Blood Red

Hearing them, knowing they were right outside the house and talking, took all of the strength from Alan’s limbs. He made himself slide along the wall until he could look toward the broken window he knew was close by.

Vampires can’t get in unless they’re invited, right? That’s what it says in all the movies. They’ve got to know more than I do. Okay. So how did Avery get in? Damned fool. You invited him.

What else was supposed to work on vampires? He thought fast and hard and finally decided to move into the living room. There, on the end table where she always kept it, was Meghan’s family Bible. The bookmark that held her place in the book was a crucifix on a leather strap. He pulled the book to him and carried it in his left, wounded hand, the bookmark in his right. He felt heat surging through the wound and clenched his teeth.

Avery stood in front of him, trying to coax his mother through the window and having no success.

“Come on, Mom, you can do it.”

She reached again then backed away, her expression showing her frustration. “I can’t. Something is stopping me.”

Alan watched her try again and fail. The sweet face he’d fallen in love with back in their senior year of high school— long before they dated, but it was love—grew ugly with anger and she snarled. He’d never seen her with that look on her face. He wasn’t sure her face had ever been designed for that sort of rage. She was like an almost perfect copy of the woman he married. He hated the thing outside his back door for that reason; hated it easily as much as he had ever loved his wife.

“Meghan.” His voice broke when he said her name and he felt the sting of tears threatening to escape. God, how he’d loved her; how she had completed him.

Avery turned to face him and so did his wife. “Alan? Can I come in?”

She had to ask. That much was true at least. They couldn’t come in unless they were invited; he wondered if all of the evil things in the world had that limitation. Maybe, he thought. Otherwise how could there be anything left?

“Yeah, hon. Come on in.”

Her sweet, sweet smile was his reward as she gracefully stepped past the window that the two things had shattered. Broke that fucker apart, Meghan; he looked at the fragments of glass on the ground and was surprised to see that they cast reflections in the shards. The reflections showed a different Meghan, one who’d been dead for two days and an Avery who’d been dead most of a week.

Same as you did my heart and soul.

“Alan, we’ve missed you, baby.” Yes, oh that one hurt. That perfect smile on that perfect face as she came toward him with her arms opened, ready to hug him and to love him again.

He wished he could believe it for a moment. A thousand times he wished he could believe it as Meghan and Avery came closer.

Alan held out the crucifix, showed it to them and let them see what he carried. Avery flinched, but Meghan kept coming. Alan waved it around to make sure she saw it.

“Silly man,” she smiled and grabbed the cross in her hand, drawing the cord from between his numbed fingers. She held it up for him to see and then kissed it with her full lips. Her eyes lit up with amusement. “It’s just a pretty little trinket if you don’t believe in it.”

Avery bit him on his wrist, sharp teeth cutting through his flesh with the greatest of ease. The Bible fell to the ground as he tried to shake his son free.

Meghan dropped the necklace and reached for his face with her hands. Her strength was amazing. Avery had been powerful, but Meghan was so much bigger than a ten-year-old boy.

Alan kneed his son in the chest and, as Avery staggered back from him, spitting blood and profanities, he brought his left hand around to punch the monster with Meghan’s features as hard as he could in her face. His right hand came into play too, groping along the bookshelf that held most of the family’s mementos.

Meghan barely flinched from his fist, which flared into a lightning blast of pain as he tore the stitches from the infected wound. His right hand caught a picture frame that held their favorite wedding photo. He brought the edge of the frame around and slammed it into her right temple hard enough to bend the polished chrome corner and drive slivers of breaking glass into his fingertips.

She let out a small gasp of pain as the flesh on her temple dented inward, and then Meghan caught his hand in her grip and squeezed until his bones broke and the Kodachrome memory was sliced apart by glass and bathed in his blood.

Avery lunged forward and sank his teeth into Alan’s crotch, gnashing and savaging even as his tiny hands sank into Alan’s thigh with enough force to tear the denim covering his flesh.