Writers 
MIDNIGHT TERRORS
Story One: The Room Without a Door
Some doors are locked for a reason. Others were never meant to exist.
Chapter One: The Knocking Inside the Wall
The first time Daniel heard the knocking, he thought someone was trapped inside the wall.
It was 2:17 a.m.
Three slow knocks.
Tok. Tok. Tok.
He opened his eyes.
The room was completely dark except for the pale blue light of his phone charging beside the bed. Rain tapped against the window, and somewhere outside, a dog howled as though something had hurt it.
Daniel lay still, listening.
Then came the knocking again.
Tok. Tok. Tok.
This time, it came from directly behind his head.
He sat up so quickly that his neck hurt.
"Hello?"
Silence.
Daniel stared at the wall behind his bed. It was old, stained with patches of yellow, and covered in cracks that resembled thin black veins. The landlord had promised to repaint the room before he moved in, but Daniel had been too desperate for cheap accommodation to argue.
He was twenty-six, recently unemployed, and running out of money. The room cost less than half the rent of anywhere else in the neighborhood.
There was only one problem.
The landlord had warned him never to sleep with his bed facing the wall.
Daniel had laughed when he heard that.
Now he wished he hadn't.
He reached for his phone and switched on the flashlight. The beam moved across the wall, revealing nothing except peeling paint and a small, dark patch near the floor.
He knocked against it with his knuckles.
"Anybody there?"
His own voice sounded foolish in the darkness.
He almost laughed at himself.
Then something knocked back.
Not from the other side of the wall.
From inside it.
Three sharp blows struck the plaster beneath his hand.
Daniel stumbled backward, nearly falling off the bed.
For several seconds, he couldn't breathe.
Then he did what frightened people often do when reality becomes too strange to accept.
He invented an explanation.
Pipes, he told himself. Old pipes. Rats. Perhaps the building's wooden frame was shifting in the cold.
He placed his phone on the bedside table, pulled the blanket over his shoulders, and forced his eyes shut.
At 2:31 a.m., he heard a whisper.
"Daniel."
His eyes opened.
Nobody in the neighborhood knew he had moved into that room today. He hadn't even told his closest friend the address.
The voice came from the wall.
"Daniel."
It sounded like a woman speaking through a mouth full of water.
He reached for his phone with trembling fingers.
The screen lit up.
No missed calls. No messages.
Then the voice whispered again.
"You took my room."
Daniel ran.
He didn't bother with shoes. He grabbed his keys and rushed into the corridor, slamming the door behind him.
The hallway smelled of damp wood and something sweetly rotten. A single bulb flickered overhead.
At the far end, an elderly man stood beside the staircase.
Daniel hadn't heard him approach.
The man wore a faded white shirt and held a walking stick in one hand. His face was narrow, his skin stretched tightly over his cheekbones. He stared at Daniel as though he had been expecting him.
"You heard it," the old man said.
Daniel swallowed.
"Heard what?"
The old man looked toward Daniel's room.
"The woman."
A chill crawled up Daniel's spine.
"What woman?"
The old man didn't answer immediately. Instead, he raised his walking stick and pointed at the door.
"Did you answer her?"
"No."
"Did you tell her your name?"
Daniel's mouth went dry.
The old man's expression changed.
It wasn't surprise.
It was pity.
"Go downstairs," he whispered. "And don't return to that room tonight."
Daniel didn't need to be told twice.
He hurried down the stairs and spent the next three hours sitting in a roadside shelter, watching the rain wash the empty street.
When morning came, he returned with the intention of collecting his belongings and finding somewhere else to sleep.
But the old man was waiting outside the building.
"You should leave," he said.
"I'm leaving. But first, I want to know what happened in that room."
The old man looked at him for a long moment.
Then he spoke.
"Twenty-three years ago, a woman lived there with her little daughter. Her name was Esther. She was quiet, kept to herself, and rarely spoke to the other tenants."
"What happened to her?"
"One night, the entire building heard a child screaming."
The old man tightened his grip on the walking stick.
"When the landlord broke down Esther's door, he found the room empty. No woman. No child. No furniture. Nothing."
"Where did they go?"
"That is what everyone wanted to know."
He glanced toward the upper floor.
"Then, three nights later, the knocking began."
Daniel felt the blood drain from his face.
"The same knocking?"
"Three knocks. Every night at 2:17."
"Did anyone investigate?"
"Of course. They tore down sections of the wall. They checked the roof, the foundations, the neighboring rooms. They found nothing."
The old man lowered his voice.
"Then one of the workers disappeared."
Daniel stared at him.
"Disappeared?"
"He was repairing the wall when he heard a little girl crying inside it. He put his ear against the plaster. The other workers said he suddenly smiled."
"Smiled?"
"As though someone he loved had called him home."
The old man took a slow breath.
"Then he stepped forward and pressed both hands against the wall."
Daniel waited.
"What happened next?"
"The wall swallowed him."
For a moment, the street seemed to tilt beneath Daniel's feet.
"That's impossible."
"Yes," the old man replied. "That is what the police said."
He turned toward the building.
"Nobody has lived in that room for more than one night since."
Daniel thought of the rent he had paid. The landlord's suspicious eagerness. The strange warning about the bed.
"Why did you let me move in?"
The old man looked genuinely confused.
"I didn't."
Daniel turned and ran upstairs.
His door was standing open.
He was certain he had locked it.
Inside, his belongings remained exactly where he had left them. His bag sat beside the wardrobe. His shoes lay beneath the bed. The window was closed.
Everything looked ordinary in the morning light.
Almost.
The dark patch near the floor had grown larger.
It was no longer a stain.
It was a narrow, vertical line running from the floor to the ceiling.
A line shaped like the outline of a door.
Daniel approached it slowly.
There was no handle. No hinges. No gap beneath it.
Just a faint rectangular outline pressed into the wall, as though someone had drawn a door from the other side.
He touched the plaster.
It felt warm.
Then he heard something that made his stomach turn.
A little girl giggling.
The sound came from behind the wall.
And a small voice whispered:
"Mummy says you're staying for dinner."
Daniel backed away.
His phone vibrated on the bed.
A new message had arrived from an unknown number.
He opened it.
There was no text.
Only a photograph.
The image showed Daniel asleep in bed, his face turned toward the wall.
The photograph had been taken from inside his room.
But he had been alone.
He enlarged the picture with shaking fingers.
Behind his sleeping body, the wall was different.
The outline of the door stood open.
Something tall and impossibly thin leaned through the opening, its head bent sideways to fit.
Its face was hidden.
But one long hand rested gently on Daniel's shoulder.
Beneath the photograph was a final message.
THANK YOU FOR KEEPING HER COMPANY.
Daniel dropped the phone.
From inside the wall came three soft knocks.
Tok.
Tok.
Tok.
Then the little girl whispered his name again.
Only this time, the voice was no longer behind the wall.
It was underneath his bed.
And something cold wrapped its fingers around his ankle.
End of Chapter One
Somewhere inside the wall, a woman began to laugh.