I could feel it. It was there and it was watching, analyzing me. Its look was piercing through the inmost of my soul aching with fear and anxiety. No sooner had I turned around that she silently vanished, carried away by the midnight wind. I went to the bathroom, splashed my face with water to get rid of all this sweat caused by the fear. That fear that something evil might happen to me when I was home alone.
This had happened every night since I had moved into that bloody house. What had gone through my head when I bought in that burg, so far from the rest of the world? Between the feeling of something looking over my shoulders, a silhouette hidden in the dark, and the objects that were disappearing, the atmosphere seemed really tense in this old house with its slamming windows, its creaking doors like these mansions in horror movies. Everything in this place gave me the creeps: the television that turned itself on, the electrical appliances that went haywire. And the room on the first floor. You could hear strange noises. The floor that was cracking as if someone was moving up there by night, for it was at night that I could hear these worrying sounds.
Each evening, I had this little ritual to check out the rooms one by one and lock them up. Despite this, the creaking, the cracking would not cease. And there was the closet too. If you listened carefully, you could hear its breathing. There was something within this damned place that made you paranoid.
Even though I was careful to lock the closet door, every morning I found it half opened. I was living with the constant fear that something might happen to me. Feeling this presence was scaring me. The thing that spied on you, hidden in the darkness and which would disappear every time you turned around.
Since I was working on my novel, I was seriously lacking sleep. Or perhaps it was all that alcohol and that drug that plunged me deep into a world of fantasy. But what fantasy? Because I had decided to write horror stories, I was now confronted by my own demons and a terror I would not have been able to hide dragged me into the whirls of madness in which, trapped, I found myself becoming crazy. Or then again, it was a reality that my Cartesian mind refused to accept. And why was I all alone in that horrible house? Did I not have any wife or child? As far as I could remember, and God knows that my memory has been failing me recently, it seemed to me that I knew the real thing with a wife named Jésabelle. And if I gather my memories once more, I also had a son whose name I cannot remember, unfortunately.
One night, at one o’clock in the morning, I thought I saw it. A creature which description was going far beyond words, one like you will see only in your worst nightmares. A creature that would scare the crap out of you and plunge you into a certain madness, madness which was slowly overtaking me. That was when the drama took place. Once, it was the evening, I was in the kitchen and I felt it right behind me. I was scared and my conscience was starting to sink into the infernal abyss, where reason did no longer exist. It was at this very moment that I took the knife. I plunged it into what I thought to be just a bad dream. Once. Twice. My nightmare seemed not to want to stop although I was striving to make it disappear with stabs. Then, at last, the horror made total sense, there under my eyes. Lying dead on the floor, my son and wife! I was looking at these motionless bodies in this pool of blood, appalled by the horrible act I had just committed. I became mad. It was the never stopping screams of a maniac that had alerted the neighborhood.
I was judged disturbed and was sent to Belle-rive hospital. There, I was locked away in one of these white rooms with padded walls, and with as a sole company my madness. The terrible thing I had done when killing the two people I most cherished in my life had ruined my appetite and I could barely eat anything.
Plus, I could not sleep anymore. Too scared of seeing it again, the thing lurking in my den of insanity and which was only waiting for one thing, to take my soul.
Nevertheless, a man could not stay without sleeping and after a few days, I finally succumbed to slumber. I found the creature, just as I had imagined. It was there, crouched down in a corner of the room, watching me with its bright red eyes. Then, it stood up and slowly started to walk towards me. I wanted to back off but, horror, I had reached the limit and with my back pressed against the wall I could only wait for my fate. I tried to chase the beast inside my head but too late, she was a few steps now from me. She put her chapped lips onto mine and from my eyes, a torrent of tears streamed down my cheeks. I finally understood and I smiled…to the thing.
