The knocking started at 2:17 a.m.
Mira didn't wake all at once—just enough to register the sound. Three slow knocks. Not on the front door. Not on the window.
From inside the wardrobe.
She lay still, listening. The room was thick with that late-night silence, the kind that presses against your ears. Then—again.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Her wardrobe doors were slightly ajar. She always left them that way. Something about closed doors made her uneasy.
"Mira," a voice whispered from within.
Her breath caught. It sounded like her sister.
But her sister had died three years ago.
Mira forced herself upright, every instinct screaming not to move closer. "This isn't real," she muttered, like saying it might make it true.
The wardrobe creaked open a little wider on its own.
Inside, darkness. Too dark. Not just absence of light—something thicker. Waiting.
"Mira," the voice said again, softer now. "You left me in here."
Her heart pounded. "I didn't—"
A hand slid out from the darkness.
It was wrong. The fingers were too long. The joints bent slightly backward, as if remembering the shape of a human hand but failing.
"Come see," it whispered.
Mira stumbled back, hitting the wall. "No."
The hand withdrew slowly. The wardrobe door creaked… and began to close.
Relief flooded her chest.
Until she heard the knocking again.
This time, from under her bed