Knock Knock

Knock, Knock, Knock

It was 1 o’clock in the morning.

“Sweetheart, someone’s at the door.” Her voice was low and cracking. I barely heard her. I didn’t really speak, I just moaned. I was in too deep sleep to move.

She shook me. “Honey!”

This time, her voice was a bit stronger. I could hear a hint of fear.

That’s when I heard it myself.

Knock, Knock, Knock, Knock

I pulled myself out of bed.

“Don’t open the door,” she said. “Check the camera first.”

These days, everybody has a video doorbell. Convenient. Safer. There was no need to go to the door.

Knock, Knock, Knock, Knock

It was louder. Stronger. It echoed through the house. Did it wake the kids? I listened for a few seconds. Bobby, age two, would cry when suddenly awakened. Sally, age five, would have come into our room. I couldn’t hear them moving. They were okay. Thank God.

My phone brightened the room. I shielded my eyes while they adjusted to the light.

A mysterious figure stood in front of the camera. I could not see a face or form to determine if it was a man or a woman.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

No answer. He walked away, leaving a package on the porch.

We lived in a nice neighborhood, but it still wasn’t safe to open the door at that time of night—especially when someone so strange was just standing there. Besides that, the excitement was over. The adrenaline was gone. I was very tired again.

“Who was it?” Cindy asked.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see the face. He walked away without saying anything.”

I didn’t tell her about the package. I didn’t want her to lose any sleep. I sure wasn’t. I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. Whatever it was, it would have to wait until morning. Like I said, we lived in a nice neighborhood.

________________________________________

I got up after 7:30. Bobby and Sally were already sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Cindy to make breakfast. She was in the shower.

“Daddy,” Sally said with a sad voice. “Are you going to cook breakfast?”

They didn’t like my cooking. Cindy was a professional chef and the cook of the family. I used to cook, but nobody ate my food. I didn’t even like it. I was a lawyer working for one of the largest firms in the city. I never had time to prepare food.

Edna was our nanny. She normally made lunch for the kids while we were at work, but it was Saturday, her day off. Ours also.

“Yes,” I said. “What do you want?”

I was only messing with them. I wouldn’t do that to them. But the look of disappointment on their faces made me laugh. When Cindy started making breakfast, they both smiled.

I grabbed the package from the porch. There was no name on it. No sender. No receiver. It only said: “Package One of Five.”

“What’s that?” Cindy asked.

“Our unknown visitor left it last night.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet.”

“Who is it from?”

“It only says, ‘Package One of Five.’”

“Open it.”

“I am!”

She started to annoy me. She was asking questions she knew I couldn’t possibly answer. The box wasn’t opened yet. I didn’t have X-ray vision. How could I know what was in the box? That’s why I didn’t tell her the night before. I knew how she would respond. Neither of us would have gotten any sleep.

As annoyed as I was, I couldn’t let her see it. It would only have added to the tension. Tension was something we did not want.

“Hand me a knife, please,” I said.

The box contained a glass globe attached to a black base.

“It looks like one of those plasma balls,” I said. “You know, when you touch it, electricity shoots from the middle.”

The only problem with my assessment of the device was the weight. I’d had a few of these when I was a kid. They only weighed one pound, two at most. This one was heavy. It weighed at least ten. Its base was larger than normal and looked like something was missing. Also, there was no power cord. How was I supposed to power it up?

“Who would send us a plasma ball?” Cindy asked.

“I don’t know!”

I set it on the countertop, and it came on.

“It must have batteries,” I said.

Despite the mystery, I called the kids over to see it. I was happy to see the smiles on their faces as little bolts of lightning shot to their hands. I remember having a lot of fun with these as a child. Now, my children had the same opportunity.

Time passed without any problems. The new week started. Cindy cooked breakfast for the kids in the mornings. Edna came to watch them we went to work. She dropped Sally off at kindergarten. The days went by as they always did. Our mysterious stranger had been all but forgotten. That is, until the following Saturday.

Knock, Knock, Knock

It was 1 o’clock in the morning.

“Sweetheart, someone’s at the door.”

“I’m up. I’m up.”

I checked the camera. Again, the mysterious figure stood on the porch.

“Who is it”, I asked?

Again, he walked away without talking, leaving a package behind.

“Are you going to get it”, Cindy asked?

“No, I’ll get it in the morning. I don’t think anyone will bother it.”

I was relieved that the kids were not awakened. I laid back down and closed my eyes, but sleep evaded me.

Around 3 in the morning. I got up and went into the kitchen. My mother used to give me a glass of warm milk when I couldn’t sleep. I added honey and cinnamon to help.

I sat at the dining room table, sipping my milk and reviewing the footage of our mysterious stranger. The camera never caught anyone walking up to the door. Footage started with somebody standing there. I must have watched it 100 times.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

Cindy walked up quietly behind me. Was it a question or a statement? I couldn’t tell.

