Every night, at exactly 3:33 AM, the knocking starts. Three slow knocks, deliberate, as if the person on the other side knows I’m listening, waiting. It’s a new routine, one that began the night I spent my first evening in the quaint, unassuming house that was supposed to be my sanctuary.
The first time it happened, I figured it was just some neighborhood prank, a way to welcome the new guy to the block. But when I looked through the peephole, expecting to catch a glimpse of retreating figures, I found an empty street bathed in the orange glow of the streetlights.
The second night, the knocking came again. Same pattern, same time. This time, a shiver ran down my spine, and a sense of dread filled the pit of my stomach. I flicked on the porch light, hoping to scare off whoever was messing with me. But as I peered outside, I saw no mischievous teens, no shadow of a person. Just my own face staring back at me, smiling in a way that made my skin crawl. It wasn’t my reflection. It was another me.
I stumbled back, gripping the nearest chair for support. The other me cocked its head, the smile never wavering, and then it was gone as suddenly as it appeared. No sound of footsteps, no sign of movement, just silence and the chilling memory of that smile.
By the third night, fear had turned to obsession. I couldn’t leave it alone, couldn’t let it go. As the clock neared 3:33 AM, I armed myself with the heaviest thing I had—a baseball bat—and waited. The knocking started, and there I was again, or rather, the thing that looked like me, only off in a way that’s hard to describe. “Let me in,” it whispered, its voice eerily like mine. “It’s cold out here.”
The words echoed in the empty house, bouncing off the walls, filling the space with a sense of imminent threat. I screamed at it to leave, threatening to call the cops. But it just laughed—that same chilling chuckle—and the night reclaimed its silence.
Sleep became a forgotten luxury. I poured over internet forums, flipping through pages of folklore and paranormal encounters, each tale more unnerving than the last. They spoke of bad omens, dark mirrors, copies of oneself signifying turmoil, or worse, death.
The fourth night, it wasn’t alone. I didn’t go to the door, didn’t need to. I could hear it—the other me—accompanied by whispers that multiplied, surrounded the house, filled the air. “Let us in. This is our house, too,” they chanted, a symphony of my own voice, warped and twisted into something sinister.
I never answered the door that night. Instead, I cowered in my bedroom, the whispers creeping under the door, promising a union, a merging, if I’d only sleep.
But I couldn’t give in, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. When dawn broke, I fled. No belongings, no plan, just a desperate need to escape my own face, my own voice.
Now I’m here, miles away, writing this in a dingy motel that charges by the hour, the neon sign outside flickering a lurid red. Every creak of the building, every rustle outside sends a jolt of fear through me. I watch the door like a hawk, jump at the sound of any knock from the neighboring rooms.
I wonder what would happen if I had opened the door, if I’d confronted those smiling doppelgangers. But some questions are best left unanswered, especially when the night is dark, and your own face is waiting outside to greet you.