by Adam Dark
Knock Knock
Knock Knock Man | Book 2
Adam Dark
Matthew Thrush
Thrush Productions, LLC.
Nightmares are only scary if you let them be…
Never cease to pursue your dream no matter how horrifying it may seem. You never know what blessing lie on the other side.
Keep dreaming…keep imagining…this is for the dreamers who still dream.
Contents
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Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
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Also by Matthew Thrush
Knock Knock
Copyright © 2018 by Adam Dark & Matthew Thrush
Editing by Thrush Productions, LLC. & Kate Casper
Cover design by Ivan Zanchetta, | Book Covers Art
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents in the story are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, and entities is entirely coincidental.
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Tripp Constantine was a man of many sorrows.
He lost the love of his life during childbirth. His son passed a week later from natural causes the doctors said. Tripp knew his son was a monster. They just didn't have the guts to say it. He didn't fault them for it. It was hard even for him to look upon his son's deformed body.
The funeral was the next day. It was just Tripp, the priest, and a black cat that fed on the rats in the cemetery. Tripp buried the love of his life and his only child. The cat followed him home.
Tripp secluded himself inside his Victorian mansion on Wry Road. It was the house at the end of the street; the one no one went near unless they were dared, the one with the overgrown yard, the tall oak that hung across the street and whined during storms. The third story balcony was one board short and the window over Mrs. Constantine's garden was missing entirely. No one knew what happened to it.
For three years he never left the house. Some thought he had died. Two kids on their bikes thought they saw a man standing on the third-story balcony petting a black cat. That was two years ago. Then one day, a neighbor watering her yard claimed she saw a naked man with hair down to his backside walking down the street.
By the time she shut off the water, called her husband outside, and pointed to the stranger, he was gone. Police were called to investigate on the account of smell. After a thorough search of the premises, they only found a dead cat and a handwritten note addressed to no one.
It only had three words scribbled inside. Make it stop.
The city condemned the house and scheduled it for demolition. Two days before the bulldozers plowed through, a philanthropist from Pennsylvania bought the property from the bank. Said it was a historical artifact worth preserving.
Maybe he was right. Or maybe he was just a crazy man with way too much money and nothing to spend it on. 101 Wry Road was the oldest house in Oakwood Valley; a small neighborhood with quiet, simple folk who never got into trouble. The mansion sat on a hill overlooking giant rose bushes so tall they could have been trees.
For thirty years the house lay untouched as nature ran its course. People thought Tripp's ghost haunted the place. Some claimed they had seen him sitting on the balcony petting the black cat, humming to the moon. Of course no one could prove it.
The neighborhood kids would take turns ding-dong-ditching the house. They'd run up to the house, knock on the door, and see who could stand on the porch the longest without peeing themselves. They always ran home screaming. There has never been an incident in Oakwood Valley until July 4, 1991.
This is the story of ten friends who knocked on the wrong door, at the wrong time, on the wrong night. And so the legend of the Knock-Knock Man was born.
1
July 4, 1961
101 Wry Road
It was storming when he saw it happen.
She was in the bed and her husband by her side. He had been walking his dog when he heard the screams coming from the long dirt driveway that led to the old orphanage. It hadn't taken in any boys for three decades, not since the owner of the house was found dead at the base of the stairs.
Police reports said he had a brain aneurism and slipped down the stairs. Cause of death was uncertain as the autopsy was not publicly released. Rumors said the doctors were unsure what they had found. Officially, he died from a burst brain vessel. Unofficially, as far as Oakwood Valley residents were concerned, it was a tumor the size of a grapefruit found lodged in the frontal cortex.
It wasn't so much the tumor that had spurred on the rumors but where it came from and the voices that seemed to haunt the house.
Of course, this was never disclosed nor were the other rumors that followed his untimely death. These and a number of mysterious occurrences that followed were never investigated. It wasn't long before the young boy who inherited the house from his deceased uncle, and caretaker at the time, went missing too.
And then more boys started going missing. A state-wide manhunt went on for three months before the families' private investigators and the FBI closed the case. And for ten years the house sat untouched until just as suddenly as he had disappeared, the boy returned. Except he wasn't alone nor was he a boy any longer.
