“What’s wrong with your dad?” My friend asked me that at school. I didn’t know what to say. My dad had been acting strange for weeks. He stopped eating dinner with us. Stopped watching TV. Stopped sleeping in his bedroom. Every night, he sat in the garage with the lights off. When I asked why, he’d just say, “I sleep better out here.” Then one night, I woke up to the sound of my dad talking downstairs. I heard him say my name. I walked halfway down the stairs. “Dad?” He stopped talking. Then he answered. “Go back to bed.” His voice sounded normal. Almost. I went back upstairs. A few minutes later, I heard footsteps outside my bedroom. Slow. Barefoot. They stopped outside my door. Then my dad whispered, “Don’t open it.” I froze. “Dad?” His voice came from downstairs. “I’m downstairs.” I looked at my door. Someone was standing on the other side. I didn’t breathe. The thing outside my room whispered again. “That’s not me.” I called my dad. He answered immediately. I could hear the garage door behind him. “Where are you?” “Garage.” “Don’t come upstairs.” There was a long silence. Then he said, “I need you to listen carefully.” The footsteps outside my door started moving away. My dad whispered, “Whatever you hear, don’t let it see your face.” I asked him what he meant. He didn’t answer. Instead, I heard something slam downstairs. Then my dad shouted. I ran. I found him sitting on the garage floor. His hands were shaking. There were scratches all over his arms. He looked at me and said, “It knows you noticed.” I didn’t understand. Then he pointed toward the house. “Your mother thinks I’ve been sick.” He swallowed. “I haven’t.” He told me he’d been hearing footsteps for months. At first, they sounded like someone walking around the house. Then they started copying him. His voice. His breathing. Even the way he knocked on doors. He said it had started appearing in mirrors. Then windows. Then photographs. “But last night,” he said, “it stopped copying me.” “What did it do?” He looked toward the garage door. “It started copying you.” I felt my phone vibrate. A notification from our family security camera. Motion detected: Upstairs hallway. I opened the camera. My bedroom door was open. Someone was standing inside. It looked like me. My dad grabbed my wrist. “Don’t look at it.” The figure slowly turned toward the camera. Then it smiled. My dad whispered, “That’s why I’ve been sleeping in the garage.” “Why?” “Because it can’t get inside unless somebody invites it.” I stared at him. Then I heard our front door open. My mom’s voice called from inside. “I’m home.” My dad went completely pale. He looked at me. “We don’t have a mom anymore.” From inside the house, my mother’s voice laughed. Then it called my name. Exactly the way she used to. My dad grabbed the car keys. We ran. As we drove away, I looked back at the house. Someone was standing in my bedroom window. It was my dad. Waving. But my dad was sitting beside me in the car. He looked at the window. Then he whispered, “Don’t wave back.” I didn’t. But the thing in the window kept smiling. And when we turned the corner, my dad finally said something that made my stomach drop. “Now it knows where you sleep.” #scary #scarystories #creepystorytime #captionstory #horrortok - @metaphysiko