For three nights, the tapping stopped. The traps stayed unsprung, with the disinfectant smell lingering where she’d wiped the skirting. Lucy told herself the handyman had been right; the disturbance had moved on. She slept deeper, waking with the strange sensation that the house had exhaled, its complaints spent.
On the fourth night, she woke in the dark without knowing why. The digital clock showed 2:21. The house lay around her in layered quiet: wind, distant boiler hum, Emma’s faint breathing. Just as she began to relax, three soft knocks came from the wall—precise, evenly spaced, and directly behind her daughter’s bed.