For months, I kept brushing off the unease as paranoia. I lived alone, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me. At night, when the house settled into its usual creaks and groans, I swore I heard faint footsteps upstairs. The sounds were so subtle — a shuffle, a quiet thump — that I convinced myself it was just the wind or the house shifting with age. Still, every night I went to bed with my heart racing, listening for noises I prayed would never come.
Then there were the little things, the details so easy to dismiss until they started piling up. My keys weren’t always where I swore I’d left them. Once, I found a half-empty water bottle in the fridge, even though I hadn’t bought bottled water in weeks. Another time, I caught the faint smell of cigarette smoke lingering in the hallway — a smell I hated, and one I knew hadn’t come from me. Each incident was small enough to explain away, but together they formed a pattern I could no longer ignore.
Yesterday, I finally reached my breaking point. I called the police. Two officers came, searched the entire house from top to bottom, and found nothing. They reassured me that the noises could have been old pipes, or that maybe I was simply stressed. I almost let myself believe them.
But just as they were about to leave, one of the officers paused at the front door. His eyes narrowed slightly, as if something still nagged at him. Then he asked the question that made my blood run cold:
“Ma’am, have you noticed anything missing or out of place lately?”
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