Blood Red

And even if he hadn’t wanted it that way, Meghan would have settled the situation. Had he waited much longer his wife would have gone down to his workshop and come up with his chainsaw, gunning the engine for all it was worth.

Avery was weak, but seemed unharmed otherwise. He was happy to be home and had almost become fused to his mother’s side. Alan couldn’t blame him. The poor kid had been gone for two days.

When the doctors were finally done and he’d shooed away the news people and even the police, Alan went up to tuck his wife and son into Avery’s bed. Meghan had made very clear that she would not be leaving her son alone for a few nights and that was just fine. He needed to get a little rest himself.

Meghan was still awake when he entered the room. Avery was sound asleep, his eyes closed and his breathing regular.

“You okay, hon?” He spoke in a whisper, just in case Avery had suddenly become a light sleeper.

“Yeah,” she nodded and started to tear up again. He leaned over and kissed her on the lips and then held her against his shoulder as she cried for a few minutes. He cried, too. The thought that he’d almost lost his son was enough to make him want to wither up and die.

“Yeah, baby. I’m good. I couldn’t be better.”

“I love you, Meghan. Get yourself some sleep.”

“You too, okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” he nodded his emphasis and wiped at his eyes. “Yeah, baby, I plan to. I’m just going to lock everything up.”

He left the two most important people in his world in each other’s arms, and turned off the light. Then he moved back down the stairs and systematically switched every light off that illuminated the lower level. He also checked every door and window, even going so far as to search the basement, because the one thing that Avery couldn’t answer so far was where he had been. The only thing he could tell them was that it had been very dark and there were other people down there as well.

So he wasn’t taking any chances. He checked everywhere twice before he went upstairs and into the empty master bedroom.

He was asleep before he even hit the bed. The last seventy-two hours had been hellish at best.

He was unconscious before the reporter from the local rag came snooping around outside of the house. He remained unaware of the attempt to open the locked doors.

Leo Marconelli was a busy man and he wanted to get a scoop that would rock the area. He didn’t have time to get into investigative reporting, but he was pretty sure he could make up a good tale. The panties had cost him a small fortune, but his source promised they belonged to Carla Whittaker. Once they were planted in the workshop he’d spotted when he was sneaking around the house earlier, he could point a finger at Alan Tripp and make sure that everyone knew it was his investigative reporting that caught her killer. After that, no one would give a good goddamn about a little kid that managed to get un-lost, or a corpse that disappeared from the hospital. Oh sure, later there would be all sorts of questions about how the panties had gotten there, and about how Leo had known. But that would be later after the celebrity had stuck to him, and he would deal with those situations as they arose.

“Excuse me, mister?”

Marconelli didn’t actually let out a shriek. It was more of a squeak.

He turned to see who was behind him and almost wet himself when he saw the kid. Not the one from this house, but the one who was supposed to be dead.

“Holy shit, kid! What are you doing, trying to give me a heart attack?”

“I’m lost. Will you help me?”

“Yeah, of course I will.” He tried to smile in a friendly manner. “You bet I will. What’s your name?” He knew, of course, but he needed to confirm.

“Teddy Lister.”

“Well, Teddy, why don’t we get you home. I’ll drive you.”

The Lister kid backed up a bit, looking nervous. “I don’t need to go home. That isn’t what I lost.”

“Yeah? What did you lose?” He was afraid of going home. Suddenly Marconelli was glad he hadn’t managed to slip the panties into the Tripp house. The Lister kid’s family was already sounding like a juicier target. If the kid didn’t want to go home, there had to be a good reason.

Teddy Lister smiled for his new friend, his eyes blazing in the darkness. “I lost my soul. Can I have yours?”

Marconelli never even had a chance to scream before the kid was all over him. Small, powerful hands grabbed his mouth and clamped it shut with enough pressure to burst the reporter’s lips. When he tried to pull back, the boy added more pressure until he felt his cheekbone crack and fracture from the force.

He punched the kid in his sweetly smiling face and almost broke his own hand. The kid didn’t even blink. He just squeezed even harder, until his fingers suddenly pressed together in the shattered ruin of the reporter’s lower jaw and sinus passages.

Marconelli was lucky. He wasn’t awake for the rest of what was done to him.

V

Ben waited until the sun rose before he went to sleep. Maggie didn’t make it home.