Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

"He called it the waiting room," Yasmin said. "He said that's where all the taken children go. They have to stand there forever, just like the watchers. Waiting for someone to say their names. Waiting for someone to remember them."

Amal stared at the drawing. It was rendered in dark colors—blacks and grays and the ever-present rust-red of the watchers' eyes. But in one corner, almost too small to see, a child had drawn a word in careful letters.

HELP.

"What do we do?" Amal asked. "How do we help them?"

Yasmin's laugh was bitter, exhausted. "I don't know. I'm a psychologist, not a—" She stopped, shook her head. "I don't know what this is. It's not trauma, not in any clinical sense. It's not mass hysteria. It's not shared delusion. The children are seeing something real. Something that exists. And I don't know how to treat that. I don't know how to make it stop."

"The song," Amal said suddenly. "During the lockdown. The children sang a song. About the watchers."

"What kind of song?"

"Something about standing where the blood fell. About watching forever. About how if we forget, they grow, but if we see them —if we remember—they have to wait."

Yasmin's face went pale. "Who taught them that?"

"No one. They just... knew it. They all knew it. They sang it together, in perfect unison, and then they forgot they had ever sung at all."

The two women stared at each other in the gathering darkness of the office. Outside, the sun was setting, and the shadows were growing longer, and somewhere in the city, children were going home to bedrooms where watchers might or might not be standing, waiting for the moment when everyone looked away.

"I need to go," Amal said. "I need to get Noor."

"Be careful," Yasmin said. "Whatever's happening—it's accelerating. More children are seeing them. More places are being marked. And the things the children are saying—" She broke off, as if unwilling to continue.

"What are they saying?"

"That something is coming. That the watchers are preparing for something. That soon, they won't just be watching anymore."

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