THE DARK BENEATH: He Drew Her Back In (Case File #26)
- Loretta & David Allseitz
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
The Dark Beneath is fiction—lore, not evidence. If you take it as fact, that’s between you, your lying uncle, and whatever’s creeping around your woods at 2 a.m.
CASE FILE #26
Filed by Detectives Loretta Smitty & David Smitty
May 21, 2026
The email arrived at 6:14 a.m., long before either of us had finished our first cup of coffee. The sun wasn’t even up yet—just a thin, gray suggestion of morning pressing against the blinds. I was halfway through a sentence about the February case when the notification chimed. David glanced at the screen, expecting a routine update from the lab.
Instead, he froze.
The subject line was simple:
RE: Concerning Drawings — Patient Childress
We hadn’t heard Rae’s name since December.
We hadn’t been back to Terrell since then either.
And we certainly weren’t expecting to see it now—not after the body behind the Unmasking Evil Motel pulled us back into The Operator case we thought we’d left behind in 2025.
David opened the email.
The message was short. Too short.
“Rae has begun drawing again. Behavior escalating. Please review the attachments.”
There were six images attached.
I felt my stomach tighten.
Rae Childress had been quiet for months.
Silent, even.
The kind of silence that makes clinicians hopeful and detectives uneasy.
We opened the first attachment.
A child’s drawing of a door.
Plain. Stucco.
A metal plate at the top.
The number 12 scrawled in uneven strokes.
David exhaled slowly.
We opened the second.
A bed.
A suitcase on top of it.
A long, thin object beside it.
A dark smear.
A broken rectangle.
A circle with a line through it.
The lines were childish.
The arrangement was not.
We opened the third.
A square filled with frantic, layered scribbles—the kind a child makes when trying to draw something that moves. Static. And inside the static, a face. Half‑formed. Eyes too wide. Mouth caught mid‑shape.
A face we recognized.
We hadn’t spoken his name aloud since February, when a man was left behind the motel like a demonstration—opened with clinical precision, his eyes still wide and aware.
The kind of work that hums.
The kind of work that doesn’t come from anger, but from instruction.
We opened the fourth image.
A torso opened with surgical patience.
A figure standing in a doorway.
A hand holding something behind its back.
A doll with a hollow chest.
A vent with a shadow inside it.
We opened the fifth.
A bathroom doorway with a light on.
A square television filled with scribbles.
A silhouette inside the static.
We opened the sixth.
A face again.
Clearer this time.
Drawn with the kind of focus that makes your stomach tighten.
Radford.
We stared at the screen in silence.
Rae Childress has never seen Room 12.
She has never seen the suitcase left on the bed.
She has never seen the static on the TV.
She has never seen the February body.
She has never seen Simon Radford.
She has been locked inside Terrell State Hospital since last fall.
And yet she drew all of it.
Not perfectly.
Not literally.
But close enough to be disturbing.
I called Terrell immediately.
The clinician answered on the first ring.
“She’s been quiet for months,” she said. “Then yesterday she started drawing nonstop. She won’t explain any of it. She just keeps saying, ‘He’s inside the room."'
We asked which room.
The clinician hesitated.
“She won’t say. She just keeps drawing the number 12.”
We were already grabbing our coats.
Terrell State Hospital — 9:02 a.m.
The building always feels colder than it should.
Not the kind of cold that comes from air conditioning, but the kind that settles into the walls and refuses to leave.
The kind that makes you lower your voice without knowing why.
The clinician met us in the hallway, her expression tight.
“She hasn’t spoken since breakfast,” she said. “Just keeps drawing. We didn’t want to touch anything until you arrived.”
We followed her to the observation room.
Rae was sitting on the floor, legs folded neatly beneath her, surrounded by a ring of drawings arranged face‑down. Her hair was parted with careful precision. Her posture was perfect. She looked like a child waiting for a parent to pick her up from school.
She didn’t look up when we entered.
She only tapped the floor once, as if inviting us to begin.
We knelt and turned over the first drawing.
Room 12’s door.
We turned over the second.
The suitcase.
We turned over the third.
The static.
We turned over the fourth.
The incision.
We turned over the fifth.
The silhouette.
We turned over the sixth.
Radford’s face.
Rae didn’t react.
She didn’t smile.
She didn’t fidget.
She didn’t blink.
She simply watched us.
“Rae,” I said gently, “can you tell us why you drew these?”
She tilted her head slightly, as if considering the question.
“You talked about him,” she said.
David and I exchanged a look.
“We haven’t spoken to you since December,” he said.
“You didn’t mean to,” Rae replied. “But you did.”
Her voice was calm.
Matter‑of‑fact.
As if she were explaining a simple truth.
“Rae,” I said, “how do you know this room?”
She pointed to the drawing of the static‑filled square.
“It’s where he is,” she said.
“Who?”
She tapped the face.
“Inside the room.”
“Which room?” I asked.
She tapped the door with the metal plate.
“Room 12,” she whispered. “The one he didn’t finish.”
The clinician stepped back.
David’s jaw tightened.
I felt the same cold I’d felt behind the motel in February.
We asked her what “finish” meant.
Rae picked up a blank sheet of paper.
She drew a rectangle.
Then another inside it.
Then a long, thin shape.
Then a smear.
Then a face.
She slid the paper toward us.
“He left something behind,” she said.
“What did he leave?”
Rae smiled—a small, polite, practiced smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“You’ll see.”
-Loretta Smitty
Point, Texas
For those of you new here, Room 12 is the last room we ever rented to a man named Simon Radford. He checked in under his real name. He never checked out. We preserved the room exactly as he left it—suitcase on the bed, TV still plugged in, bathroom light still on.
If you click the TV, the static flickers.
If you wait long enough, his face flashes through it.
Not a shadow.
Not a trick of the light.
Him.
We don’t know how Rae Childress drew that face.
We don’t know how she drew that room.
We don’t know how she drew the suitcase.
We don’t know how she drew the static.
But we do know this:
The last time a child in this town started creating things they shouldn't, Point learned their name the hard way.
If you want to see Room 12 for yourself, the key is at the Front Desk.
If you value a peaceful night of sleep, leave it there.
Room 12 is not vacant.
-Management
This update continues Rae Childress’s storyline following the events of The Dollmaker of Point, expanding the world into "The Operator" case and the Unmasking Evil Motel.
Haven't met Rae Childress yet? You can find her story HERE.
If CASE FILE #26 is the first you're reading, make sure to go back and check out "The Dark Beneath" series of posts! The Dark Beneath: Scary Folklore & Whispers in Texas
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