Crayon Number 47

I met Imogen at the community college art studio, both of us drawn to the same broken easel in the dusty corner. She was sketching with a ferocity that made her charcoal snaps, and I was painting over an old canvas, trying to cover up a childhood nightmare with thick coats of ochre. We became fast friends, sharing coffee and secrets. Imogen was different, though. She spoke of ‘the other side’ like a place she’d visited, and her eyes held a weariness that belied her 22 years. She never called herself Wiccan, preferring ‘hedge-walker,’ and she warned me that her art was not just expression but a map of the invisible.

Last night, over cheap wine and melancholic music, we got to talking about the things we see when the lights are low. Imogen grew quiet, then pulled out a battered sketchbook, its pages yellowed and warped. She began tearing out drawings, tossing them onto the floor as if they were infected. I picked them up, one by one. My blood turned to ice. There, in graphite and ink, were the exact same figures I had drawn as a child, hidden in a box under my bed. A lanky, jointless thing with a too-wide smile; a bloated, wet creature with long, spindly fingers; and a three-legged beast with a stitched-together hide, its head a mass of mismatched animal jaws. I had drawn them in crayon, crude but unmistakable. Imogen looked at me, her face pale and slick with sweat. ‘They know you,’ she whispered. ‘The ones you drew, they’re the ones that hurt me the most. The third one, the stitched one, it twists its body into knots to get into my room. It scratches the floor, and I hear its wet breath. I’ve woken up with welts on my skin, and it’s always standing in the corner, watching, its jaws clicking.’

I felt a chill crawl down my spine. My drawings had been my way of coping with night terrors, a way to give shape to formless fear, but I had never truly believed they were real. Imogen described the stitched one in horrifying detail: how it would contort its spine, popping vertebrae, to squeeze through cracks; how it would sit on her chest, not to suffocate, but to make her watch its jaws clamp open and closed, each snap a beat too slow. The detail in her drawing was miniscule, a perfect replica of my own childhood sketch, down to the crooked stitches and the odd number of teeth.

I decided to stay with Imogen that night, a mix of curiosity and dread. Around 3 a.m., we were in her dimly lit apartment, the walls covered with her other works, mostly landscapes and portraits, nothing else monstrous. She began to moan, clutching her ribs. ‘It’s here,’ she said, her voice tight. I looked around, saw nothing but shadows. But then I heard it: a dry, rattling breath from the corner, and a faint clicking, like a dog worrying a bone. The air grew thick, and the scent of damp earth and rot filled the room. Imogen grabbed my wrist, her nails digging in. ‘Don’t look at the corner, no matter what.’ But I’m a fool, and I looked.

It was there, half-emerged from the wall, its stitched flesh glistening. It was twisting its body, the seams popping, the jaws gaping. It moved with a fluid, unnatural grace, and I saw its head tilt, as if it recognized me. A low, gurgling sound escaped it, and I felt my own ribs ache. Then Imogen screamed, and the lights flickered. When they stabilized, the thing was gone, but Imogen was on the floor, a red welt across her cheek. She looked up at me, eyes wild. ‘You have to remember, now. You have to tell me what you drew and why, because they’re not just monsters. They’re something else. They’re the failures of your imagination, and they hate you for giving them form.’

I left at dawn, but I couldn’t go home. I drove to my childhood house, still standing, and snuck into the attic, where I had hidden that drawing box. It was still there, beneath a pile of moth-eaten quilts. Inside, I found the crayon drawing, but it had changed. The stitched creature had new details, a red handprint on its chest, and the other two were more defined. On the back, I saw my crayon writing, scrawled in a child’s hand, that I did not remember: ‘They are always hungry, and they always find their way back.’ I heard a creak from the stairs. I turned. The attic door was open, and from the shadows, I heard a clicking, and a wet breath. I saw a stitched hand wrap around the doorframe, and the head tilt, those jaws snapping shut with a final, terrible click, as if to say, ‘We found you.’

I didn’t stay to see more. I bolted, but as I ran down the corridor, I saw the lanky one waiting at the end of the hall, its smile too wide, and the bloated one dripping water from the ceiling. They were all there, in my childhood home, as if they had never left. I knew then that they were not demons from another dimension. They were the consequences of my own fear, given flesh by my hands, and they would never let me go. I am writing this from a motel room, the lights on, but I can feel it. The stitched one is in the corner, watching, waiting for me to close my eyes. And I see its jaws start to move, and I know that this time, I cannot draw them away.