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My son, sitting at the table, looked up instantly.
“He’s here,” he whispered.
I froze.
“Who is here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
He didn’t answer.
Another knock came.
I walked slowly to the door, every instinct telling me to look through the peephole first. But I didn’t see anyone clearly. Just a blurred shape standing outside.
I opened the door.
There was no man in a red hat.
Instead, there was a delivery worker holding a small box.
“Package for you,” he said casually, checking his clipboard.
I signed without thinking.
The man left.
And suddenly, the street outside looked completely normal again.
I closed the door and stared at the box.
It was small. No return address I recognized. Just my name written neatly on the front.
My son stood behind me silently.
I opened it.
Inside were sketchbooks. Dozens of them. All blank. Perfectly new. On top of them was a single folded note.
I hesitated before opening it.
The note read:
“Keep drawing. The story is just starting.”
My hands went cold.
There was no signature. No explanation.
I turned around immediately to ask my son what he knew about this, but he was already smiling.
“I told you he’d come,” he said softly.
My heart started racing.
“Who is he?” I asked.
My son shrugged like it was obvious. “The man in the red hat.”
I tried to stay calm. “Honey, that’s not real. That’s just drawings.”
But he shook his head.
“He said you’d say that.”
That night, I barely slept. I kept replaying everything in my mind. The drawings. The message. The timing of the package. It all felt connected in a way I couldn’t explain logically.
The next morning, I decided to check everything properly.
I went through his old drawings again. One by one.
And that’s when I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.
The man wasn’t just standing randomly in each drawing.
In every single one, he was positioned near something small in the corner. A mailbox. A streetlamp. A classroom wall. A door.
Always near something connected to arrival or entry.
I felt a chill.
Later that day, I went to his school.
I asked his teacher if he had mentioned anything unusual.
She smiled gently. “Actually… your son has been very active in art lately. He’s been drawing more than ever. Other kids have started asking to join him.”
Then she added something unexpected.
“He always draws the same figure. We thought it was symbolic. Like a guide.”
A guide.
That word stayed with me.
When I got home, my son was sitting at the table again, already drawing.
The man in red was there again. But this time, something was different.
There was a door behind him.
A door I didn’t recognize.
“Where is that?” I asked quietly.
My son didn’t look up.
“It’s where he takes me when I draw him enough,” he said.
My chest tightened. “Takes you where?”
He finally looked at me.
“To the place where ideas come from.”
Silence filled the room.