The car ride home was quiet again, this time because of me. Given how my hands shook after that terrifying encounter, I told my mother she should drive us home.

My mother had only just parked in the driveway, when I leapt out. She hadn’t even turned off the engine yet. I dashed into the house so fast, I didn’t even have time to register that Greg’s car was gone, much less worry that he was out drinking again…

After bounding up the steps two at a time, I ran into my room and threw my purse down on the bed. Not even thinking to turn on the lamp, I dropped to my knees so fast they popped. My hands ran along the dusty floor under my bed, not finding purchase on the box. I huffed and lay down on my stomach, stretching my arm as far in as it would go until I touched a solid surface.

“Yes!” I turned the edge of the box with the tips of my fingers and brought it close enough to hold.

Awkwardly shimmying back, I managed to pull the box out. Turning around, I sat with my back to the bed and set the dusty, cardboard shoebox on my lap. I reached up and turned on my bedside lamp to better see the pictures on its side.

Ah, it was a box for the light-up shoes I got when I was five. I smiled fondly, remembering how disappointed I was when the shoes no longer fit, but I kept them anyway. I would put them on my hands and bang them on a surface so they would light up, pretending I was a magical fairy with lights for hands.

With a deep breath, I gingerly took off the lid and set it aside.

A thick pile of drawings sat inside. I took out the top one and held it up to the light. A crudely drawn man with pink hair smiled happily at me. He was wearing a purple jacket with bright yellow pants and a bowler hat with matching colored stripes around it. I stared at the man for ages, trying desperately to remember drawing him. But I couldn’t even remember his name. I flipped the page over a few times, hoping some childish scrawl would reveal itself.

“How is this possible?” I whispered, setting aside the drawing and looking down at the next one.

I gave a small yelp and snatched it up. It was a purple and blue cat!

“Ha! I found you!” I gave the drawing a little shake. The cat was lounging on what looked like our living room carpet, staring up at me lazily.

“I’m not crazy,” I whispered, but then thought of the shadow man and decided to reserve judgement on that until I went through all the drawings.

Putting the box to my side, I went about setting down each drawing on the floor around me as I pulled one page after another from the box. The drawings improved in skill and as I got older, I began to sign my name on the art, along with my age.

Some drawings were of just the man or the cat, but almost all of them were the two together. As more and more of my floor was filled with the colorful man and his furry companion, I felt a lump in my throat that surprised me. My lower lip began to tremble and I had to stop to wipe my eyes because they had gotten blurry with tears.

I wished I knew why I made dozens of these drawings. I wished I knew why I couldn’t remember them. I wished I had found that cat in the parking lot...instead of...whatever that man was.

I sniffled and put aside another picture of the happy man, now dressed in a green jacket, bright blue pants, and a boater hat. Turning to the last picture in the box, I stifled a shriek.

Staring up at me was the shadowy figure I had seen in the small forest. In the black and grey drawing, the only color were his yellow eyes. There could be no mistake.

I got to my feet and scanned over all the drawings scattered about the floor.

“I am not crazy.” I repeated. An icky feeling crawled up my spine and as quickly as I could, I threw all the drawings back into the box and kicked it under my bed. The feeling had inched down my legs and now prickled my feet, almost as if the shadow man was eager to emerge from that drawing and snatch my ankles from under the bed.

I hopped onto the bed and pulled the warm blanket over my head. Having curled into a ball, a chilling thought entered my mind.

What if the shadow man followed me home? What if those sickly yellow eyes were staring at me through the window? I whipped off the blanket and snapped my eyes to the window and two menacing yellow eyes glared back at me.

I gasped, but then realized the yellow “eyes” I saw were from the street lamps, standing stark against a pitch black sky. I sighed with relief and considered going to the window and doing a proper scan of the front yard. But then I remembered what the drawing looked like under my bed and deemed that I had more than enough nightmare fuel for one night.

“What is that thing?” I went back to hugging my knees to my chest. “What does it want with me?”

