The Boy Who Slept with Shadows

They say childhood memories fade with time. But for sixteen-year-old Eli Morgan, the screams still echoed every time he closed his eyes. No matter how many years passed, no matter how far he moved from the house on Sycamore Street, he could never truly escape the shadows that once whispered his name.

It began when Eli was just six.

Back then, he was a quiet, lonely boy with a mop of curly brown hair and a love for picture books. His mother worked double shifts at a nursing home, and his stepfather—well, no one ever dared to call him "dad." Rick was a bitter man with cruel hands and an even crueler voice. The neighbors knew, but silence was easier than involvement.

Eli’s only solace was his room upstairs. It was small, with peeling wallpaper and a broken nightlight that flickered at odd hours. But it was his. He’d lie on his bed at night and imagine himself as a knight, battling monsters far less terrifying than the man downstairs.

But one night, the monsters changed.

Eli woke to whispers—soft, raspy, and impossibly close. The air was cold, and a dark shape loomed near the foot of his bed. At first, he thought it was Rick playing tricks. But this shadow didn’t reek of alcohol or mutter curses. It didn’t move like a man.

It just stood there. Watching.

Terrified, Eli pulled the covers over his head and prayed. When he peeked again, it was gone.

The next morning, he found small, sooty footprints near his bed.

No one believed him.

“Maybe you dreamed it,” his mom said, her eyes sunken from exhaustion.

But the shadows kept coming. Each night, they drew closer. He’d hear them scraping along the walls, whispering his name like a lullaby from hell. And Rick—who once stormed into his room to yell about "noises"—stopped coming in altogether.

Until the night Rick disappeared.

It was a stormy Wednesday. Thunder rattled the house. Eli, shaking under his sheets, saw the shadow again—but this time, it wasn’t alone. Dozens of them poured from the corners of the room, slithering like smoke, filling the space with darkness so thick it choked.

And then Rick screamed.

A guttural, soul-tearing scream from downstairs. Then silence.

When Eli’s mom got home the next morning, the house was empty. No sign of Rick. No blood. No broken glass. Just one thing left behind—black, sooty footprints leading from the living room to the basement.

They never found him.

Eli and his mom moved away a month later.

Years passed. Therapists called it childhood trauma. Night terrors. A coping mechanism. Eli tried to believe them. He told himself that Rick had simply run away. That shadows couldn’t whisper. That they didn’t have fingers like claws or eyes like coal.

But deep down, he knew the truth.

And now, at sixteen, the whispers were back.

They started one week after his mother died in a car crash. Alone in a foster home, Eli began seeing the flickering again. Hearing the scrape of nails on his bedroom wall. Finding soot in his shoes. At night, he’d lie awake, waiting.

He didn’t have to wait long.

One night, he woke to find a note on his pillow—written in ash:

“You’re one of us now.”

And for the first time in ten years, Eli didn’t scream.

He smiled.

Because something inside him had changed. The fear that once gripped him was gone. The shadows no longer felt like strangers. They felt like family. Like home.

That night, his foster parents vanished.

Just like Rick.

And when the police came to question him, Eli simply blinked and said he didn’t hear a thing. He was asleep. Just like always.

Now, Eli walks with the shadows. They protect him. Guide him. Whisper secrets of the dark.

He was once the boy who feared the night.

Now he is the thing that children fear.