The woman was eight months pregnant when they first pulled down the overgrown driveway. The grass sent its tassels toward the sky like long spears. The car's tires mowed through like a grain plow. The Oakwood Valley School for Boys had life again. The bright lights burned through the dim horizon from the old mansion on the hill.
The surrounding neighborhood wrapped around like an amphitheater. Each road zigzagged and interlocked with the others in a maze. A main road was constructed that led by the long driveway of 101 Wry Road. The nearest home was a mile away but close enough to see the lights shining bright on the darkest of nights and hear the screams echo down into the valley.
The man always walked his dog at the same time every night. He had done so for the last three years ever since he moved in down the street. And each time the house on the hill with the long drive and rose bushes the size of trees always sat quiet and
dark, but not tonight.
The dog walker had paused by the entrance while his mutt did her business in the bushes next to the brick mailbox. He didn't know why his gaze was drawn to the dusty tire tracks that night but he felt compelled to get nearer to the mansion. He pulled the leash and led Samantha into the drive.
He made it all the way to the house before he noticed light was coming from above, and he saw movement in the top bedroom. He turned to leave but stayed when he heard a scream. He drew closer to the home, old Samantha tugging at her leash to chase after a squirrel, but he held on.
The dog walker stood in the yard staring up into those vaulted windows overlooking the valley. The balcony door was ajar and the voices from inside filtered out as if they were carried on the wind. The woman was pleading with the man. The man tried to comfort her but it was no use.
She was in pain. Severe pain.
His dog still tugging the other way, he was going to walk up to the door and knock to see if they needed help when he caught a glimpse of metal reflecting the candlelight. The shadowed man in the room seemed to glide like a wraith carrying a sharp object of death. And when he hovered over the woman, she screamed the most heart-wrenching scream of terror the unseen observer had ever heard.
The woman screamed only for a moment, then silence.
Just then Samantha caught wind of something in the trees and tugged on the leash so violently that it snapped right out of her owner's hands. She disappeared into the night. The man cried after her barking but it was too late. She was gone.
He returned his attention to the window by the balcony. The man in the room was watching him. The dog walker called for Samantha but bolted down the long drive when the shadow in the window disappeared. Heart pounding and fear welling up inside his chest, he sprinted as quickly as his old knees would allow him.
He made it to the end of the drive and leaned against the mailbox. His body was hot with sweat. So far there was no pursuit. He heard Samantha barking in the tall grass. He called for her.
Then came a sharp wail and her barking stopped. The old man began to cry as he ran down the hill toward his house. He slammed the door open and dialed the police.
"This is 911, what's your emergency?" the woman operator asked on the other line.
"He killed her!" the old man said through gasps for air.
"Sir, please calm down. Can you say that again?" the woman asked.
"I saw the knife. He killed her and then he killed my dog," the old man said.
There came a knock on the door. The old man swiveled and dropped the phone. It clanged against the counter, the dispatch operator's voice echoing through the dangling receptor.
"I didn't see anything, I swear," the old man said.
The shadow wavered, but remained on the porch unable or unwilling to cross the barrier into the old man's house. The man's hands were trembling.
The old man saw the bloodied leash in the stranger's hands.
"You killed my Samantha," the old man whimpered.
The shadow at the door tossed the leash on the floor. The leash was still attached to the collar. The metal name tag clanged against the wood floorboards and skidded to a stop five feet from the old man.
The operator on the phone continued to speak. She was saying the police were on their way, but her voice went unheard by the old man as the shadow by his front door cocked its head to the side.
"Are you going to kill me?" the old man asked.
His screams were squelched quickly and the room fell silent. The shadow scooped up the phone hanging by its cord and pressed it against his ear.
The woman was still speaking.
"The old man can't come to the phone right now. He's indisposed," the shadow said and hung up the phone.
He dragged the old man's body through the living room toward the bedroom. He left three minutes later after he had finished with it. Police sirens and their blue and red lights flickered in the night sky. The shadow picked up the dog leash. It dragged behind him as he shuffled down the stairs and pushed the gate open.
He headed back up the hill toward the orphanage where his wife was dying.
2
The car lurched down the half-mile long dirt driveway like a rocket. Its dark silhouette pierced the night sky like a black dart. Thick thunderclouds roared overhead. Flashes of lightning streaked the sky, illuminating the driver's face.
