“Have you ever wondered what happens to makeup when it gets old?” my grandmother asked one evening, her trembling hands clutching an ancient eyebrow pencil.

I looked up from my phone, slightly annoyed. “They just dry up, don’t they?”

She cackled, the sound echoing off the dimly lit walls of her apartment. “Oh no, dear. They become… alive.”

I rolled my eyes. Grandma and her stories again. Ever since Grandpa passed away last year, she’d been getting increasingly eccentric.

“This pencil,” she continued, holding it up like a conductor’s baton, “has been with me for forty-three years. And every night, it draws by itself.”

“That’s physically impossible, Grandma.”

“Is it?” She smiled, her dentures gleaming. “Watch this.”

She placed the pencil on her vanity and turned off the lights. We sat in darkness, the only illumination coming from my phone screen.

“Grandma, this is—”

“Shh!”

And then I saw it. The pencil rolled, seemingly on its own, leaving a dark trail across the vanity’s surface. My phone clattered to the floor.

“What the hell?”

“Language, dear,” Grandma chided, but her voice held an unsettling playfulness. “It’s just saying hello.”

The pencil continued its dance, drawing what appeared to be a face. Not just any face – Grandpa’s face.

“You see,” Grandma explained, eerily calm, “makeup items that have been used to enhance beauty for so long eventually gain a consciousness of their own. They remember every face they’ve helped create.”

The drawing completed itself – a perfect portrait of Grandpa, down to his characteristic crooked smile.

“That’s why I never throw away my old makeup. They’re like family now.”

I stood up, backing away. “This isn’t funny, Grandma. How are you doing this?”

She ignored my question. “Would you like to try it? The pencil seems to have taken a liking to you.”

The pencil rolled in my direction. I stumbled backward, hitting the wall.

“No? Such a shame. It really wants to draw you.” She picked up the pencil, examining it lovingly. “Though I should warn you – once it starts drawing someone, it never stops. That’s why your grandfather’s face appears every night.”

“Is that why…” I swallowed hard. “Is that why you have all those drawings of Grandpa hidden under your bed?”

“Hidden?” She laughed. “Oh no, dear. Those aren’t hidden. They’re preserved. Each one is a piece of him, you see. And soon, there will be enough…”

She trailed off, her eyes glazing over with something I couldn’t quite read.

“Enough for what, Grandma?”

She smiled, but it wasn’t her usual warm expression. “Enough to bring him back, of course. Now, won’t you stay for one more drawing? The pencil insists.”

As I fled her apartment that night, I could have sworn I heard both her laughter and Grandpa’s, mingling in the darkness. The next morning, when I returned to check on her, I found the apartment empty – except for thousands of drawings scattered everywhere, and one very old, very worn eyebrow pencil, still warm to the touch.

Some say if you listen carefully on quiet nights, you can hear the scratch of a pencil drawing endlessly, somewhere between this world and the next.