I can’t remember when it started, but I know that it wasn’t always there. At first, I thought it was the neighbours with their loud music, but every time I placed my ear against the walls, I could only hear their soft voices. No thumping. No music.

I began to wonder if the sounds were in my head as every morning when I woke up, I could hear the soft sound of a heart ticking like a clock. When I went to bed the noise was loud as if someone were banging on my bedroom door, wanting to get in. I tried to ignore it the best I could, but found myself taking a strong dosage of sleeping pills.

Unfortunately, the pills made things worse. I’d wake up every night and notice strange things. My body would become unmovable, the thumping sound became louder and the presence of something else watching me became clear as footsteps thumped along the hallway, outside my door, echoing.

But on the nights where I woke up on my back, unable to move, a figure would be glued to the wall above where I laid…

You could count the number of bones the creature had in its body if the red flesh hanging from its deformed figure and face weren’t distracting. Thin strands of black hair clung to its bare head in clumps. While the creature’s body faced the ceiling, its head would click its way around to face me. Its thin crusted lips would form an unsettling grin after it had licked its lips with an abnormally long and thin tongue as if it had found something interesting to play with. Unable to move or look away my gaze stayed on the creature who stared back at me with empty sockets that leaked red and yellow fluid from them.

It has been a while since I first started to notice the thumping noise and a few weeks since I started to see those strange beings. I don’t take sleeping pills anymore. I threw away all the clocks in the house, have broken every light and got rid of the people who laid quietly under my floorboards without my knowledge until a few days ago.

The kitchen and the living room now lay in a mess due to the amount of digging I had to do to find their bodies and to stop the thumping sound. However, I’ve still had no luck.

I now sit in the dark, writing out the events so I won’t forget what has happened. I am afraid that I am losing my mind. The static TV casts a dim light over this page and my hands, helping me to see what I am writing. I still hear the thumping now and again but I just have to wait until my eyes grow heavy with exhaustion and my body forces me to sleep so I can wake up like a statue, looking at the ghastly creatures that stand in front of me and the static TV.

They’re waiting for something…