Tales to Terrify 739 Mia Cheng

March 27, 2026·46 min·4 clips

A man sees a figure waving from a dark window, but it vanishes each time the light flickers off.

The kid is late. Before that absence takes over, the host opens with the show's familiar dark-threshold ritual and marks the last week of Women in Horror Month. Locus Magazine's fundraiser gets a nod for genre fiction fans, awards, interviews, reviews, and speculative voices. Then the story tightens around a thirteen-year-old boy, his mother's picture, and the repeated game that gives shape to the narrator's days. Waiting becomes the routine. He watches from the window until afternoon leans into evening, then moves through the apartment complex toward the courtyard. The place has a sour, worn-in feel: dingy lights, stinking laundry, debris, a smoky elevator, and a loose ground-floor button. They play football. They sit on a stone bench and look through the kid's drawings before the sun goes and the boy leaves. After that, the painting starts. The narrator paints as if someone else has taken over, stopping only when birdsong or the surrendering moon breaks the spell. Day starts to matter less. Sleep turns fitful, dusk feels like the real waking hour, and the open curtains stop seeming odd. The pattern breaks softly. When the boy finally appears half-dark, his granite-colored shirt and reluctant shadow make the courtyard feel less like a meeting place than a line he might cross for the last time. School delayed him. His father noticed. An aunt was scolded. Soon, the boy expects to live with him. The news hits hard. The fear is simple and awful: if the child leaves, the fragile rhythm that turns play into art may leave with him.

As heard by us

A slow, shadowed story that turns a courtyard routine into something tense and unnerving.

Tales to Terrify settles into a nocturnal rhythm: a boy, a painter, and a courtyard where the light keeps fading. What makes it work is how plain the setup feels at first.

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Why you'd press play

When a boy's shadow starts to feel like a warning in the dark.

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