Tears cascaded his cheeks. Both hands clenched the steering wheel, soaked in blood. Not his blood. The thunder blocked out the cries of the baby wrapped in an old blanket in the passenger seat. The driver placed his hand on the infant's face to shut him up.
The baby choked and gagged before the man released his grip. The child began screaming even louder. The shrieking pierced his mind like daggers. He glanced in the back. His wife wasn't breathing. He told himself she was only asleep, that she'd be okay, but the truth was fighting for a front row in his conscious.
She wasn't sleeping. She was dead. And the thing that lie next to him had killed her. Blue and red lights glared at the entrance to his drive. The police had taken up position to block the only way in or out of his home. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and sped toward their vehicles.
His truck smashed into the first police car and sent the two policemen crouched behind it for cover soaring through the air. Their bodies hit the asphalt like heavy stones and rolled. They were slow to get up.
The man shoved down the gas pedal again and forced his truck through, nearly decapitating one of the policemen in the process. The man barely rolled out of the way before the tire found his throat.
"This is Sergeant Thomas. We need backup. The suspect has fled the premises and nearly killed us in the process," the officer said into his radio secured to his left shoulder.
Tripp Constantine sped down the road with blaring sirens in hot pursuit. He glanced in the rearview mirror to see the police scamper off the road and into their vehicles. The baby continued to cry to his right.
"Stop crying!" he roared, slamming his fists on the steering wheel.
The pressure in the back of his head rose. And the familiar voices he thought he had left behind thirty years ago returned.
"You need to kill it," they said.
"He's my child," Tripp said.
"Does such a monster deserve to live? He killed your wife," the voices said.
Their tongues were like slick vipers whispering in his ear. He could feel their hands slithering all along his back and neck as if they were in the truck with him.
"Leave me alone!" Tripp said.
He veered suddenly to the right to miss the spike strip the police had tossed in the road. The truck barreled into the sidewalk and ripped a mailbox to pieces. eIt kept going and smashed into the house. It came right through the living room as a family was having an evening meal together. The wife, husband, and their three kids stared in disbelief as Tripp's truck backed up and he revved the engine and drove off in the opposite direction leaving a gaping hole in their home.
The police in the street backtracked and followed.
"You know what they'll do to you if they catch you," the voices said.
"They won't," Tripp said.
"What if they do? They'll think you killed her. No one will know the truth. You were trying to save her. But this thing that she birthed tore her apart from the inside out."
"That's not true," Tripp said through the raging sirens behind him and the crying baby.
"You know it is. They won't think otherwise. They'll find the old man..."
"I hid the body," Tripp said.
"What will happen when they find him?"
"They won't."
The voices slid through Tripp's mind to the other ear.
"You know you need us," they said.
"I've been fine without you for thirty years," Tripp said. "I know what you did the first time."
"He was an accident," they said.
"You killed my uncle and those other boys," Tripp said.
>
"A necessary sacrifice to protect you," they hissed.
Tripp spun the truck out of the neighborhood toward the highway.
"You won't get away. They'll have the roads blocked off..."
Tripp ignored the voices in his head. All they had ever done was hurt him. They couldn't be trusted. The hospital was only five miles away. If he could get there, then they could save her. They could help him. But he never made it. The police had the road blocked off up ahead. He slammed on the brakes and reversed.
The police in pursuit swerved to block his retreat. Tires squealed as Tripp peeled down a side road into the trees. The old graveyard hadn't been used in years. The tombstones shined like silver orbs as his headlights crossed their paths.
The police converged on the dirt road and followed him in. There was a creek at the far end of the cemetery. Tripp left the truck running and hopped out. He carried the baby in both arms as he ran. There was no hope for his wife. She was gone.
"What are you going to do now? You've cornered yourself," the voices said.
Tripp blocked them out and splashed into the creek. The cold water sucked the breath out of him as he plummeted under. His head broke the surface gasping for breath, the baby still clutched in his arms. He swam to the other side just as the police began to make their way down the slope.
"Stop or we'll shoot!" they yelled.
They had flashlights beamed on Tripp's face, guns drawn and ready.
