In *The Eighth Child*, a child psychologist is drawn into a web of unsettling mysteries at an isolated mental health facility. A silent boy’s haunting drawings and whispers in the shadows hint at a sinister presence. As the days pass, the lines between reality and terror blur, revealing a chilling connection between the boy, the psychologist, and an unrelenting force that defies explanation.
I never imagined that I would wind up in the tiny mental health facility tucked away in the hills, cut off from the outside world. I had experience working with problematic youths as a child psychologist, but nothing had prepared me for what I was going to encounter with Ethan. He had previously spoken, but now he was silent. Neither the physicians nor anybody else could explain it. Ethan had not spoken a word for months. He drew weird pictures all day long, shadows that seemed to writhe on the page, twisted features, and dark, frightful forms. The illustrations of a tall, dark entity with luminous eyes that kept chasing him were the most unsettling.
I was informed that Ethan had been acting in this manner for almost a year when I was recruited to evaluate him. No one dared to discuss the former patients, and the institution was highly guarded and remote. However, there was something in the staff’s avoidance of the topic, as though it would be best if the memories were forgotten.
I sat across from Ethan in the antiseptic, poorly lighted room on our first day together. As he grasped his pencil and started drawing, his big brown eyes met mine. He remained silent and unflinching as I walked up to him, but his eyes were disturbingly attentive and knowing.
“What are you drawing today, Ethan?” I asked gently, trying to break the silence.
He didn’t respond. He just kept drawing. Even darker than previously, the person on the page was taller, more sinister, and had eyes that seemed to sparkle with evil intent. A shiver went down my back.
“I’ve been reading about the others,” I said, hoping to engage him somehow. “The children who were here before you.”
He paused his hand and looked up at me for the first time. A spark of something like panic was there in his eyes.
I leaned closer, my voice softer. “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m here to help.”
Ethan drew a line through the figure’s eyes while lowering his head. The drawing’s character appeared to die; its once-bright, sparkling eyes had turned lifeless. It seemed to have been drained of the gloom.
I had trouble sleeping that night. I was plagued by the visions of Ethan’s drawings—the shadows that appeared to move on the paper as though they were alive, the dark figures pursuing him. I visited the library in the hopes of learning more about its history. I was completely chilled by what I discovered.
Eight kids. Over the years, eight children who had sought therapy at this clinic gradually disappeared. Before Ethan, some had been here for years. Nobody had any idea what had happened to them or where they had disappeared to. Records from the institution were lacking, files were empty, and there were no indications that they had ever been there.
I felt more and more like I was being pulled into a sinister, unavoidable web as I read. Strange things began to catch my attention: whispers in the late-night hallways, movement flickers out of the corner of my eye, and the sensation that I was being watched. The employees seemed… strange, but they were unconcerned. As if they were aware of something I was not. Additionally, they became more reticent the more I pressed for clarification.
As the days went by, I saw Ethan more frequently. He sketched every day, the same creature haunting every page, but he still wouldn’t talk. I lingered in his room late one night in the hopes of making progress. He glanced up at me once more as I sat next to him, his face unreadable. He again raised his pencil and drew a circle around the image, this time encircling the dark, tall form in an almost perfect circle.
I looked closer, my breath catching in my throat. In the center of the circle, he drew a number. “8.”
I went cold. I suddenly realized that Ethan was the eighth child. The child who has gone missing. The one that the records had never mentioned. I was unable to understand him, even though he was the key to everything.
I asked Ethan, my voice trembling. “What does the number mean, Ethan? What happened to the others?”
He didn’t respond. Rather, he abruptly got to his feet, his eyes wide with fear. The lights flickered and the room grew cooler. Then the murmurs began.
First low, like a murmur in the distance. Then it got louder. My name was being called by the murmurs, which were leaking into the room’s corners and hissing through the walls.
I stood up, my heart racing. “Ethan? What is it?”
He gestured to the room’s corner and spoke for the first time in months. Even though his voice was raspy—almost a whisper—it made me shiver.
“It’s coming. It’s here.”
Slowly, my body froze in terror as I turned. A figure—a towering, dark shape with luminous eyes—was standing in the room’s darkened corner. I could feel it observing me even though it didn’t move.
My heart was racing as I staggered back, but I was immobile. The figure’s eyes were burning into mine as the whispers became louder.
Then everything made sense: the whispers, the eight kids, and the shadowy figure in Ethan’s pictures. They weren’t merely historical relics. The cycle included them. Every kidnapping and every disappearance fit into a pattern, a curse that had imprisoned them all.
I turned back to Ethan, my voice breaking. “Why didn’t you tell me? What is it? What does it want?”
Ethan’s eyes were filled with terror. “It takes them. It takes us.”
Understanding hit me like a slackening weight, and I gasped. The eighth child, the one who was supposed to go. The reason I was brought here was to participate in the curse. I had been confined. So was Ethan.
I could feel myself being pulled into the shadow as the figure drew nearer. The walls had lost their murmurs. In my mind, they were saying that I will be the next.
Ethan offered me a tiny, melancholy grin as I gave him one last glance. Then, like the other kids before him, he vanished into the night.
I was not a child psychologist anymore. Now I was caught up in the never-ending cycle of lost souls, a part of the story. And they would mark me as the ninth when they eventually located me.