When Amy first moved into this old Victorian-style house, she discovered a string of brass wind chimes by her bedroom window. Strangely, the cord holding the chimes had snapped in the middle, and several brass bells lay scattered on the windowsill, looking like a pile of discarded scrap metal.
Amy was a person who loved peace and quiet. She had originally intended to throw the wind chimes away, but that night, as if by some mysterious impulse, she found a piece of nylon string, strung the chimes back together, and hung them back outside the window.
That night, Amy slept soundly. At three in the morning, she was startled awake by a series of crisp clinking sounds.
“Ding… ding…”
The sound wasn’t loud, but it rang out particularly jarringly in the still of the night. Amy opened her eyes groggily and looked out the window. There was no wind tonight—not even a leaf stirred—yet the wind chimes were swinging wildly, their copper pieces clanging against one another and producing a screeching, teeth-grinding sound.
She rolled over and covered her ears with her pillow, thinking it might be an aftershock or a mouse scurrying across the roof.
The next day, Amy noticed that the wind chime had shifted. Originally hanging right in the center of the window frame, it was now hanging crookedly on the far left, and the nylon string had been worn white, as if something had pulled on it with great force.
Feeling uneasy, Amy checked the windowsill—there were no cat paw prints or bird droppings. To put her mind at ease, she deliberately sprinkled a thin layer of flour on the windowsill.
On the third night, the clattering sound rang out again, more urgent than the night before, as if someone outside were frantically shaking it.
“Ding-ding-ding-ding—”
Amy sat up with a start, her heart pounding. She grabbed a flashlight, steeled her nerves, walked to the window, and yanked the curtains open.
Outside, the scene was deserted, with only the wind chimes swaying gently in the still air.
She looked down at the windowsill. There were no footprints or claw marks in the flour. However, on the windowsill directly beneath the wind chimes, there was a row of clear, wet fingerprints.
Those weren’t human fingerprints.
The prints had only three fingers—abnormally slender—and the knuckles were bent backward, as if the hand were folded outward from the wrist.
What sent chills down Amy’s spine most of all was that the prints hadn’t been made by a hand reaching in from outside, but by one pressed against the inside of the windowpane.
She jerked her head around to look at the bedroom door, where the doorknob was slowly and silently turning downward.
Just then, the wind chime outside the window suddenly let out a loud crack—the sound of a string snapping completely.
Amy realized that the wind chime hadn’t been ringing because of the wind at all, nor because something outside wanted to get in.
It was because something inside wanted to get out.
And now, the door opened.
