Midnight Woodpecker

A knock on the door, heard amidst the silence of an apartment, broken only by the ticking of a clock, is alarming. Especially when someone is knocking insistently on the door—your door, yes, your door—at a time when the clock has already crawled past three in the morning.

Floating somewhere on the surface of sleep, I sat up in bed and, without opening my eyes, listened. Perhaps they were knocking on the neighbors' door? Or had I dreamed the knocking?

The apartment was silent. A couple of cars rustled outside, and then everything was quiet again. Glad not to have to get out of my warm bed to figure out what was going on, I smiled contentedly and collapsed back into bed. However, before my head had even hit the pillow, the knock came again.

 Groaning, I pulled the blanket over my head and decided that sending the night woodpecker to hell wouldn't be such a bad idea. That's it, I'm asleep. Or I'm not home. Or I'm deaf.

Leave me alone.

But the knocking, after a brief pause, resumed.

Cursing like crazy, I threw off the blanket and, staggering, slowly made my way to the front door. Incidentally, I have two. Behind the first, where I was now standing, trying to open the lock with my sleep-stuck hands, was a small hallway with an electrical panel, rustling meters, shoe racks, and another apartment. No one lived there or even visited. The rooms were empty.

And the second door, a massive iron one, with several secure locks, two of which could only be opened from the inside, separated the hallway from the landing.

It was on this door that they were knocking. It wasn't particularly loud or insistent, but in the stillness of the night, any sound seemed to be amplified several times over.

But why knock if there was a doorbell?

Maybe it was broken?

Approaching closer, I peered through the peephole and immediately sighed in irritation. The stairwell was pitch-black. As usual. Whoever was constantly unscrewing the lightbulbs in the entire building would probably soon make a tidy fortune selling them. So what? They were practically new! Just screwed in!

Hmm, no shame, no conscience!

Hmm...

Lightbulbs are lightbulbs, of course, but right now I was faced with a completely different issue, far removed from the lighting in the building or electricity in general. The knocking continued. But I, like any sensible person, would never open the door to anyone. Especially someone I hadn't seen. Especially at such a dark hour, when everyone was already fast asleep.

"Who's there?" 

The knocking died down, and I pricked up my ears, waiting for a response. Who was there? Perhaps one of my friends had decided to visit at an inopportune time? Or some alcoholic with the wrong door? Or an unfaithful husband showing up to see his mistress and, again, getting the wrong address, unable to see the apartment number in the dark? Or police officers looking for witnesses? Or, conversely, thieves checking to see if anyone was home?

"Who's there?" I repeated, growing even more irritated. "Who's there?!"

There was no answer, but the knocking stopped. Finally! Just like some drunk. He'd drunkenly forgotten where he lived.

After checking all the locks, just in case, I returned to my apartment, slammed the second door as hard as I could, and went to get some sleep.

But it wasn't meant to be.

The knocking echoed again in the silence of the house. Under different circumstances, I probably would have freaked out, put on earplugs, given up on all the midnight woodpeckers, and gone to bed.

The knocking continued.

Only now it wasn't the five-locked outer door that was being knocked on, but the one where I stood, leaning my back against the paneling.