Chapter 1

Hey, I've never posted here before – but I've lurked under a few different usernames and occasionally even without just to read people's tales and recountings of the horrors they've witnessed and been pulled into. At the moment, I'm lying on the couch while my partner plays Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. No, I wasn't a fan before meeting them and this point isn't really important – I was just thinking I'd give context.

The reason this context is important is that we're downstairs right now. That's where the living room and TV are. It's a medium sized apartment – two stories with three bedrooms, one and a half baths, a laundry room that's more like a hallway than a room, a living room with an open entrance, and a kitchen/dining room. The kitchen also opens up into a small backyard. I should also mention that all of the bedrooms and the full bath are upstairs, while the laundry "room" and half bath are downstairs with the kitchen/dining room and living room.

The layout of the house is fairly simple too. You walk through the front door and to the left is your staircase – it curves a little at the top so the bathroom door is maybe a foot off of where you stand from the bottom of the stairs. It takes a right towards the first room, then another right. The second bedroom is on the left and the last bedroom is directly at the end of the hallway. That's where my partner and I sleep. Or where they still sleep and I used to sleep.

Now, moving onto the actual important part – and thanks for bearing with me through the house description, I know it was probably a bit rough. Lately I've been feeling… unusually sick. But not like a regular sickness. Normally when I'm sick my nose is stuffy, I can't breathe, I'm constantly sneezing – that kind of thing, regular sickness stuff. But this has been different. I've had pounding headaches, like my brain is condensing in on itself or trying to expand against my skull. Imagine a sharp sound, like a high pitched note – but it's short. A quick "ding" and then it's gone. But then repeat that sound over and over and don't stop. Like my brain is throbbing. I've tried water, caffeine, my normal cocktail of pain medication – nothing seems strong enough to make it stop. Then there's the "electric shocks". They're… hard to explain. But imagine a sharp tingling sensation running through your arteries and veins, from your center to your extremities every time you move. It's… kind of like that. I should also note, I'm an EXTREMELY heavy sleeper. I've had family members take watches off of my wrist while sleeping and not been woken up by it. Not that they were trying to steal it, it just needed to be charged and I – always forgetful – just wouldn't. So to my surprise for the last three or four nights, I haven't been able to sleep. Almost entirely. And when I do, it's extremely fitful, waking up in odd positions at odd hours with numb arms or numb legs or a pounding headache only to muffle a groan with my pillow and force my eyes shut again.

I usually end up moving downstairs when this happens enough times though, when I'm forced awake too much or left awake too long. The darkness of my partner's room without them awake is… unnerving. Like there's something wrong with it. They've told me about some spirits that live here, they've assured me that the one they're certain is here wouldn't do that – and I believe them. That it's not her. But there's one spirit my partner continues to vehemently deny existing saying they're "probably just a hallucination I had" (I, in this context, being my partner) and that "I was sleep deprived, they're not real". But if they're not real, why mention them in the first place as if they are? They originally mentioned them as the "spirit that they see sometimes on the staircase". They're entirely black except for a featureless, white face. They said that they believe the spirit doesn't want to hurt them, and is just watching over them.

Now, for another piece of context – my headaches always seem to get worse when I go upstairs, when I lay down to go to sleep. That full body electric shock thing, that gets worse too. So I spend most of my time downstairs. I usually can only really sleep downstairs anymore. I'm worried this thing, this spirit, is trying to force me out of the apartment – out of my partners life – and I don't know what to do.

As I'm writing this, I'm beginning to get a headache. I'm wondering if it's from my phone screen – it could be. Or maybe, I'm right. And the spirit doesn't want me telling anyone that something's going on, someone who might believe me. Does anyone have any advice on what to do or who this spirit might be? Any help is appreciated.