Page 28 of Presence

I’m terrified.

I don’t know how long I stay motionless, focusing on slowing my breath, and listening to the buzz of blood in my temples. But finally, I get calm enough to look at the paper in front of me. I can’t just… sit still and be scared. I need to do something.

With legs like jelly, I stand up and bend to pick up the pen that had fallen. It spun away, ending up a foot from me. As I reach for it, something weird happens. I blink, and suddenly the pen is in my hand—not on the floor. How? I didn’t pick it up.

Then, I hear a sound from the kitchen. A soft humming, like water boiling in an electric kettle. I freeze, every nerve firing with alertness.

My gaze snaps to the kitchen archway, expecting, fearing what might appear. Will the shadows show up here too? Will they leap at me and try to consume me like before? I can still feel them—their tendrils prying my mouth open, slick against my skin, intrusively touching me. But there’s nothing—no shadow, no form.

I inch towards the other room, clutching the pen like a weapon. My heart is thumping so loudly I’m convinced whatever is there can hear it, can sense my fear.

It’s ridiculous... What am I going to do, fend someone, something, off with a pen? But right now, it’s all I have, and if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that I can’t let anyone—or anything—target me in my own home, not in broad daylight.

Losing a battle at night is one thing, but losing one during the day would be the death of me.

As I round the corner, my eyes dart frantically around the room. Everything appears normal. Dishes stacked neatly, windows closed, the kettle not even plugged in. It’s just sitting there, empty on the counter, right where I always leave it when I make tea.

“What the fuck?” I whisper, barely audible. Clearing my throat, I call out, “Hello?”

Nothing. The silence is thick and heavy.

I stand here, a grown woman clutching a pen like a talisman, facing the everyday items in my kitchen as if they might suddenly come to life and attack. The skeptical part of my mind scoffs at the absurdity, but another part—more primal and instinctive—is simply scared shitless.

The conversation with the entity pretending to be Camilla, the shadows, Echo’s warnings—some time ago, I’d have said all this was a product of an over-exhausted brain, playing tricks on my sanity.

Not anymore. I am more ready to believe this now.

I walk deeper into the kitchen, looking at every single item with heightened focus. I don’t know what I’m looking for, I really don’t. Something moving, perhaps? Levitating? Maybe knives hovering in the air, ready to strike?

There’s none of that.

But just as I reach the countertop, I can swear that someone’s come to stand behind me. I hear breathing, calm and steady, yet loud enough for the sound to explode my fragile heart. I whip around, the pen raised like a dagger, expecting to confront whatever has been stalking me, but there’s nothing. The kitchen is still, the only sounds are my own heavy breathing and distant traffic. My eyes search every shadow, every potential hiding spot. Nothing.

Fuck, this is killing me.

I’ve felt watched for a long time. Ever since I can remember, really. My earliest memories are of my mother screaming and beating me. Then my father left, and she lost her mind. As a young teen with no other adult to lean on, it was hard not to have a mother. She should have been my rock. Even though I didn’t fully understand it then, I felt the void. I saw the other kids with their parents.

Between her failed rehab and the sleeping pills, I started feeling like I was never alone in the dark. Whenever I stepped into a shadowy corridor, it felt like someone was walking beside me, matching my footsteps. Whenever I had a panic attack, it always seemed there was something experiencing it with me. Watching. Always watching.

I couldn’t share it with anyone. Not with my mother who wouldn’t care, or with fragile Camilla I met at school. I knew I was alone in this. I had to endure it by myself. That’s how this creepy, bone-chilling sense of always being watched became my new normal. It became my pillar, no matter how ugly and rotten it was. I learned to live with it. But the thing is, it was always just a feeling. Until now. Now, it’s reaching out to me.

“What do you want from me?” I ask the emptiness, lifting my chin and gripping the pen so tightly it feels like it might snap. My words echo slightly in the quiet kitchen, sounding both brave and damn foolish. Because I know that the presence is here. I know it’s watching me. Somewhere in the shadows of this very kitchen, it has its eyes on me, seeing how I’m getting sweaty, how my breath becomes too shallow and quick.

But how long can I do this alone? I’m fighting an enemy that doesn’t respond, doesn’t show itself. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. Exhausted and unnerved, I lower the pen, swallowing hard. My hand shakes from the strain of tensing my muscles.

A chill runs through me, not from fear but from a deep, unsettling cold that seems to seep from the walls themselves.

Fuck this… Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe the stress is getting to me.

But then, the blinds crash down over the window behind me, striking like thunder. I jump, a raw scream tearing from me. My heart aches, squeezing painfully as if it’s about to collapse in my chest.

The pain isn’t the worst. The worst is… I freeze, my breath catching in my throat as the kitchen is swallowed by unnatural darkness. It’s as if the light itself has been sucked out of here.

I’m alone in the dark.

Panic grips my chest, each heartbeat pounding loudly and erratically in this stifling silence. Frantically, I fumble for the light switch, my fingers clumsy and trembling. The familiar contours of the wall feel alien, but finally, I find the switch and flick it on.

Nothing happens.

---