The Unseen Playmate

The other night, I was reading A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson to my daughter before bed and came across the "The Unseen Playmate." The first two stanzas may be the most terrifying thing I've ever read:

"When children are playing alone on the green,
                     In comes the playmate that never was seen.
When children are happy and lonely and good,
                    The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.

Nobody hear him and nobody saw,
                    His is a picture you never could draw,
But he's sure to be present, abroad or at home,
                    When children are happy and playing along."

It instantly conjured images from Pinterest Dark Imagination board and got me thinking about a story I had been envisioning while creating that board. I'm currently working on something else, but this passage has certainly inspired me to revisit the horror story I had been thinking back a few years ago. Be afraid...be very afraid.