old wood.

The wood was already rotting and as soon as the light of his lamp hit the young woman curling down behind the bookcase his heart sank. He had seen this girl before, on one of his missions, he hadn’t asked her name, but he would be able to recognize that woman’s big green eyes anywhere. She was wearing a pink dress that looked way to expensive to be worn by someone living in an abandoned apartment.

When she locked eyes with Edward se let out a giggle. She too remembered Edward, how could she not, he had saved her life. She walked over to the now broken bookcase and extended her hand. Edward shook it and they both smiled.

Behind her, there was a clear view of the apartment. A Christmas tree was standing in the middle of the living room, fairy lights hung form the walls. If it weren’t for the foggy windows, he would have said it was a completely different apartment. It didn’t look uninhibited at all, it seemed festive and homey.

Edward turned his eyed back at Lila, who was climbing through the rotten wood. When she stood in front of him, she took of the chain around her neck and said, “Merry Christmas”. The chain was attached to his dog-tag, the exact same one he had lost that day in the California shooting. She had kept it, after all this time. It seemed she could see the question in his eyes, so she said, “I live on the building next door, I saw you moving in here and thought this was the right moment to give this back to you”.

She didn’t live in the Lovely apartment; she had come in through that apartment, but she didn’t live there. The fresh decorations, the foggy windows it looked like someone lived there, vile ran up his throat. Suddenly he regretted knocking the bookcase down.