“Me either.”

She didn’t let me respond. There was no need to. She also had a cup of warm milk with honey and cinnamon.

We talked for over an hour about the stranger and the packages. We couldn’t figure out who it was. At 5 AM, I don’t remember which one of us said it. “The kids will be up in 2 hours. We’d better get a little sleep.”

At that, we went back to bed. I think that the warm milk worked. I fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow.

I woke up around 7:45. The kids were watching TV. When I was a kid, we had Saturday Morning cartoons. We watched “One Saturday Morning” on Channel 7. No other option. This was fine with me. These kids were able to watch any movie or TV show ever made. Anything to keep them distracted.

Cindy didn’t feel like cooking and gave them cereal and orange juice. She had already grabbed the package from the porch but waited for me before opening it. It was labeled “Package Two of Five.”

“What’s that”, I asked.

“The package from…”

“What is it? Who’s it from? Open it.”

Realizing that I was messing with her, she ignored me.

This box was also heavy. Maybe 12 pounds. She opened the box and found 4 cylinders inside. They were black and pointed at the top. They were heavy and warm. They seemed to be vibrating ever so slightly. Each one had notches on the side. A note inside read, “The four corners.”

“Four corners”, I said. “Of what?”

Looking at the plasma ball, I noticed that it also had notches. The cylinders were attracted to them like magnets. As I brought each one close, the tops started to glow. An electric discharge came from the plasma ball to the cylinder. The closer they got, the lights in the room started to flicker. When all four were connected, the plasma ball came on stronger. Brighter. It started to hum. A pulse came out that almost knocked me off my feet. What were they? Batteries? I didn’t know.

We placed it on the top shelf. We didn’t let the kids play with it. We had to figure it out ourselves first.

That next Friday, neither Cindy nor I could sleep. We both stayed up watching the camera for any sign of our mysterious stranger approaching the door. Midnight came and a new Saturday began.

“It’s Saturday”, Cindy said.

“I know. Are we going to stay up until 1?”

“That’s the plan.”

We didn’t say much else. We just stared at the screen, waiting for something to happen.

Right on cue, at 1 AM, the screen flashed, and our stranger appeared on the porch.

Knock, Knock, Knock, Knock

Just like before, a package was left. Three or Five.

I was up first. This package was light. Maybe half a pound. Cindy’s questions were not so annoying this time. “What is it” was a good question.

“It looks like a tablet screen”, I said.

My brother used to repair cracked screens on phones and tablets. This looked like the screen to a 12-inch tablet. It was in a frame that had notches. It had a note telling us where to attach it, but it was kind of obvious.

It snapped in place at a 45-degree angle to the base and 2 of the cylinders. Right away, the plasma ball turned on, the tops of the cylinders started to glow, the hum was back, the lights flickered, Cindy’s hair stood up, and if I didn’t know any better, I could swear that I started to float. It was just a little. Just an inch and only for a second. But it happened.

I never liked the feeling of being lifted off the ground. Maybe when I was a child. But not since then. When I was in high school, I took up wrestling in gym. The kid that I thought was a wimp, picked me up and body slammed me, twice. Years later, my niece was 5 years old. I told her that she was too big for me to pick up. I thought she was joking when she said that she could pick me up. When she did it, let’s just say I was a little traumatized.

So, when I felt myself lifting off the ground, even for one second, I screamed. Of course, these caught the kid’s attention. They came running out of the room to check what was going on. I was fine, except for the fact that my heart was beating 1000 times per second.

Nobody noticed that other items were still floating. It was Bobby who noticed the handprint on the screen.

“Touch it Mommy”, he said.

Cindy placed her hand on the screen, and a shockwave came out of the plasma ball. It knocked out all of the lights in the house. They were out for 10 minutes. It made Cindy and I very nervous. The kids thought it was cool and wanted to try it themselves. We were not going to let them touch it. It was going back on the top shelf. We were afraid of what next Saturday would bring.

The days leading up to Friday were filled with sleepless nights. We had no idea what the device that we were building was designed to do. What started off as a playful curiosity has escalated to outright danger. Would we even open the next package? Would we tell anyone what was happening? These are the types of questions that kept us up at night.

I had a light week at work. In an average work week, I would handle 15 cases. I only had 3 this week. All 3 were open shut cases. Legally, I can’t give you any details on the cases, but between the 3 clients, I got them a total of $56 Million. My firm got a large portion of it, and I received a large bonus from that. So, I was happy.

