It was a crisp Saturday morning when I stumbled upon a garage sale that seemed ordinary enough: old clothes, dusty books, and forgotten toys strewn across a lawn. I was about to walk past it when a small, weathered box caught my eye, sitting apart from the rest of the items. Inside were VHS tapes, most unlabeled and coated with a thin layer of grime, except for one that read Colouring with Steve in childlike handwriting.
Curiosity piqued, I paid the old man at the sale, who offered no more than a faint smile and a nod, and took the tapes home. My old VCR creaked when I inserted the first tape, and the screen lit up with a slight flicker. The show began simply enough: a man with kind eyes and an easy smile sat at a table in front of a soft, pastel backdrop covered in crayons, colored pencils, and papers.
"Hello, friends," Steve said in a voice that could soothe a storm. "Today, we're going to color something special—a cozy little house."
There was an unexplainable warmth about him. He spoke to the camera as if he were directly addressing me. The scratching of crayons on paper was oddly satisfying, and the subtle colors filled the screen with a peaceful, hypnotic quality. But there was something else. The faint hum of static buzzed in the background, barely noticeable at first, but it crept into my awareness as the episode went on.
I brushed it off, thinking it was just the age of the tape.
The first episode concluded with Steve holding up his drawing of the house, framed with smiling clouds and a bright sun. His smile, however, felt too wide, like it lingered just a second too long before the screen cut to black. Then, there it was—a single frame of something else. Something wrong.
I leaned forward, replaying the end of the tape frame by frame. For the briefest moment, there it was again: a dark room, barely lit by the dim glow of what looked like a lantern. The shapes were hard to make out, but the longer I stared, the clearer it became. Shadows cast by twisted objects lined the walls, and something or someone stood in the corner, facing away. My heart thudded in my chest as I realized the figure seemed to be holding something—a crayon, perhaps.
I blinked and the screen turned black again, leaving me in the silence of my living room. I shivered and reached for the next tape.
The second tape sat heavy in my hands, its plastic casing oddly cool against my fingers. I hesitated, the image from the end of the first tape still etched into my mind. Yet curiosity gnawed at me more fiercely than any sense of self-preservation. I pressed play, and the familiar hum of the VCR brought the screen to life.
Steve appeared, sitting at his art table with that soft, reassuring smile. "Hello again, friends," he greeted, and this time his voice seemed to echo, as if the room behind him were much larger than the backdrop suggested. "Today, we'll venture into the forest."
There was something different about him—something in the way his eyes seemed to dart to the corners of the screen, as if checking for something just out of view. The pastel background remained the same, but the lighting appeared dimmer, almost as if a shadow loomed just outside the frame.
Steve reached for a dark green crayon, fingers trembling ever so slightly, and began sketching a forest. The familiar scratching sound returned, but it was slower, more deliberate this time. I leaned forward, squinting. The scene unfolded: trees with long, gnarled limbs crept across the paper, their leaves drawn with sharp, precise strokes. The once-soothing hum in the background deepened, morphing into something less mechanical and more… alive.
I adjusted the volume, turning it up enough to hear the tiny noises hidden beneath Steve’s voice. Faint whispers trickled through the static, unintelligible but urgent, like voices desperately trying to push through a locked door. My skin prickled.
Then Steve stopped. His eyes met the camera, his smile faltering for the briefest moment. He whispered something under his breath, so faint I couldn’t catch it even after I rewound it twice. It sounded almost like, "Not much time," before his eyes flicked away, and he continued coloring. His smile returned, stretched wider, almost forced.
As he filled in the spaces between the trees, something shifted on the paper. It started subtly—the outlines of the trees seemed to twist, bending at unnatural angles. Their branches began to coil and knot, forming shapes that looked disturbingly like grasping hands.
Then, there were the shadows. At first, they were just dark smudges among the trees, innocent enough. But as Steve’s crayon swept across the page, they sharpened, taking on the forms of figures hunched among the branches. Each figure had no face, just hollow ovals where eyes should have been.
