I should probably explain why I'm doing this to myself. It isn't out of some random desire to punish myself. It's because it's the best way to guarantee that I can stay in a brightly lit room with the door closed 100% of the time. No one comes in or goes out without my noticing. I've moved all my stuff from the bathroom into my room, which is sort of like my fort, I guess, and I've got a whole stash of ready-meals that I stick on the radiator for half an hour if I get hungry and a bunch of bottled water. I wish I had an en-suite. The only time I leave is to use the bathroom and for dinner with my mother if she insists, which she doesn't usually. I don't know what's waiting for me outside so I'm not going outside again if I can help it. This is not a practical plan for the future but it's the best I can do.  

I have not slept for almost four days and I think I might die.

My uncle Jacob has come to stay with us for a weekend. Godknows why, since him and Mum barely get along and haven't for as long as I remember. He's some kind of hippy-dippy alternative medicines inventor or something and he always smells like plants, and he's into a bunch of meditation and yoga and every other stupid stereotype out there. Mum's a lab technician, so no wonder she keeps her distance. They've already had one extremely heated debate over the validity of homoeopathy or something and it was nothing short of unnecessarily disruptive. If he's supposed to be here to calm me with his magic plants or something it isn't working. Unless he's brought a ton of pot with him, then it might.

I've calmed down a lot since Tuesday. It's probably just the haze of sleep deprivation, but I've done A-levels. I can handle this stuff. Coffee with crushed up caffeine tablets dissolved in it still tastes like crap, though. If it weren't for the medication, I'd be jumping out of my skin with paranoia, but it's keeping me strangely Zen.

I keep hearing kids. It's weird. There are no kids in this house and both my neighbours are pensioners so there is literally no reason for me to be hearing kids laughing and talking. Occasionally one calls my name. Sleep deprivation is weird.

 After that stunningly rational post yesterday, I had a panic attack and ended up passing out on my bedroom floor. My mother found me and is pretty much forcing me to take my medication – they did prescribe me new stuff after all. I have no clue what it is but I think it's got some kind of weird sedative property. I'm not allowed alcohol while I'm taking them and the label says for short term use only. Anti-psychotics or something. Hah. Hahahaha.

I suppose I am now officially, medically insane so I can have no worries about sounding crazy when I write down what happened yesterday. I left my house almost immediately after posting and cycled to the Brightleys'. I kept to the busiest streets on the way there, trying to maximise my contact with other people even if it was the longer route there. The photo with that thing in it only has a couple of other people besides Laurie in it, so maybe the crowd would scare it away or something. In retrospect, it's a stupid theory. It's not even a theory. It was a random, naïve, hopeful guess that ultimately didn't pay off.

The house had a board from an estate agent declaring it was up for sale. No cars were in the drive and the curtains were drawn. It was almost painful to look at, settled between the two houses either side of it like a gangrenous toe. It just looked so empty, and not just in the sense that no one seemed to live there any more – it was like the place had been hollowed out of existence. The woods loomed darkly behind it.

I parked my bike next to the stacked bins, stuffed full of leaflets and junk mail, and dropped my helmet on top. The bright sunlight bounced off the shiny plastic, momentarily blinding me. I rubbed my eyes and looked up, the skin on the back of my neck crawling as my throat began to close, but I didn't dare look behind me.

All the doors were locked and all the windows were shut except for the tiny bathroom window, which was slightly ajar. There was no way I could fit through there. I wasn't sure when the plan had become sort of very illegal, but apparently it had. I wasn't sure there even was a plan. I looked around. The street was deserted. Standing on my tiptoes, I reached my arm through the little window, groping for the handle of the window with the dodgy lock. It was a long shot, and a likely-incriminating waste of time, but it was the only way I'd get in short of breaking a window.

It didn't feel right under my fingers, but I pushed and probed until something gave and the lock clicked. Pulling back my fingers, I felt something close around the tip of my index finger, sharp and pointed and unrelenting. A squeak of pain escaped my lips before I could stop it, leaning forwards to ease the painful tugging. My heart raced as I tried and mostly failed not to panic. Something burned in my throat, drawing a sudden, violent cough from between my lips before I could stop it. Thank god there was no one else about or I would have been caught by now. I sagged against the building, eyes burning with the effort of suppressing the panic or the cough or both.

