 Three, four, five, my mom said, tapping each fence panel in turn. The rain hammered down and I was soaking wet, desperate to get inside. Still, she didn't like it when I argued, so I just helped to count, in the hope it would get done quicker. It didn't. As usual, she had to do it again herself. She flipped the light switch 17 times before sitting at the table with me. So, Oliver, how was your day at school today? Tell me what you learned, she said. She was so used to the rhythm that I never saw her visibly counting. It was good, I started tapping out each syllable as I spoke with my finger to count them. We did fractions and math, and I got them all right. I paused. That was 15 syllables. She raised her eyebrow at me. Your day, I added. She smiled, satisfied. You might sound insane. It was. The thing is, when you're a kid and it's all you've ever known, it isn't that insane. It's an inconvenience. It's one of those annoying things in life, like the way you have to make your bed even though you're just gonna sleep in it again that night, or the way you have to wear matching socks even when nobody can see them in your shoes, or the way you have to brush your teeth for exactly 170 seconds. My teachers commented that I was a pretty average child who was very good at math and poetry. Besides that, I was quiet. I mostly went by unnoticed. I'm sure they wouldn't blame me if they knew why. Trying to tell the teacher the answer to four times five in exactly 17 syllables was likely to make you appear quite strange. I asked why, of course. I asked why in every combination of 17 syllables that you can imagine. It didn't take long after starting school. Before I realized the other kids didn't have to do everything in 17s. They didn't count out 17 chips from the bag to eat, and they didn't have to have exactly 17 toys. Birthdays were never very fun for me. Getting new toys meant throwing away the same amount of old ones, and they never had to stay at home on the 17th of every month to do 17 hours of silence. The number 17 keeps us safe. If we don't do it, we'll die, she said, matter of factly. I accepted it in the way you accept everything as a child. I left home on my 17th birthday. It wasn't my choice. It was the way it had to be. I'd been prepared for it. I knew ever since I was a small child that I'd be leaving on that day, regardless of my circumstances at the time. I was relieved, to be honest. I loved my mom more than anything, but I came to realize that she was very mentally unwell. I wanted her to get help that she so desperately needed. But she refused to admit she had a problem. During one particularly rebellious moment as a teenager, I turned the volume on the TV up to 18, but her reaction ensured I never tried it again. The older I got. And the more I realized how I'd been cheated out of a normal childhood, the angrier I became. As I matured and got on with my own life, I withdrew from her for my own sake. When I got the call that she died, I'm ashamed to say I didn't feel much of anything. I was 34 with a wife and two kids of my own and contact with my mother had gradually dwindled ever since I left home. I felt like I barely knew her anymore. The funeral director called. My wife, Jenny, said, he wants you to call him back. Oh, and when are you going to the house? I was thinking I could come with you tomorrow. The twins will be at Jasper's house. I haven't even thought about that. I guess I need disorder stuff. I replied 17 had all but disappeared from my life. But some things like the syllables I occasionally still did out of habit. My childhood home look just as I remembered it. Jenny approached the front door and I moved automatically to the fence. One, two, I started. What are you doing? Jenny asked, bemused. I stopped. What was I doing? I shuffled slightly, feeling uncomfortable. I knew that counting was stupid. I knew all of it was stupid. But I felt a strange sense of anxiety as I stopped and joined her at the door. It was the first time in my life I'd entered this house without first tapping and counting the 17 fence panels. I pushed away the fleeting image of my mother turning in her grave. I reached automatically for the light switch and with a great deal of mental energy flipped it only once. I felt sick to my stomach. It was strange. I'd lived on my own for all those years without any ridiculous rituals. But somehow, being in this house, it made it all come back. The house had always been extremely cluttered, but now it was even worse. Jenny's jaw dropped as she looked around. Seventeen tiny house plants lined the windowsill, 17 mugs hung on the kitchen wall, 17 pens in the jar, 17, 17, 17. Jenny didn't have to count everything. To see how strange and out of place everything looked, it was immediately apparent to anyone with eyes that this house contained either too many or too few of everything. I walked up 17 stairs to my childhood bedroom. It was completely empty. It hadn't been turned into an office or a guest room or anything. It was just four bare walls with no furniture inside. I felt strangely annoyed about this. I hadn't expected my mom to be one of those moms who kept their child's bedroom undisturbed as a shrine to them. But as I looked through the house amongst the clutter, there was literally nothing left to indicate in any way that she even had a son. Feeling nauseous, I walked out to the back garden and lit a cigarette. I smiled and wondered whether if my mom had been a smoker. She would have insisted on smoking 17 at a time. I closed the door behind me and took 17 mindless steps