Reddit: r/nosleep

PART II: I Think I'm Going to Need More Than A Guide

The previous tenant of my new flat left a survival guide. I think I'm going to need more than a guide.

So much has happened in the last 24 hours. I'm so stressed and I've barely slept since I discovered that Jamie was missing. It's starting to make me feel a little twitchy. But I thought I'd better update you guys.

I was overwhelmed by all the suggestions you gave me and have taken more than a few of them on board. I'm definitely going to be getting a huge planter full of sage for the balcony and I did spill a little salt in my doorway. I'm sorry to disappoint but that didn't help at all.

There's nothing I'm following quite like Mrs Hemming's rules. I've followed them to the letter so far, and lo and behold I'm still alive. That's not to say it hasn't been tough. I'll start from the beginning.

I was going crazy. And a few hours after my last post Jamie still hadn't returned. He had been gone for almost 24 hours. His work have called me multiple times. I don't know what to say so I just keep ghosting the calls.I was bang in the middle of the danger time when I decided checking the lift had to be my first step. But I wasn't going to break that rule.

I waited. I waited desperately for 3.34 to come and I'm ashamed to say that when it did I remained paralysed to our sofa for almost half an hour before I found the nerve to leave the flat. It was 4.02 when I finally reached the lift.

The lift in this building is old and rickety. It hasn't been updated in a very long time and has likely been here as long as the building. It's big, clunky buttons stared back at me as I glared at them, hoping for some sort of answer or clue. My heart thumped and I was overcome with a feeling of dread but nothing came of any of it. It was hopeless.

I stepped inside the lift, rode it up and down a few floors and searched the entire perimeter with a phone torch for anything I could find. I found nothing. Jamie had completely disappeared.

Sobbing and exhausted I rode back to floor 7 and turned my key in flat 42, the perfect home that felt anything but home at that point.

I sat at the cheap flat pack dining table we'd managed to put together on move-in day and cried. My hands shaking as I held my phone. I was flitting between reading all your comments and contemplating calling the police for an hour. But I decided to call my friend Georgia instead. I needed a real person here, things were so crazy I wasn't sure the police would be able to help with what little information I had. But I knew I needed to sound it out with someone.

I'll spare you the details again, but I told her everything. She promised she'd be with me in the late morning, she had to take her younger brother to school.

I waited anxiously. Not before arming every room exactly as advised. Before I knew it I looked at the clock and it was 8.23, I had around half an hour until the postman was due to show up.

There was no way I was missing him today. I stood by the door looking vacantly at the wood, like someone in a film who was possessed. The exhaustion was really setting in but Jamie was all I could think of. Pure adrenaline was keeping me standing.

At 8.52 I opened the door. The next two minutes were the longest of my life but when I saw him a wave of relief swept my entire body.

Right on cue, 8.54 the postman, Ian Flanders stood in front of me, a smile that barely hid his concern covering his younger than expected face. He didn't look old enough to have been the postman for over 35 years but I was too distracted by the answers that I needed from him to care.

"You must be the new tenant." He stated, but in a way that it sounded like a question. I struggled with my answer, so I got straight to the point.