It felt like forever. I didn't dare move even the tiniest bit or make the slightest noise, sure someone would spot me at any second. The sensation of being watched began again, and I was sure that I'd hear an angry yell from a neighbour at any second or the wail of sirens or something, but nothing came. Just a second mechanical click, and the pressure released on my finger. Without a second to spare, I pulled it back and shoved it into my mouth without looking at the damage. I didn't want to know. I tasted blood – a lot of it.

I paused before pulling open the window fully. Who knew what I'd be risking if I entered that house? The air was still and deadly silent besides the sound of my too-fast breathing. I'd come this far. Might as well carry on.

I climbed through the window and bumped my thigh painfully on the sink. The bathroom door was already open, leading on to the dark corridor. If the house had seemed empty from the outside, the inside was worse – there was literally nothing here. The floors were so bare they were probably sterile. The walls had been stripped of framed family photos and paintings. The ends of the corridor were swathed in darkness so I couldn't see beyond into the kitchen or the sitting room, but I would bet they were the same. I edged forward, finger throbbing, heading towards the stairs. My toes collided painfully with the bottom step. Cursing myself for my stupidity, I pulled out my phone and illuminated the screen. In the dim light, I could make out the stairs properly, covered in papers with the same scribbles as those that had been plastering the walls in Jess' bedroom. O's with X's through the middle, trees, disproportionate stick figures and scrawled handwriting. They sent a shiver down my spine and I tore my eyes away from them.

The light from my phone didn't reach the top of the staircase. I frowned and turned, shining it at the wall behind me; it lit that up just fine, and they were the same distance from me. Dwelling on the implications would likely do me no good.

Each step I took forwards, upwards, I tried not to think of what might be at the top of that staircase. The thing from the photograph? Jess, or whatever had become of her?

My phone screen flickered off, and I froze. A sound brushed at the edge of my consciousness. Low and steady and thumping, almost a pulsing like a heartbeat but slower and heavier. With trembling fingers, I desperately pushed at the button to turn the screen back on, almost crying out with relief when the light dazzled my eyes. My lock screen was a picture of Jess. With a silent prayer to her, I pushed on forwards.

The top of the staircase was empty but for a splash of pink bright against the dark blue carpeting. I knelt quickly, picking it up and holding it close. Jess' hoodie. The one missing from her wardrobe, the one in the descriptions her parents put out. My phone fell to the floor as I straightened up to tie it around my waist, relishing the way the sleeves wrapping around my waist felt almost like her arms embracing me tightly. It smelled of her perfume. Finally, something normal-

I looked up sharply, eyes drawn to Jess' bedroom door.

It nearly didn't fit in the door frame it was so tall. Only a small part of its upper body was visible as it leaned out from behind the door, unnaturally rigid in its movements, dark suit almost completely hidden in the pitch-darkness. It's face seemed to glow in the low light of my phone, and I screamed. Or I think I did. I'm not sure. I'm only sure that its face lacked any features, human or otherwise.

Without a pause, I ran down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time and thanking whatever god that I didn't slip on any of the papers. I could barely breathe, whether from pure fear or from my burning throat I didn't know. It didn't slow me down and I barely remember exiting the house. The front door pushed open all too easily, and I was suddenly bathed in the orange glow of the nearby lamppost. What should have been a comfort only panicked me further, and I began to gasp for air – it had been about three in the afternoon when I arrived and I couldn't have been more than ten minutes inside.

I ran through the woods. I don't know what drew me in that direction, but I ran into the woods. I stumbled home after midnight. I remember very little of it, just the mindless pure panic that kept my legs pumping and my eyes open.

If there's anything good about this new medication, it's that I can apparently think straight when recalling these events.  

Jesus christ why did I ngot back what the fcuk drov me to d someting so fucking dumb. I saw it i swa it i sa it and i it was watching me and its tall and its got no face and I just acnt. I cantn breatje.

Mum finally dragged me to therapy again so they could tell me that yes, I am going medically crazy. They're saying they need to do more tests but they think I'm experiencing delusions from grief and denial or something. I don't know if that's even possible. Jess would know. She was the scientific one. They kept asking me if I was taking my medication and I think they want me to start taking something else, treating me like some kind of stupid kid who didn't understand anything.

