Blood Red

She found Ben Kirby sitting at the end of Sociology, his head in his hands. Ben was a good guy, even if he was so shy he made her look like a socialite. At the moment, he looked like he was ready to have a heart attack: his face was pale, his eyes were wide and he was staring off into outer space.

“Ben? You okay?”

He jumped when she spoke and looked around for a second before he focused on her. “Hi, Kelli.” He stared at her for several seconds without answering, and finally he shook his head. “No. I don’t think I am. I think I’m in big trouble.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Ben was never going to be the sort of guy she found attractive: he wasn’t nearly muscular enough for her tastes. He was, however, the sort of guy that made her want to mother him. If ever there had been a damaged person who was more likeable than Ben, she’d failed to run across him.

“No,” he frowned and stood up. “No, but thanks a lot for asking.” He moved past her before she could answer him and headed toward the library’s exit. Much as she wanted to see if he really did need her help, she couldn’t bring herself to follow him. His eyes were too haunted, and she’d seen enough of that sort of expression in the last few days; she saw it on the Listers and when she caught her face in the occasional reflection.

III

Avery Tripp was staying home for a few more days. His mother had already decided that. She was around constantly, and he didn’t mind at all.

Alan Tripp went back to work, dodging as many questions as he could and focusing instead on getting his job done. It was the sort of work he could do in his sleep, but he needed to get the hell out of the house before he lost his temper.

Avery was home, and that was a blessing, but his son was acting a little too strangely for his comfort. Something had happened to him while he was gone, but for the life of him, Alan couldn’t guess what it might have been. He’d been afraid of sexual molestation or the like, but there were no signs that he’d been misused that wretchedly.

But he wasn’t himself. And Meghan was exhausted from hanging around with him constantly. His wife was acting as strangely as her son, as if the idea of being separated from her only child for even a minute should be considered a sin. It wasn’t healthy and he didn’t like it. He needed her to calm down and he needed Avery to grow up. The problem was that he couldn’t articulate those facts without coming across like a monster without any feelings, and for that reason he was doing his best to avoid being home with them.

If that made him an insensitive bastard, he’d have to deal with it, because the notion of being around the two most important people in his life was making his skin crawl.

“I need to see a fucking shrink.” He stepped outside of the offices and moved to the smoke hole at the back of the building. There were times when his boss rode his ass hard for taking too many smoke breaks. At least for the present time, he was being allowed to come and go as he pleased.

Martin Sullivan was already outside when he got there. Martin was in the shipping and receiving department. He was a nice guy who was ten years younger than Alan and loved to go on and on about his sexual exploits. Alan would have taken offense, but Martin was just weird enough to make up stories that were humorous instead of just vulgar. Alan still got a chuckle whenever Martin went off about the female clown he’d scored with at the circus. Something about getting stuck in a clown car in a compromising position with a woman who wore more makeup than Tammy Faye Bakker. It was funny, but after the first few stories from Martin, everything sort of blurred together.

Today the man wasn’t smiling. His expression was anything but happy.

“How’s things, Martin?”

“Hi, Alan. Not so good.”

“What’s up?”

Martin looked at him and shook his head. “I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“Wrong how?”

“I’m having trouble keeping food down.” He looked more closely at Martin and wondered if the man might have caught a bad bug. He couldn’t have managed to look less energetic without being in a coffin.

“Maybe you need to take the rest of the day off.”

Martin nodded and, without another word, started walking toward the parking lot. It wasn’t Alan’s place to stop him, but he figured he could make the guy’s life a little easier and let his manager know he’d gone home.

Four more people went home early that day. In an office of only twenty workers, it was a noticeable difference.

Alan stayed until it was almost dark out before finally deciding that he, too, should get home at some point.

The house roads were relatively calm—they were almost always calm, except in the summer and on weekends when they had tall ship events in the bay—and he made good time.

But the house was dark when he got home, and for a moment he was filled with a deep, abiding dread. There should have been some lights on, somewhere in the place. Even if all the lamps were shut off, the TV screen should have been putting off a glow.