The first time my son knocked on my door, it was just past midnight.
“Dad?” He said quietly. “There’s blood everywhere.”
I blinked and leapt out of bed immediately, then followed him down the hallway. He stood at the top of the stairs, clutching the railing.
“Where?” I asked.
“Everywhere,” he said. “On the floor in my room. Kitchen.”
I turned on the lights and walked through the house, looking around carefully. The wooden floorboards looked the same as always. The sink had a few marks, but nothing unusual.
I crouched beside him. “There’s nothing there, buddy.”
I walked him back to bed and tucked him in, but he didn’t look convinced as I turned off the lights.
The next night, it happened again.
“Dad, there’s still blood.”
I sighed and got up, then checked again. Same floors, marks and no blood anywhere.
“Enough,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “You’re just scaring yourself.”
He went quiet after that.
On the third night, he didn’t knock – he just stood in my doorway, already crying.
“It’s worse,” he whispered, rubbing his eyes. “There’s more now.”
That was when I stopped being annoyed and started getting concerned. The next morning, I took him to the doctor. We went into the office, and he listened patiently as my son described what he was seeing.
“There’s blood everywhere,” he said. “On the floor, in the sink. It’s all red.”
The doctor glanced at me. “You haven’t noticed anything like that, I assume?”
“Of course not,” I said. “Nothing. The house looks completely normal.”
He nodded, then ran a few basic checks on my son – a vision test, eye movement, simple questions. Everything seemed fine.
Then he pulled out a set of cards with patterned dots on them.
“What number do you see?” he asked my son.
“Seventy-four.”
“Good, and this one?”
“Six.”
I stared at the dots, just a mess of colours.
Then it hit me like a truck when I remembered. I leaned over and interrupted the test, my heart racing.
“…I don’t see anything.”
The doctor paused, then held the card closer to me. I shook my head.
He leaned back slightly and pointed at me. “You’re red-green colorblind.”
I exhaled. “I remember now, from when I was younger. Had a doctor tell me that.”
He nodded, finally understanding.
“Most people adapt,” he said. “You stop noticing. If you’re driving, you look at the position of the traffic lights instead, not the color. But it means anything that looks red to other people, blood, for example, can look dark to you – brown, black or just part of the background.”
He paused.
“I think you should take what your son is saying seriously.”
My pulse accelerated immediately.
I asked the doctor if my son could stay with the receptionist for a while, then darted outside. Then I called my neighbor as I got into my car.
“Are you free right now?” I asked.
“Yeah man, what’s up?”
I tried to steady my breathing as I started the ignition.
“Can you do me a favor when you get back?”
When I got back to the house, he was waiting for me by the front yard as I asked. I unlocked the door, and I glanced back at him as he followed me in.
His eyebrows raised as soon as he entered, and his jaw dropped.
“Jesus… there’s blood everywhere.”
I swallowed.
“Where?”
“You can’t see it?”
I let out an exasperated grunt.
“No, I’m red-green colorblind, apparently.”
He gestured down around at the floor as we walked through the hallway and into the kitchen.
“A trail, smeared across the floor. Like someone’s been crawling. It’s in the sink too… We should call the police.”
“Not yet,” I said, anger rising in my chest. I grabbed my pistol out of the top kitchen cabinet and turned to him. “Show me where the rest of it goes.”
We went upstairs.
“Straight ahead,” he said. “Don’t step left.”
I moved carefully, my eyes seeing nothing but the familiar patchy wood I always saw, while he described something else entirely.
“It’s all dried up, but looks pretty thick.”
We kept moving through the upstairs hallway.
“Stops here.”
He pointed up. My son’s door.
“There’s handprints on the door,” he continued.
A chill ran through me as I reached for the handle.
“Careful,” he whispered.
I opened the door and we looked around.
“It’s on the floor in this room too. There’s some under the bed,” he said, bending down. Then he stumbled backwards in shock.
I bent down, and at first I couldn’t see anything. Just darkness.
Then…
A pair of eyes reflecting the light, staring straight at me. My eyes widened.
The man didn’t move. He looked weak, barely conscious, blinking slowly as he stared back at me. His eyes were unfocused, like he wasn’t fully there. His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths, each one sounding like it took effort.
I could hear my pulse thumping in my ears, loud and heavy, drowning everything else out. My grip on the gun tightened, then loosened – he didn’t look like someone about to attack. I lowered the gun slowly.
Behind me, my neighbor let out a shaky breath. “We need to get out,” he whispered.
I nodded, not taking my eyes off the man as we backed out of the room, step by careful step. The floor creaked under us, and I half expected him to lunge out from under the bed, but he didn’t. He just lay there, watching.
We got the hell out of there and called the police.
They found he’d broken in through the spare guest room, cutting himself badly on the window when he climbed through. There was glass still embedded in his hands and arms. He’d tried to move through the house, leaving a trail behind him, but he’d lost too much blood.
Too weak to leave, he’d crawled from room to room, eventually dragging himself into my son’s room. The space under the bed was just big enough to hide in. He’d wedged himself into the far corner, out of sight, and stayed there. Barely alive, and waiting for God knows what.
He’d been there for days, inches away from my son.
I shook my head as I sat on my son’s bed later that week.
“I’m so sorry buddy,” I said quietly. “You were right all along.”
“I told you,” he said quietly, his voice cracking.
I swallowed.
“I know.”
Then I looked down at the floor, still just dark patches to me, and swallowed. He’d been telling me the truth for three nights.
I just couldn’t see it.
submitted by /u/TwistedUrbanTales
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