At first, I didn’t think much of my son’s drawings. They were sweet — ordinary little sketches you’d expect from any curious four-year-old. But Mickey wasn’t ordinary. He never drew from his imagination. Ever. Everything he put on paper was something he had actually seen.
So when the same strange man began appearing in Mickey’s drawings over and over again, my curiosity twisted into dread. That’s when I decided to set up a camera outside. And what I saw later still haunts me.
It’s just Mickey and me. Alone. Always has been. Some days, “just the two of us” feels like more than a phrase — it feels like survival. I work two jobs to keep the lights on, food in the fridge, and Mickey in the one thing that lights up his world: art classes.
Mickey doesn’t just like drawing. He lives for it. His art teacher once told me he had a photographic memory. Every line, every shade he drew was a mirror of reality — never make-believe, never invented.
At first, his drawings were sweet. Flowers from our garden. Our rusty mailbox. Mrs. Peterson’s orange cat sunning itself on her porch. Then, one afternoon, he came running into the kitchen, grinning ear to ear, holding up a new drawing.
“Look, Mommy! I drew my friend!”
I wiped my hands on a towel and bent down to see. My smile froze. It was a man — tall, with a hat pulled low over his face, standing by our backyard fence.
“Your friend?” I asked slowly. “Who is he, sweetheart?”
“My friend,” Mickey said simply. “He’s nice.”
A chill crept up my spine. “Where did you see him?”
“Outside,” Mickey replied cheerfully. “He waves at me.”
I forced a laugh. Kids have wild imaginations, right? Maybe he’d glimpsed a passerby and spun a little story.
But the next day, there was another drawing.
And another.
And another.
Within a week, I’d counted eighteen drawings. The same man. Same hat. Same stance.
Sometimes he stood near the apple tree. Sometimes by the garden shed. Sometimes on our porch.
Then my heart stopped.
The last drawing showed him inside our house — standing in Mickey’s room, next to the toy chest, smiling.
“You don’t draw things that aren’t real…” I whispered, trembling.
Mickey padded in, sipping his juice box. “Do you like my pictures?”
“When did you see this man in your room?” I asked quietly.
“Sometimes he peeks in,” Mickey said simply. “When I’m playing.”
I couldn’t breathe. There were no new neighbors. No strangers. I knew every face on our street. So who was this man — and why was he in my son’s room?
That night, I didn’t sleep. Every creak of the house made me jump. By morning, I had decided. No matter what it cost, I was installing cameras.
“Mommy, why are you putting that up?” Mickey asked as I mounted a tiny security camera above the back door.
“Because I want to know if your ‘friend’ ever comes back,” I said with a shaky smile. Inside, my heart was pounding. I already knew. Whatever Mickey was seeing wasn’t imagination. And I was terrified to see the truth.
For the first few nights, I sat guard like a soldier, eyes glued to the live feed from the backyard camera, drinking cup after cup of cold coffee. But nothing happened. No movement. No strangers. Eventually, I stopped staying up and checked the footage each morning instead. Still nothing.
Mickey’s drawings changed too. The man vanished. Flowers, trees, cats and neighbors returned to his pages. But Mickey wasn’t the same. His crayons dragged. His sighs grew heavier.
“Mom,” he murmured one afternoon, eyes downcast, “my friend doesn’t come anymore. It’s because of your camera.”
I knelt and brushed his hair back. “Sweetheart, we don’t play with strangers. It can be dangerous.”
He pressed his lips together, stood quietly, and walked to his room. My chest tightened. It felt cruel — like I’d taken something precious from him. But I knew I was doing the right thing. The man was gone. Finally.
Or so I thought.
The next morning, I opened the camera app expecting the usual empty yard.
Instead, my blood ran cold.
Just after midnight — minutes after I’d kissed Mickey goodnight and turned off my light — the porch lamp flickered on.
Then a shadow climbed over the fence.
My hands shook as I zoomed in.
“Step into the light,” I whispered. “I need to see your face…”
The figure wore a hood, moving low and fast, like they’d done this before. Without hesitation, they leapt toward Mickey’s window.
“No. No, no, no…”
My heart hammered. That window was old and heavy. Mickey couldn’t open it alone. But the figure slid it up with ease.
I scrubbed through the footage, breathless. One minute. Two. Five. Ten. Nothing. Just darkness.
Then —
“There!” I gasped.
The shadow slipped back out the same way it had come.
The figure turned. Just for a second. Enough for the porch light to catch their face.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Finally. Evidence. I can call the police now.”
My hand reached for my phone — then froze.
“Oh God… no.”
The phone clattered to the floor.
Because in that one fleeting frame, I recognized the face.
The nightmare wasn’t a stranger.
It was someone I had once known.
That morning, my coffee sat cold and untouched while I stared at the frozen image on my laptop.
I knew exactly where I needed to go.
There was no hesitation left. No fear. Only anger — and something deeper clawing its way back after five long years.
I slipped on my coat, glanced at Mickey asleep in his bed, and whispered, “I’ll fix this. I promise.”
Mrs. Riley from next door knocked softly, stepping inside with a thermos of tea. “I’ll watch him,” she said kindly. “Go do what you need to do.”
I nodded. “Thank you. I won’t be long.”
I knew where he’d be.
My best friend had mentioned weeks ago she’d seen him at the bus depot on the edge of town.
Back then, I’d brushed it off.
A ghost from my past didn’t scare me.
But that ghost had climbed through my child’s window.
The bus depot was nearly empty. Just one man in a faded gray hoodie, mopping the tiled floor.
He looked older. Hollowed out.
“Ethan,” I said.
The mop slipped from his hands. Slowly, he turned.
Tired brown eyes. The small scar beneath his lip.
“Hi, Claire,” he whispered.
“You have some nerve,” I said, stepping closer. “Breaking into my yard. My home. Mickey’s room.”
His lips trembled. “I didn’t break in. I never touched him. I just… I wanted to see him.”
“You saw him. Through his window. Like a stalker.”
“I know how it looks,” he said. “But I swear, I only watched from a distance. He was drawing one day, and… he looked so happy. I just stood there. Then he saw me. And he waved. I waved back. That’s all.”
“And then you came back,” I hissed. “Because he waved again. Because he wanted you there. Because you couldn’t stay away.”
