She Disappeared at 2:47AM : I Still Hear Her Knocking

They say the body gives up before the mind does. I learned that the night Emma disappeared.

It was 2:47AM when I woke up to the soft tap-tap-tap at our front door. Rhythmic. Unmistakable. She always knocked like that—three short, one long. Like a nervous heartbeat trying to keep time.

I stumbled out of bed, assuming she'd forgotten her keys again. That was Emma—absent-minded, always one step ahead of herself and two behind her belongings. I didn’t even bother to look through the peephole. I just opened the door.

But there was nothing. No Emma. No footprints. No wind. Just the empty porch and the black sky hanging like a lid over the world.

I stood there for minutes. Waiting. Calling her name. Whispering it louder, as if the darkness could answer.

Then I noticed something strange. The house was…wrong. Still. Not the peaceful stillness of night, but a loaded one. Like the pause before something terrible. The air smelled faintly of burnt sugar, though we hadn’t baked in weeks. And the clock on the hallway wall had stopped at—yes—2:47AM.

That was when the knocking started again. Behind me.

Not at the front door.

At the inside of the bedroom wall.

I didn’t sleep that night. I barely moved. Just stood there, paralyzed, as the knocking came and went like waves. Always in threes. Always with that long, final drag, like fingernails down wood.

By sunrise, I called the police.

They searched everything—the house, the backyard, the woods that fringe the property line. But Emma was just…gone. No signs of struggle. No surveillance. No explanation.

They took my statement, offered sympathy, and eventually, suspicion. “People don’t just vanish,” they told me. “She must’ve left.” But she didn’t. I know that like I know my own name. Emma didn’t leave. She was taken.

Days passed. Then weeks. I stopped telling people about the knocking. About the way the lights flicker at exactly 2:47 every night. About the bruises I wake up with—small, like finger-marks.

My sister suggested grief counseling.

My neighbor offered holy water.

But none of them hear what I hear.

The knocking never stopped.

One night, I pressed my ear against the wall where the sound was loudest. It was coming from inside the crawl space. I hadn’t checked it. I hadn’t dared.

Flashlight in hand, I pulled back the warped paneling. Cold air rushed out like a sigh. I crawled inside. Dust. Cobwebs. Forgotten things.

And something else.

A note. Folded. Yellowed. Written in Emma’s handwriting.

“I knocked. You opened. But it wasn’t me.”

I dropped the note. I crawled out. I haven’t gone back in.

Now, I don’t answer the knocking. Not anymore. But I still hear it, every single night.

2:47AM.

Three soft taps.

One long scratch.

And lately, it’s not just the wall. It’s the windows. The mirror. The inside of my closet door.

I don't think it's Emma anymore.

But whatever it is, it remembers her knock.

And it wants me to open the door again. . I moved.

New city. New walls. Fresh start.

Last night, 2:47AM — the knocking found me again.