Knocking - Part V

The gut-punch conclusion to a groundbreaking horror serial

I cannot delay this tale any longer. I am running out of pages, light, and therefore time. I have examined father’s pistol and emptied the cartridge and found it to be full: all seven rounds. Whether or not these rounds are still good will be left up to fate. I reloaded the cartridge and am confident I can use it now. The knocking is omnipresent, pervading my very being, pounding away at my sanity.

Mother explained to both of us the need to ration our food. With no way of knowing how long we were going to be trapped in her room, we needed to keep the food for as long as possible. Brother and Mother barricaded the door with her dresser and I closed the shades over the window. Mother indicated to both of us Father’s rifle under her bed. I found Mother’s notebook on her nightstand with a pen by its side. I planned on taking it once Mother was asleep. At that time, I still held out on the idea of surviving this, and, as ashamed and sickened as I am now by the idea, I thought of using these events as a way to catapult a successful writing career. I doubted anyone who read the book would believe such things could truly happen, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get it out of me. Now I am writing it. It is more cathartic than I thought it could have been.

With nothing left to do but survive, we all lay on her bed and huddled together. It was only midday, but we all felt exhausted. My eyes were heavy and I could feel Mother’s arm, wrapped around my waist, begin to slacken, and a slight snore eked out. I tried to look behind me, over Mother’s shoulder, to see if Brother was asleep as well without waking Mother, but I couldn’t see him. I assumed he was. After all, he had been awake since the middle of the night when the first Knocker came to the door. I put it out of my mind and allowed my body to rest.

I awoke hours later to the thunder of the Knockers. Many more had arrived, based on the intensity of the knocking coming from downstairs. I blinked a few times to really be sure I was awake, then realizing that I was, it occurred to me I had slept through the day and into the night. The room was pitch-black. I could feel Mother’s arm still around me and I could barely make out the sound of her soft snoring. Gently and quietly, as not to wake Mother, I lifted her arm from my waist and slowly put one leg and then the other over the edge of the bed and onto the floor. A chill shot through my feet and up through my spine from the wood floor. The room was freezing and I was certain if I could see my breath I would. I wished I had put my shoes on, and am thoroughly regretting it now.

“Don’t light any candles,” Brother hissed from behind me.

I startled and turned instinctively to where I thought Brother was. “Why not? They’ve already seen us.” There was a pale light coming in through the slit between the shades of the window and I could barely make out Brother’s nose and lips.

He didn’t answer. I stood and stretched, raising my arms above my head and interlocking my fingers, my spine popping and my knuckles cracking, my muscles tensing all the way down to my toes, my breath held and my eyes squeezed shut. I lowered myself from my tip-toes and let out a satisfied sigh.

“Well, if you insist on no candles then at least open the shades to let in the moon,” I said. “They don’t know we’re up here.”

A sliver of moonlight cut across the bedroom, illuminating it just enough for my memory to fill in the gaps. I padded over to where the food was to make myself and Brother a cheese and onion sandwich. As I began slicing the bread, Mother woke up, so I made her a sandwich as well.

She asked us how we slept, an awkward question in such circumstances, but we knew there wasn’t anything else to say, and we had to say something to keep the knocking at bay. That’s when Brother told us he hadn’t slept at all, just waited for us to wake up. Mother asked him why he hadn’t slept, but he didn’t answer. I think she and I knew the answer already, though.

We ate in silence, huddled back on the bed. We hadn’t anything to say, or anything to do, only to listen to the knocking. I lost track of time. I had no way of knowing how long we sat there, huddled together to keep warm. Like before, when Brother and I waited for Mother to return, sitting beneath Brother’s window, I tried to pick out the individual knocks. It was impossible to do now. There were far too many. Then, as still now, it sounds as if there is but one large fist banging on all sides at once, and I began to imagine a giant ghoul looming over our house, matted, greasy hair veiling its face, grey skin heaving, multiple fists from many arms bashing against the house simultaneously. I imagine the wood cracking, splintering, the windows shattering. It punches through, all its fists smashing against each other at the centre of our house, now crumbling around us, crushing us, killing us.

Thoughts of escape consumed me, though I became increasingly aware of the futility of it all. Jump out the window, break my ankle and the Knockers are upon me. Break through the front door, side door, or back door, Knockers swarm me before even a blade of grass caresses my foot. Climb onto the roof and leap over the heads of those preternatural things, break a leg and am caught. Take that scenario, or even jumping out the window, and exclude any injury such a landing would surely leave, and make a run for town. They will have me within a blink. Take a weapon with me, the rifle, though I do not know how to use a rifle, and so will be deadweight. Take the wood fire iron poker with me and smack any that reach me. Keep at it till I get to town… then the horde will bear down on the people there. And that is assuming I would not die before running the entire three miles there.

I played these ideas over and over in my head, trying to think of scenarios where we might escape. I attempted to imagine the hundreds or more ghouls surrounding the house instead of replaying doomed escapes. I could think of no way any of us could outrun the blink the ghouls seem to possess. We’d break the window — either up or down; it didn’t matter ultimately — and make a run for it. The moment the Knockers saw us, we were dead.

Another thing breached my mind at this point. Through all this imagining, I was unable to picture how these things killed. Brother knew, as he had seen Olly die, and Mother had a good idea after seeing her corpse, but I had no idea. All my imaginings faded and glared out of focus once the killing began. I suppose that’s normal enough. The mind shies away from mutilation and horror. But as of that moment, I needed a clear head. The knowledge of the way these things killed could save us, for all I knew.

