The Last Crayon

In the autumn of 2007, I was twelve, and we lived in a crooked little house on the edge of a dying orchard in upstate New York. The house had a name—Holloway House—painted on a wooden sign by the front steps, but the locals called it the Needle House because of the towering spruce that leaned over its roof like a giant’s splinter. My mother, a night-shift nurse, would leave for the county hospital at 10 PM, and I would be alone with my younger brother, Marcus. He was eight, and he had a habit of drawing with the same stubby red crayon until his fingers were stained with wax.

It started with the sounds. Not footsteps, but the skittering of something small and dry moving in the walls, like a beetle trapped in a hollow log. Then came the creaking of the second-floor landing, right above my bedroom. I told myself it was the house settling, but Marcus claimed he saw a tall figure in a wide-brimmed hat standing at the end of the hallway, just past the bathroom door, where the light from the streetlamp cast a patch of sickly yellow. He wouldn’t go near that bathroom alone, and sometimes I’d have to stand outside the door and talk to him until he was done, just to keep him calm.

One night, while Mom was at work and Marcus was asleep, I heard a distinct footstep directly in front of me in the living room. I was curled up on the couch with a book, and the sound was so close that the hair on my arms stood up. I looked up, and there it was: a shadow without a source, standing between the coffee table and the television. It was as if the air had thickened into the shape of a man. It didn’t move, but I felt a pressure, a weight pressing down on my chest. I didn’t scream. I just sat there, heart pounding, until the shadow dissolved into the gloom.

Mom told me about her own encounters when she was single, before we were born. She’d come home from a late shift, dead tired, and crawl into bed. Invariably, just as she was drifting off, the covers would be ripped off her, yanked down to her feet. She’d lie there, frozen, and then she’d hear a low laugh from the corner of the room. She’d scramble out of bed, grab her keys, and sleep in the car in the driveway until sunrise. She never wanted to talk about it, and after we moved in, she pretended it never happened. But I saw her occasionally staring at the far wall of her bedroom with a look I didn’t understand until one horrible night.

Marcus started waking up with red wax on his hands, even when he hadn’t been drawing. He’d insist that he had been asleep, but the crayon would be under his pillow, warm to the touch. He began to talk about a woman with gray skin who stood in his room and whispered things he couldn’t quite remember. I tried to console him, but I felt the presence too, growing stronger each night. It was as if the house were feeding on our fear, and the spirit that walked those halls was growing bolder.

One Saturday afternoon, Mom was in the kitchen making soup, and I was in my room doing homework. I heard Marcus scream—a high, keening wail that cut through the quiet. I ran to his room and found him huddled in the corner, pointed at his bed. On the mattress, drawn in what looked like red crayon, was a crude figure: a stick figure with long, spindly arms and a circle for a head, but the eyes were two dark pits, and the mouth was a jagged line. It looked like a child’s drawing, but the style was wrong, the lines too deliberate. ‘I didn’t do it,’ Marcus sobbed. ‘She did. She came out of the wall and drew it.’

Mom came rushing in, saw the drawing, and went pale. She grabbed a rag and scrubbed at it, but the crayon lines wouldn’t come off. They smeared, like blood, and then the rag came away stained with a dark, oily substance that smelled like burnt toast. She threw the rag away and pulled us into her room, slamming the door. She whispered, ‘We never speak of this to anyone. This house has a history. I should have known better.’ But she didn’t tell us what the history was.

That night, as Mom got ready for work, I begged her to stay. She hesitated, then said, ‘Honey, if I don’t work, we lose the house. I’ll be back at seven. Just keep the lights on and stay together.’ She hugged us, and I felt her trembling. As she left, she paused at the front door and said, ‘If anything happens, call me. Don’t go near the bathroom.’ Then she was gone.

Marcus and I huddled under a blanket on the living room couch, the TV playing a cartoon on low volume. We both dozed off. I woke to the sound of a door opening upstairs. Then slow, deliberate footsteps came down the hallway, each step a creak that made my blood turn to ice. The footsteps stopped right at the top of the stairs. I got up, my legs shaking, and peered up into the darkness. A figure stood there, tall and thin, silhouetted against the dim light from the bathroom. It moved its head, and I could swear it was looking directly at me. I backed away, grabbing Marcus. We ran to my room and locked the door.

We didn’t sleep. We sat against the door, listening. There were no more footsteps, but we heard a faint, rhythmic tapping from the other side of the wall, like a finger drumming. Then the tapping stopped. I looked at Marcus. His eyes were wide, and he was holding his red crayon. ‘She wants it back,’ he said. ‘She says it’s hers.’

In the morning, when Mom came home, we were in the same spot, exhausted. She found us, saw the red crayon in Marcus’s hand, and let out a small gasp. She took it gently and said, ‘This was… from a dream. I had this crayon when I was little. I thought I lost it.’ She looked at us, and I saw something in her eyes—not just fear, but recognition. ‘I think I know what she is,’ she said. ‘She’s the woman who used to live here. She died in that bathroom. She didn’t have any children, and she couldn’t let go. She’s been trying to take mine.’

We never slept there again. We moved within a month, leaving almost everything behind. But I still have nightmares, and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to find a red crayon on my nightstand, one I don’t remember buying. I’ve thrown it away many times, but it always comes back. And every time, I hear a whisper, like a child’s voice, saying, ‘Come play.’ But I know it’s not a child. It’s the shape that wears a hat and draws on walls, and it’s patient. It will wait until I forget, and then it will come for my children, just as it came for me.

And that’s why I’m back, sharing my story again. Because sometimes, telling it helps keep the darkness at bay. But I know, in my heart, that the crayon I just found in my coat pocket—the one I never put there—is a promise. It’s coming back. And this time, I won’t be able to run.