Thump. Thump. Thump. Mark heard the muffled, but close - so close - noise with one ear pressed into his pillow, drifting off. He jerked from the edge of sleep, consumed by sudden fear as if he had just woken up from a nightmare. The young boy did the first thing that a child of his age would do: check under the bed. He peered over, stretching his head down and thinking how far it seemed to the floor. Holding on to the bed as if his life depended on it, Mark peered over the edge for a split moment, then shot back up like a spring. There wasn’t anything there. Just darkness and some dust mites. But…what was that in the corner?
There was something there, hiding in the shadows. Maybe it was a shadow itself. Mark dived back down, intense curiosity overthrowing fear, and saw…nothing. He inspected the area this time, eyes shooting left to right, right to left, convincing himself that no monster resided there. Only then was he satisfied enough to find a comfortable position under the warm covers again, but not enough to fall asleep.
Thump. Thump. Thump. The sound continued. It was then that Mark viscerally sensed the intelligence behind it. He became convinced that there was something or someone behind the sound, an unknown entity making an effort to keep him awake. He couldn’t pinpoint the source for this certainty. The initial inconsistency and lack of rhythm in the noise had given him a false sense of security that vacuumed the fear away in an instant. It must be some pipes or some wood creaking or something. But as he listened acutely in that paranoia that sometimes possessed children, he heard the sound repeated. In sets of three. Over and over again.
His mouth gaped open. Sweat plastered his shirt to his back. The uninterrupted rhythm, like the same note thrice repeated on a piano, brought forth horrifying, uncontrollable visions to Mark’s mind, visions of the player, the producer of this unmistakingly purposeful sound.
The boy attempted to fall asleep, but peace would not come. The sound continued, on and on, and after what must have been two hours, Mark began to cry hysterically with fear, anger, and the sickening feeling that now occupied his stomach because of the merciless monotony of the monster in the cellar, as if he could not even alter the rhythm of his thumps.
When his crying receded and the sound still persisted, he realized that he was being mocked. The monster was mocking him and he could even see it, a dark silhouette because he didn’t exactly know what it was. It was looking up at the low, dirty ceiling of the cellar beneath his bedroom, looking up through the floor, and through Mark’s bed too, which now didn’t seem so comforting anymore. It sneered at him and his slow descent into manic fear, his hopelessness. These vivid imaginings, but no, they weren’t imaginings because they must have been happening…thoughts, these thoughts resulted in a light and uneasy four hours of sleep for Mark. When he awoke and the morning sun illuminated his covers, he remembered minor, meaningless flashes of the night before. He felt as if he had woken up from a long, tiresome nightmare. A grand pancake breakfast rubbed away the last doubts he had regarding the events of the past night and he was again, for the time being, a happy, carefree boy.

***


Later, the sun dropped behind the horizon and night soon followed. Mark was tucked into bed by his mommy with a smile on his face and a racing mind filled with excitement from the day’s events. His mother kissed him goodnight, shut the lights off, and quietly closed the door to her son’s room. Unsettling darkness and thirty seconds was all it took before Mark was pulled back into the nightmare. Thump. Thump. Thump. His joyful state of mind was abruptly smashed into a million tiny pieces, pieces so miniscule that he wondered if the whole had ever even existed. All the suffering of the previous night crept back into his body, his mind. Thump. Thump. Thump. Mark cowered under the covers and put his pillow over his head. He shut his eyes tightly. If I hide from it, it’ll go away. He’ll stop. A few seconds passed and all Mark could hear was his own rapid heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump. This was a comforting sound even though it was eerily familiar to the other, the one that Mark no longer heard. He opened his eyes and loosened his grip on the pillow. Maybe it was his heartbeat all along. How stupid, childish, foolish of him to scare himself like that. He shook his head, pushing the covers off, brushing aside the shield that protected him from nothing. He sighed with relief and closed his eyes. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was not his heartbeat. It was too distant, too slow, too dark. Mark stood up with a resolved look on his face, a newfound courage. Whatever it was down there, he was going to stop it, bring an end to that infinite note of three.

He tiptoed down the hallway and to the kitchen, stopping briefly to get his dad’s flashlight from the drawer. The boy climbed down the cold, grey steps that led to the cellar, his slender body shivering, longing for the warmth of his bed even if that sound was part of the package. He turned the knob of the wooden door at the bottom of the stairs and crept inside. The light played across cobwebs, old furniture, and antique things Mark could not identify. Then he stood perfectly still. Silence. He walked to every corner of the room, trying to locate the monster, but the more he searched the more ridiculous the whole thing seemed. After a failed but thorough investigation, Mark climbed back upstairs, tiptoed to his room, and snuck back into bed. It was dark and silent. He felt slightly uneasy, but there was no monster, there couldn’t be. He just checked, after all. He closed his eyes. Thump. Thump. Thump.