Therapy was horrible. I felt like I was being scrutinised the whole time, like I was being watched like some kind of possibly-dangerous but mostly insignificant thing shoved under a microscope. They wanted to talk about Jess but I steered them more towards my home life. I'm sure there's a bunch of stupid Freudian nonsense they can spin from all that.

I'm going to go back to the Brightleys'. There's got to be something I missed, and it's better than sitting around petulantly complaining to random strangers on the internet. I'd better do it now while I'm still irritated; it's sort of motivating.  

I've looked through the contents of the memory stick. It's our holiday photos from the trip, but they're all wrong. There's photos I don't remember us taking, some I know we took are missing (I have them here on my own hard drive, so I know they exist – why would she delete them?) and others are just messed up. I don't feel comfortable posting mine or Jess' pictures to the internet so they're not going to appear here, but I wouldn't post them even if I wanted to. There's just something wrong about them, and I don't want to make them last forever in digital format.

If these were paper photographs, I'd burn them in a second. There's something in them and I think it's watching Jess.  

Do you know what it's like to hope that you're going crazy? Or worse, to hope that your probably fucking dead girlfriend was crazy? Because I'd rather be crazy than this actually be fucking happening. Jess didn't just get sick in America. She got crazy. She must have gotten crazy because there is no other logical, scientific, reasonable damn explanation for what's supposedly going on. She must have gotten some mind-rotting crazy virus thing and I must have caught it off her because I'm going nuts, too.

God, I'm starting to sound like I'm blaming her again. I'm so crap.

When we were planning our trip through the USA, she specifically asked if we could avoid Mississippi, the state where she had lived before moving to the UK. So we did, and I didn't think much of it. If I was doing a round trip of Great Britain, I'd probably avoid this dull county I've barely left. I was meant to be going to university in Newcastle. I don't know if that will happen now and I'm scared.

No, I need to focus on Jess. Not my own selfish dreams. Jess. Beautiful, lovely Jess. Jess, with her open mind and her whole-face smile and her dreams. Jess got sick. I don't know who else knows the exact details – probably her parents, and any doctor they took her to. She never told me. It started as a cough, so according to my GCSE biology it was probably some kind of infection of the lungs. Can an infection make you withdrawn? Paranoid? Cold?

I should be objective. Jess wasn't perfect. In those last months she didn't call me as often as she used to. We stopped talking as much. She stopped playing lacrosse. There isn't a lot to do in this town, but what few things she did do, she quit. The more I think about it, the more it was like she was isolating herself. I should have noticed the warning signs and reached out to her, and I remember briefly wondering why she never reached out to me – she knew about my history of depression. There were a couple of times where we'd meet up at the park or go for coffee or something and she'd just suddenly stand up, whisper half an apology and just – leave. I tried to think nothing of it, but I can't get her face out of my mind. If I'm being rational, she was depressed and had some kind of freaky mental breakdown and ran away. If I'm not, it was something else. I googled the pictures and and I'm trying not to imagine what it means if it's something else.  

I googled the symbol and I now know what it means. I'm fucking praying this is some kind of sick hoax.

I haven't been able to leave my room for three days and my mother is becoming increasingly panicked about my mental state. She thinks I might try to kill myself. I don't know why she'd care if I did, since she's never made much of an effort with me. She even threatened to call Dad. I'll go downstairs tomorrow, when the sun is high.

Jess' bedroom. That's what I'm supposed to write about, right? That's what I said I'd do?

It wasn't locked, but it was closed off. I don't know how to describe it. It was like the room was a separate part of the house. When I stepped through the door, I swear the temperature dropped by about ten degrees and the air was different. When I flicked the lights on I nearly burst into tears.

Almost every inch of the walls was covered with sheets of paper with black scribbles all over them. This one same design kept repeating, like a O with an X scrawled through it. I'll post some photos after this post if I can – I'm not 100% on how this blog website thing works yet. I tore some down and took them home with me. It was so wrong. Jess had photos of us together and a couple of old family photos taped to the wall over her bed, but they were covered by the weird drawings. Why? Why would she do that? I tore some of the papers down and shoved them in my pocket.

