The knocking.
By: Kisharo Posted on: December 31, 2014
Long ago, before the fall of the seleucarian empire and the existence of mayaween, lived two young brothers. This story takes place in a monastery and city now forgotten in the sea time.
The two brothers, none of which reached their adult years, were training to become warrior monks. The two children exceled in their studies, in particular their telepathy. No other child could even use the ability, but the two brothers could use it to communicate with each other. They were unable to form words however; instead used pulses of kai energy to make a sequence of knocking noises that only the siblings would hear and understand.
The brothers shared a modest room with eight or so other children. At night the two would often use their ability to communicate with each other, as not to wake the other young monks in training. They would speak of their dreams of becoming powerful monks, which even the divines would respect.
The night brought a deafening silence into the room that was occasionally broken by the sound of restless turning bodies. The brothers kept awake long after all the other children had gone to sleep. Knock, knock, knock. The younger brother asked if his older sibling was still awake. He replied, and told his younger brother to go to sleep. Eventually by the time it hit midnight the older brother was asleep. He dreamt he was an old man, etching runes on odd random objects. He hears a knocking at the door, "Go away!" he shouts "I'm busy!"
But the knocking doesn't stop; it just gets louder and louder as it echoes through his head. Eventually the man decides to open the door; at that point he breaks free of the dream world in shock. Knock, knock, knock. The knocking is loud and inconsistent, like his younger brother was intentionally trying to wake him. The knocking was much more powerful than anything he had done before, far beyond his proficiency of the ability. He tried to communicate to his younger, and tell him to stop; but to no success. Eventually he gave an aggressive whisper "Hey stop will you!"
The knocking then ceased for the rest of the night. However the boy could not get back to sleep as. When he finally starts to feel tired the sun starts to rise. In the morning he confronts his younger brother, "You can't use your ability so deep into the night like that, Understand?"
"But I was just lonely, you know the dark scares me some times." the younger says in reply
The younger brother has an apologetic tone to his voice. The older of the two presents a look of understanding on his face and partially accepts the apology, but continues to tell his younger brother off, "That's no reason to wake me just before the sunrise."
A pang of confusion hits the younger brother, "I wasn't awake then."
The rest of the day is fairly standard, the young monks train their body and mind, but the elder brother can't help but think about what his sibling said. He thought to himself, his kai was too focused for him not to remember. So he came to the conclusion that his younger brother was lying or one of the other monk was playing a very uncharacteristic trick on him.
It was a far darker night than any that preceded it, at a time just before midnight, both brothers were kept awake by the eerie silence that covered the city. Knock, Knock, Knock. It was more of the incoherent knocking from the night before, so he decided to ignore it. Knock, knock, knock. It continues. He whispers to his brother, "What do you wa..."
"It's not me." The younger brother interrupts.
The knocking continues to get louder. Knock, knock, knock. The two brothers lay there in fear, unable to see anything in the room, until he hears a sharp whisper by the side of his head "Knock, knock, knock."
Before he is given a chance to react a scream pierces the silence. The entire monastery wakes and monks burst into the room with lit torches. On the bed lays the younger brother, his chest torn open, his heart missing and many of the ribs are broken off and bone fragments are found in the pools of blood. The walls are covered in spurts of red. Like someone flung ink at a canvas. The metallic smell of blood lingers in the air. The monks are trying to get the crying children out of the room, but the elder brother just sits on his bed, staring at his now dead sibling. The shock overwhelms his emotions, and when one of the monks brings him back to reality he bursts into tears. As he is dragged out of the room he hears one of the monks say "It looks like the heart has been ripped right out of him."
As the years go by the older brother begins to accept his sibling's death, and focuses on his studies. He continues to have nightmares of being an old man in a wooden hut, hearing the knocking every night he falls asleep, even when he becomes one of the greatest monks in the land. He always wakes from the dream when he opens the door, never to see who is knocking. Sometimes he thinks it's his brother, but mostly he fears it's the thing that killed his brother, and is now coming for him.
On a night we now call mayaween, around 29 years after the incident, he has the dream again. This time however, the knocking makes sense. It was the same code that he and his brother used all those years ago, when they were still training to be monks. But the knocking was in a frantic fashion. The message simply translated into one word, "Run".
He woke in a panic, but the knocking didn't stop. The same word repeated over and over again. It got louder until the the knocking stopped making sense and returned to the fearful sound that he heard as a child. Unable to see, he stays on his bed. Knock, knock, knock. It continues. Knock, knock, knock. At an increasing volume, until he hears a whisper in the dark, "Knock, Knock, knock."