to the shed. When I was a kid, I would have to take big strides to make it 17, but now it was effortless. The shed was locked. Maybe she kept my stuff in there. It made me feel better to think she may have kept some sentimental stuff. Maybe she cleared out all the junk and now it's full of boxes of memories. Maybe there were 17 drawings from when I was a kid and 17 report cards and 17 photographs. I would eventually need to get it open to empty it out. But I decided I would leave that until last to keep the hope alive a little longer. My thoughts were interrupted by an ear splitting shriek that made my blood run cold. Jenny. As soon as I rushed back in the house, it felt somehow eerily quiet. Jenny. No answer. I called out again. Nothing. The bubbling sense of unease that I'd felt since arriving transformed into complete and utter terror as I ran around the house, throwing all the doors open. Every room was empty. She wasn't there. It was then that I heard the tapping. I looked around, trying to identify where it was coming from. It was like it was coming from everywhere at once. Four taps. It was getting louder. Five. Where the hell was my wife? Six taps. The tapping stopped. Eighteen taps. I hadn't even meant to count them. I just always counted everything automatically ever since I was little. I grabbed my phone to call her, but it went straight to voicemail. I ran downstairs again, counting each step automatically as I ran. Sixteen. Sixteen steps. How was that possible? There have always been seventeen steps. I couldn't miscount. I never miscounted anything. I've been counting my whole life. I resisted the urge to go back up, to count again, but Jenny was more important. I heard the scream again. It was inhuman, horrifying. It was coming at me from every direction, closing in on me. It wasn't Jenny's voice. It couldn't be. I didn't know what else to do, so I searched every room again. When I flung open the kitchen door once more, Jenny stood in the center of the room, just staring at me. She looked completely normal, except all the color had drained from her face. I grabbed her and pulled her close to me, but her arms hung limply at her side. Jenny, what happened? Where were you? I've been here the whole time, but you haven't finished your sentence, Ollie. Then she collapsed on the floor. She was still for a moment, until lots of things started happening at the same time. She started heaving and retching, coughing up blood. Then she did. She shook and convulsed in my arms. I reached for my phone automatically, shocked in horror, making me barely aware of what I was saying to the operator. All I could do was hold her and be there and pray that she would hang in until they arrived. Time seemed to slow down then. It was like I wasn't really in my body, but I was watching myself, as if I were someone else. It was then that a memory formed and as I looked at my wife, I wasn't just looking at her. In my mind, I saw the image of a man lay on the same kitchen floor in a pool of thick red blood. I could smell the bacon burning as though it was happening right next to me. My mom was there too in the memory, younger than I remembered her. We were both screaming. I called the man daddy. It wasn't possible. I had no memories of my father, who I was told had passed shortly after I was born. A lack of pictures of him in the house and my mom's unwillingness to talk about him meant I didn't even know what he looked like. Yet, here I could see every line on his face. As quickly as it came to me, it went. I was back in the kitchen, holding Jenny and telling her it was all going to be okay as she brought up more blood until her shirt was covered in it. I mentally willed the ambulance to hurry up, the smell of bacon lingering in my nostrils. I had a moment of clarity then. What the hell was I doing? I needed to get her out of this house. Carrying a 120-pound woman was somehow more difficult than I would have expected. When I got to the front door, I realized it was stuck. My mind wandered back to the memory I had earlier, and I wondered if it was real, whether this had happened back then as well. Had my mother tried to drag my father out of the house and been unable to get out. I wasn't going to give up that easily. I grabbed a chair, broke the window, and with only a few gashes on me, I managed to get us out and lay Jenny down. The moment we were outside, my mind started to clear again, and I knew everything would be okay. By the time the ambulance arrived at 1717, if it wasn't for the fact that Jenny was covered in blood, you wouldn't have known anything at all that happened to her. She'd managed to sit herself up and looked like she just suffered quite a severe nose bleed. They took her in to check her out, but could find nothing wrong with her. I don't know what happened in the house. All I know is that when we returned home, Jenny knocked on our own door 17 times before pushing it open. When we went to pick up the girls from her brother Jasper's, she made me drive around the block 17 times before stopping. As I write this, she's on the computer house hunting. She wants to move, you see. She doesn't mind where we move to as long as it's to a number 17. I don't know why the number 17 is so important, but I know that it is. I know now that I won't ever escape it. I can live with it if it keeps us safe. I just wish I could apologize to my mom now that I know she wasn't mentally unwell after all. She was right. She was just protecting us. Maybe if I'd listened more or taken her more seriously, she could have told me what from.