The Constant Weight

Ever since the séance in the old farmhouse, I’ve carried a weight that isn’t mine. It started as a knot in my stomach whenever I walked past the cellar door, and grew into a constant pressure on my shoulders, like a hand pressing down, urging me to stop, to sit, to do nothing. My brother, Danny, he thinks I’ve just become moody, a teenager with a chip on her shoulder. He doesn’t know that the thing we woke up that night follows me like a second shadow, and that it’s hungry for attention.

The house itself is a sagging Victorian relic, creaking with every shift of the wind. My mother’s sewing room sits at the top of the stairs, its window facing the dead oak in the yard. Danny and I have our rooms on the second floor, mine at the end of the hall, his next to the bathroom. But the entity doesn’t stay in his room anymore; it’s taken to lingering in the hallway between my door and the attic access, right where the floorboards groan the loudest.

It started with small things. The scent of mothballs and rot following me down to breakfast. The way my radio would crackle with static at exactly 3 AM, no matter what station I tuned. Then came the cold spots that crept up my spine when I passed the linen closet, and the feeling of being watched from the attic, where none of us ever climb. I told myself it was just old house paranoia, but the knot in my stomach would tighten, and my jaw would clench, and I’d snap at Danny for no reason.

The worst was when I’d be doing something as mundane as reading or folding laundry, and I’d feel a breath on my neck, but when I’d spin around, the air would be still. I’d catch a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision, a shape that was too tall and too thin to be real, disappearing into the shadows when I turned my head. Danny said I was letting the old tales get to me, but he hadn’t stood in that dim hallway last week, feeling that weight press down until I couldn’t breathe.

I tried everything to shake it. I opened the windows to let in the autumn air, burned sage from the farmer’s market, even slept with my Bible on the nightstand. But the weight only grew, and I’d find myself avoiding the hallway altogether, taking the long way around the dining room to reach my bedroom. Last Tuesday, I woke to find the attic door ajar, a dark, cold draft spilling down the stairs. And I knew, with a sickening certainty, that it was waiting for me up there.

I know I should tell my mother, but she’s been dismissive since Dad left. She says it’s the house settling, that we have too many drafts, that I’m just stressed from school. She doesn’t see the way the dust motes swirl in the hallway when no one is moving, or how Sammy, our old tabby, refuses to go near the attic door, his fur bristling and his eyes wide. She doesn’t feel the weight that sits on my chest every night the moment I turn out the light.

Today, I found an old photograph in the bottom of a shoebox in the hall closet. It was of a man in a dark suit, standing at the end of a hallway that looked just like ours, but the wall behind him wasn’t there, just a gaping, black void. On the back, in shaky handwriting, were the words: ‘He watched until I couldn’t move.’ I dropped it, my hands trembling, and I hadn’t the courage to pick it back up.

I can’t sleep. The weight is worse now, pressing me into my mattress. And I swear I can hear it breathing from the attic, regular and slow, like it’s been waiting all this time for me to understand. But what I truly dread is that I’m not just being watched anymore. It’s starting to walk beside me, to stand in my mirror, to echo my movements. And I’m afraid that soon, I won’t be the one moving at all.