“Red sky at night,” My husband said, smiling. “Shepherd’s delight.”

What a bizarre turn of phrase. The sky is red, and it has always been red. I side-eyed the love of my life, sighed at what I deemed to be a dull joke, then swivelled on the beach blanket to face him.

“What do you mean, Holden?” I asked.

He frowned, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. “Me? What do you mean? Have you never heard that expression?”

“No…” I said. “It feels a bit redundant. The sky’s always red.”

“Yeah… Other than the times that it’s blue,” Holden laughed, squeezing my hand. “Ditzy Dahlia strikes again.”

Is this the Mandela Effect? I wondered. Did I slip into an alternate reality with a blue sky? Am I going crazy?

“Nice try. You’re not going to prank me,” I said.

“Right back at you,” Holden snorted, holding his phone screen in front of my face. “Look. The sky is blue. Google says so. Everyone says so.”

We argued about it for a little, before eventually tiring and going to bed. When I woke the next morning, the sky still looked red to me. But Holden insisted it to be blue, as did my concerned friends and family. And that was when I really started to feel frightened. I realised I was seeing something that nobody else could see. I wondered why the topic of a blue sky hadn’t ever come up in conversation before.

It had. Of course it had. And worse than that, I’d once believed it to be blue too.

So, what changed? Was it a psychotic break? Psychologists tried to ascertain whether I’d experienced some sort of neurological trauma, and doctors ran brain scans to search for signs of physical damage. Nobody could pinpoint the problem.

And I’d never experienced any mental health issues, so this sudden disconnect from reality — well, everyone else’s reality — terrified me. Ironically, it ended up being enough to challenge my mental well-being, if I hadn’t already been experiencing psychological problems. Catch 22.

But then I started to notice other things.

“Please, Holden,” I begged. “Tell me you’re joking.”

My husband looked at me with frightful eyes. “You’re scaring me, Dahlia. First the red sky, and now this… No, there aren’t giant holes in the Earth that open and close. When’s your next hospital appointment?”

“Thursday,” I said, teary-eyed.

Holden held my hand again. “I want to call Dr Hanson tonight. Is that okay? He said we could contact him whenever we need him. I’m certain the doctors have missed something important. I want them to do the tests again.”

I begrudgingly obliged. When we arrived at the hospital, Holden engaged in a heated debate with Dr Hanson, and that’s when a grey-haired, strangely-serene lady entered the main lobby. She patted my husband on the shoulder, and he led her over to me.

“This is Dr Lang, honey,” Holden said. “Apparently, the hospital contacted her last night, and she flew over from the States to help us.”

“Hello, Dahlia,” Dr Lang warmly said. “Do you think you’d feel comfortable with a private conversation?”

I nodded feebly and followed Dr Lang down a sparse hospital corridor, away from prying eyes and ears.

“I was contacted for a reason, Dahlia,” Dr Lang explained. “You’ll be pleased to hear that you’re not a special case — there is a solution. There are others.”

“Others?” I asked.

She nodded. “Others who have spoken of red skies and… things that ordinary folk cannot see.”

I gulped. “So, it is a psychological thing? Hallucinations?”

When Dr Lang ferociously shook her head, I was perplexed to find that I didn’t feel comforted. Being diagnosed with sudden-onset schizophrenia had been a terrifying prospect, but I knew that the doctor still had awful news to deliver.

“Not hallucinations,” She said. “People with your ability have seen things which… affect our world behind the scenes. There are things that humans were never meant to see.”

That last sentence still rings in my mind, offering no respite from the horrors that would unfold — even two years later. But what frightened me at that moment was the hospital’s sudden power cut. I shrieked in horror, and the doctor frowned at me.

“Why haven’t the generators kicked in?” I asked.

“Generators?” She asked, before quickly shifting her demeanour. “Oh. What do you see, Dahlia?”

“The lights are out,” I whispered, shuddering in horror.

“No, Dahlia. They’re not,” Dr Lang assured me. “Listen, we haven’t got time for this. You’re in grave danger. They’re coming for you.”

“What’s coming for me?” I cried.

Red lighting filled the hospital. Not emergency lighting — some nightmarish, paranormal illumination, guiding the way through the labyrinth of terror in which I found myself. With my survival instincts seemingly disoriented, I screamed and hurtled my body through the hospital — Dr Lang was in tow.

“Dahlia! Listen to me!” She pleaded. “They don’t want you to see them. You’re not supposed to see them.”

And then I saw what she meant. Through a long glass pane, overlooking a patient’s room, I saw three macabre figures. Like inside-out corpses, their red-meat forms loomed over a man lying in a hospital bed. Doctors were frantically attempting to save him, but it was no use — the patient’s life was fading.

I saw the sheer primal horror in his eyes. Perhaps he saw the inhuman corpses before he died. Perhaps we all see them before we go. I think they might be reapers. I have nightmares about that patient. I think he felt one of the horrifying figures placing its red, meaty hands on his chest, crushing his heart.

Stillness followed.

“Time of death…” A doctor began.

I didn’t hear the rest. My screams drowned out the voices. In unison, the three unholy ghouls twisted their inside-out heads to face me. The supposed leader, which had killed the man in the bed, strolled to the glass pane.

In a sudden movement, its ghastly hand, veiny and fleshless, protruded through the glass with spectral ease. I tried to screech, but the slimy palm was already wrapped around my neck, constricting me.

“You shouldn’t be here, Dahlia Milton,” It snarled in a distorted, wheezy voice.

I croaked. “I… I don’t want to see any of this… Please, don’t kill me… Just help me… I want to see the blue sky.”

The thing had no eyes, but I know it surveyed me closely. Its cogs whirred and groaned. Judge, jury, and executioner. I was certain I already knew its judgement. Its two sinister associates slid forwards, stretching lifeless limbs towards me.

“Knowledge is sight,” It hissed. “You cannot un-see the way the world truly looks, even if we take your vision.”

As the world faded to black and I slipped away, my terrified lips uttered one final plea. “Show mercy.”

When the endless void consumed me, I assumed I had died. To wake in a hospital bed was an overwhelming relief. My husband tightly embraced me, but Dr Lang watched me with a disgruntled look on her face. It was when my husband left the room that she spoke her mind.

“Don’t worry. I can’t see weird things anymore,” I chirpily said.

“They took your gift, but they didn’t take your eyes,” Dr Lang whispered. “They always take the eyes. That’s what worries me. What did you say to them?”

I shrugged. “I just begged. Anyway, what about your solution? How did you save the others like me?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. Just pray they’ve truly shown mercy.”

There are things that humans were never meant to see.

The sky is red, and it has always been red. I know that. I can’t pretend otherwise. I’m just glad it looksblue again. If I put those murderous walking corpses out of my mind, they might spare me. They work behind the scenes, and it’s got nothing to do with me. It’s got nothing to do with any of us.

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