The bedroom looked smaller than you remembered. Everything sat frozen in place, as though the house had been holding its breath all these years, waiting for you to return.

Your eyes wandered, but it was the wall above your bed that pulled you in, sharp and sudden, like a tug on a long-forgotten thread. The drawings. They were still there.

Faded construction paper, the tape yellowed and brittle. Little crayon figures, scrawled with shaky, childish hands. There you were — a stick-figure version of yourself, and beside you always the same dark shape. Black crayon for the hair, thick and scribbled wild over one eye. A wide, impossible grin stretched across his face in every drawing.

Benny.

You stepped closer, fingers brushing the edge of one of the drawings, and the floorboard behind you creaked. The air sharpened, a coldness threading up your spine. You turned, slowly, knowing what you would find, but not ready for what you’d see.

There, in the shadowed corner beside your old dresser, something shifted. At first, only a hand appeared — long, pale fingers, stretched thinner than you remembered, the skin almost paper-white, knuckles faintly bruised as they gripped the wood. Then the hair. Still the same ink-black tangle, but longer now, heavier, falling like a veil to hide half his face.

And then his eye. That unmistakable glow — soft white, unnatural, watching you without blinking. But the rest of him...

The soft, childlike roundness was gone. He was taller now, lean and gaunt, his dark hoodie hanging from his frame like a shadow that refused to let go. His grin, once playful and wide, was now stretched too far, sharp at the edges, too eager, too desperate.

Your breath caught.

His voice came, soft and thin, fraying at the edges:

"You came back."

He was taller than you now — towering, but slouched, trying to shrink himself, trying not to scare you. "I thought you’d forgotten." His voice broke, just slightly, the words cracking like old wood.