My nephew has always been a quiet child. Not shy, exactly—he’ll answer questions if you ask them, and if you really work at it, you might even coax a laugh out of him. But he’s… inward-facing. His little world is made of paper, waxy crayon colors, and the patient rhythm of drawing lines that only he seems to understand.
While other kids are chasing each other around the park, shrieking and tumbling into the grass, he sits cross-legged with a pad of printer paper balanced on his knees, his fist curled tight around a crayon, tongue peeking out the corner of his mouth as he works. There’s a seriousness to the way he draws, as if what he’s putting on paper is simply a copy of something he already sees clearly in his head.
It was during our family picnic in the park—a hot, windless day in late August—that he handed me his latest creation. I’d been sitting on the blanket, sipping warm lemonade from a plastic cup, watching his small body hunch forward in concentration. When he finally stood and walked toward me, he didn’t say a word, just extended the paper like an offering.
The drawing was charming in that innocent, slightly awkward way all children’s art is. He had sketched the four of us: my mom, my dad, himself, and me, all holding hands in a wide green field. A huge yellow sun with exaggerated triangular rays grinned in the sky. The grass was a scribbled mess of green strokes, and the faces were wide circles with dots for eyes and crooked smiles. But behind my figure stood something else. It was a tall shape, colored entirely in black. Not shaded neatly, but jaggedly, violently, as if the crayon had been stabbed into the page over and over. It had no face, no hands, just a long, thin body that leaned forward slightly toward my drawn self. The edges of it were messy, smudged, and almost seemed to blur into the air.
“Who’s that?”
I asked, forcing a light chuckle so it wouldn’t sound like I was… uneasy. My nephew giggled, a strange, high-pitched little sound, and looked up at me with wide eyes that seemed too knowing for his age.
“That’s the man who lives in your shadow,”
He said matter-of-factly.
“He said he’s your dad.”
The lemonade soured in my stomach. I glanced at my mom, who was busy unpacking more sandwiches, and then back at him. My dad had been dead for years. A heart attack, sudden and final. We didn’t really talk about him much anymore, not in detail. My nephew had been born after he died. I ruffled his hair and smiled.
“Kids say the weirdest things,”
I murmured to myself.
I folded the picture and tucked it into my bag, deciding not to mention it to anyone. That night, I woke to the feeling of being watched. Not the vague, restless sense you get when you’ve been dreaming—this was sharp, certain, like someone had leaned over my bed and was studying me in the dark. The room was still except for the faint ticking of the clock on my dresser. Moonlight slanted in through the blinds, striping the carpet. I turned my head slowly.
There was a silhouette at my bedside. It wasn’t my mom, or anyone from the house. It was too tall—its head nearly grazed the ceiling. The outline was wrong, too thin and stretched. I couldn’t see a face. I couldn’t see eyes, or hair, or clothes, just… absence, a body-shaped hole carved into the air. I screamed. And in that blink of panic, it was gone.
The next day, I tried to convince myself it was a dream, a half-awake trick of my mind. But that afternoon, my nephew came over again, clutching another drawing. It was the same scene as before—Mom, Dad, me, him—but the faceless figure in black was closer to me now. It loomed almost directly over my shoulder in the picture, its jagged lines even darker, almost tearing the paper.
“Did you… draw this today?”
I asked. He nodded, smiling faintly.
“He told me he’s moving closer because you’re not listening.”
I didn’t know what to say. That night, walking home from the corner store, I felt it. It wasn’t just being followed—I know what that feels like, the quickened steps, the turning of your head. This was different. It was weight. Pressure. Like something had hooked itself into my spine and was pulling, tugging, wrapping itself around my ribs.
The streetlights were dim, their glow pooling weakly on the asphalt. My shadow should have stretched in front of me, sharp and long. But there was nothing. Not under the lamps, not even when I stepped directly into a beam of light. When I looked behind me, the sidewalk was empty. I didn’t tell anyone about it. Who would believe me?
The changes started subtly. I’d glance into mirrors and feel like my reflection was half a second behind. My footsteps sometimes echoed wrong, like someone else was just out of sight. My nephew’s drawings kept coming. Every time I saw him, he’d hand me a new one. And each time, the figure in black was closer—first touching my arm, then holding my hand. Then, in the latest one, it was inside my outline entirely, as if my shape had been colored in with black crayon, my own body erased.
“Why do you keep drawing him?”
I asked one afternoon, my voice sharper than I meant. He looked at me, serious for once.
“Because he says you forget too much. He says he’s been with you forever.”
It was three nights ago when I realized the truth. I was brushing my teeth when I saw it—not in the mirror, but in the wall behind me. The shadows from the lamp were wrong. My body wasn’t casting one. Instead, something darker than the darkness itself seemed to be pressed against my back, stretching up over my head, its long arms draped around me. When I turned, there was nothing. When I faced the mirror again, it smiled.
Now, I don’t see my shadow anymore. Not in sunlight. Not under streetlamps. Not even in photographs. He’s not behind me now. He’s inside
