A Knock Always Requires an Answer
A short horror by Matthew Tonks
The water soaks into his flesh, the bubbles popping rhythmically against him while he lies there, his eyes half-closed, the phone lazily in his hands, colours drifting aimlessly across its screen as he moves each one into its box, his mind running on autopilot, no real thought to any of it anymore.
A laboured breath, a sigh. He shifts himself wearily, and the warm water splashes against him like cold fingers. He grumbles and grunts.
“One more, and then I’m done,” he mumbles to himself as an ad begins to play across the screen. He grimaces. His teeth chatter as the temperature of the room suddenly begins to drop several degrees. He shivers.
His eyes search the small room, the bathroom’s frosted glass door clearly visible in the reflection of one of the room’s many mirrors, still firmly closed. Something moves out in the hallway, past the door, its shadow large. A breath catches in his chest, “H—Hello?” he calls out.
After several silent moments, he calls out again, but like before, no answer comes.
He lets out a breath and furrows his brow as he slides deeper into the bathwater, submerging almost all of his upper body. He grimaces again as his toes clumsily try to grip the hot water tap while one of his hands blindly searches for the plug, the other holding his phone out of danger.
As he looks up, stretched six ways to Sunday, he catches his own reflection faintly in the plexiglass skylight—now in the dark, a crude, otherworldly mirror. He gasps, scaring himself for a moment before nervously laughing to himself as his fingers finally find the plug.
A knock comes from the door—not the bathroom door, but the one before it, across the hall, opening out to their small courtyard.
“No one’s home,” he whispers with a grumble.
The knock comes again. He pulls himself up out of the water into a sitting position, squinting his eyes tightly as he holds his breath and listens for movement, but nothing comes. His brow furrows deeper and he grumbles again.
He jumps as another knock bangs on the door, louder this time. He hisses gruffly under his breath as he pulls up the security cameras on his phone.
As the app opens, the signal lags for a few extra seconds before it finally connects and shows the courtyard empty, with no one at the door. He narrows his gaze, lips tightening as he checks the other cameras scattered around the outside of the house, but finds no one anywhere.
With a laboured sigh, he clenches his jaw as he opens up the camera archive for the courtyard.
The recordings show that the last footage flagged for movement was when he locked the door twenty minutes ago, before he climbed into the bath. He shakes his head and trawls through the footage, hoping whoever was knocking on the door just didn’t set off the sensors—but no matter how hard he looks, he finds no one there.
He’s pulled away from his phone with a jump as the strange knocking starts again—this time on the bathroom door.
He lets out a surprised cry as his eyes turn to the mirror—where the silhouette of a large figure stands on the other side of the door’s frosted glass.
His eyes widen even more as it bangs on the glass again, this time the door shaking violently while the figure remains unmoving.
He swallows, his lips trembling as he tries to call out, but the words catch in his throat and fall over themselves.
The lights flicker and the door slides open with a bang.
He lets out a hiss as the water burns his flesh, its temperature dropping to near freezing.
He looks down and stares directly into a pair of empty, dead eyes staring up at him from a stain of blackness that infects the water.
Something grips him, and before he can cry out, he’s dragged under.
The water thrashes and spills over the sides as his fingers cling to the porcelain rim before disappearing into the water below.
A few splashes follow, then the water falls calm and begins to drain from the otherwise empty bath.
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