Who did I invite?

When my daughter was born, we lived with my parents, the five of us crammed into a small one-room apartment. It was cramped, but we were given a room with our infant. The baby barely slept at night, screaming constantly, and I rocked her until morning. That's when I started noticing bites on the fruit or cookies we left next to the bed overnight. Someone had clearly been drinking from a glass; there were milk stains or a few drops that had fallen on a napkin. I thought it was my husband, but how he managed to eat at night without disturbing me and my daughter is unknown.

This went on for a month, and then my parents were given a two-room apartment, and we all started preparing to move in. When I was finishing up the last few small things, I put my father's old hat on the floor and said, "Well, our little darling, if you're coming with us, then climb into this hat. We're taking you with us!"

And I carried the hat away with the rest of my things.

A week passed, and we were settling into our new apartment. One day, alone at home with the baby, I felt someone's gaze on me. My body was frozen with fear, and my mouth instantly went dry. I sat down on the sofa, clutching the baby to me, and began to look around the room. And then I saw two dark, glittering eyes staring straight at me through the half-open mezzanine door.

I couldn't tear myself away from contemplating those eyes, and when they blinked and returned to me, I realized it wasn't the object lying there at an awkward angle.

 The most terrifying thing was that it was impossible to get out into the hallway without going through the space under the mezzanine. And as I passed under it, I could hear something moving above my head.

Standing outside with my child, I calmed down, deciding that my nerves were playing a cruel joke on me.

Soon we got a dog, and her behavior once again sent panic through me. She would constantly freeze and stare for long periods of time in one corner or another, then start barking furiously and sniffing those spots. I complained to my family, but they didn't quite believe me, attributing it to my fatigue from nightly vigils by the child's crib. I woke up in the mornings, horrified to realize I was going crazy with fear and tension.

Then my parents moved to another city, giving our family an apartment. We turned the small room into a nursery. My daughter screamed constantly at night, calling for me, saying that her toys were moving around her room and something was rustling in the closet. I would take her into our room or sit with her in the nursery for a long time, trying to calm her down.

In the morning, when I walked into the nursery, I would sometimes see the closet doors open, even though I always closed them tightly in the evenings. My husband couldn't help us because he sold cars and was out of town for long periods.

At night, the water was constantly running, the toilet was making noise, there was banging and rustling noises, the dog was barking, and my daughter was screaming in tears from the nursery. I completely lost consciousness, slept with a knife by my bed, and twitched at the slightest rustle.

My little daughter also saw other people's eyes, babbling about a "bogeyman" under the table. I reassured her that it was probably our Linda lying there, and the dogs' eyes were glowing, but I knew the dog was lying quietly in the other room at the time. I begged my husband to move out; he could already see that I had turned into a nervous ghost from lack of sleep and constant fear.

But we only moved in after my husband himself witnessed the strange presence.

We went to a neighbor's house for a few minutes to deliver some jars. As we were returning, we heard our daughter screaming outside the door. We ran into the apartment.

The child was wailing in terror under her bed, while the closet doors slowly closed, and someone grumbled in the depths before they slammed shut with all their might.