This week she added a MAN in the corner, standing by our mailbox.
She said his name is “the watching man.”
I work as a school counselor, so I know what kids’ drawings can mean and what they can’t. Most of the time a scary figure is just a nightmare leaking onto paper. I’ve told a hundred parents that exact thing at my own kitchen table, in my own office, holding their hands while they panicked over stick figures.
My name is Denise. I’m 42, married to Paul for eleven years, and our daughter Bailey just turned seven.
At our kitchen table Tuesday night, Bailey handed me the drawing like it was homework.
I asked her who the man was.
“He comes when Daddy’s at work,” she said. “He waits by the mailbox and then he goes in the backyard.”
I laughed it off. Told her it was probably the mailman, or a neighbor walking his dog.
But that night I couldn’t sleep.
The next morning I checked our doorbell camera app, just to put my own mind at ease.
There he was. A man in a gray jacket, at 11 AM on Tuesday, standing by our mailbox for six full minutes before walking around the side of the house.
I didn’t recognize him.
I scrolled back further. He’d been there Thursday too. And the Tuesday before that.
Always around 11 AM. Always when Paul was supposedly at the office.
I called Paul at work to ask if he knew anything about deliveries or a neighbor doing yard work.
The receptionist told me Paul had left the company four months ago.
My hands went still on the counter.
I opened our bank app and found a second checking account I didn’t know existed, with deposits going in every two weeks from somewhere called Halden Logistics.
I typed the company name into Google with my heart pounding in my ears.
Bailey walked in while I was staring at the screen and said, “That’s him. That’s the watching man’s boss building.”
If you’re still curious about unsettling things kids say or do, you might want to read about my nephew’s mysterious ring burn, or the time my 7-year-old mentioned a man in a non-existent picture, and don’t miss the story of my foster brother’s four strange marks.
