The call came during my lunch break. Ms. Simmons, Lily’s third-grade teacher. My stomach tightened immediately—teachers don’t call in the middle of the day for good news.
“Mr. Collins? I wanted to discuss some drawings Lily has been making in class.”
“Is everything okay?” I asked, already walking toward an empty conference room for privacy.
“Well…” Her hesitation spoke volumes. “Lily’s been drawing some concerning pictures. The same scene, over and over. A man standing outside what appears to be your house at night. Sometimes in your yard, sometimes just watching from the street.”
My blood ran cold. “What man?”
“That’s what concerns me. When I asked her about it, she said ‘the man who watches Daddy sleep.’ I thought you should know.”
I thanked her, promised to talk to Lily, and ended the call with shaking hands. I’d been a single father since my wife died two years ago. It was just Lily and me in the house.
No one else.
That evening, I sat Lily down at the kitchen table. Her pigtails bobbed as she colored another picture—this one innocent, just flowers and butterflies.
“Sweetie, Ms. Simmons told me about some pictures you’ve been drawing at school. About a man outside our house?”
Lily didn’t look up, just kept coloring. “The night man.”
“Who is the night man, Lily?” I tried to keep my voice steady.
“He stands in the yard and looks at your window. Sometimes he tries the doors.” She said it so matter-of-factly, like she was describing the weather.
“Lily, this is very important. Is this someone you made up, or someone you’ve seen?”
She finally looked up at me, her big blue eyes—just like her mother’s—staring into mine. “I see him from my window. He doesn’t know I watch him watching you.”
I checked all the locks that night. Twice. I even called a security company to install cameras first thing in the morning. Sleep was impossible. Every creak, every shadow had me sitting bolt upright, heart racing.
Around 2 AM, I heard Lily’s bedroom door open, followed by her tiny footsteps pattering down the hall. I found her standing by her window, peering through a gap in the curtains.
“Lily, what are you doing up? It’s late.”
She pointed without looking at me. “He’s here again.”
I rushed to the window, pushing her gently behind me. The streetlights cast long shadows across our front lawn. And there, partially hidden by the big oak tree, was a dark figure. Watching our house. Watching us.
I grabbed my phone to call 911, but in that split second when I looked away from the window, Lily tugged my sleeve.
“He’s gone now,” she whispered. “He always disappears when you look.”
The police came anyway. They found nothing—no footprints, no sign of anyone lurking around. They suggested it might be Lily’s imagination, maybe a way of processing grief. Kids invent things, they said. Especially after trauma.
But I knew what I had seen.
The security system was installed the next day—cameras covering every angle of the house, motion-activated floodlights, the works. For three nights, nothing happened. No alerts, no shadows, no mysterious figures. Lily stopped drawing the man at school.
I started to breathe easier. Maybe it had been her imagination after all, spreading to my sleep-deprived mind that night.
Then came the fourth night.
The security app on my phone chimed at 1:43 AM. Motion detected in the backyard. I sat up, heart pounding as I opened the alert. The camera showed a clear image of our yard, lit bright as day by the floodlights.
Empty.
I checked all the other cameras. Nothing. Must have been a false alarm—a raccoon or the wind moving branches. I was about to put my phone down when I noticed Lily standing in my doorway.
“Did you see him, Daddy?” she asked, clutching her stuffed rabbit.
“There’s no one there, sweetie. The cameras would have caught him.”
She shook her head. “He knows where they are. He walks around them.”
A chill ran down my spine. I hadn’t told Lily where the cameras were placed.
“Come here,” I said, lifting the covers. She climbed in next to me, and I held her close, trying to convince myself that everything was fine. That we were safe.
Just as I was drifting off, Lily whispered:
“Daddy, I know who the night man is.”
I was instantly awake. “Who, Lily?”
She looked up at me, her face eerily calm in the dim light. “He looks like the man in the pictures with Mommy. The ones you put away in the attic.”
My body went rigid. There was only one man in pictures with my late wife that I’d hidden away. Her ex-boyfriend. The one who’d threatened us both when she left him for me. The one who’d disappeared right after her “accident.”
The police took our statements at 2:15 AM. They promised increased patrols and told me to keep the security system armed. They took the photos from the attic as evidence. But their faces told me what they weren’t saying: without proof, there wasn’t much they could do.
I stayed awake the rest of the night, watching the security feed on my phone while Lily slept beside me. Nothing appeared on the cameras—no movement, no shadows, no lurking figures.
But twice, the app notified me of motion detected in the yard. Twice, I checked to find nothing there.
Just empty spaces where the cameras were pointing.
And once, just as dawn was breaking, I swore I heard footsteps on the porch, followed by the gentle testing of our front door handle.