A three-chapter creepypasta
Chapter 1: The Face in the Glass
The first time I saw the man, he was standing outside my bedroom window on the second floor of my house.
I was forty-three years old, lived alone in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and had never believed in ghosts. I believed in bad neighbours, faulty locks, and the occasional idiot who wandered into the wrong yard after drinking too much. But ghosts? No. Absolutely not.
It was 2:13 a.m. on a Tuesday when I woke to the sound of someone tapping on my window.
Three slow taps.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness. My bedroom curtains were partially open, revealing a thin strip of winter moonlight. At first, I thought a tree branch had blown against the glass, but there were no trees near that side of the house.
Then came three more taps.
I sat up.
Something was standing outside.
A man.
He was tall and unnaturally thin, wearing a black overcoat that hung almost to his ankles. His skin was pale, and his dark hair appeared wet, plastered against his forehead. He stood perfectly still, his hands hanging at his sides.
The strangest thing was his face.
He had no eyes.
Not empty sockets. Not black holes. His face was smooth where his eyes should have been, as though someone had stretched the skin over them and erased every trace of their existence.
I couldn't breathe.
My bedroom was on the second floor, nearly six metres above the ground. There was no balcony, no ladder, and no ledge wide enough for a person to stand on.
Yet there he was.
I scrambled backwards until my shoulders struck the wall. My hand found my phone on the bedside table, and I immediately called 911.
As I whispered my address to the dispatcher, I kept my eyes fixed on the window.
The man tilted his head.
Then, slowly, he raised his right hand and pressed his palm against the glass.
The tapping stopped.
The dispatcher asked whether the person outside was trying to break in.
Before I could answer, I heard a voice behind me.
"No," it whispered.
I spun around.
Nobody was there.
The dispatcher repeated the question.
I looked back at the window.
The man was gone.
I spent the rest of the night in my living room with every light switched on. When the police arrived, they searched the property and found nothing unusual. They suggested I might have been dreaming, although I insisted I had been fully awake.
Before leaving, one officer asked me something that I found rather odd.
"Did you look at the window from outside?"
I told him I hadn't.
He nodded slowly.
"Good. Whatever you do, don't."
I asked him what he meant, but he simply told me to keep the doors locked.
That afternoon, I examined the outside of my house. There were no footprints in the snow beneath my bedroom window. No ladder marks, no damaged siding, nothing.
But when I returned to my bedroom, I noticed something I hadn't seen before.
Three small, wet handprints were visible on the inside of the window.
And beneath them, written backwards in the condensation, were four words.
I KNOW WHERE YOU SLEEP.
Chapter 2: The Photographs
I didn't sleep in my bedroom for the next four nights.
I bought new curtains, installed motion-activated lights around the house, and positioned two security cameras outside. I even contacted a local security company to inspect the property.
The technician found nothing wrong.
When I told him about the man, he gave me the kind of polite smile people reserve for someone they suspect might be losing their mind.
"Sometimes stress makes us see things," he said.
I almost punched him.
On Friday morning, I checked the security footage.
At first, everything appeared normal. Snow fell gently across the yard. A neighbour walked his dog. A delivery driver left a parcel at my front door.
Then, at 2:13 a.m. on Tuesday, the footage from the camera facing my bedroom window began to distort.
The image flickered.
For exactly thirteen seconds, the entire screen turned black.
When the picture returned, the man was standing in the snow.
He was facing the house.
I leaned closer to the monitor.
The camera showed him standing directly beneath my bedroom window, staring upward at the glass. He remained there for nearly three minutes without moving.
Then he did something that made my stomach turn.
He looked directly into the security camera.
Despite having no visible eyes, I knew he was looking at me.
He raised one hand and pointed towards the lens.
The footage ended.
I immediately checked the other camera. It showed the same thing from a different angle.
Then I noticed the timestamp.
The recording was from Tuesday night, but the camera had been installed on Thursday afternoon.
I replayed it six times.
There was no explanation. The camera contained footage of an event that had occurred two days before it existed.
That evening, I called my sister, Rachel, and told her everything. She lived across town and agreed to stay with me for the weekend.
When she arrived, I showed her the recordings.
She watched silently.
When the footage ended, she looked pale.
"Have you ever seen him before?" she asked.
I told her no.
She stared at me for several seconds before shaking her head.
"That's impossible."
"What is?"
Rachel reached into her handbag and pulled out an old photograph.
It had been taken when we were children, nearly thirty years earlier. We were standing outside our childhood home with our parents. I remembered the photograph well because it had been taken on the day our father disappeared.
He had gone out to buy cigarettes and never returned.
The police searched for months. No body was ever found.
Rachel pointed to the background.
Standing beside the house, partially hidden behind a curtain in an upstairs window, was a tall man wearing a black overcoat.
His face was smooth and white.
No eyes.
I felt as though the floor had disappeared beneath me.
"Where did you get that?" I whispered.
"It was in Dad's old belongings," Rachel replied. "Mum kept it in a box. I found it after she died."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I thought it was a trick of the light."
She turned the photograph over.
On the back, in our father's handwriting, was a sentence neither of us had ever noticed before.
