Six-year-old Lily loved to draw. Every day she filled pages with colorful houses, flowers, and stick-figure families. But one afternoon, she brought a picture to her mother that made her pause.
It was a portrait of a man. Not a cartoonish sketch, but detailed — with sharp eyes, a wide smile, and a mole near his chin. Too detailed for a child her age.
“Who’s this, sweetheart?” her mother asked, trying to sound casual.
“My friend,” Lily said simply. “He talks to me.”
Her mother brushed it off as imagination. Children invent playmates, she told herself. But then more drawings appeared. The same man, again and again. Sometimes he was standing by the window. Sometimes he was holding Lily’s hand. Sometimes he was inside the house.
Worried, her mother showed the sketches to her husband. Neither recognized the man. They laughed nervously, deciding it was just a phase. But late at night, she caught Lily whispering into the corner of her room, as if someone were listening.
Then, one rainy evening, a knock echoed at the front door.
Her mother opened it to find a stranger on the porch. Dripping wet, smiling politely. And her heart nearly stopped — the mole, the eyes, the smile. He was the man from Lily’s drawings. “I think I’m lost,” he said softly. “But your daughter knows me.”
The mother slammed the door, trembling, clutching Lily in her arms. When police arrived minutes later, the porch was empty. No footprints in the mud. No sign of anyone.
The drawings stopped after that. But sometimes, Lily still glances at the window with a faint smile, as if she knows he’s out there… waiting.
