• The Knockings •

While Biyo was in school, he was in the middle of a reading lesson, and he needed to go the bathroom. He stuck his hand up and told Mr. Hirosawa that he needed to use the bathroom. After his usual speech about how he "should have gone at break", Biyo walk to the bathroom.

As Biyo sat the toliet, then there came a knocking at the door.

"Someone's in here," he said.

There came a pause, then the knocking resumed. It was faster now, more determined.

"Wait a minute!"

The knocking slowed, and a voice replied:

"Let me in. I need to come inside."

The speaker's tone was thin and reedy: an adult that Biyo didn't recognise.

"Go away!"

The knocking intensified again, until it was a frantic drum-beat, just a few feet from Biyo and out-of-sight. He heard the voice shouting something, growing more and more desperate:

"Let me in! Just open the door, please!"

Biyo was terrified, by that point. The hammering and yelling was so loud, and yet nobody had come to investigate it. Eventually, his teacher came to find him, angry because he had been gone half an hour. When Biyo refused to open the door to let him in, he got a spare key from h8s desk and then took him back to the classroom. He never told anyone what happened.

A few weeks later after this phenomenon, Biyo is celebrating his birthday, and his family threw him a party with his friends. It was a gloriously sunny day, but as soon as we'd set everything up in the allotments behind our house, the coal refused to light. Biyo's Dad asked him to go and get some fire-starters from the shed in the front garden.

It was pretty cramped inside, and Biyo wouldn't fit all the way, so he just opened it up, stood on tip-toes to reach the shelf, then shut the door. As he turned away, he heard on the other side of the door.You little bastard. I'll rip your fucking teeth out. Let me THROUGH!"

"Open up! I need to come through!"

This voice was not the one Biyo heard the month before: it was deeper, more brooding and angry.

He said nothing, and hurried away. Biyo had no idea what is happening, but it frightened him. As he walked away, There came a final thump, like someone was smashing a door open, and he heard the voice again:

"You little shit. I'll rip your teeth out. Let me THROUGH!"

Biyo ran back to his party, and spent the rest of the day glancing over his shoulder.

As Biyo have guessed by now, there were a lot of these voices. Biyo count at least thirty, total. Every month or so, he used to get them: pleading to be let through doors. Almost always, it would be immediately after I shut the door behind me, as though these strange entities had been following me. Biyo never told anyone, but to be honest, he kinda just got used to it. It always made Biyo jump, and some of the voices would make me feel uneasy, but Biyo knew that he was safe, so long as he did not open the door. Some of the voices, he got used to, to the extent that he even named them. There was one which always used to appear at my front door, at home.

Twenty days went on, and Biyo have retained as much normality as possible. He sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and listens intently to noises that anyone can't hear on the other side of the door.

Biyo notice things have started to get strange, stranger than usual, he suppose. Three weeks ago, he woke up, sweating and crying, though he did not know why. His dream had been, from what he recall, fairly normal, when a huge shadow had abruptly fallen over everything. Literally, the second he opened his eyes, there came the knocking at my bedroom door. Not just normal knocking, though. This was truly frantic.

"Who goes there?" he yelled.

"P-please. Help us..." it replied.

Biyo was surprised. It was the sadistic, angry voice that he remember from his father's shed on his birthday party, but it seemed genuinely sincere.

There was a pained tone to it, too: as though the speaker were grievously wounded. Biyo actually found himself pulling back the sheets to get up, but he hesitated. He had never before been tempted to open the door. There were moments Biyo came very close to letting the thing into his room. He held out, in the end.

It got worse. Just two days later, Biyo was in his local corner-shop. He'd just paid for a bottle of milk, when a great force slammed against the shop door. Simultaneously, a voice began screaming: a long, keening squeal of pain. Biyo whirled to face the door, but there were so many fliers plastered over the glass that he could only just make out the shape of a woman on the other side, slapping her palms against the window. The shopkeeper stared at him, as though he were crazy. In the end, Biyo asked if he had a bathroom he could use, murmured some half-thought-out excuse and hid there for ten minutes until the screaming stopped.

There were four more incidents between then and now: a mixture of screams and tearful begging.

A week later while Biyo's parents were away, he was in his bedroom, when his door started shaking, violently. It wasn't a scream, or a howl, or a roar that he heard, though. It was just crying. Dozens and dozens of voices, sobbing quietly. A hard knock hit his door. Hard knocks were coming from Biyo's bedroom walls. Still no pleases or bargaining, just sobbing.

KNOCK.

Biyo jumped up from his bed.

KNOCK.

A hairline crack split the frame of his door in one corner.

Biyo then heard a smach on the glass of his window, behind the curtains, and heard more voices crying. Not even sobbing, though: more like bawling in terror and anguish.

Biyo have shoved most of his furniture against his door and window. It has been three hours since this latest attempt at entry began. The smaching has not abated. Nor has the crying. Biyo fairly sure that his door won't hold much longer.

Then Silence fell. Biyo notice that the crying and smaching had stop. For a minute, Biyo sat there. Then he got up and hurried to his door, eager to escape this claustrophobic situation. Perhaps he'd go outside, where he could be far away from any doors, and from the damned knocking. He pulled-away his barricade and turned the handle.

Locked.

Biyo peered through the keyhole. Beyond his bedroom door was not the corridor that he remembered, but another room, some kind of library or classroom, he think. It seemed unoccupied, but for one kid, sitting and reading with his back to him. He banged on the door.

"Hey, um, can please let me out?", said Biyo.

He glanced over his shoulder.

"Yeah, over here. Could you plese open the door?"

"I can't. I'm in detention, and I'm not supposed to talk to anyone. Please go away."

He turned from Biyo. Confused and exasperated, he began to stand up. A loud bang shattered the silence once more. Biyo realized it sounded like a fist being pounded against the glass. His window!

He heard it again. But this was not the frantic knocking of somebody wanting to get inside. This was not even an attempt to break in. Whatever was beyond the curtain and glass knew Biyo was inside. It knew Biyo was frightened. In a predatory sadistic way, it wanted Biyo to be afraid.

Biyo turned back to the door and began hammering on it, frantically.

"Hey! Let me in, okay? I really need you to open the door..."