Steve’s hand faltered, the crayon slipping from his grasp and rolling off the table with a thud. He stared at it for a moment, the smile now entirely gone. Slowly, he turned back to the camera. The whispers grew louder, almost urgent, filling the room with a hissing cacophony. He leaned forward, his eyes wide and glistening, and whispered clearly this time:
"Do you see them too?"
The screen snapped to black, and my living room plunged into silence. For a moment, I sat frozen, my eyes still glued to the dark screen. My pulse hammered in my ears, drowning out everything else. Then, from somewhere in the house, I heard a noise. A gentle thud, like a crayon falling to the floor.
The third tape felt heavier in my hands, as if the plastic shell itself knew what it contained. The unease from the previous episodes hadn’t faded, but against my better judgment, I needed to see more. I pressed play, and the screen flickered to life with a crackle that sent a chill down my spine.
Steve appeared, his usual pastel backdrop looking more faded than before, almost bleached out. The smile he wore seemed more practiced now, more like a mask than ever. “Hello again, friends,” he said, the cheer in his voice undercut by a tremor. “Today, we’ll color something very special—a picture of family.”
His hand moved slowly, selecting a bright yellow crayon that seemed out of place amidst the deep hues he’d used before. He sketched the outline of three figures: a mother, a father, and a small child holding hands. The innocence of the image should have felt comforting, but instead, it was suffocating. I leaned in, eyes narrowing as the static began to creep across the screen, disrupting the image.
It started subtly—just a few brief pulses—but soon the static became more aggressive, cutting into the tape at erratic intervals. Each burst revealed flashes of unsettling scenes: cracked, decaying buildings with shattered windows, hallways lined with peeling wallpaper, and a low, resonant whisper echoing over and over, “Find me.”
I gripped the arms of my chair, eyes locked on the screen. The family Steve was coloring seemed to change with each pass of his crayon. The bright yellows and pinks he used shifted suddenly, morphing into dark smears, as if ink had bled through the paper. The child’s face began to twist, an expression of joy turning into something far more disturbing—a mouth open too wide, as if mid-scream.
Steve paused again, looking into the camera. His smile was gone, replaced by an expression I could only describe as remorse. His eyes seemed to flicker with the static, caught between reality and whatever nightmare world leaked through the screen.
“Do you remember?” he said, voice low and trembling. The static hissed louder, nearly drowning him out. “Do you remember what lies behind the colors? The truth hidden in plain sight?”
My heart raced as I leaned closer, breath shallow. The background behind Steve rippled, and for a second, it looked like something moved—a silhouette that stretched and distorted. It was tall and crooked, its limbs bending in impossible ways. The figure stood behind Steve, its head tilted at an unnatural angle, hollow eyes locked on the camera.
The static crescendoed, consuming the screen, and the voices within it grew. I could almost make out their words, fragments of phrases layered over each other:
“Lost… always watching… behind the colors…”
Then, silence. The static vanished, and the screen returned to Steve, who was now frozen mid-stare, his eyes hollow and empty. I felt the hair on my arms rise as he whispered one final, bone-chilling sentence:
“They’re here.”
The tape ended abruptly, leaving me staring at my own reflection in the dark screen. But before I could move, a shiver ran down my spine as I heard it—a faint, almost imperceptible whisper coming from behind me:
“Find me.”
The box of tapes sat on the table like a silent challenge. I’d watched three so far, each one leaving me more unsettled than the last, but now I noticed something strange. The numbering on the tapes wasn’t sequential. Between some of them, numbers skipped ahead—episode 4 jumped straight to 7, and others were missing entirely. My pulse quickened. Had someone removed these on purpose? What was hidden in the missing episodes, and why did it feel like each tape I did have was daring me to find out?
I turned to the internet, hoping to find some trace of Colouring with Steve, but my search came up empty. No records, no archived footage, not even a single mention on obscure forums. It was as if the show never existed. Frustrated, I called a friend who knew more about old TV programming than anyone I’d met. When I mentioned Colouring with Steve, the line went silent.