The first photo I uncovered wasn't me and Jess. It was an old family photo. Jess must have been about six when it was taken, all skinned knees and rosy cheeks, squashed between her mother and a figure who could have been a photocopy of the Jess I knew and loved. Jess mostly refused to talk about her dead big sister, except on the nights when it all got too much and she'd cuddle up close to me and whisper things. Laurie used to take her camping. Laurie's love of dancing. Laurie's sad smile.

The photo was old and blurry, taken sometime around sunset. A smiling family, framed by their porch against the glowing, golden forest behind them, blurring trees into tall, willowy figures with reaching arms. Laurie looked sad. I nearly took the photo with me, but decided not to at the last minute. I didn't need to steal things from a pair of grieving parents.

I lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, fighting the growing urge to sob. It was painful to be here, in this room where we'd made so many memories. We'd planned our trip to the Americas here. I'd shown her my scars here. She had applied for vet school here. How many times had we stretched out on this bed and just lain together, Jess curled into my side like a kitten, my fingers tangled through her hair, breathing and being as one?

My fingers stretched past my head, trailing across the cotton sheets, burrowing under the heavy pillow. It still smelled like her, even a month after her disappearance. My left index finger brushed something hard. Reaching a little further, I stretched out and closed my fingers around it, pulling it from beneath the pillow and towards me. I sat up without looking at it, but I could tell what it was from the shape. It's a memory stick. I haven't checked out what's on it yet, but I will tomorrow, maybe.

I can't stop thinking about the implications of that memory stick. The police searched her room, so surely they would have found something like this and checked it or taken it as evidence or something? I don't know how these things actually work outside of silly American police procedurals. If they didn't find it, they either did a sloppy job of searching the room or it was placed there after they did the search. I'm not sure which is a worse reason.

I checked the drawer in the bedside table, the desk drawers, the wardrobe, under the bed, beneath the rug. Nothing but more drawings. I'm going to google the symbol tonight.  

Mrs Brightley didn't like me because I wasn't right for Jess. Jess wanted to be a veterinarian, and I had no clue what I wanted to do in life, least of all hold down a traditional doctor/lawyer/civil engineer shtick job to support my wife, two point four kids and a dog. I wasn't physically attractive enough. I wasn't a prefect at school. I came from a broken home. Everything about me was wrong, apparently, though she never said it to my face. It hurt Jess a lot, and it hurt me too, but we were stronger than that. God, I miss her so much.

It felt all kinds of wrong as I approached the house. It's one in a row of identical two-storey family homes, the garden increasingly unkempt since neither Mr or Mrs Brightley were willing or able to work on it. If they didn't do something soon, it would merge with the forest behind it and become almost impossible to restore. Mr B's car was gone again. From the street I could see the television flicker, so I assumed Mrs B was in. I made like I was going to walk to the door of the house next door, even though I was alone on the street, changing direction at the last minute to creep along beside the house in the shadows of the overflowing recycling bins stacked along the wall. Jess' bedroom was on the first floor and there was no way I could scale the vertical brick wall.

I stood for a moment underneath her bedroom window, staring up at her closed curtains. There had to be some way to get in. Stacking the bins under the window would make too much noise, and the last thing I wanted to do was attract attention to myself. Talking to Mrs B would likely yield precisely zero results. The back door creaked, so that wasn't an option either. I doubted they had forgotten to fix the broken lock on the bathroom window, and why was I even considering breaking and entering?

My heart nearly stopped when the sound of a car engine rumbled down the street, then lifted as I recognised the green Ford Fiesta creeping reluctantly forwards. I tried to be as casual as possible as I walked around the house, keeping half an eye on the car as it pulled into the drive. It was Mr Brightley. I had never seen him look so tired. His eyes were red so I think he had been crying.

It didn't take much convincing to let me see Jess' bedroom. Mostly he just smiled blankly and replied in a monotone, hollow voice that I could do what I want. Mrs B was thankfully passed out on the sofa, and his sigh of relief was audible.

Climbing the stairs was hard. I remember every creak, every pause that made my thighs burn for a second, the way the rough patch on the banister scraped against my palm. The ghosts of me and Jess scrambling down them like kids, eager for dinner, or stumbling up them like the adults we pretended to be, flitted all around me.

My head began to ache, and that is the last really solid sensation I remember feeling until I left the house. I don't recall most of the bedroom. Hell, I'm not even sure I made it that far.