And what about the cat? Was he just a figment of my imagination or was he real?

I shook my head.

Maybe I really was going crazy and these were hallucinations after all.

                                                               ***

That night I hardly slept for fear that I would see the shadowy figure once again. Every time I began to nod off, a sound would wake me up and I’d lift my head and scan the room, completely alert. Finally, after my paranoia gave way to exhaustion, I fell asleep around four in the morning.

When I woke a few hours later, I turned over and groaned. Because I hadn’t closed my curtains last night, the sunbeams fell right over my pillow, blinding me. Pulling up my blanket, I used it to cover myself in darkness, only to remember that it was Tuesday!

My Aunt Cindy came to get me at ten o’clock every Tuesday. I shot my arm out from under the blanket and tried to grab my phone from the bedside table. After missing a few times and jamming one finger into the side of the table, I whined as I pulled the phone under the covers with me and pressed the power button to check the time.

9:35 flashed brightly into my eyes, but this time the light energized me. Aunt Cindy was always ten minutes early, so I had precious little time to get ready.

The crunch for time helped me forget the strange box of drawings and I jumped off the bed and went to my dresser, realizing I was still wearing what I wore yesterday. I didn’t have time to disapprove of my appearance in the mirror as I rushed to change my clothes while simultaneously brushing my hair and shoving my homeschool workbooks into my book-bag. I could still feel the fatigue from last night’s paranoia, which upset my usually organized pre-sleep preparation of packing my book-bag and changing into night clothes.

I slung my partially closed book-bag on one shoulder and ran out my door, almost colliding with my mother in the hallway. “Whoa!”

“Geez Mia,” my mother said, clutching her chest, “I was coming to tell you Aunt Cindy is going to be a little late today.”

I gave a half hysterical laugh. “Great that’s … that’s great.”

My mother chuckled at my wild, half brushed hair and mismatched clothes.

“Go put on something you actually want to wear, then come downstairs for breakfast. I made pancakes!”

I nodded, grateful she didn’t ask why I looked like a fashion tornado had run me over. Dropping my bookbag on the floor, I shuffled back to my room.

Well at least she’s in a better mood, I thought with a smile. That’s a good sign.

After putting on more stylish clothing and taming my hair, I went back downstairs and into the kitchen. My mother hummed as she put pancakes on two plates and I smiled.

That’s a really good sign.

I sat down at the round kitchen table in the breakfast nook as my mother put the plates on the table.

“So, how was the soup kitchen last night?” she asked, pouring a generous amount of syrup onto both plates.

I felt my stomach growl, so I pulled my plate closer to me. “Ms. Higgins won two hundred dollars in a scratch off her son bought for her.” I took a large bite of my pancake. Oh and I might have hallucinated a purple cat and a shadow monster, but other than that it was great. Yeah, there was no need to tell her that.

“That’s great!” My mother sat down beside me. “If anyone deserves two hundred dollars it’s Ms. Higgins.”

Eager to change the subject and focus more on eating than talking, I asked, “How’s work?”

“Well a husband and wife died in a car accident this week.” My mother cut up her pancakes into bite size pieces. “Their double funeral is today.”

I swallowed a bite and reached for a glass of water. “That’s horrible.” I paused to take a sip. “How old were they?”

“The husband was in his sixties and the wife was in her fifties.” She shook her head, still cutting up the pancake stack.

“Awww man, that’s still too young.”

“Indeed.” She began to eat and we slipped into a comfortable silence.

Talk like this was normal at the kitchen table. My whole life had consisted of talking about death, and after years and years of practice, I could stomach any topic while eating. My mother had seen every type of death under the sun. Car accident, accidental overdose, suicide, murder, you name it. And since I was the only one she talked with besides Aunt Cindy, I came to know every little gory detail. Sometimes I wondered if my mother and I had gotten too desensitized to death.

“Jake said the husband was almost decapitated,” my mother continued, having paused to drink some water. Jake was the mortician who got the body in presentable shape for the viewing. “Had to practically sew his head back on.”