“Where did you hear about that?” he asked, his voice low, almost wary.
“Old VHS tapes from a garage sale,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady.
There was a pause long enough to make me wonder if he’d hung up. “It aired briefly on a local station in the ‘70s. They pulled it fast—no one really talked about it after that. Listen, if you found something related to it, be careful. That show... it wasn’t right.”
A chill ran down my spine as I hung up. I turned back to the tapes, fingers hesitating over the next one. I pushed it into the VCR and hit play.
Steve appeared on screen, but this time, something was very wrong. His hair was disheveled, and his eyes darted to the corners of the frame as if watching shadows move. The pastel backdrop behind him was fractured, showing gaps where walls met unfinished floors, their surfaces rough and splintered. A stark, cold light spilled in from somewhere off-camera, cutting harsh lines across his face.
“Hello, friends,” he greeted, but his voice warbled, dipping unnaturally low, as though someone were playing with the audio. His smile twitched at the edges, more like a grimace now. “Today, we’re going to learn about control. And… what happens when you lose it.”
My chest tightened as I leaned closer. The static interference was stronger, flickering in and out in brief but jarring bursts. Each time the static overtook the screen, I caught glimpses of dark, abandoned rooms and what looked like scribbles scrawled frantically across walls.
Steve’s crayon moved sluggishly across the paper, creating shapes that barely resembled anything recognizable. His hand shook, and the lines bled outward, smearing the image as if it was coming apart at the seams. The background changed again, showing more of the space behind him. Wooden beams stretched upward, clawing at the darkness like fingers. In the corners, I could almost make out shapes—small and writhing, just on the edge of perception.
Steve’s voice cracked as he spoke, his words barely making sense. “Behind the colors… there’s truth. They tried to hide it, but it’s always there. Watching. Waiting.”
The static surged, louder and more ferocious than before, almost knocking me back. When it subsided, Steve was no longer at the table. He stood just behind it, eyes wild and face pale. The light behind him flared, showing dark smudges across the walls—crude figures with eyes, rows upon rows of hollow, staring eyes.
“Have you ever lost control?” he whispered, leaning so close to the camera that the screen filled with only his eyes, wide and glistening with terror. “They have.”
The tape cut to black abruptly, leaving me staring into the reflection of my own pale, frightened face. For a long moment, silence filled the room. But then, just as I began to exhale, I heard it again—the same soft, whispering voices I’d heard on the tapes.
They were inside my house.
I told myself I should stop, that I’d already gone too far, but it was like something had taken hold of me. Each time I watched, the tapes reached a little deeper, making me feel as though they were watching me back. When I pushed in the next tape, I felt a palpable dread, as if the air itself had thickened around me.
Steve appeared, looking gaunter than before, his face paler, his eyes dull and lifeless. The familiar pastel backdrop was gone, replaced by a dull, gray wall. For a moment, I could swear the room behind him looked familiar. Too familiar.
“Hello, friends,” he began, his voice low and hollow, like it was coming from a distant place. “Today, we’re drawing a room. A very special room.” His gaze felt direct, penetrating. It took everything in me not to avert my eyes.
He started with the outline, a rectangle that gradually took form as he added more detail. There was a couch, a coffee table, a lamp in the corner. My blood ran cold as I realized he was sketching my own living room. Every line was precise, down to the throw blanket on the sofa and the old rug near the door.
My heart pounded as he continued, filling in each element with the same slow, deliberate strokes. As the crayon scratched across the paper, I felt an odd pressure in the room, like the walls themselves were closing in. I glanced around and froze—my furniture was shifting. The coffee table crept a few inches to the left, and the lamp flickered, its light dimming.
I returned my gaze to the screen, gripping the chair to steady myself. Steve’s hand slowed, and he paused, looking up with a smile that no longer seemed human. His eyes looked hollow, as if whatever spark of life had been there before was gone.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said, voice metallic, distorted. “Draw with me, friends. Let’s create something… real.”
The moment stretched into silence. My hands itched, almost compelled to grab a pencil, to follow along with his unnerving request. I shook my head, resisting, and his face twitched, as though he could sense my hesitation. His voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible but somehow piercing.
