Story classification: Original fiction. This story was created for darkrecord’s Dreams & Premonitions archive and is not presented as personal testimony or a documented event.
When a child draws the future, the first predictions seem harmless—until Lucy sketches a boy trapped beneath the ice.
Lucy was six when she began drawing things that had not happened yet.
The first picture showed a blue cup broken beneath the kitchen table.
The following morning, Nora knocked the cup from the counter while reaching for the cereal.
The second showed a fox lying beside the school gate. That afternoon, traffic stopped while a young fox wandered across the road.
The third showed their neighbour standing beneath a yellow umbrella.
It did not rain that day, but a plumbing pipe burst above him in the entrance hall. He grabbed the nearest object to shield himself.
A yellow umbrella.
Nora tried to treat the pictures as coincidences.
Children absorbed more than adults realized. Lucy might have seen the cracked cup or heard someone mention rain. Human beings were skilled at finding patterns after events occurred.
Then Lucy drew the boy beneath the ice.
She used a dark blue crayon for the water and left the boy’s face white. One hand pressed against the underside of a jagged black line.
Above the ice stood a red sled.
Nora recognized it.
The sled belonged to nine-year-old Adam Weiss, who lived two houses away.
“When did you draw this?” Nora asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“You mean you’re going to finish it tomorrow?”
Lucy shook her head.
“It happened tomorrow.”
That evening, Nora called Adam’s mother and invented a warning about thin ice near the quarry pond. Mrs Weiss assured her that Adam was staying with his father until Sunday.
At 10:30 the following morning, Nora saw Adam pulling the red sled past her window.
She ran outside without shoes.
Adam had returned early and planned to meet friends near the pond. Nora frightened him so badly with her shouting that he began to cry. She called his mother, who came running from the house.
They found a fresh break in the ice less than twenty metres from where the children had intended to play.
After that, Nora could no longer call the drawings harmless.
She bought Lucy a calendar and asked her to place each picture beneath the day it belonged to.
The system worked for almost a month.
Lucy drew a power outage, a fallen tree and a dog escaping through an open gate. None of the events was catastrophic, but Nora prevented two of them.
Then Lucy drew their bedroom.
Nora lay asleep beneath the blanket.
A second figure stood beside the bed.
It had Nora’s height and Nora’s hair, but its face was covered by violent circles of black crayon.
Lucy had drawn herself beneath the bed.
“Who is this?” Nora asked, pointing to the figure.
“The other Mum.”
“What does she want?”
“To be here when you wake up.”
Nora felt cold spread across her back.
“When does this happen?”
Lucy tapped the next square on the calendar.
“Thursday.”
It was Tuesday.
Nora took Lucy to a hotel on Wednesday afternoon. She told her husband, Patrick, that the house had a gas leak. Patrick was away for work and accepted the explanation without much concern.
The hotel room was on the sixth floor. It had one door, sealed windows and no space beneath the bed.
Lucy examined it carefully.
“She can still come,” she said.
“Who can?”
“The one who dreams about us.”
That night, Nora slept with every light on.
At 2:40 a.m., she woke to the sound of crayons moving across paper.
Lucy sat at the small desk.
“What are you drawing?”
Lucy covered the page with both arms.
“Nothing.”
Nora gently pulled the picture free.
It showed the hotel room.
Nora stood beside the bed with her hands covering her face.
Lucy lay asleep beneath the blanket.
A tall black shape watched from the bathroom.
“You said it happened at home.”
Lucy began to cry.
“I thought that was home.”
The bathroom light went out.
Nora grabbed Lucy and ran into the corridor. She called reception from the elevator and reported an intruder.
Security searched the room.
No one was found.
The next morning, Patrick returned unexpectedly. Nora told him everything. He listened patiently, then suggested that Lucy’s drawings were influencing Nora’s interpretation of ordinary events.
“She’s scared because you’re scared,” he said.
Lucy stood in the doorway behind him.
Her face had gone pale.
“What is it?” Nora asked.
Lucy pointed at Patrick.
“That’s not Dad’s dream.”
Patrick turned slowly.
“What did you say?”
Lucy ran.
The house lights failed at exactly 11:13 p.m.
Nora found Lucy hiding beneath her own bed, just as the drawing had shown.
Footsteps crossed the hallway.
“Nora?” Patrick called from downstairs.
Another Patrick stood in the bedroom doorway.
This one smiled.
Nora looked beneath the bed.
Lucy pressed a finger to her lips.
The Patrick in the doorway entered.
His face changed as he moved through the darkness. His hair lengthened. His shoulders narrowed.
By the time he reached the bed, he looked exactly like Nora.
The other Nora leaned down.
“You’ve been changing the pictures,” she whispered. “That isn’t allowed.”
Nora seized the bedside lamp and struck her.
The figure folded inward like wet paper. For a second, Nora saw something enormous behind the human shape—an eye opening in a room without walls.
Then the lights returned.
Patrick rushed upstairs.
The figure was gone.
Lucy emerged from beneath the bed holding one final drawing.
It showed Nora and Lucy standing together in the bedroom.
Patrick was not there.
At the edge of the page, a small door had been drawn in red.
“Where is Dad?” Nora asked.
Lucy looked toward the hallway.
“He woke up.”
Patrick entered the room behind them.
He appeared normal.
He sounded normal.
But when he saw the drawing, he smiled with someone else’s mouth.
That night, Nora locked herself and Lucy in the bathroom.
Patrick sat outside until morning.
He never knocked.
He only breathed against the door.
At sunrise, the sound stopped.
When Nora finally opened it, the hallway was empty.
Patrick’s car remained outside. His phone lay on the kitchen counter. Every photograph containing him had changed.
Nora and Lucy stood beside an empty space.
The police treated him as a missing person.
Lucy has not drawn the future since.
She draws only one thing now.
A red door.
It appears in every picture, no matter what the picture is meant to show.
Yesterday, she drew the bathroom.
The red door stood where the mirror should have been.
Beneath the drawing, in handwriting that did not belong to a child, were six words:
HE IS LEARNING HOW TO RETURN.
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