The Noise in the woods at 3:17 AM
The first time I heard it, I thought it was an animal.
It was 3:17 in the morning.
I remember the exact time because I had been awake for nearly an hour, staring at the ceiling and listening to the rain tapping against my bedroom window.
Then I heard it.
Knock.
A pause.
Knock. Knock.
I sat up.
The sound had come from the woods behind my house.
My house was at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by trees on three sides. There were no neighbors close enough to hear, and no streetlights. At night, the forest became one enormous black wall beyond my backyard.
I waited.
Nothing.
I checked my phone.
3:18 A.M.
I laughed quietly at myself.
"Probably a branch."
I went back to bed.
The next night, it happened again.
3:17.
Knock.
Pause.
Knock. Knock.
This time, I went to the window.
The rain had stopped.
The woods were completely still.
I couldn't see anything.
Then the sound came again.
Knock.
It was deeper than a branch hitting a tree.
It sounded almost deliberate.
Like someone was standing in the forest, tapping on a wooden door.
I turned away from the window.
That's when I heard something that made my stomach drop.
A whisper.
Very faint.
Almost too faint to understand.
"Hello?"
I froze.
I slowly turned back toward the woods.
Nothing.
I waited.
The whisper came again.
"Hello?"
This time, it sounded closer.
I didn't sleep for the rest of the night.
The following morning, I convinced myself I had imagined it.
That was easier than believing the alternative.
For the next few days, I went about my life normally.
Work.
Groceries.
Dinner.
Television.
Sleep.
I didn't tell anyone.
Because saying it out loud would make it real.
Then Friday came.
3:17 A.M.
Knock.
Knock. Knock.
I sat upright before the third knock finished.
I was already awake.
I had been waiting.
The strange thing was that the sound wasn't coming from the woods anymore.
It sounded like it was coming from somewhere in my backyard.
Closer.
I got out of bed and walked to the window.
I pulled the curtain aside.
Nothing.
Then I noticed something.
There was a figure standing between the trees.
It was too far away to make out properly.
Tall.
Thin.
Completely motionless.
I stared at it.
It stared back.
At least, I thought it did.
Then my phone buzzed.
I nearly screamed.
It was a text from an unknown number.
DON'T LOOK AT THE WINDOW.
My blood went cold.
I slowly looked back toward the glass.
The figure was gone.
I immediately locked my bedroom door.
I didn't sleep.
The next morning, I called my brother.
I told him everything.
He laughed at first.
Then he realized I wasn't joking.
"Maybe someone is messing with you," he said.
"Who?"
"I don't know."
"I live in the middle of nowhere."
"Then call the police."
I almost did.
But when I checked my phone, the text message was gone.
No number.
No notification.
Nothing.
It was as if I had never received it.
That night, my brother stayed over.
We put a chair against the front door.
We locked every window.
We even checked the backyard.
Nothing.
At 3:10 A.M., my brother was asleep on the couch.
I was sitting in a chair facing the hallway.
3:16.
I checked the clock.
3:17.
Knock.
My brother's eyes opened.
We looked at each other.
Knock. Knock.
"That's the woods," he whispered.
Then came a third sound.
Not a knock.
A scrape.
Something dragging across wood.
My brother stood up.
"Don't."
He looked at me.
"What?"
"Don't go outside."
"I wasn't going to."
The scraping continued.
Then stopped.
Silence.
And then something tapped against the back door.
Knock.
My brother's face went pale.
"That's not the woods."
We stood there, staring at the door.
Another knock.
Knock. Knock.
Then a voice came from the other side.
My voice.
"Hey."
My brother grabbed my arm.
The voice spoke again.
"Open the door."
It sounded exactly like me.
Same voice.
Same rhythm.
Same little hesitation I had when speaking.
My brother whispered, "What the hell?"
The thing outside laughed.
Using my laugh.
Then it said:
"I know you're in there."
We didn't move.
For almost an hour, nothing happened.
Eventually, my brother fell asleep sitting upright.
I stayed awake.
At sunrise, we opened the door.
There were footprints in the mud.
Bare feet.
They started at the edge of the woods.
They crossed the backyard.
They stopped directly in front of the door.
Then they continued.
Up the steps.
And stopped at the exact spot where I had been sitting the night before.
My brother looked at me.
"You're moving."
"What?"
"You're not staying here."
I agreed.
I packed a bag that morning.
