u/Chivalryisdeadbro

I’ve had the same dream four times now.

It’s always the same. I’m lying on my left side, facing the wall. The room is dark except for the thin blue glow of the digital clock on the nightstand. 3:17 a.m. Every single time. I hear the floorboard just outside my bedroom door creak once, the way it only does when someone puts their full weight on it. Then the door opens without a sound. I can’t turn my head. I just feel the mattress dip near my feet as someone sits down on the edge of the bed.

They don’t speak at first. They just sit there. After a few seconds a hand settles on my right shoulder, light at first, then heavier. The skin is cold. Not corpse-cold, more like someone who’s been standing outside in the rain. Then a voice, soft and close to my ear, says my name. Not the name anyone calls me. The full name on my birth certificate, the one I haven’t heard spoken out loud since I was a kid.

After that the dream always ends the same way. The hand tightens, and I jolt awake with my heart hammering, staring at the empty side of the bed.

The first three times I told myself it was stress. I’d been sleeping badly since the divorce. The house still felt too big. I left the hallway light on after the second dream. After the third I started locking the bedroom door from the inside.

Last night was the fourth time.

I was on my left side again. 3:17 on the clock. The floorboard creaked. The door opened. The mattress dipped. The cold hand settled on my shoulder.

I waited for the voice.

It said my name.

Then it said something it had never said before.

“You’re awake this time.”

I felt the hand lift off my shoulder. The mattress shifted as the weight stood up. I heard bare feet on the hardwood, two soft steps toward the door. The door closed with a quiet click.

I lay there for almost a minute before I could move. When I finally rolled over, the room was empty. The door was shut. The hallway light I’d left on was off.

I got up and turned on every light in the house. Nothing was out of place. No muddy footprints. No open windows. The deadbolt on the front door was still thrown. I checked the security camera on the porch. It showed an empty driveway and the usual moths around the porch light. Timestamp matched. No one had approached the house.

I went back to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed where the weight had been. The sheet on that side was still warm.

That was when I noticed the clock.

It still read 3:17.

I sat there watching it for what felt like a long time. The colon between the numbers never blinked. The time never changed. I picked it up and the display finally jumped to 3:41, like it had been holding its breath.

I didn’t sleep again. I made coffee and sat at the kitchen table until the sun came up. Around six I walked the perimeter of the house just to feel like I was doing something. Under the bedroom window, in the soft dirt of the flower bed, there were two bare footprints. Adult size. Toes pointed toward the glass, as if someone had stood there for a while looking in.

They weren’t there the day before. I know because I weeded that exact spot Sunday afternoon.

I took a picture. Then I raked them smooth because I didn’t want to keep looking at them.

I’ve locked every door and window. The hallway light is on. The bedroom door is locked. The clock is face-down in the drawer so I don’t have to see the numbers.

I keep telling myself it was just a dream that felt real because I was half-awake. That the footprints are from a neighbor kid cutting through the yard. That the sheet was warm because I’d been lying on that side earlier.

But I can still feel the exact shape of that hand on my shoulder.

And I know if I fall asleep tonight, the floorboard will creak at 3:17, the door will open, and the mattress will dip again.

Only this time I won’t be dreaming.

I live alone in a small one-story house on the edge of town. Quiet street. No close neighbors. The kind of place where the loudest thing at night is usually the fridge kicking on.

About two months ago I started hearing a soft clicking. Not loud. Just… deliberate. Like someone tapping a fingernail against wood, slow and steady. It only happened after I’d turned the lights off and closed my eyes. The second I sat up or switched a light on, it stopped. Every time.

I tried recording it on my phone a few nights in a row. Left the voice memo running on the nightstand. In the morning the files were just silence. Nothing. But I kept hearing it while the phone was recording. That part still bothers me more than anything else.

One night I forced myself to stay still and just listen. The clicks weren’t random. They came in groups—short ones and longer ones with clear pauses. I grabbed a pen and paper from the nightstand and started marking them down in the dark as best I could. Short. Long. Pause. Short short. That kind of thing. The next morning I looked up Morse code. I’m not proud of how long it took me to accept what I was seeing.

It was spelling my full name. Over and over.

After that the messages changed. Birthday. The date of the accident that killed my parents. The address of the house I grew up in. Things I never told anyone. Things that aren’t online anywhere.

