Tapping by Kate Burson

Overall Adults Category Winner

Every child has a haunted bedroom at one time or another. A monster under the bed, a ghost in the form of a pile of laundry. I am no exception, only my phantom was heard rather than seen.

When I was eight years old my family relocated to a larger house on an average street in an average New Zealand town. My excitement at no longer having to share a room with my sister was short lived. The tapping started straight away.

Always between midnight and one a.m., always the same pattern. Sometimes it sounded as if it were coming from the ceiling, sometimes the wardrobe, sometimes it seemed to be directly under my bed.

My parents took turns to come and hear the tapping, bleary eyed and in various states of undress. My mother blamed the pipes, my father said it was the house cooling down. Either way the general consensus was it was a perfectly normal noise. Eventually they stopped coming when I called.

Despite their vague explanations I was reassured by my parent’s confidence. I learnt to live with noise, at times I even welcomed it. I remember laying awake, age fifteen, waiting for the boy I was fighting with to text me. When the tapping started I breathed a satisfied sigh, at least one thing in my life was reliable.

When I moved away for uni I felt the absence of the tapping quite profoundly for the first few weeks. Being woken by the boozy yells and squeals of my fellow students frightened me far more. The tapping was always there when I returned home for the holidays, greeting me like an old friend.

The years passed, I found a home of my own in a different city, got married, had children. I can honestly say I had not thought about the tapping for years. Until today.

Our eldest daughter had been learning about World War Two at school. She sat with her father at the dinner table as I washed the dishes, giving an enthusiastic lecture on morse code. She tapped out a pattern on the table and a wine glass fell from my hand, shattering into an impossible number of pieces.

My husband and daughter cried out in shock. I had no desire to comfort them.

“Do that again, the tapping you just did. Do it again please.”

My daughter, despite her obvious confusion, obliged.

It was the same pattern as the tapping in my childhood room. Exactly the same.

“Is that morse code? What does it mean?”

“It’s the most important message mum. A cry for help. S.O.S.”