I know how this sounds. I know exactly how insane it looks written out like this. But I don’t care anymore. I need help. I need someone to take me seriously before I lose my fucking mind.

The past two weeks have been some of the hardest of my life, and on top of that, something has been happening in my new home. Something I can’t explain. Something I can’t ignore. And something that’s getting worse every single night. I’ve never believed in the paranormal. I don’t believe in religion. I always thought people who said shit like this were just stressed or imagining things.

But I’m not imagining this. I know I’m not. And that’s what terrifies me the most.

Every time I tell someone what I’ve been hearing, I get the same useless answers:

“You’re just hearing things.” “It’s animals in the walls.” “You’re probably sleepwalking.”

I swear to God, if one more person tells me I’m just tired or that I should just leave the house if I’m so scared, I’m going to snap. Something is happening in my house. Something is wrong, and I can feel it watching me even as I write this.

I’m tired of pretending I’m okay. I’m tired of trying to rationalise something that doesn’t make sense. I’m tired of lying awake every night, waiting for whatever this is to start again.

So, without further ado, I’m going to tell you everything that’s happened over the last two weeks.

I just hope writing it down doesn’t make it worse.

“Hello, Christopher,” my mum sang as I stepped into the room, her voice soft but hollow, like she was remembering a song she used to love but couldn’t remember why.

Those words hit my chest like a brick every single time.

“I’m Sam, Mum… Christopher died many years ago.” The words came out quiet and tired. It was the third time I’d told her that day. The third time I’d watched the same wound open in her mind like it was brand new.

She smiled at me, wide and certain. “Oh, don’t be so silly. I think I’d know my Christopher when I saw him.”

Something inside me broke a little more.

Dementia doesn’t just steal memories. It steals people. Piece by piece. Until all that’s left is the shape of someone you love, walking around with their soul slowly slipping through their fingers.

Most illnesses eat away at your body. This one eats away at everything that made you you. Simple things brushing your hair, tying your shoes become long, exhausting missions. Names fade. Faces blur. You start looking at the people who raised you, who held you, who loved you… and all you see is a stranger.

Sometimes I watch her stare at herself in the mirror, confused, like she’s trying to remember who that woman is the one with tired eyes and a trembling jaw. I want to tell her. I want to remind her who she used to be. But I know the moment will slip away again, like trying to hold water in cupped hands.

If I ever had kids, I’d tell them, “If this illness ever gets me… take me out back and end it. Please.” Not because I’m scared of dying, but because I’m terrified of becoming a ghost in my own life, wandering through rooms full of people who cry when I walk past because I don’t know their faces anymore.

They say that once dementia reaches the final stage, the person suffering lives in a kind of ignorant bliss. But the people around them don’t. They get to watch the person they love dissolve, slowly and painfully, right in front of them. They hold their hand while they forget birthdays, inside jokes, childhood stories, the names of the people they brought into this world.

I look at my mum the woman who held me through nightmares, stayed awake all night when I was sick, worked double shifts so I could have school shoes and all I see now is someone slipping away.

And there’s nothing I can do. No medicine. No treatment. No amount of begging or praying.

Just a slow, quiet goodbye, happening a dozen times a day.

Every time she calls me “Christopher,” I lose her all over again.

I’m sitting by her bedside in the old rocking chair I brought from her lonely wooden cabin on the outskirts of town, running my fingers over the tiny indents worn into the armrests where she rested her elbows over the years. The varnish around them has faded to a dull, pale colour, like the chair itself is tired.

The door behind me swings open softly.

“Hi, Beth. Just coming in to drop off some food for you,” a gentle voice says.

I turn and see Cat the nurse who’s been taking care of my mum for the past year. She’s in her late twenties, very pretty, and the only thing stopping me from asking her out for a coffee is the large emerald-encrusted wedding ring on her finger. And the fact that it would be wildly inappropriate.

She brushes her hand lightly across my shoulder. “Hi, Sammy. I hope you’re doing okay.”