I stopped sleeping in the bedroom. Moved to the couch in the living room and kept the TV on low just for the noise. The clicking followed within two nights. Same pattern. Same patience. Only now it didn’t always stop when I turned a light on. Sometimes it just got quieter, like it was waiting to see what I’d do.

Last week it started coming from the ceiling above the couch.

Two nights ago I felt it through the cushions when I sat down—tiny vibrations, like the sound was happening inside the fabric.

Last night I slept on the floor with every light in the house on.

Tonight the clicking has mostly stopped.

There’s breathing instead.

Soft. Steady. Coming from the walls. I pressed my ear against the drywall in the hallway twenty minutes ago and it was right there, slow and careful, like something trying not to be noticed. Every so often there’s still one soft click mixed in with the breathing.

I’ve got the phone in my hand right now. Sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room. All the lights are on. I’m typing this as fast as I can.

The breathing just moved closer.

There’s a single click right next to my left ear.

I can feel it on my skin.

I—

Then I heard her soft voice from the bedroom say, “till death...do us part.”

​

I’m writing this at my kitchen table because i need to get it out of my head.

I’m 31. Live alone in a one-bedroom. Night shift at a distribution center, so my sleep is already trash. No roommates, no pets, nothing dramatic. Just a normal boring apartment and a normal boring life until about a month ago.

It started small enough that I wrote it off.

I’d go to bed with a sink full of dishes and wake up with them clean and put away. I figured I must’ve gotten up half asleep and done them. Happens. Then it was the laundry. Dirty clothes I’d left in the hamper were washed, dried, and folded on the chair. Still told myself it was me. Sleepwalking or whatever.

Then the browser history started bothering me.

I’d wake up and there’d be a bunch of tabs open or searches from 2–4 a.m. that I had no memory of. Random shit at first. Weather in cities I’ve never been to. Old news articles. One morning it was a deep dive into the building plans for my apartment complex from 1987. Another morning it was looking up the exact model of the lock on my front door. I cleared the history every time and told myself I must’ve been half awake and bored.

I started setting alarms for 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. just to check. Most nights I slept through them. On the nights I did wake up, everything looked normal. I’d go back to sleep and still find new stuff in the morning.

Two weeks ago I found a text thread on my phone with my sister. Twelve messages sent between 1:50 and 3:10 a.m. I had no memory of sending any of them. They were short and weirdly flat.

“Are you awake”

“I can’t sleep”

“Do you ever feel like you’re not all the way in your body”

“Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

She replied the next morning asking if I was okay. I told her I must’ve been half asleep and rambling. She bought it. I didn’t.

I bought one of those cheap plug in type cameras and pointed it at my bed. First few nights showed me sleeping the whole time. Then last Thursday the footage showed me sitting up at 2:17 a.m., staring straight ahead for almost four minutes without moving, then getting out of bed and walking out of frame toward the living room. I came back at 3:41, lay down, and went still again. I had no memory of any of it. On the second camera in the living room I was just standing in the middle of the room in the dark for a long time, like some fucking psycho. then I opened the front door, stood there looking out for maybe thirty seconds, closed it, and locked the deadbolt from the inside.

I checked the door that morning. Locked. Chain on. I always put the chain on before bed. I know I did that night.

I watched both videos a couple of times, feeling sick. Then I went to save copies to my laptop and the cloud. When I went back to the camera apps later that day, both recordings were gone. Completely deleted. Not in the recycle bin, not in any recently deleted folder, not in the cloud trash. Just gone. The cameras were still recording fine after that, but those specific files had been wiped.

I’ve been trying to stay awake past 2 a.m. the last few nights. Coffee, energy drinks, loud TV. Last night I made it to 2:50 before I must’ve crashed. Woke up at 6:10 with a new note open on my phone. Timestamp 3:22 a.m. It’s in my notes app, typed with my fingerprint unlocked.

It just says:

“You’re getting closer to noticing. Stop looking.”

I deleted it. Then I went into recently deleted and erased it from there too. Didn’t help. I still know what it said.

I checked the cameras again this morning. Last night’s footage is already gone. Same as before. Deleted while I was still asleep.

I called out of work today. Told them I had a stomach bug. I’ve been sitting here since 5 a.m. with every light on, both cameras running, phone face-down on the other side of the room. I keep catching myself glancing at the front door like I’m waiting for it to open again.

I don’t know if I’m blacking out or sleepwalking or having some kind of mental break. All I know is something is using the hours I’m supposed to be unconscious, and it’s careful enough to erase the evidence when it’s done.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when the sun goes down again tonight.