I lay there on the bed with eyes half-open, feeling the gentle rise and fall of Mother’s chest against my back. My thoughts wandered, coasting just above my reach, never grasping anything, always reaching for an idea that would never come. Fantasies filtered in and out, only half-seen and the remainder never guessed at. I was as if dazed, asleep in those waking moments, waiting for something to happen, something to change. After a while, something did.

I felt a weight lift from the other side of the bed and I craned my head to see if Brother was awake. He stepped over Mother and me, careful not to wake either of us. I closed my eyes, thinking he was going to use the bucket, but his footsteps didn’t make it that far. After a few tense moments I slowly opened my eyes to a squint and could just make out Brother’s silhouette standing in front of the bedroom door. My anxiety spiked as he placed his hands on either side of the dresser blocking the door. He budged it, testing how much sound it would make. The wooden feet of the dresser rubbed against the wooden floor, making a scuffing sound that would have been loud enough to wake us up, if not for the knocking. Realizing this, he pulled one side of the dresser away from the door, and then the other, walking it back far enough to open the door wide. I was frozen, unable to speak, my mouth open but not even air escaping.

My mind screamed at him to stop, screamed at me to yell at him to stop, screamed at Mother to wake up and make him stop, and screamed at the screaming to stop so I could focus. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed my mind to slow and quiet, steeling myself for the confrontation to come. Brother was gone when I opened my eyes.

I debated then whether or not to wake Mother. I decided not to, thinking I could handle Brother alone. I thought it might even be easier without her, Brother not feeling as outnumbered or bullied by both of us calling him back. I thought this was the safest room in the house for Mother to be in case something terrible happened. What if I had woken her? She might be down here in the basement with me just now if I had. Or not. Things happened too quickly. I can’t help but feel guilty over her death. I must be partially responsible for it. I know I am. If nothing else, she would have had a fighting chance to get away. I should have woken her to at least give her that much.

She wouldn’t want me to think these things, I know. But when has such a statement ever helped the grieving or distressed? And so I got up alone, grabbed the rifle from underneath the bed, and made my way downstairs.

The sun must have been just peeking up through the woods, as faint grey light filtered in through the windows. I saw Brother just standing there, facing the front door. I stepped behind him. He didn’t notice. I looked past him to the windows on either side of the door and saw, not individual ghouls, but a mass of black, their movements jerky and unnatural, grey light flooding past their tangled mass of fists and hair, casting long, dreadful shadows across the floor, engulfing Brother and me. It made me feel claustrophobic, and I felt my chest tighten and my breath leave me. There were so many — still are so many. Father’s rifle seemed to shrivel at the wall of ghouls just beyond those windows, making it feel useless and leaving me feeling stupid.

Brother moved to open the door and I snapped to. I shouted at him to stop and instinctively raised the rifle to his back. He stopped, his hand floating inches from the doorknob.

“You’d shoot me?”

I couldn’t answer. Images of him as a young boy flitted through my mind, memories of us playing; Father teaching us how to ride Gabriel, watching Brother as he fell time and time again, laughing through it all. Now he’s older, riding confidently atop Olly, a stick in one hand, tufts of Olly’s mane in the other, pumping the stick up and down like a cavalry sabre. It was a little show for me to enjoy whenever he rode past me. He never did any such show after Father died. He’s younger again, and Mother is chasing him around the kitchen, shouting at him to give her the toad he has captured between his hands. He and I digging holes in the riverbed. I couldn’t shoot him.

He grasped the door knob.

“I will shoot you if I have to! If it’s to save Mother!”

He half-turned, and his eyes were the saddest of anything I’d ever seen. Hopeless, listless, resigned, disappointed. I couldn’t understand them, though. It was like he built up a wall around himself the night before as he lay awake in bed while Mother and I slept. What had he been thinking of while I was scheming ill-conceived escapes? What demons possessed him that night for him to come to such a conclusion? I no longer knew him, could no longer fathom his depths. Where had the little boy gone? Where had my big brother gone? He turned back and opened the door.

My finger slipped, my body jerked and Brother fell, grabbing at his knee. The gunshot echoed in the silence, ending the knocking, and my head rang. I dropped the rifle, turned away and ran. I didn’t stop, and knew the only safe place left in the house was down here. I slammed the door behind me, and the knocking commenced immediately. I tumbled down the stairs and shambled to a corner, knelt down and cried. I cried with a fury I’d never felt before, screaming at those things to go away, pleading with them not kill my family, and just screaming incoherently till my voice failed me. But I kept on weeping in the darkness. I cried so long. I wanted to die; I wanted my tears to choke me. I wanted to give in; I wanted to give out. I’ve read books where people died of broken hearts, and my heart is broken, but it hasn’t killed me. I cried myself to sleep and I awoke, cold and shivering, on the floor. The rest of story has been told.

I’ve written this down for anyone who may find my body at any time in the future. I hold no illusions of survival. I am going to die, and I am reconciled to this fact. But I do not wish to die the same way Brother and Mother did. I have the power to choose my death. I have so many regrets from the past three days, so many more from my short life. But I can’t feel the guilt anymore. I think I’m too tired to. I’ve felt nothing but guilt and melancholy for so long, I suppose I’m beginning to forget how anything else feels. I killed Brother and Mother. I killed them. Not the ghouls. I did. I left Mother’s bedroom door open. I shot Brother. Those things can’t die. I can’t kill them, but I can die. And I should.