“It’s better when you join in.”
I reached for the remote, my pulse racing. I had to see that last scene again, to understand what was happening. When I rewound the tape, it stuttered, the screen flickering and distorting in shades of black and white. The VHS fought against my command, but I forced it back to the exact moment where he’d asked me to draw.
The screen jumped, then steadied. Instead of Steve, I saw a new image—a grainy, nightmarish shot of a hand, reaching out from within the screen. Its fingers twisted, pressing against the glass as though trying to escape. The skin was pale and cracked, nails dark and chipped, grasping desperately, inches from my own face.
I felt frozen in place, breathless, as the hand twitched and writhed, pushing harder against the screen with every passing second. A new voice—a woman’s voice—echoed faintly through the static, panicked and weak, saying one word over and over:
“Help.”
The screen flashed again, and Steve reappeared, his smile now stretched too wide, his eyes dark pits. He leaned closer, almost pressing his face into the lens, and whispered, “Once you start… you can never stop.”
The screen cut to black, and in the silence of my living room, I heard a soft scrape, like something scratching against the inside of the TV.
Sleep had become a distant memory. Every time I closed my eyes, fragments of the tapes haunted me—Steve’s hollow eyes, the hand reaching from the screen, the voices whispering my name. The darkness felt suffocating, as though it were pressing in on me, daring me to go back to the tapes. And, as if by some twisted compulsion, I did.
My hands shook as I inserted the next tape and pressed play, feeling as if I was stepping over some final, irreversible line.
Steve appeared, but this time he didn’t pick up a crayon or even look at the table. He sat in silence, staring directly into the camera with an intensity that felt almost predatory. His once-cheerful smile was gone, replaced by a grim line, and his skin looked waxy, nearly translucent. A chill seeped through the room as he opened his mouth, his voice lower than ever before.
“Hello, Martin.”
I froze. My heart thudded painfully as my name echoed through the speakers, the sound almost crackling with distortion. I tried to tell myself it was just a coincidence, some trick my mind was playing on me after too many sleepless nights. But his eyes bored into me, the screen warping slightly around his face as he spoke.
“You’ve been watching,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I knew you would. They knew you would.” He tilted his head slightly, his lips twitching into something that was neither a smile nor a frown. “Do you know about the dark room, Martin?”
I leaned forward, unable to stop myself. My hands gripped the arms of my chair, knuckles white, as if bracing for impact. The screen flickered, momentarily obscuring Steve with bursts of static, and when the picture returned, he was closer, filling almost the entire frame.
“The dark room is where they wait,” he continued, his eyes unblinking, pupils wide and black. “It’s behind the colors, beyond the screen. It’s where the lost things go… where the eyes can’t see.”
He lifted a hand slowly, pointing just past the camera, as though he could see through the screen and into my living room. “They see you, Martin,” he whispered. “They’ve seen you since the first tape.”
The static surged again, and for a moment, the screen flickered, revealing what looked like a shadowed room. The walls were covered in crude, childlike drawings—faces scribbled in jagged lines, each one eyeless, scratched out with heavy strokes of charcoal. The drawings seemed to pulse, almost as if they were breathing, watching even without eyes.
The camera returned to Steve, but his face was shifting. His eyes seemed to darken further, hollowing into voids that stretched and pulled at the edges of his face. He didn’t blink, didn’t move, as he stared unceasingly into the camera.
“Do you know what they want, Martin?” he murmured, his voice now barely a thread of sound. “They want to be seen. To be let in.”
The image distorted, lines rippling across his face as though he were dissolving. Behind him, the walls of his “studio” melted away, replaced by shadows that stretched endlessly into the darkness. I could almost make out shapes shifting within it, hands clawing toward the light, fingers pressing against some invisible barrier. They seemed close—too close.
The camera zoomed in, closing in on Steve’s face until his features blurred, his eyes becoming bottomless pits. He whispered one final sentence, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“You can’t stop now, Martin. You’ve seen too much. You’re part of it now.”
