I saw him again today.
At first it was just a flicker at the edge of my vision. A dark shape, a shadow. Something that I always wrote off as nothing, despite the constant feeling of foreboding. You know that feeling you get when someone is watching you across the room? That itchy feeling sitting in the back of your skull and needling at your nerves? I’ve felt that every day since moving into this house.
I’ve had incidences before. Seeing things that weren’t there. First it was a little girl who was looking for her mother. We loved to play hopscotch together. I was six, so my parents and older brother just thought I had an imaginary friend. When I was eleven and still talking about Madeline and her yellow dress, I was met with anger and annoyance. When I met David, the man with the gunshot wound still gaping in his head, I was met with fear.
I’ve been dragged to countless psychologists and psychiatrists, been hit with every diagnosis in the book, but the feeling and the shadows never disappeared. My family, the people who are supposed to support you through everything, left me at an asylum when I was seventeen and never looked back. The only things that place taught me were to trust no one and pretend everything is normal. The asylum was full of shadows and apparitions; they knew I could see them, even when I pretended to see nothing.
But I don’t see nothing. I see things that could not possibly be there. Horrible things and beautiful things alike. This entity, this man in my house… I don’t know which category he falls into. I don’t feel threatened, but I don’t feel safe either. He hasn’t spoken to me yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. I can only hold my breath and wait.
C. Brown 