The window

I was in my bedroom, doing the typical at-home teenager thing: staying up late, digging around the depths of the internet, and generally not paying attention to anything other than what was on my monitor. It was the early morning, around 2 o’clock, and everyone in my house was asleep but me. The room was nice and warm despite it being the dead of winter, since we had the windows replaced last week. We had been losing heat, especially in my bedroom, through some old storm windows, but the bitter cold was now kept outside.

I don’t remember what I was doing; I think in the terror that consumed me I must have forgotten. I heard a noise at my window. Not the sound of a bug flying into it, or the shrubs brushing against it. No, this was an odd noise, a thumping sound, something I had never heard before. I didn’t think anything of it initially. Whether that was because I genuinely believed it was nothing or because I didn’t want to find out what it was, I can’t say, but I sat there for a moment and just listened to it. It was distinctly rhythmic. Thump, thump, thump. It only lasted fifteen seconds or so, and then stopped. I shuddered, but shrugged it off and, after spending another hour or two browsing and consciously not looking toward the window, turned my computer off and fell into an uneasy but uneventful sleep.

This morning, after the sun had been up for a few hours and the things that go bump in the night were doing whatever they do during the daylight hours, I walked to my window and spent a few minutes trying to replicate the sound I had heard. I tapped the window, bumped it with some soft objects, even locked and unlocked it, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what had made the sound. Nothing I did was even close. I figured that the event had been a fluke, and the day was normal until this evening.

My dad arrived home from work at the usual time and decided that the house was too stuffy, so he came into my room and went to open the window (we’re in Texas, so winter evenings are sometimes very comfortable, as was the case today). Never in my life before that moment have I genuinely wished to be deaf.

My dad forgot to unlock the window before trying to open it, and when he pulled up, it produced the same noise I heard last night.

My window only has handles on the inside.