Her voice sounds almost musical, like it isn’t coming from a person but from something gentler.

I nod. I don’t need to say anything. The pain in my eyes says more than words ever could, and she understands instantly.

“Would you like a hand eat—”

My mum cuts her off.

“DOES IT FUCKING LOOK LIKE I NEED HELP, YOU STUPID LITTLE WHORE?”

Spit flies from her mouth with every word.

Cat doesn’t respond. She just takes a long, steadying breath and walks out of the room, shoulders slumped.

“MUM,” I snap. “You can’t talk to her like that. I’ve had enough.”

“Shut up, Chris. I don’t like how that slut calls you by your brother’s name,” she shoots back.

I don’t say anything. I stand up, walk calmly to the door, open it gently… then slam it shut. The sound echoes through the empty hallway, bouncing off the walls until it feels like the air itself is shaking. The pungent stink of day-old piss and disinfectant floods my sinuses. Even after a year and a half of visiting, I still can’t get used to that smell.

I head toward the exit for some fresh air. A voice calls out from my left, but I’m too focused on getting outside to hear what it says.

I turn and see an open door. That’s where the voice came from.

I take a few steps toward it, my head still turned, drawn to the room. Before I reach the doorway, an old woman comes scrambling out. She grabs me and slams me into the wall with a strength that makes no sense for someone her size.

She slaps me across the face, eyes wide and glassy, breath thick and sour, and begins chanting:

“Tap tap tap on the bedroom wall… Knock knock knock goes the hallway walls… Ding ding ding goes the clock…”

I shove her off me before she can finish, sending her stumbling backward.

I don’t say a word. I just run.

I sprint for the exit, barely registering the woman at the front desk stepping forward to unlock the door. “Thank you,” I gasp as I burst outside and collapse against the wall, hyperventilating, sucking in as much fresh air as I can to drown out the smell and the words echoing in my head.

When my breathing finally settles, I glance between the bus stop and the door.

“I have to say goodbye to Mum,” I whisper.

As I make my way back inside, dread washes over me. Pressing the button to be let in only makes it worse. When the doors open, the smell hits me again—but this time it’s different. Sickly sweet. Like rotten fruit left in the sun. A faint breeze behind me is the only thing stopping it from overwhelming me.

The doors close.

The smell slams into me. My stomach lurches, vomit crawling up my throat as I swallow hard. Fighting it back, I force myself down the hallway.

With every step, the stench grows stronger. Especially as I near the room the woman came out of earlier. The sound of gagging and dry heaving echoes faintly off the walls.

Just as I reach the doorway, my heart starts hammering.

The door bursts open.

Someone rushes out but this time it isn’t the old woman.

It’s Cat.

She barely looks at me before collapsing over the bin beside the door, emptying whatever she had for lunch into it. I gag, tears burning my eyes, and look past her into the room.

Two men in masks are dragging something heavy out of a hole in the wall a hole that must have been hidden behind a bookshelf, judging by the broken shelves scattered across the floor.

The body is bloated. Ruined. At least a week or two old. Its clothes are shredded, stuck to flesh barely holding together. Maggots writhe inside the open cavity of its stomach, crawling over one another in a living mass.

The face is almost unrecognisable.

Almost.

I know exactly who it is.

It’s the old woman. The same one who spoke to me less than five minutes ago.

Her mouth is frozen in a toothless grin, eyes wide and glassy.

And she’s staring straight at me.

I’m sorry, but that’s all I’m going to write tonight. That last paragraph took me way too long because my hands won’t stop shaking. I need to try and get some sleep. I just hope the tapping doesn’t start again tonight. I can’t deal with it anymore. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks.

I’d really appreciate any thoughts or ideas about what I’ve written so far, because even now, two weeks later, I still don’t have a single answer.

I keep asking myself the same question over and over again.

If that woman was already dead… who the fuck. grabbed me in that hallway?