Short horror stories

Tap tap

My husband works night shifts as a security guard for some big local company, leaving me home alone most nights of the week. Since I'm a light sleeper, and my husband a loud one, it didn't take long for me to get used to the quiet nights that allowed me to actually get some sleep.

A couple of nights ago though, I woke up to faint tapping noise coming from somewhere in the house. After walking around the house to see where the sound was coming from I quickly decided it had to be coming from the kitchen. Probably a leaking faucet, nothing my husband can't fix I thought as I went back to bed, trying my hardest to ignore the tapping.

The next morning my husband promised he would take a look at it in the weekend, and if I could just bear with it for just two more nights. I agreed, but in the next couple of nights the tapping noise grew louder, or so it seemed. I went down to the kitchen a couple of times determined to fix it myself if it meant getting some sleep. But every time I came close to the kitchen the tapping just stopped.

I must say I did find it a bit weird, but no tapping meant I could get back to sleep again. That Saturday my husband took a look at it and he assured me that nothing was leaking in the kitchen. To be sure he checked the bathroom too, but everything was fine. The tapping couldn't have come from a leak. Those three nights my husband didn't have to work nightshift the tapping didn't occur. And by the time my husband was off to work again, I had forgotten all about it.

That night the tapping returned, and louder than it had been before. Frustrated I did my round through the house to see if I could find the source, it was no surprise that as soon as I was getting close to the sound the tapping stopped. This went on for a couple of nights, only at times my husband was working. The tapping grew louder and louder each night.

Until last night, when I swore I could hear it right next to me, in my own bedroom. I had stopped getting out of bed by now and just pushed the pillow onto my head so I could drown out the noise and get some sleep.

This morning, as I was cleaning the windows on the top floor of the house, I saw something that made my heart drop. I was cleaning the window in the bedroom, closest to my side of the bed, and I saw fingerprints all over the glass. They all looked to be the same fingerprint, in the same spot as if someone was tapping the window.

What worries me most about all this is that the fingerprints weren't on the outside of the window. They were on the inside.