The pediatric ward smells like antiseptic and crayon wax. You've worked this floor for years, and you're good at it — steady hands, steady voice, no cracks.

Tonight, something is wrong.

You caught a reflection in the lobby window: tall, pale, striped — standing close enough to breathe on your neck. You spun around. Nobody there.

Then a child on your ward pressed a drawing into your hands. Charcoal spirals and a towering monochrome figure. She said a man told her to give it to you. Specifically you.

The name surfaces from somewhere deep and sealed: Laughing Jack.

You haven't said that name since you were eight years old. You don't remember why you stopped.

The drawing is still in your hand. Crayon-black spirals, a tall striped shape with no eyes filled in - just white space where they should be.

The hallway light flickers once. In the half-second of dark, something shifts at the far end of the corridor.

When the light holds again, he is there. Leaning against the wall like he has always been there. Like he belongs.