For the early years of my daughter’s life, she insisted on doing everything with her imaginary friends. And she had quite a few. One, she claimed, was an elephant. Another, a young girl with whom she played with in her room.
I worried about her at first, but I soon learned that it was not harming anything. My wife, Cristy, assured me that there was nothing to worry about. She played with them, and they seemed to keep her occupied most of the time.
Every one of her birthdays, I hoped the phase would pass. But it never did. If anything, it got worse and worse. She got more and more friends, and how she described them got more and more disturbing. It went from fun characters that could have been from a cartoon or kid’s show to being things that a kid shouldn’t be able to describe. A man with a head sewn to his shoulder. A thing made of various body parts.
We took her to a therapist, but it didn’t help. The therapist said that it was probably just a phase that would pass soon. I hoped the same, but they got even worse from there.
The day my daughter turned 8 years old, she said she had met a new friend. My wife and I were nervous. What would it be this time? We asked what their name was.
“His name is Tim,” she said.
At first, it sounded like she had made an actual friend. She had never really been that social. She preferred to hang out with her imaginary friends rather than actual human beings. Had she finally grown out of the phase that we were all waiting for her to pass?
“But, he has done bad things,” she said, her tone growing darker.
My wife and I exchanged glances. This wasn’t the first time she said something like this.
“Like what, honey?” I asked gently.
“He doesn’t want me to say.”
“Well, can we meet Tim?” As I said this, a shadow crossed over her face.
“Nobody except me can ever, ever meet Tim,” she said in a voice much too dark for an 8-year-old.
We asked why, which we clearly realized was a mistake. My daughter shrieked and screamed that Tim said so. Then she stomped up to her room and locked the door.
She finally came out for dinner. We didn’t mention anything about her new friend. Instead, once she had gone to sleep, we called the therapist and told her everything that had happened. Once again, she said it was probably just a phase. We didn’t want to believe her, but then again, she was the expert here.
None of us, not even my daughter, mentioned anything about Tim for the next week. But I did notice that she was acting differently. She didn’t play with any toys. She usually just sat on her bed, looking up at the ceiling with a completely blank expression on her face.
Finally, I decided that this needed to stop. Over dinner one night, I slowly and casually brought up her new friend.
“So, how’s it been going with Tim?” I asked between bites. Both my wife and my daughter looked at me, but it was my daughter’s look that made me go cold.
I had never seen such a young girl, only 8 years old, glare with so much pure malice.
“Don’t bring him up, Daddy,” she said. “He will get you if you do.”
This sent another wave of chills down my spine. What did she mean?
I tried to shrug it off, but I had trouble sleeping that night. I had a terrible nightmare, in which my daughter was holding hands with something. A creature. So incredibly tall, he had to crouch to be in her room with her. I couldn’t see anything else before I woke up.
When I did, I turned on the lamp immediately. The nightmare was so unsettling that I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night, instead opting to read a book by the light.
All while I read, I tried to convince myself that I was overreacting. She was an imaginative kid, that was all. All of it was just in her head.
Even so, I found myself wanting to peek into her room, just to make sure everything was fine. As I walked down the hallway toward her closed door, I heard something. Whispering. From behind the door. My heart began to beat faster. Why wasn’t she asleep? It was past midnight.
Slowly, I opened the door, and the source of the whispering became apparent. My daughter was asleep in her bed. But by the foot of her bed, in front of her open closet, stood a figure. It was impossibly tall, leaning over her bed so far its head was in front of her’s. It had entirely blank features, and the whispering seemed to be coming from its head.
I was frozen in fear. I couldn’t move, no matter how much I wanted to yell at my daughter to wake up and run. I just stood there, and as I did, the whispering became clearer and louder until the point that I could hear words coming out of the thing. They were low, dry, and calm, but they made me anything but.
“Annnnnaaaaa…”
I shuddered when I heard my daughter’s name being spoken by the thing. But I stayed perfectly still as the thing kept talking.
“Annnnnaaaaaaaa… Whhyyyyyy diiiiidd yooouuuu tellllll theeeemm…?” it said in its raspy voice.
My daughter didn’t stir, not even a little bit. Then, the thing’s head slowly turned toward the half-closed door, a cracking sound coming from its neck as it did so. It turned in an unnatural way, one that no living being could ever do.
“Eeeaavveeessss-dropiiiiinng issssn’tttt niiiiccce…” it said. It took me a long second to realize that it was talking to me.
At this point, I was so scared that I didn’t care about anything but getting the hell into my room. I turned on my heels and sprinted down the hallway faster than I had ever run in my life. Once I was in my room, I slammed and locked the door behind me.
My wife stirred at the noise. She groggily looked over at me. When she realized that I had my weight against the door, she shot up.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, slightly panicked.
I only managed to get a single word out through my fear. “T-T-Tim…”
A confused look spread across her face. “Anna’s imaginary friend?” she asked.
I just shook my head.
It took almost half an hour for my wife to calm me down enough to be able to tell her what had happened. As I said what I had seen, my wife’s face grew skeptical. She told me I must have had a nightmare, and that what I was saying was ridiculous.
That morning, Anna was fine. Nobody mentioned anything about it.
However, my wife and I got divorced soon after that night. I now live alone in an apartment building. Every night, I wake up and see that thing standing in the corner, blending in with the shadows. But I know it’s him. He was waiting for me to tell someone about him.
And now I have. I can feel him behind me as I type this. Growing slowly closer. He will punish me for talking about him. But I feel like this needs to be out there.
I can see him in the reflection of my screen now. Slowly approaching me. I feel his hand on my shoulder.
I hope this post makes it out there.