It was never the story you’d tell your parents when you were scared.

Never the thing to share at campfires or late nights at sleepovers.

It was never anything you’d share at all.

Because you knew if you did.

You knew if you described the tall figure that loomed at the top of the stairs in his dark, calf length jacket and length of twisted rope. You knew he’d find out.

That scared you more than anything else.

Not that he was there. That he was aware. That he knew every feint, every eye duck, every shuffled step and skipping jump.

He lived inside your heart so long that his fear made boots pressed paths between ventricles.

You never told because you never could.

Staring up with terror like a waveless sea, they found you stood upright held in a cast of fear.