IF HE COMES TO YOUR WINDOW, DON'T LET HIM SEE YOU.
A loud knock sounded at the front door.
We both froze.
Three slow knocks.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Rachel grabbed my arm.
From the other side of the door, a man's voice called softly.
"Children? It's Dad."
I hadn't heard my father's voice in thirty years.
But I recognised it immediately.
Rachel began to cry.
The voice came again.
"I'm cold. Please let me in."
I backed away from the door.
Then the voice changed.
It became deeper, rougher, and almost mechanical.
"I know you're both in there."
The doorknob began to turn.
Rachel screamed.
I dragged her towards the kitchen, where we locked ourselves in a small pantry and called the police.
We waited for what felt like hours.
Eventually, we heard the front door slam.
When the police arrived, they found no one outside.
But one officer discovered something strange on the front step.
A photograph.
It showed Rachel and me hiding inside the pantry.
The picture had been taken from outside the house, through the closed front door.
On the back, someone had written a message.
ONE OF YOU LET ME IN.
Chapter 3: The Room That Wasn't There
Rachel refused to leave me alone after that night.
For three days, she stayed in my house while we tried to understand what was happening. We searched through old family records, contacted relatives, and examined every photograph we could find.
The more we discovered, the worse things became.
Our father had vanished on November 17, 1996.
But the last photograph taken of him showed him standing outside a house that had been demolished two years earlier.
And in every photograph taken after his disappearance, the eyeless man appeared somewhere in the background.
Sometimes he stood behind a tree.
Sometimes he watched from an upstairs window.
Once, he appeared in a reflection in a shop window, standing directly behind our mother.
She had never noticed him.
On the fourth night, Rachel discovered a letter hidden inside the back of our father's photograph album.
It was addressed to me.
I opened it with shaking hands.
The letter read:
My son,
If you are reading this, then I failed to keep him away.
There is something in this world that lives in places people forget. Empty rooms. Abandoned houses. The spaces behind closed doors. It watches families for years before choosing one person to follow.
I first saw it when I was a boy. It stood outside my bedroom window, just as it will stand outside yours.
It does not have a face because it takes the faces of those it steals.
It took my brother first. Then my father. When it came for me, I discovered something important.
It cannot enter a house unless someone inside invites it in.
But there is a loophole.
If you see it reflected in a window, mirror, or photograph, it can enter through that reflection.
Never look at it through glass.
Never let it see your face.
And whatever you do, never open the door to the room that isn't there.
The letter ended abruptly.
There was no signature.
I looked at Rachel.
"What room?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she slowly turned towards the hallway.
At the end of the corridor, between the bathroom and the spare bedroom, stood a door neither of us had ever seen before.
It was narrow and painted black.
A brass handle gleamed in the dim light.
I had lived in the house for six years. I knew every room, every cupboard, every corner.
That door had not been there yesterday.
From behind it came three soft taps.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Rachel grabbed my wrist.
"Don't open it."
Something on the other side began to breathe.
Then my father's voice spoke.
"Son? It's time."
I backed away.
The handle turned.
The door opened a few centimetres.
Beyond it was not a room.
It was my childhood home.
I could see the old wallpaper, the carpeted stairs, and the kitchen where my mother used to prepare breakfast. Everything looked exactly as it had thirty years earlier.
And standing at the far end of the hallway was my father.
He looked just as he had on the day he disappeared.
Beside him stood the eyeless man.
My father smiled sadly.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I couldn't keep him away forever."
The man stepped forward.
For the first time, I understood what I was looking at.
The smooth skin over his eyes began to split.
Beneath it were two familiar eyes.
My father's eyes.
Then his nose appeared.
His mouth.
His face.
The eyeless man was becoming my father.
Behind me, Rachel screamed.
I turned towards her for only a second.
When I looked back, the doorway was empty.
The black door slammed shut.
The next morning, Rachel was gone.
The police found no sign of forced entry. Her car remained in the driveway, her handbag sat on the kitchen table, and her shoes were still beside the bed.
But there was one thing the police couldn't explain.
The hallway was different.
Between the bathroom and the spare bedroom stood a solid wall.
There was no door.
No frame.
No handle.
Nothing.
I moved out three days later.
I changed my phone number, left Saskatoon, and tried to rebuild my life somewhere else.
For nearly a year, nothing happened.
I began to believe the nightmare was over.
Then, last night, I woke at exactly 2:13 a.m.
Three slow taps came from my bedroom window.
I live on the seventeenth floor of an apartment building.
I didn't move.
I didn't breathe.
I kept my eyes tightly shut.
Then I heard my sister's voice.
"Please," Rachel whispered from the other side of the glass. "It's cold out here."
I pressed my hands over my ears.
She began to cry.
Then she said something that made my blood turn to ice.
"He's wearing Dad's face now."
The tapping stopped.
Silence filled the room.
I waited until morning before opening my eyes.
My bedroom window was covered in condensation.
Three wet handprints were pressed against the inside of the glass.
And written backwards beneath them were five words.
YOU CAN LOOK NOW, BROTHER.
I haven't looked.
But something is standing beside my bed.
I can hear it breathing.
And it sounds exactly like me.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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