Every Night at 2:17 AM, Someone Knocks”

Every night at exactly 2:17 AM, someone knocks on my door.
Not bangs. Not frantic pounding.
Just three slow, deliberate knocks.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
The first night it happened, I assumed it was a mistake. Someone drunk. Someone lost. Someone who would eventually realize they had the wrong apartment and go away.
I didn’t check the door.
The second night, I checked the clock first.
2:17 AM.
The knocks came seconds later, as if whoever was outside had been waiting for me to notice the time.
I froze in bed, listening. My apartment was silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator and my own breathing. After the third knock, there was nothing. No footsteps walking away. No elevator ding. Just silence thick enough to press against my ears.
By the third night, fear had settled in.
I live alone on the fourth floor of an old building where sound carries strangely. Pipes groan like tired animals. The walls whisper when the wind is right. But this—this was different. This was intentional.
Again, I checked the time.
2:17 AM.
Again, three knocks.
I forced myself out of bed and crept toward the door. I didn’t turn on the lights. I don’t know why—some instinct told me I shouldn’t let whoever was out there know I was awake.
I peered through the peephole.
The hallway was empty.
No shadows. No movement. Just the flickering overhead light and the dull beige carpet stretching toward the stairwell.
I laughed quietly, trying to convince myself I was imagining things. Sleep deprivation does strange things to the mind.
Then I heard it.
A soft sound.
Breathing.
Not mine.
It was right outside the door.
I stumbled back, heart hammering, every nerve screaming at me to lock myself in the bedroom. The breathing stopped the moment I moved, as if it knew I had heard it.
That night, I didn’t sleep again.
On the fourth night, I decided I wouldn’t let fear control me.
I stayed awake. Sat on the couch with all the lights on. Coffee in one hand, phone in the other, door in my line of sight. Midnight passed. Then one. Then two.
At 2:16 AM, my phone buzzed.
I hadn’t set an alarm.
The screen lit up with a notification from an app I don’t remember downloading.
“It’s almost time.”
Before I could delete it, the knocks came.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
My entire body went cold.
I didn’t approach the door this time. I shouted instead.
“Who is it?”
No answer.
“Go away,” I said, my voice shaking. “I’m calling the police.”
Silence.
Then, slowly, something pressed against the door from the other side. Not a hand. Not a fist.
A forehead.
I could see the faint indentation through the wood, the way the door bowed inward just slightly, as if whatever was out there was leaning its full weight against it.
And then it spoke.
Not loudly. Not clearly.
Just enough.
“You’re late.”
The pressure vanished. Footsteps echoed down the hall—finally, real footsteps—and then nothing.
The police found nothing. No fingerprints. No camera footage. No neighbors awake at that hour. They suggested stress. Anxiety. Hallucinations.
I almost believed them.
Almost.
The knocks continued every night.
Always at 2:17 AM.
Sometimes there was breathing. Sometimes there was whispering. Once, I swear I heard my name spoken in my own voice.
I stopped sleeping entirely.
By the seventh night, I noticed something worse.
My reflection had changed.
Dark circles under my eyes deepened, but that wasn’t it. When I brushed my teeth that morning, my reflection blinked a fraction of a second after I did.
I laughed it off.
That night, the knocks came early.
2:16 AM.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
I didn’t check the door.
Instead, I checked my phone.
Another notification.
“You were supposed to open it.”
I don’t remember unlocking the door.
I remember standing in front of it. I remember my hand on the handle, shaking. I remember thinking that whatever was out there had already been inside my apartment long before the knocking started.
The door opened.
The hallway was empty.
But my apartment was not.
I saw myself standing in the living room, barefoot, eyes hollow, smiling in a way I never had before.
It spoke first.
“Thank you,” it said. “I was getting tired of waiting outside.”
The clock on the wall clicked over.
2:17 AM.
I wake up every night now at that exact time.
Not because someone knocks.
But because I hear it knocking from inside the apartment—from behind my bedroom door.
And every night, I knock back three times.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Waiting for someone else to open it.