There was a rule in our house: If you think of something bad, knock three times to keep it from happening.
It wasn’t a superstition we grew up with—Mom made it up when I was about eight. At least, that’s what I used to think.
The first time I remember her saying it, we were sitting at the kitchen table. She’d been chopping onions for dinner while I told her about a kid at school who said his uncle got struck by lightning. Half-joking, I said, “What if that happened to Dad?” She froze, knife poised mid-air, and turned to me with an expression I couldn’t quite place. Fear? Anger? No, it was deeper than that. Something primal.
“Don’t say things like that, Eli,” she said sharply. Then, softer, almost pleading: “Knock three times. Quickly.”
I laughed, thinking it was just a silly game, but she didn’t. Her eyes stayed fixed on mine until I rapped my knuckles against the table three times. Only then did she relax, returning to her chopping as though nothing had happened.
That was how it started.
As I got older, it became a reflex. Thinking about failing a test? Knock three times on your desk. Imagining your bike skidding on wet asphalt? Three knocks on the handlebars.
It felt dumb, sure, but harmless. And honestly, it worked. Nothing bad ever happened.
Until the week I forgot.
It was a Wednesday morning in October, gray and drizzling. I was running late for work and spilled coffee on my only clean hoodie. As I changed, I thought about the rain and muttered, “Watch me skid out on the highway.”
I didn’t knock.
By noon, the call came. A ten-car pileup on the I-95. I was fine, but my best friend Caitlyn—the one who took the same route to work every day—wasn’t.
She’d been in the middle of it, her car crushed between two semis. They said it was quick. Merciful, even. That didn’t help me sleep at night.
Mom never asked why I suddenly started knocking on everything, all the time. Walls, countertops, my knees under the dinner table. She just nodded like she understood. Maybe she did.
The second time I forgot was a month later. I’d been at a grocery store, staring at a shelf of canned soup. Mom had been sick with the flu for a week, and I’d been stressing over whether it was really just the flu. “What if it’s something worse?” I whispered under my breath.
I realized my mistake the moment I got home and found her on the kitchen floor.
The thing about knocking three times is that it’s not a guarantee. It’s a bargain. An acknowledgment.
When you knock, you’re not just pushing bad luck away. You’re asking it to take notice of you instead.
After Mom’s funeral, I tried to stop. I told myself it was all in my head, a coping mechanism twisted into something grotesque by grief and guilt. I ignored every dark thought, every irrational urge to knock.
For a while, it worked. Nothing bad happened. Life went on.
Then, last week, I heard it.
It was late, sometime after midnight. I’d been lying in bed, half-asleep, when there came a soft, deliberate knocking from the wall above my headboard.
Three knocks. Perfectly spaced.
I froze, my pulse pounding in my ears. “Eli,” I thought to myself. “It’s just the pipes. Or a branch hitting the side of the house. Something normal.”
But it wasn’t.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
This time, it came from the closet. The air in my room turned cold, heavy, like I’d just stepped into a meat locker. I’d lived in this house my whole life. I knew its sounds, its creaks and groans. This wasn’t one of them.
I got up, heart hammering, and opened the closet door. Nothing. Just rows of hanging clothes swaying slightly, as if disturbed by a passing breeze.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Now it was coming from the window. But outside, there was nothing but the empty yard, slick with rain.
I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed in the corner of the room, knees pulled to my chest, and waited for dawn.
The knocking hasn’t stopped. Sometimes it’s soft, a faint tapping on the bathroom mirror. Other times it’s loud enough to shake the walls. Always three knocks. Always somewhere just out of sight.
I’ve tried knocking back. It doesn’t help. If anything, it seems to make it more persistent. More eager.
I don’t know what it wants. But I think it’s waiting for me to slip up again. To think of something bad and forget to knock. Or maybe it’s just reminding me that no matter how careful I am, I can’t keep it away forever.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
That was the front door.
I’m not expecting anyone.