But before I left, I did something I still regret.
I went into the woods.
The footprints led deeper between the trees.
I followed them for maybe ten minutes.
Then I found something.
An old wooden structure.
It looked like a shed.
Except it was half collapsed and completely covered in vines.
There was a door.
The door had three marks scratched into it.
One large line.
Two smaller lines.
Knock.
Knock. Knock.
My heart started pounding.
I reached for the handle.
It opened.
Inside was almost completely empty.
Except for an old chair.
And a small wooden table.
On the table was a cassette recorder.
I picked it up.
There was a tape inside.
A handwritten label was stuck to it.
3:17
I shouldn't have pressed play.
But I did.
Static filled the shed.
Then a man's voice.
"I don't know how long I've been here."
I recognized the voice.
My father.
My father had been dead for eleven years.
I dropped the recorder.
The tape continued playing.
"If you're hearing this, don't answer it."
My hands began shaking.
The voice continued.
"It doesn't live in the woods."
A pause.
"It lives in the house."
I stopped breathing.
The tape crackled.
Then my father's voice whispered:
"And every night at 3:17, it tries to remember how to be you."
The recording ended.
I ran.
I didn't stop until I reached my car.
My brother was waiting for me.
He took one look at my face.
"What happened?"
I couldn't answer.
We drove away.
I thought that was the end.
It wasn't.
That night, I stayed at a hotel forty miles away.
My brother stayed in the room with me.
We ordered food.
We watched television.
We tried to pretend everything was normal.
At 3:16 A.M., the television suddenly turned off.
The room went silent.
My phone screen lit up.
3:17.
Then came a sound.
Knock.
My brother slowly turned toward the hotel room door.
Knock. Knock.
I whispered, "Don't answer."
A voice came from the hallway.
My brother's voice.
"Hey, open up."
My brother was sitting beside me.
His face turned white.
The voice outside laughed.
Then it changed.
It became my father's voice.
"Son?"
My brother started crying.
The voice changed again.
This time, it was my mother's.
Then my sister's.
Then mine.
Finally, it became a voice neither of us recognized.
"You're getting better at hiding."
The doorknob began to turn.
My brother grabbed the chair and shoved it underneath the handle.
The thing outside started pounding.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then suddenly—
silence.
We waited.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Nothing.
Eventually, we heard footsteps walking away.
We didn't sleep.
At sunrise, we left the hotel.
I never went back to my house.
I sold it six months later.
The strange thing is, the noises stopped.
For almost a year, I heard nothing.
I started believing I had escaped.
Then last night, at exactly 3:17 A.M., I woke up.
I was lying in my new apartment.
In a different city.
On the seventh floor.
There were no woods anywhere near me.
I stared at my ceiling.
Then I heard it.
Knock.
A pause.
Knock. Knock.
I sat up slowly.
My bedroom door was closed.
I hadn't closed it.
I watched the handle.
It didn't move.
Then I heard a whisper from the other side.
"Hello?"
I couldn't move.
The voice sounded familiar.
It sounded like me.
Then my phone buzzed.
One new message.
Unknown number.
I opened it.
There was only one sentence.
YOU FINALLY BROUGHT ME HOME.
I stared at the screen.
Then I heard another knock.
But this time, it didn't come from the bedroom door.
It came from inside my closet.
Knock.
I slowly turned toward it.
The closet door was open three inches.
I knew I had closed it before going to bed.
Something moved in the darkness.
I reached for the lamp.
Before I could turn it on, a voice whispered from inside the closet.
My father's voice.
The same voice from the tape.
"Don't look."
I froze.
The voice whispered again.
"Whatever you do..."
A pause.
"...don't look at the clock."
I looked anyway.
3:17 A.M.
And for the first time, I understood what my father had meant.
The knocking wasn't coming every night at 3:17.
It was waiting until 3:17.
Because 3:17 wasn't the time it appeared.
It was the time it was allowed to enter.
The closet door slowly opened wider.
Something stepped into the room.
I couldn't see its face.
But I could see its smile.
It was wearing my clothes.
And when it spoke, it used my voice.
"Finally."
It tilted its head.
"I've been waiting for you to come home."
The lights went out.
And somewhere far away, deep in the woods behind the house I had left nearly a year ago, something knocked three times.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Then the forest answered.
From hundreds of different directions.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
And every single clock in my apartment stopped at 3:17.