The Knock Between Worlds

“Is that us?” Charlie asked.

“Us, or… something like us.” Erika’s gaze flicked past the door, toward the deeper dark. “Charlie—”

He saw it at the same time: a suggestion of a man’s outline where the bookcase shadow pooled. Not movement. Waiting. The hair along Charlie’s arms lifted. Instinct drove him forward, his body placing itself between that stillness and his daughter, even if the act meant nothing in this in-between state.

Harper knocked. Three quick taps. She said something brave and ridiculous about accepting a cough. Then she turned the knob.

The room she opened wasn’t the room Charlie needed it to be, but it obeyed a logic he could almost recognize—the old lamp, the old chair, his notes in someone else’s hand. Every detail had been replaced by a memory that wasn’t theirs, like the house had raided an attic full of discarded years and decided to stage its own reenactment.

She stepped inside.

“Let her look,” Erika said low, a palm hovering where Harper’s shoulder would be. Her voice trembled with restraint. “If we push too hard, she’ll run.”

“I don’t want her in there with—” He glanced back at the rectangle of hallway, half expecting the shadow to resolve into a face. It didn’t. Yet.

Harper made a slow circuit, cautious. The light dimmed a fraction, shadows tightening along the corners, then returned. She backed out and shut the door gently, like she always had, rule-abiding even on the day the rules had failed.

Downstairs again. The kitchen, which felt like the thinnest place between them. The counters gleamed too clean, the air smelled faintly of lemon oil and something metallic, and the clock ticked louder than it ever had in life. Outside, through the window over the sink, the neighborhood went about its morning—the perfectly ordinary world moving on schedule, oblivious. Charlie stared at the square of sky and wanted to pry the house open with his hands and climb back into that normal day.

“We can guide her,” Erika said, reading him again. “Just not with words.”

“How?”

“Pattern.”

Erika tapped her finger against the countertop: knock… knock… knock. Evenly spaced. A rhythm you’d notice without thinking about why. She nodded toward the basement door. “Here. It’s quieter there for us, but here for her.”

Charlie arched a brow. “We’re sure we want to invite our daughter to the world’s most ominous staircase?” It came out drier than he intended, but the quip kept the fear from settling too deeply in his chest.

“She’ll bring a flashlight,” Erika said, with absolute faith. “Morgan made her buy one.”

Charlie’s mouth tugged upward. “Morgan would make an earthquake carry a first-aid kit.”

“And Lila will make Harper listen when she wants to run.” Erika lifted her chin, a decision settling into place. “Ready?”

He took her hand. The metal of the basement knob hummed under his palm, not hot, not cold, but aware. It was like gripping the edge of a coin that had just been pulled from deep water. He imagined his knock traveling not just through wood but into whatever lay between; he imagined it landing in his daughter’s ribcage the way a remembered song lands.

He rapped three times. Polite. Expectant.

Up in the kitchen air, the sound arrived like a thought. Harper stiffened. She put down the wooden spoon she’d armed herself with—that’s my girl—and pulled out the heavy flashlight from the junk drawer—that’s Morgan’s influence—and turned to the door.

“Either you are my parents and this is going to be the dumbest scare of my life,” she said to the air, “or you are not my parents and this is going to be the dumbest decision of my life.”

Charlie squeezed Erika’s fingers. His smile was small and sorrowful. “She’s brave.”

“She’s ours.” Erika leaned closer to the seam of door and frame. She couldn’t touch Harper, not yet, but she could put her mouth close to where the world went thin and let her breath ride the space between.

“Be brave,” she whispered.

Harper’s hand paused on the knob. Her head tilted, the way it used to when she was little and listened for owls in the backyard.

“Mom?” she breathed.

Erika closed her eyes. “Yes.”

The knob turned.

The basement door opened onto a rectangle of darkness that wasn’t just darkness. It had dimension. It had depth. It had that same slow, waiting quality as the study—like a held breath. But it also pressed back with a subtle no laid over their please.

The smell drifted up first: damp concrete, iron tang, and the faint sweetness of mildew. The air shifted heavier, as though stepping through the threshold meant stepping underwater.

“We go as far as we can,” Erika said.

“And then?”

“And then she goes farther.”

Harper lifted the flashlight. Its beam cut a white path down the first few steps. Dust turned into stars in the cone of light. She put one foot on the stair, then another. The boards groaned as if remembering every weight they’d ever carried.

Behind her, above them, somewhere near the study, the house shifted—an almost-sound, the suggestion of a man clearing his throat to speak.

Charlie didn’t look back. He couldn’t afford to.

“Step carefully,” he said, though she couldn’t hear. “Count your steps. If you feel the air change, stop.”

Harper descended.

The door eased shut on its hinges, a slow close that felt less mechanical and more deliberate, as though the house itself had decided to trap the moment.

Erika pressed her forehead against the cool wood and let out a slow breath. “She heard me.”

“She felt you.” Charlie stared at his own hand, at the way it seemed perfectly solid until he held it against the door and watched the outline soften. “We can make a trail.”

“We will.” Erika straightened. The steadiness in her voice put the spine back in his. “One nudge at a time. One brave thing at a time.”

On the other side of the door, their daughter went down into the dark with a flashlight and a joke and more courage than anyone had a right to at sixteen.

Something in the study listened.

Something in the house waited.

And in the kitchen, where the world was thinnest, two parents learned how to knock.