I don't have a name for what I see at the bottom of my stairs every night.
It started three weeks ago. I'd been getting up at night to use the bathroom, walking past the top of the stairs, not thinking about it. Then one night I glanced down the stairs on the way back and there was something there.
It was standing at the bottom of the staircase, in the dark of the first floor, facing up. Facing me. It was approximately human in shape but proportions were wrong in a way that's difficult to specify — not dramatically wrong, not obvious from a single glance, just wrong in the way that makes you look again and then look again.
I stood at the top of the stairs for a full minute before I went back to bed. I told myself it was the dark, a coat rack, my eyes adjusting. In the morning the first floor was empty and normal.
The next night I woke at 2 AM with the specific feeling that something was in the house. I got up, walked to the top of the stairs, looked down.
It was there. Same position. Same upward-facing posture.
It did not move while I watched it. I watched it for a long time.
I've been watching it every night since. I've established that it's there from midnight to approximately 3 AM, that it doesn't move from its position at the base of the stairs, and that it is consistently facing up — facing the direction of wherever I am in the house.
I've shown it to three people. One of them said they didn't see anything. Two of them got quiet and left shortly after and haven't come back.
What I want to tell you: it hasn't moved toward me. In three weeks, it has not moved toward me. I keep the lights on and it doesn't come into the lit areas, and I don't go into the dark areas, and we have maintained this arrangement.
But last night I noticed it was on the third step instead of the first.
It might be learning my schedule. It might be testing limits. I don't know. I don't know what it wants.
I know it's been three weeks and I still live alone and the lights are on and every night I walk to the top of the stairs and look down.
And every night I look down, it's there.
Looking up.