I have to stop. I'll explain when I can, but now I just. I jsut have to do something and I don't even understandn but Ill do it. I swear jess.

Life got in the way of my investigation and I had a bit of a relapse yesterday. I just didn't have the energy or motivation to get the hell out of my bedroom, which makes me feel like shit today for even briefly abandoning Jess. Since this is a public blog I don't want to be too specific about everything, but yesterday was bad. I'm so glad I'm out of school now so I don't have to worry about my brain deciding to sabotage my work. Instead it gets to sabotage the my futile attempts to find Jess. When did this become about finding her? Godknows, but I'll be damned if I turn into Mrs B.

Rousing speech over, I'm going back to the Brightleys'.  

I'm still pissed off but I think I can form coherent sentences now. And I'm confused. Why would Mrs B scream like that? I'm going to go back tomorrow to see what I can find out.

Jess' house has not changed at all – and why would it? I'm such an idiot. Mr Brightley's car was gone, and it took Mrs B five minutes to answer the door. She kept the chain on the whole time and I could smell the wine on her from the other side of the door. She sounded like she'd been crying. Here's what I remember of our conversation.

“Good morning, Mrs B. How are you today?”

“Why are you here?”

“I just- I wanted to see how you were doing,”

“You've seen. Now get gone before I call the cops,”

“Is there-” Before I could say anything more she screamed, her eyes widening like she was seeing right through me, and slammed the door in my face. I stumbled backwards and almost fell over. 'Anger' doesn't even begin to adequately describe how I feel right now. There's no way I can write more until I've calmed down.

I've been avoiding writing anything since last time. Isn't that childish? Therapy with Dr. Willett today, and he didn't want to see the journal. Said it was supposed to be a private method of expressing my thoughts until I was comfortable verbalising them during a session or something, so I guess writing about Jess is what I'm meant to be doing. I'm in therapy because of her, after all. No, that sounds like I'm blaming her. It's not her fault, and I'm a piece of shit for even thinking it.

Jess disappeared. We don't know how or why or where she's gone or anything. The police won't say much, or if they did I wasn't really in a state to process it. Something about how young people up and leave all the time, which is total bullshit because Jess wouldn't do something like that. It nearly killed her father, who's had a dodgy heart since his heart attack last June, and her mother has barely left the house since. That makes two of us, I suppose. Dr Willett has encouraged me to reach out to Mrs Brightley but I don't want to risk upsetting her or anything by showing up on her doorstep. We didn't really get along.

Maybe I'll walk past the house tomorrow. See if it gives me any closure.

I should probably write more than three sentences. I used to be a part of the journalism club at school and this sort of reminds me of that. It's not like I have a deadline or anything, but I'll pretend I do to kick my lazy arse into writing more.

Jess Brightley was my girlfriend. We met at school almost three years ago when she joined the sixth form after moving to this town from America. She originally hailed from some hole-in-the-wall, middle of nowhere place and used to joke a lot that she'd moved to the English equivalent. She was very pretty – blue eyes, blonde hair, played lacrosse at a regional level, wanted to be a vet. She had this way of talking that was so animated that you couldn't help but be drawn into whatever she said, and it was always something fascinating. She could describe the weather and it would be interesting.

We finished school together and took a gap year before going to university. She had been splitting time between volunteering at the animal shelter a couple of towns away and waiting tables, I'd been fixing people's computers at slightly extortionate rates to fund our travel. We started in South America, working our way upwards through Mexico and the USA to finish in Canada, but we never made it that far. We had to cut our journey a bit short because Jess got sick somewhere between Utah and Nebraska, and we had to come back to the UK because we'd skimped out on insurance.

That's how I want to remember her. I want to remember her splattered in Amazonian mud, laughing as vines caught in her hair. When I think of her, I remember her with a beer bottle in hand and a bright smile on her face and I was so sure in that moment that she was the most beautiful girl in the world. I don't want to remember the coughing and the nightmares, or how paranoid she became in those last few months. I'm not sure I'm ready to commit that to paper yet.

I'm going to post this online because I am guaranteed to lose any notebook I own.

Today is the first time it has rained significantly since Jess went missing. My therapist asked me to keep a journal as a part of my treatment, but I don't really have a lot to write about and today seemed like as good a day as any to start. The sound of the rain is incredibly soothing.