Chapter 3: The Children's Crusade

Chapter 3: The Children's Crusade

The week following Gary the mailman’s fall was a descent into a quiet, domestic hell. David felt like a prisoner in his own home, cataloging every new impossible pin with a morbid, frantic energy. A gleaming dress pin on the bathroom floor. A rusted kilt pin in the silverware drawer. A tiny, sharp tack on the arm of his office chair. Each one was a territorial marker, a signpost on the road to madness. He was no longer trying to rationalize; he was trying to survive.

He watched Maisyn with a new, terrible lens. Her innocence was now a mask for the thing that whispered to her. When she hummed a tune he’d never heard, he wondered if it was one of its songs. When she laughed at some private joke, her eyes focused on the empty air beside her, a cold dread snaked up his spine. The entity was becoming bolder, its presence a constant, oppressive weight in the house. He felt its influence in every cold draft, in every shadow that seemed too deep, too long. He was losing his daughter, bit by bit, to a smiling, faceless thief.

His goal had become suffocatingly simple: keep her safe. But how could he protect her from something that lived inside her own head? The thought was a closed loop of despair, leaving him exhausted and frayed.

The obstacle arrived via a phone call on a grey Wednesday afternoon. The school’s number flashed on his screen, and his stomach instantly clenched.

“Mr. Miller? This is Carol Starkey, Maisyn’s teacher.” Her voice was professionally gentle, the carefully modulated tone used to deliver bad news. “I was hoping you might have a moment to come in and chat today, if you’re free. It’s about Maisyn.”

“Is she okay? Did something happen?” David asked, his mind immediately leaping to visions of twisted ankles and paranormal accidents.

“Oh, she’s physically fine, nothing like that,” Mrs. Starkey said quickly. “It’s just… something has come up that I think we should discuss in person. It concerns some of her recent behavior.”

An hour later, David sat on a child-sized chair in the empty, brightly-colored classroom. The smell of crayons, tempera paint, and antiseptic cleaner hung in the air, a scent that felt alien and mocking. Mrs. Starkey sat opposite him at a small kidney-shaped table, her face etched with a practiced concern that couldn’t quite hide a deeper unease.

“David, I don’t want to alarm you,” she began, folding her hands on the table. “We all know Maisyn has been through a tremendous loss. It’s natural for children to develop coping mechanisms.”

He nodded, dread coiling in his gut. He knew where this was going. Mr. Pins.

She slid a folder across the table and opened it. Inside were half a dozen drawings. David’s breath hitched. They were all of him. The same towering, stick-thin figure, a void-black silhouette against a chaotic crayon background. But these drawings were more detailed than the first one she’d shown him. In one, the figure seemed to be wearing a dark, narrow suit. In another, its limbs were elongated to impossible lengths, bending at angles that defied anatomy. And on every single one, the body was riddled with sharp, glinting lines. Some were simple dashes of a silver crayon; others were meticulously drawn needles and pins, each with a tiny, distinct head.

“She calls him Mr. Pins,” Mrs. Starkey said softly, watching David’s face. “At first, we thought it was just a typical imaginary friend. A bit morbid, perhaps, but understandable given the circumstances. But it’s… progressed.”

David swallowed, the sound loud in the quiet room. “Progressed how?”

This was it. The moment of hesitation. Mrs. Starkey took a deep breath, her professional veneer cracking slightly. “She’s been introducing him to the other children, David.”

The words landed like stones. Not just in their house. Not just in her head. It was spreading.

“She seeks out the other quiet ones,” the teacher continued, her voice dropping lower. “The lonely ones. Liam, whose parents are going through a divorce. Chloe, who’s new to the district and hasn’t made friends yet. She’ll sit with them on the playground and have these long, whispered conversations. She’s telling them about Mr. Pins. She’s telling them he can be their friend, too. That he helps people who feel like they’re falling apart.”

David felt the blood drain from his face. Maisyn was quoting the entity’s own twisted philosophy. He says they’re for holding things together, so they don’t fall apart and get lonely. She wasn’t just a victim anymore. She was a missionary. A prophet for a monstrous cause.

“And the other children?” David asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“That’s the most worrying part,” Mrs. Starkey said, her gaze firm and serious. “They’re listening. Liam’s mother called me yesterday. He woke up screaming from a nightmare about a ‘spiky man’ hiding in his laundry basket. Chloe’s father said she refuses to go to sleep now unless he leaves every light in the house on. She told him she was ‘waiting for a new friend to visit.’” She paused, then slid another piece of paper from the folder. It was a different drawing, the crayon strokes more frantic, less controlled than Maisyn’s. It was another stick figure, this one short and crudely drawn, but it was covered in the same tell-tale spikes. “Liam drew this yesterday during free time. He said it was Mr. Pins, coming to check on him.”

The horror was no longer contained. It had breached the walls of his home, of his family, and was seeping into the community like a contagion, infecting the most vulnerable. Maisyn was patient zero.

He stared at the drawing, at the childishly rendered monster. He thought of the hat pin in his sock drawer, the needle he’d pulled from Savannah’s bracelet. This wasn’t just imagination. This was real. And it was recruiting.

David left the school in a daze, the cheerful shouts of children at recess sounding like screams in his ears. He drove home on autopilot, his world shrunk to a single, terrifying reality: his daughter was the vessel for a supernatural plague.

He found her in the living room, sitting on the rug, surrounded by sheets of paper. She was drawing again, humming that same strange, placid tune. The floor around her was a gallery of horrors, dozens of spiky black figures marching across the pages.

He knelt in front of her, his hands shaking. He had to try. He had to reach the little girl still buried somewhere underneath.

“Maisyn,” he said, his voice cracking. “Mrs. Starkey called me. We need to talk about Mr. Pins.”

She didn’t look up from her work, her crayon moving in smooth, confident strokes. “Did she tell you about my new friends?”

“She told me you’ve been scaring the other children, sweetie. You have to stop. This isn’t a game.”

Finally, she looked up. Her eyes, those bright, imaginative eyes he loved so much, were filled with a serene, chilling pride. A disturbing joy.

“But they’re not scared, Daddy,” she said, her voice full of a gentle, unwavering conviction. “They were lonely. Liam was crying in the coatroom because his daddy moved out. Chloe eats her lunch all by herself. They were sad.”

She picked up the drawing she had just finished and held it out for him to see. It was Mr. Pins again, tall and thin and covered in needles. But this time, he wasn't alone. Standing beside him, holding his spindly, featureless hand, were two smaller stick figures.

“Now they’re not lonely anymore,” Maisyn whispered, a beatific smile spreading across her face. “Mr. Pins is their friend, too. He’s collecting all of us, so we can be together. Isn’t that nice?”