Rumours and whispers cling like cobwebs to old houses. These homes collect the stories of people’s lives and sweep them into the corners. They become creatures of dark and shadow, disappearing in sunlight. They can be swept away for a time but will always come creeping back. He had heard the whispers of the neighbours. He tried not to listen to rumours, but he couldn’t ignore the looks he got, he couldn’t ignore it when the woman downstairs had met him in the hall one day and asked how he was doing. He couldn’t ignore that while he was answering she appeared to be looking beyond him into the open door of his apartment, like she expected to see something.

It has started small enough.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Just a branch the wind was blowing up against the side of the house or even his bedroom window. Tap. Tap. Tap. No, it was coming from inside somewhere. Tap. Tap. Tap. Maybe one of the neighbours had a space heater running? Tap. Tap. Tap. He couldn’t shake the fact that it really did sound like the knocking of human knuckles on the door down the hall. He didn’t sleep well at all anymore.  There was always someone else in his dreams. A vaguely defined shape that leered at him out of the ether with a threatening presence.

It got worse as the other residents of the old house left for the holidays. The building seemed to turn inwards and he swore he could feel something looking at him. He felt like an intruder, he wasn’t wanted here and whatever wraith was grasping at him in his mind had crossed over into the waking world.

Crying. What had woken him was the sound of crying. It was muffled as if the person didn’t want to be heard, but unmistakable as a sound. Who could it be? The neighbours were gone but the noise seemed too close to be anything else. The room down the hall? A perverse wave of fear rolled up his spine and settled like a stone in his belly. Confused and drowsy, he staggered to his bedroom door. Softly pulling it open he stood in the doorway and listened. It definitely sounded like the room down the hall. With limited success he admonished himself for his childish fear of the dark and headed for this second doorway. As he touched the handle all the noises stopped and there was only the empty house and its darkened windows peering out into the night.

Still, he wanted to make a thorough search and turned the handle. Nothing. He opened the door to the tiny room. Nothing. Only the detritus from his move – boxes stuffed inside one another and crumpled newspaper on the floor. Some drunk girl, he thought. Just some drunk girl staggered home from her office Christmas party.

Comforted by this idea, he went back to bed.

It would have been easy to ignore that one night. But it happened again. And again. And again. And again, until it had happened every night for a week. Once again, he tried to chalk it up to stress. Work was no longer an adequate distraction. There was hardly anyone left in the office and the semi-deserted building felt alien. The cheap plastic holiday decorations seemed especially artificial and pitiful. Gradually, the shadows slithered into his mind. Asleep or awake they were always present as the finality of the winter darkness settled in.

Now he was sure he was seeing her -the spectral figure from his dreams had breached the gate. The first time had been not as an apparition but solid. He had been eating breakfast at the big front window when he’d glanced up into the blackness of the glass and she was there. Crying, as he had since learned she always did, but solid. More disturbing that her apparent reality was that she was looking at him. It had been so personal, like being a child called out in front of the class.

Soon he was catching glimpses of her in mirrors and the dimness of winter windows. He saw her pale face and heard her hideous whimpering, as if in great pain. In her hands she tightly clutched a knitted blanket. The blanket has once been white but was now red and rusty with blood. It dripped and she wrung it in her trembling hands.

At first he thought he was hallucinating and wondered if he should see a doctor. Nothing like this ran in his family but you couldn’t be too careful. He could believe it was his imagination until he came home from work on his last day before the office closed for the holidays. For once he hadn’t been thinking of the tapping or the crying or the strange reflections. He was thinking of booking train tickets home.

He turned the key in the lock and entered his apartment. He kicked off his shoes and dropped his bag onto the floor. With a loud groan, he sank on to the sofa. He closed his eyes for a brief moment. Happy thoughts about seeing his family were interrupted when he began to notice a soft whimpering.

A cold chill clutched at him and fear knotted in his chest. There she was, plain as day, in the hallway leading to that tiny bedroom.  Worse than the abhorrent sobbing was that she was looking right at him. Her dark eyes drilled into his very soul and he was paralyzed, neither being able to move or look away. Her sobbing became more intense and desperate until each cry convulsed her entire frame, the bloody blanket clenched to her breast.

She lurched towards him and sagged slightly as if the effort of her wailing had finally become too much. The hateful spectre seemed to pause momentarily. Any relief he felt at the stopping of her advance was dashed as she contorted and undulated forward. Her moaning rose to a howl and a cascade of blood erupted from her mouth. The macabre smell of decay accompanied by the metallic tang of the blood filled his nostrils.

Shrieking, he scrambled for the door. His foot caught the strap of his messenger bag. As he fell, his head cracked loudly on an end table and he blackness overtook him. When he woke, the room was dark with only dim light from the streetlamps peeking in.

He roused himself shakily from the floor and considered phoning the police but was at a loss as to explain himself. The was woman gone, as she always was. The only ghastly souvenir that remained was a small pool of blood at the entrance to the hallway. It wasn’t equal to the tidal wave he had witnessed but it was enough for him to believe that he hadn’t experienced a hallucination or a stress-induced breakdown. Gingerly, he put a hand to his head. It was swollen and painful, but his fingers came away clean and he felt that any damage was minimal.