Then he went silent, his face frozen, unblinking. The tape continued running, but he didn’t move. His eyes held mine for what felt like hours, dark and empty, until the screen finally cut to static.
The tape ended, but the silence felt wrong—like a pause, like a breath being held. My eyes drifted to the TV, feeling like something was watching me back. The silence stretched, heavy and unnatural.
And then, faintly, I heard it again. My own name, whispered from somewhere within the darkness of the screen.
I’d told myself I wouldn’t watch another tape. I’d even gone so far as to pack the whole box away in the attic, determined to get it out of sight, to break whatever spell it had over me. But it didn’t matter. Each night, I felt the tapes calling to me, whispering in the back of my mind, clawing at my willpower. I’d wake up drenched in sweat, my own name echoing in my head, feeling that same unnatural pull toward the tapes.
By the third night, I was back in front of the TV, holding the next tape in my hands, numb and resigned. I pushed it into the VCR and braced myself as the screen flickered to life.
Steve’s image appeared, his expression more strained, as if he was fighting something inside of himself. The walls around him were darker now, and the light was dimmer, casting shadows that seemed to cling to him like a second skin. He didn’t greet the viewer this time. He simply picked up a crayon and began to draw.
The paper in front of him showed the faint outline of a face, just the barest suggestion of features. He worked slowly, filling in the eyes first. But instead of drawing the typical cartoonish, happy eyes he usually gave his characters, these were dark, hollow voids, stretching deeper and deeper with each stroke of the crayon. A strange shiver ran down my spine as I watched, and the hairs on my arms prickled with unease.
Steve’s face remained expressionless, his hands moving methodically, almost mechanically, as he added twisted, unnatural smiles to each face. His humming started then, a tuneless, off-key lullaby that made my skin crawl. The sound was low, droning, like a broken music box just on the edge of discord.
The camera angle shifted, zooming in on the faces he was drawing. At first, they were unfamiliar, haunting strangers with voided eyes and ghastly smiles. But as he continued, my chest tightened. The faces began to look disturbingly familiar. The shape of the chin, the curve of the nose, the slight crook in a smile—I recognized these people. They were people I knew. My friends, my family.
One by one, he drew them, distorting their expressions with each stroke, dragging their features into grotesque parodies of themselves. I clenched my fists, fingers digging into my palms as I saw my best friend’s face emerge, his eyes dark, hollow pits. Then my brother, his mouth twisted into a sickly grin, the joy drained from his expression. My mother’s face appeared next, and I felt a sharp pang of fear and anger. What was he doing? Why was he doing this?
And then, with an unsettling calm, Steve began sketching the outline of a new face—the features somehow more familiar, more immediate. My own face.
The crayon moved slowly, tracing the shape of my jaw, the slight crease of my brow, the set of my mouth. I watched, unable to breathe, as he filled in the eyes, two yawning voids that seemed to bore into my soul. My mouth was pulled into a hideous smile, a grin that felt like it belonged to a corpse.
The humming grew louder, off-key and warbling, as if Steve was singing to himself from some dark, forgotten place. The static on the screen surged, and beneath it, I could hear something faint—screaming. Distant, distorted, layered over itself a thousand times, a chorus of tormented voices that chilled me to the bone.
Steve’s hand stilled for a moment, his expression flat, almost serene. He lifted an eraser, holding it between his fingers with a reverence that seemed almost ceremonial. Slowly, he brought it down to the face on the paper, pressing it to my eyes first. The charcoal lines smeared, blurring my face until the eyes were obliterated, leaving only an empty, black void.
With a detached calm, he erased the rest, one stroke at a time, until my face was nothing more than a shadow on the paper, a ghostly outline fading into nothingness.
He looked up, his gaze meeting mine through the screen. For the first time, I saw the faintest glimmer of a smile. It wasn’t his usual cheerful grin; this was something darker, something triumphant.
The static swallowed the screen, and the tape ended, leaving me sitting in the dark, numb and hollow. The image of my erased face lingered in my mind, a chilling reminder that whatever this was, it had me in its grasp.
