Nick was our beloved neighbour who used to live in the apartment next to us. He was a close friend of my husband.
One day he suddenly disappeared. Before his disappearance, he started acting weird.
He was always the nicest and most helpful guy we knew until a few months ago when he started being rude and disrespectful to senior citizens and once called a 75-year-old woman an absolute bitch because she was wearing a cross-chain not only that he threatened to take her chain off and threw it in sewer otherwise he would harm her but also physically assaulted her.
This left the lady terrified and she did what he told her to do and later called the police on him for harassment. After that incident, he started becoming more and more isolated.
He also started acting inappropriately with me.
He was labelled mentally unstable by the neighbourhood. Even my husband started distancing himself from Nick.
Occasional dinners with our families completely stopped. His old aunt contacted my husband a month before his disappearance to find out about him and his health. He was very close to his aunt who used to live in the countryside. He would often call his aunt and that’s why it was not normal behaviour for him to not call her for months.
There were many things he did that made other neighbours despise him but the list is quite too long.
After his disappearance, strange things started happening in our building like food, clothes and other items that would often go missing from my home. Earlier I thought I just kept things at different places and forgot but then the frequency of these things increased day by day.
One day I was just gossiping with my neighbours about things in day-to-day life and the topic of objects and food disappearing came to my surprise, this was not only happening to me but also with other women.
Two months ago my husband found me sleepwalking. Long story short he woke up in the middle of the night and when he found no one beside him on our bed he started searching for me in the home. At first, he thought I was in the bathroom but he noticed the main door was open and then he noticed that the lift was at zero floor. He went downstairs and found me standing in the parking lot. He woke me awake and I came to my senses.
I had no idea how I got there or what happened.
These occurrences became quite frequent. No matter how many locks my husband put at the main door, I would always be there standing in the parking lot at night. My health was deteriorating day by day. My husband took a break from work and we went to the park. We paid a man to click pictures.
Suddenly everybody disappeared in front of my eyes, the photographer, my husband and other people in the park. I saw a cloaked man standing in front of me. His hands were ghostly pale and he was calling my name in a harsh voice. I froze for a while but then he started coming near me. I started running in the opposite direction.
I heard my husband’s voice calling “Rose, Rose, Rose…. calm down Rose. What has happened to you? “
I stood there in surprise and disbelief. Everything was normal, now there were people around and they were looking at me in surprise.
Before I could say a single word to my husband, I drifted back into a quiet world where a pale-cloaked man was chasing me.
Again I heard my husband screaming “What’s wrong with you Rose? I think we need to go home as soon as possible”.
I came to my senses and I realised I was acting like a crazy manic. I know people hallucinate but something about it felt so real like I was there at the moment but I guess that’s how a human mind works.
I always drift into a world where a cloaked man with pale hands is chasing me until and unless my husband doesn’t try to calm me down. I started losing my mind slowly and slowly.
My husband arranged an appointment with a great physiatrist. We went to him and he diagnosed me with schizophrenia and wrote some medications for me.
My husband told me I was acting strangely but I didn’t do anything. My sleepwalking problem was still there. It escalated quickly with me punching my husband so hard that he banged on the wall. He also showed me a video that he recorded from a hidden cam where I was talking in a masculine and extremely coarse harsh voice to myself saying along the lines “I am Ni..ck and I am not going to leave you all”.
Three days before the appointment a man who lived on the 3rd floor was found dead sitting on a chair in the parking lot with his head turned 180⁰ around.
The day my husband called my physiatrist again because I was acting like crazy making demonic noises giving him threats and I allegedly physically assaulted my sister in law who came here to check my health resulting in the stitches on her forehead.
The condition was so bad that they had to tie me to bed and lock me inside the room till the doctor gave me an injection. I don’t remember anything. All I remembered was dark shadows chasing me and I ran as far as I could run away from them and it just got worse and worse and worse ….
Well the rumours of me being crazy spread like fire
The police officer investigating the murder case questioned my husband about my mental health and told me I was found going down to the parking lot nearly the same time close to that man’s death but my husband shut them down saying that it was none of their business as they didn’t have a warrant at that time.
Our neighbours have informed us that the police were asking if there were some problems between my family and that guy who was murdered.
I don’t know, I remember nothing, I just remembered those horrific nightmares that I experience daily and even while typing this, it feels like that cloaked man with pale hands is standing beside me fondling my head.