Babadook -

Not the kind you buy at a fair. This one was wrapped in gray twine, left on the porch in the rain. No note. No return address. My son found it first. Said it smelled like "old basement and medicine."

I heard him whisper: "You invited me."

Drawings of me. Sleeping. With a thin black hand resting on my throat. Babadook

The first page was harmless. A nursery rhyme about a mother and her boy. But when you turned to the second spread, the letters tilted. The paper felt rough, like scabs. If it's in a word, or in a look You can't get rid of the Babadook. I laughed. Tried to. Not the kind you buy at a fair

Don't pretend you didn't. Would you like a version of this as a social media caption, a short film script, or a TikTok narration script? No return address

New pages had appeared.