Cindy wasn’t so happy. Somebody was stalking her at work. A man wearing all black kept asking for her. She was not one for making personal appearances for guests that she didn’t know. When the waitress asked what he wanted with her, he would get up and leave. This happened every day. On Friday, he didn’t show up. Instead, upon leaving, there was a note stuck to her windshield. It wasn’t handwritten. It was composed of letter stickers. It was just 4 words.

“Don’t Touch It Again”

“We’re getting rid of that thing in the morning”, I said.

“I agree.”

--

For the fourth week in a row,

Knock, Knock, Knock, Knock

This time, we didn’t hear it. Both of us were dead asleep. We were so tired that we couldn’t keep our eyes open. It was Bobby that responded. We didn’t realize that he was woke these last few weeks watching us, observing us. When we didn’t respond, he copied what we did.

“Hi woe. Who dare?”

We learned about this when we checked the footage, later. We’re just glad that we trained him not to open the door.

We slept late, not getting out of bed until after 8 AM. It was the words, “Front Door Opened”, that awakened us. It took a second to grasp what was happening. Then, almost at the same time, we screamed, “The Kids”.

We ran downstairs quickly to stop them. My heart was beating so hard that I felt the blood pulsing in my eyes. Cindy tripped over her own feet. She would have fallen if I hadn’t caught her. It seemed like hours, but we reached the bottom in seconds. Still, it was too late.

Sally was holding the box that said “Four of Five”. Her little arms hugged it like a buried treasure she had dug out of the ground herself.

“We’re helping, Daddy.”

We’re helping. Both of them.

Cindy turned her attention to Bobby. The device, already sitting on the kitchen table when I turned around, I saw the glowing handprint on the screen. “Helping”, Bobby said. His hand was right upon the screen when she grabbed him. That, also, was too late.

The plasma ball started to glow brightly. A shockwave came out, but it was not aggressive as the first. This was different. It seemed to be scanning Bobby’s face. He laughed as if it tickled. Then, a voice came out of the globe.

“Identity verified. Bobby Carter Jr. - Part four located.”

Pushed by something inside, the box opened. We were too stunned to say anything, let known move. We were in a trance. Even when a beam emitting from the plasma ball grabbed hold of Bobby and pulled him back to the device, all we could do was stand there. Powerless.

From the opened box emerged some kind of drone. It was a flat platform with 4 fans under it. It locked itself on to the device above the 4 cylinders. The same cloaked figure appeared on the screen. “Hi woe”, Bobby said as he continued to laugh. The cloaked figure lifted his head to reveal a somewhat familiar looking face. He spoke.

“Prepare for package five.”

His voice was deep and raspy. His eyes glowing red. No sooner than he spoke, did the screen turned off. Immediately, a delivery truck arrived. The driver set the package on the porch, rang the doorbell and walked away.

“I got it”, Sally said. Her voice displayed excitement as strong as our fear.

“No”, Cindy screamed.

“But Mommy”, Sally. “It’s package five. We need it.”

“Don’t wo-we”, Bobby said. “It’s OK.”

I got the box off the porch. It was small and light. Inside was a cell phone. A cheap, no name Android. I turned it on and the message on the screen asked for Bobby’s fingerprint. Bobby grabbed it. As he touched the screen, “No Match” appeared. “Fingerprint of Bobby Carter required.”

It dawned on me. Bobby Sr. I touched the screen.

The screen on the device turned on. A bunch of random numbers began to flash. It stopped on 8202058. August 20, 2058

A powerful beam shot out of the plasma ball. It was stronger than before. All of the lights went out in the house. The wind inside the house picked up. Papers and other items started to blow around. It sounded like a freight train going through the house. I screamed but nobody could hear me. Then it stopped.

In the middle of the living room was a ball of light floating about 3 feet off the ground. From the ball of light emerged our mysterious “friend”.

Cindy ran to grab a knife. “Nobody threatens my family and gets away with it.”

She didn’t say it. Her body language did.

He walked up to me and hugged me.

“Daddy”, he said. “It’s so good to see you. It’s me, Bobby Jr.”

Bobby! From the future! Why?

“Mom, Dad, 10 days from now, we will be in a plane crash. Sally don’t make it. The injuries you suffer eventually takes your life. Mom, you’ll die in 5 years. Dad, you in 7. I’m left all alone.

“The packages were not weapons. They were sent piece by piece to ensure that only this family could use it. There are others searching for it.”

10 days from now, we fly to San Francisco. I accepted a job. Cindy already found a job at a high-end restaurant there. We were both contractually obligated to be there. We had to go.

“Fine”, I said. “We’ll take the train.”

We moved to our new city, our new jobs, our new lives. In our new home, the time machine sat on the kitchen counter. Future Bobby turned on the machine and hugged us before disappearing into the light. The time machine is left with us.

Moments after Future Bobby left, the Android phone beeps. “Warning. Look out the window” appears.

Outside the house, staring at the house, a mysterious figure stands.