Blood Red

The hallway was dark and he walked softly, ignoring the way his knees wanted to shake. What the hell was wrong with him? This was his home, his castle, the place where he should have felt safest. So why am I so fucking scared?

He shook the thought away angrily and moved to the master bedroom’s closed door. He didn’t knock, it was his room.

When the door creaked open he saw Avery and Meghan. For just one second, he thought they were both asleep, nestled together. Then he saw the blood that ran from Avery’s mouth and his mother’s neck.

Avery lifted away from the wound he’d made, and Alan saw the dead staring eyes of his wife as she lay where she had for what was probably a couple of hours. She was dead. He could tell that from ten feet away.

He’d known something was wrong with his son, had tried to deny it to himself, but he’d never guessed.

“Oh, fuck. Avery, what did you do?”

Avery looked at him with eyes as dead as his mother’s and smiled a bloody, sweet smile only granted to ten-year-olds.

“She’s okay, Dad. She will be.”

The pit of his stomach disappeared into an ice storm and he tried to breathe, but nothing came to his lungs. “Unnngh.”

He wanted to speak, to tell Avery to get away from Meghan and let her breathe, let her get some air, because she looked horrible. Her face was completely slack and her eyes stared at the ceiling with rapt fascination. He wanted to reach out and pull his son away from his wife, drag him out of the room and kill him. He wanted to hold Meghan and have her come back to him.

Avery wiped the blood from his lips with his left sleeve. It helped make him look more like he was supposed to look, like he was just a little boy again.

The eyes gave it away; even if he hadn’t seen what Avery was doing to Meghan—and at that thought, he wanted to fall down and die on the spot because the notion of being without her was destroying him—his son’s eyes, gleaming with an odd silvery light, would have destroyed the illusion beyond all repair.

“What did you do?”

“She’ll get better, Dad. I did.” He moved, a small boy, only ten and still waiting for his first growth spurt for the love of God, and before Alan could fully grasp what was happening, his only son was standing at the foot of the bed, at eye level with him.

“What . . . did . . . you . . . do?” This thing could no more be Avery than the pallid dead thing on the bed could be Meghan. That was the realization that let the anger in. It looked like Avery. It called him Dad like Avery, but there was no way that his son could be a killer.

“I’m making her better, Daddy.”

“Where’s my son?” He didn’t recognize his own voice.

“I’m right here.” Avery flashed a smile that belonged on Jack the Ripper far more than it belonged anywhere near the face of his only child. The eyes glittered at him, mocked him, challenged him.

And Alan saw the challenge, heard it in his heart, and accepted it. In two steps he was across the room, covering the distance to the mockery of his beautiful boy. By the third footfall, he had his hands around the monster’s throat and was lifting the fragile weight of a ten-year-old child into the air, his fingers crushing down in rage.

Avery backhanded him hard enough to make him see stars. Alan dropped his hold on the thing with Avery’s face and staggered, his face already swelling from the violent impact.

Avery’s evil twin landed with the grace of a cat and jumped from the bed, sailing through the air until he struck the lamp built into the ceiling. The glass exploded with a brilliant display of sparks and showered down over Alan where he lay. Several pieces of the light’s frosted glass cover fell to the floor; three of them took a detour and stopped in Alan’s left arm, chin, and chest. The pain was intoxicating. Then Avery hit the ground, crouching before he scurried away at an impossible speed.

“You don’t hit me, Daddy! You don’t ever

hit me!”

The room fell into complete darkness. Alan’s eyes started to adjust and he felt his pulse double as he strained to hear any sound at all. There was nothing to hear. Avery didn’t even seem to be breathing.

Alan lowered his head to the ground and tried spying where there might be a shadow of the boy’s legs, something to indicate where he might be.

The double pinpoints of silvery light under the bed gave the thing away just before it attacked. Alan rolled, but it was faster than he was. Sharp, savage teeth clamped down on his hand, driving deep into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, and he let loose a scream.

His free hand shot out in a wide arc and doubled back, slamming into the back of Avery’s head. The only noticeable effect was the teeth slicing deeper than before.

The monster was strong, far stronger than any ten-year-old could ever be. But it didn’t weigh any more than Avery did, and Alan rolled over, using his own weight to pin the struggling, frantic form under him.