“Ugh God,” I replied. Then after a beat, I couldn’t help but grin. “What do you think normal families talk about at the breakfast table?”

My mother laughed and I joined in.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs and my mother’s mirth vanished. Greg made his appearance in the doorway and my mother sprang to her feet.

“Mom, you haven’t finished your …” I tried to say before she interrupted me.

“I want to get to work early. I have a lot to do today before the viewing.” My mother put her plate in the sink, kissed me goodbye, and left.

I sighed and slowly turned my head towards Greg.

He looked like hell. Clearly, he had also slept in yesterday’s clothes, considering how wrinkly they were. I watched him squint at the sun shining through the window and figured he was definitely hungover.

At least he was starting the day by ignoring me, just the way I liked it. Greg spotted the breakfast and grabbed a plate out of the cabinet. With a fork, he speared some pancakes and threw them onto his plate.

As he sank into the chair across from me, I stared at my plate and said nothing, hoping he’d follow along and not talk to me.

But then again, when was it ever that easy with Greg?

“Hey I need some money,” he mumbled without looking up at me, his mouth full of pancake.

I looked up from my pancakes, struggling to keep from telling him to at least have the decency not to talk with his mouth full.

“You need money?” I echoed instead.

“That’s what I said dumbass,” he replied quietly, “Do you have any or not?”

My cheeks burned with anger and embarrassment.

I snapped my gaze up at him. “Why don’t you ask Mom? I hear through the grapevine that she’s a thief.”

Greg looked up at me. I could feel his smartass brain trying to find another way to weedle what he wanted out of me when his usual name calling didn’t work.

Normally, I wouldn’t have dared to talk back to Greg. But after being chased by a yellow-eyed monster and spending a sleepless night thinking that same monster would show up again to hurt me, my brother hardly felt like a threat.

“What did you say to me?” he finally asked. Ha, buying time cause he couldn’t think of any good comebacks, I figured. This only emboldened me.

“You know Greg, normal guys in their thirties don’t have to ask their seventeen year old sisters for money. And maybe, if you were going to spend it on something useful like, I don’t know, a suit for a job interview, then I would probably give you the money. But since you and I both know you’re just going to spend it on booze, you can forget it.”

Greg got up out of his chair slowly and put his hands on the table, leaning across it until he was inches away from me. Even though my heart was beating out of my chest, I held my ground; my fingers curled tightly around my fork and knife without my realizing it.

“Listen here, you little smartass.” His breath reeked of stale alcohol. “I get a lot of flack from Lucy already. I don’t need lip from you.”

Lucy was our mother’s name. He refused to call her mom.

“So you either shut your yap and get out of my sight,” he continued. “ … or else.”

“O-Or else what? This is my house too,” I squeaked, even though every cell in my body was screaming at me not to push him too far, “You can’t do anything to me because Aunt Cindy is coming and she’ll get angry if you hurt me. She may even call the cops.”

Greg looked away from me with an evil chuckle, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He snapped his gaze back to me, disdain in his eyes.

“Cindy can’t help you now, especially not while I’m here.”

I blinked. The wall in my mind cracked again, and another memory slipped through in fragments. It was another memory of the yellow- eyed shadow. I was six years old, and from under my bed sheets, I could hear his deep, menacing voice.

... can’t help you now … Not while I’m here. 

My fork and knife fell from my trembling hands and I whispered, “Scary Man.”

“What did you call me?” Greg yelled and slammed his hands on the table, bringing me back into the present situation.

I shrieked and flew out of my chair, snatching up my bag and booking it out of the kitchen.

I ran to the front door and flung it open. At first bright sunlight kept me from seeing anything, then a figure of a woman in her late forties came into view.

Her hair was silver and cut in a pixie style. She was incredibly tall and her eyes were golden brown. Crow’s feet wrinkled as she smiled and looked down at me.

“How’s it goin’, sweet pea?”

Thank God, it was Aunt Cindy.