And somewhere in the silence, just on the edge of hearing, I thought I heard my own name whispered, one last time:
“Martin.”
The envelope was tucked between the last tape and the bottom of the VHS box. I hadn’t noticed it before, my hands trembling too violently as I’d hastily grabbed the tapes, driven by an almost animalistic need to see it all. But now, it was impossible to ignore. The yellowed paper was folded neatly, pressed in such a way that it felt like a secret had been buried inside.
I hesitated before opening it, the weight of dread pressing down on me. I already knew it was a mistake. But I opened it anyway.
Inside was a single page, a coloring book illustration. It was simple at first glance—Steve, smiling, holding a crayon in one hand, a piece of paper in the other. His pastel-colored background was soft, inviting. A scene that seemed to promise the same innocence that the tapes had pretended to offer at the beginning.
But there was something about his smile. It had changed, just slightly, in the way it was drawn. The edges were sharper, the eyes slightly more hollow, as if they were trying to escape from the paper. It was a drawing, yes, but it felt too real. Too alive. As though the lines themselves were moving, shifting under the weight of something darker.
I felt sick.
I shoved the page back into the envelope, my hands trembling. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t look away.
I put the final tape in the VCR.
The screen flickered as usual, and there he was. Steve. But he looked different this time—more ragged, more strained. His hair was disheveled, his clothes torn. The pastel background had all but vanished. Now, there was only darkness behind him, an endless void. The room where he once sat was gone. The soft colors were replaced by something much more sinister. The edges of the frame were blurred with an oily darkness, as though reality itself was fraying.
“Hello, Martin,” Steve said. His voice was barely recognizable, a low rasp as though it had been dragged through a thousand miles of static.
His eyes locked onto mine, as if he were looking directly at me through the screen. There was something unnatural about it, a pull that I couldn’t explain. He didn’t smile—not at first. Instead, his eyes were wide, too wide, stretching with something wrong.
“Do you want to finish the picture, Martin?” he asked, his voice sliding through the static, sounding both distant and right next to me at the same time.
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t move. I could feel my heart racing, the walls of my living room closing in around me. The room behind Steve began to bleed into the scene, not just on the screen but into my reality. The shadows began creeping out, like ink spilling from a page, black tendrils reaching into my own world.
I heard it then—scratching, faint but growing louder. From inside the walls. I turned, my breath caught in my throat. It was like something was clawing at the plaster, scraping relentlessly, just beyond my reach. I could almost hear the shapes, the figures behind the walls, crawling toward me. They were coming.
“Don’t you see?” Steve’s voice purred, now much closer. “You’re already part of it. They are waiting for you.”
The screen flickered violently, static surging, distorting Steve’s face. It warped, his features shifting and twisting, eyes bulging, mouth stretching into a gaping hole, teeth too sharp and jagged to count. The smile that had once seemed innocent now became a grotesque mask of hunger, the crayon in his hand twitching as though it had a life of its own.
And then, the room behind him—the room in the show—was here. I could see it clearly, the shadows crawling over the walls, the crooked furniture, the scratches on the walls that hadn’t been there before.
The scratchings in the walls grew louder. They were inside my house now. Inside me.
The screen went black.
I sat in the dark, heart hammering, breaths shallow and ragged. For a moment, there was only silence.
Then I heard it.
“You’re part of it now,” Steve whispered.
The static hummed back to life, the image of Steve flickering, but now the screen was filled with only one thing—my reflection. It was me, sitting in the chair, staring blankly at the screen. My hands were clenched around a crayon. I hadn’t even realized I’d picked it up.
I was mirroring Steve’s pose. My mouth was frozen in a twisted smile.
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at the screen. I couldn’t look away, even as the sound of scratching filled the room, growing louder, closer.
The picture of Steve in the coloring book changed again, his eyes now wide and hollow, his smile stretching unnaturally across the page.
I had to finish it.
But I couldn’t stop drawing.
I couldn’t stop.