The Man in the Window

It was a chilly November evening in the small town of Alder Creek. The streets were quiet, cloaked under a fog so thick it felt like breathing through cotton. Inside a modest two-story house, 28-year-old Daniel Mercer sat by the fireplace, sipping black coffee and trying to calm his nerves.

He had just moved into this house a week ago. A cheap listing on a local website had led him here — an old Victorian-style home, dusty, creaky, but oddly inviting. The price was too good to be true. Now he understood why.

Daniel had begun to notice... things. First, the soft knocking at the window every night around 3:03 AM. Then, the shadowy figure that seemed to lurk in the garden — always out of reach of the light, always watching.

His friends dismissed it as paranoia or the stress of moving, but Daniel knew what he felt. Every night, after the knocking, he’d check the curtains, and there would be nothing outside. But sometimes... sometimes the curtains would move, as if someone had already been inside.

On the eighth night, it got worse. Daniel had set up a small security camera outside the living room window. He needed proof, something to make sense of this haunting presence. That morning, as he checked the footage, his heart dropped.

From 3:02 to 3:04 AM, the camera recorded a man — pale, bald, with completely black eyes, wearing an old-fashioned suit. He stood outside the window, smiling. Not moving. Just smiling.

And then… he vanished. Not walked away. Not turned. Just disappeared — like fog into fog.

Daniel called the police, but they found no evidence. No footprints, no signs of trespassing, no face on the camera — it had mysteriously glitched only during those two minutes. The rest of the night was clear.

That night, Daniel didn’t sleep. He sat in the living room with a baseball bat, staring at the window. The wind howled, and the house creaked, but nothing came. Until 3:03.

A soft knock.

Then another.

Daniel stood, heart racing, and pulled back the curtain.

Nothing.

He turned around… and froze.

There was a man standing inside the room.

The same pale figure from the footage. He stood by the stairs, smiling. His skin seemed stretched, almost waxy, and his eyes were like pits — empty and deep.

Daniel tried to scream but no sound came out. The man raised his hand and pointed… toward the basement door.

And whispered:

"He’s still down there."

Daniel turned toward the basement, where the door was slowly creaking open on its own.

"Who’s down there?!" he cried, backing away.

But when he turned back around — the man was gone.

The next morning, Daniel’s neighbor, Mrs. Crowley, knocked on his door. A sweet, old woman who had lived on the street for fifty years.

"You look pale, dear. Are you sleeping alright?"

Daniel hesitated, then confessed everything. The knocking, the figure, the footage.

Her face went white.

"That man," she whispered, "used to live here. Henry Graves. He killed five people and hid their bodies in the basement. That’s why no one wanted to buy this house. That’s why it was so cheap."

Daniel’s blood ran cold.

"What happened to him?" he asked.

Mrs. Crowley looked at him, eyes trembling.

"He disappeared. One day, just gone. Some say he never left."

That night, Daniel made a decision. He went down to the basement — flashlight in hand, heart pounding. The air was thick with mildew and rot. Boxes lay untouched, and cobwebs hung like curtains. But one thing caught his eye.

A wooden hatch.

He opened it.

Inside were bones. Human bones.

As he stepped back in horror, the flashlight flickered. And in that moment of darkness, he heard it — a whisper, right beside his ear.

"Now you know. So now… you stay."

The basement door slammed shut.

They found the house abandoned two weeks later. The front door was open. Lights still on. Coffee cup half full.

But no Daniel.

All that remained… was footage from the living room camera. At 3:03 AM. The pale man in the suit, standing by the window. Smiling.

And this time — Daniel was standing beside him.

Smiling too.

🩸 End.