Blood Red

No bodies were found inside the structure, either.

The campus was abuzz with news the following day and there were plenty of students who were stunned into staying away from school; the students who lived in the Phi Chi fraternity were very popular and mostly they were well liked.

But a few held out hope. After all, if no bodies were found, it was possible that they’d escaped the blaze.

The truth was simpler than that. The bodies had been removed. Jason Soulis was not ready for anyone to know what was happening in the town, and that many corpses would have set off far too many warning bells.

II

Kelli didn’t regret not going to the party. She kept telling herself that until she finally fell asleep. She didn’t quite believe it, but she tried to.

She was in bed by ten o’clock and unconscious fifteen minutes later. She would have deeply loved to stay asleep, too. But the dreams came again. This time it was different. This time it was Bill, not Teddy, who came to the window.

The room was dark, but he was out there, calling to her softly. He looked at her with those warm, loving eyes of his and called to her softly. “Kelli, let me in. It’s cold out here and I want to see you.” His words were innocent enough, but the tone he used to speak them made promises of what she had dreamt of on a few occasions.

“Bill, you’re married.”

“Kelli, I want to see you, I want to hold you.”

She sat up in the bed and stared at him. He was so handsome. But there was something wrong with the way he looked, something minor that was enough to make her wait. His hair was as perfect as ever, his mouth sweet and kind, his nose unchanged: it was his eyes. They seemed . . . bleached. The deep rich blue they had always been was missing, and there was a strange light in them that was unsettling. Dream or no, his eyes were completely wrong.

Kelli knew one thing for certain at that moment: dreams can become nightmares. She stayed away from the window. When the voice from outside became insistent, she left her bedroom and walked down the stairs to the living room. In her dream, she turned on the TV and watched reruns of old sitcoms she remembered from her childhood. Bill kept calling to her, asking her to let him in, so she cranked up the volume. Now and then she looked out the back window and saw him standing on the patio.

It was when Who’s the Boss came on that she realized she wasn’t dreaming at all. There was just no way she could willingly dream about that show.

Kelli stared at Bill standing outside and he stared back.

“Let me in, Kelli.”

“No.”

He grimaced. “Why not?”

“You’re scaring me, Bill.”

“What do you have to be afraid of?”

She looked at him, looked at his shirt with the torn buttons, his pants with several spots that looked almost like mold staining the fabric and finally, she looked at his feet. He had one shoe on. The other was missing.

“I think you’re dead, Bill. I think you’re a ghost.” Her voice was a tiny thing, frail and broken.

“I’m not a ghost, Kelli. I’m right here. All you have to do is let me in and I can prove it to you.”

“Why can’t you just come inside?”

He looked at her for several heartbeats, his face working as he tried to come up with a proper explanation. “Just let me in. Please, Kelli, I’m cold and I need to get warm.”

“Go away, Bill.”

“Kelli . . .”

“I mean it. I’ll call the police. They’ll be here damned fast, too, with all of the people who’ve been vanishing from this house.”

“Kelli, come on now, we’re friends.”

She shook her head and looked away from him. When she looked too closely, she wanted to believe he was real and that he was there to be with her in a way she knew was wrong. The worst part was she knew he would be with her that way if she wanted. The desire to be with her was in his gaze.

“I can’t let you in, Bill. I don’t want to die.”

“I would never hurt you, Kelli. I just want to be with you.”

She shook her head again and tried not to cry. Bill slapped the sliding glass door hard enough to make her jump. “Let me in the fucking house, you bitch!”

She looked at him and blinked. He wasn’t handsome anymore. His face was dead white and slack, almost expressionless. His hair was plastered wetly to his skull, and she thought she saw something crawling through it, like a small crab. His eyelids were sagging, partially hiding that sickening glow from his pupils, and his teeth . . . his teeth were all wrong, grown obscenely long and sharp within the confines of his mouth. A dark, black tongue licked across those teeth as he suddenly snarled at her.

“You let me into the house before I have to get nasty with you!”

“Get away from me, Bill! I mean it!”

“You can’t stay in there forever, Kelli! And when you finally come out, I’ll be waiting for you!” His threat held more than merely the promise of violence. She shuddered and stepped away from the window.

Kelli looked around for something, anything that she could use to defend herself. Finally she settled on a letter opener and grabbed it.

When she looked up again, Bill was gone.