The first three knocks came from beneath the floor. Evan lowered his book and looked at the boards between his boots. The cabin stood on short timber posts, with barely enough space underneath for an animal. He waited for scratching, or the small hurried movement of something finding its way out. Nothing followed.

Earlier, he had caught his knee on the woodpile while bringing logs inside. He had taken a minute to care for the scrape, then settled beside the stove with his trouser leg loose over the tender spot. Now the room had gone so quiet that he could hear the little clicks of cooling metal. Three knocks came again. This time, directly beneath his chair.

Evan stood. Before he could reach the window, someone knocked on the front door. He had locked it after bringing in the last armful of wood. The nearest neighboring cabin was dark, and the gravel track ended at his porch. “Let me in,” said the person outside.

It was his voice.

Not a voice that sounded a little like him. His own, down to the slight roughness at the end of the sentence. Evan backed toward the kitchen, keeping away from the window. The person outside said his name, softly, as though being reasonable with someone who had made a mistake.

His phone lit up on the counter. A message from his younger brother, Miles. “Don’t answer it. I’m hearing you here, too.” Miles was at home, nearly ninety miles away. Evan stared at the message until another appeared. “Tell me something it wouldn’t know.”

Evan typed with both thumbs. “You broke Dad’s blue mug. I said it was me.” The reply came back: “You broke it. I watched you.” For one brief second, Evan could breathe. Only Miles would correct him in the middle of a nightmare. He sent back the truth: “You kept the handle in your sock drawer because you thought we could glue it.” Miles answered, “Still have it.”

The porch boards creaked. Something moved slowly across them, stopping outside the kitchen window. Evan crouched behind the counter. His scraped knee protested as he bent it, but he stayed down. “Miles,” his voice said outside. “Tell him to open the door.” Evan looked at the phone. The screen showed that his brother was typing. Then Miles’s message arrived. “It just asked me to tell you.”

They had no sensible explanation to give each other. Evan told Miles to wake his wife and stay away from the glass. Miles told Evan to keep the cabin locked and stay on the phone. Neither pretended that a calm sentence made the night ordinary. They simply kept answering.

At some point, the thing outside began speaking in Miles’s voice. It used the name he had called Evan when they were small. Then it laughed, and the laugh carried on a little too long. Inside the cabin, Evan’s phone vibrated. “Still here,” Miles wrote. Evan sent the same words back.

They kept doing that until a pale strip of morning appeared beneath the curtain. By then, the porch had been silent for more than an hour. Evan did not open the door. He called Miles, and his brother answered before the first ring finished.

“I’m coming to get you,” Miles said. Evan asked, “How will I know it’s you?” There was a pause. Then a familiar, irritated breath. “Because I’m bringing the mug handle, and you’re finally fixing it.”

Evan laughed once, shakily. When Miles’s car eventually crunched up the track, he held the little blue piece against the windshield before getting out. Evan watched him all the way to the porch. For a moment, neither brother spoke through the closed door. Then Miles held up the handle again. “Still here.”

This time, Evan opened it.

Who would you call if the voice outside your door was your own? Whichever your choice, make sure you bring NutriCore Vital Recovery Spray with you, preferably in daylight.

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