The Shadow in the New Place

We have lived in this apartment for almost a year. The price was low, and I sometimes wonder if the last family left for a reason I am starting to understand. From the beginning, the air felt heavy, and my cousin said she felt it too the first time she visited.

Coming home from work, a cold stillness always meets me at the door. It feels like unseen eyes follow me from room to room. I believe the center of this strange pressure is the hallway bathroom. Everyone who uses the shower mentions a sense of another presence just outside the curtain.

I discovered that if I avoid looking at any reflective surface, the feeling lessens. But the dark glass of the picture frames at night can still make my heart jump. It is a constant unease.

I told myself it was all in my head at first. But during my first week here, I was washing my hands and glimpsed a dark, shifting form in the medicine cabinet mirror. For a while, I would see the outline of a tall figure in the dark television screen. Then, after several weeks, it all just stopped, and I could finally breathe.