Blood Red (43 page)

Kelli lost track of her friends almost immediately. She was taking care of a little girl named Jayce Thornton. Jayce had planned to dress as a witch for the event and had lost her hat when the wind picked up. So the two of them stayed behind to look for it, and by the time they discovered the black, pointy affair, it had wedged itself in a tree. Kelli did her thing and climbed up the elm while the little girl watched her. The air had been misty when she started up, but the fog had struck and done its damage by the time she finally climbed down with the hat’s brim caught between her teeth.

In thirty seconds the visibility was down to nothing.

In a minute, she and Jayce couldn’t even see the sidewalk under their feet and all the damned flashlights did nothing but make the air glow brightly.

“Where are we?” Jayce was laughing, but she sounded a little nervous. Kelli couldn’t blame her. It was crazy dark out.

“Hey, perfect weather for Halloween. Let’s go find some goblins.”

She took the little girl’s hand in her own and they started walking, listening for the sounds of the others. Happily, the noises were still there, because it didn’t take them too long to find the rest of the group.

Erika was just about completely gone in the fog, and she used it to her advantage to scare the shit out of Kelli. One second, everything was just dandy and the next, the whiteness came alive and shot a flashlight beam in her face. The little ghost next to Erika did the exact same thing to Jayce. It could have gone south fast, but she managed to stop the witch from beating the bejesus out of the little ghost. If she’d been a little slower on recovering, she would have never stopped the fist Jayce swung at the ghost kid in time and there would have been a lot more boohooing and a bloody nose.

A minute later both of the kids seemed fine again and all was well, give or take the fog. They finished with the last house on the seaside of the street and were getting ready to head for the other side when things really did go wrong.

The little boy dressed as Spider-Man let out a very sincere shriek. As Kelli looked around for him in the fog, calling out his name—her list told her it was Nicky dressed that way— she realized he wasn’t anything because he wasn’t answering.

“Nicky? Hey, Nicky? Where are you?” she called, and soon her friends were joining in. They kept the kids gathered in a little island between them and called out, waited, called out again.

The fourth time they called out, Rita didn’t add to the cacophony. Kelli got a chill down her spine and when she called out again, she also called for Rita.

Rita didn’t answer, either.

“Okay, this is sooo not funny, guys.” Erika didn’t sound amused. There were parties to be hit and she wanted to be there already. She was only doing this for Kelli’s sake.

“Rita! If you’re joking, you can stop it!”

No answer.

Kelli moved in closer to the kids, quickly doing a head count. There were still sixteen. Only one had vanished.

Only one. And Rita hadn’t answered her.

“Okay guys, let’s all go.”

Several children started protesting at the same time and she waved her flashlight and her hands. “Calm down. We’re just going to move over to my place and then you can all check out what you already have, but Rita and Nicky might be lost and we have to find them.”

“Man, this sucks . . .” Barry Winston was a brat and there was no reason for that to suddenly change. Superman had never looked more pouty. His bottom lip was stuck out like a diving board.

“Barry, it’s just for a few minutes.”

“No it’s not! You’re just trying to ruin Halloween!” Eight years old and he was already a major-league drama queen.

“Barry, we’re going,
now
.”

Something came out of the heavy fog and grabbed Barry before he could respond. It was big and black and had the boy in its arms before he could even catch a breath to scream with.

They all saw what happened next. Damned near every flashlight in the group turned to Barry as he was grabbed. The dark shape that caught him stood revealed. Bill Lister had looked better before. His skin was loose on his face, and bloated with water. He was deathly pale, save where some kind of black fungus was growing on his features. His eyes shot back a silvery glare into the beams from the flashlights, and his teeth, the teeth she had always thought looked perfect in his handsome face, were bared, made longer by the way his gums had receded.

Bill looked directly into Kelli’s eyes as he leaned over and bit down, his mouth covering the wound he made, but not before she saw Barry’s blood leaking from behind the moldy lips.

Not a single person there thought for even a second that it was a fake-out.

Erika reached for the man and clubbed him over the back of his head with her flashlight. She didn’t recognize Bill; she’d never met him. Bill didn’t recognize her, either, but he attacked her for her efforts. His hand reached out and grabbed Erika’s face. He caught her pretty skin in the grip and it tore as easily as tissue paper. Erika’s scream was cut short by her jaw and nose breaking under the force he applied.

After that, everyone started running. Kelli managed to catch Jayce’s hand and the little boy in the devil outfit’s wrist before she turned and started hauling ass. Neither of the kids had a chance in hell of keeping up with her so she wrestled them both into her arms and ran faster. Jayce wrapped her legs around Kelli’s waist and the little devil did his best to monkey crawl over her back as they moved.

She had no plans, but spent most of her time looking at the ground to make sure her feet didn’t hit the curb and take all three of them down.

“They’re coming, Kelli! They’re coming!” Jayce’s voice was so loud and her speech so fast she could barely make out the words. She nodded instead of answering and pushed herself as fast as she could. She didn’t even have time to wonder what had happened to Bill. She was fixed on the dead look of him and the way his teeth disappeared into Barry’s flesh. Adrenaline kicked into her system at the thought and she groaned.

The little devil boy was pulled from her arm with enough force to strain her muscles. His screams vanished, rising higher into the air until Kelli had to turn and look. She saw him reaching for her, his toddler hand stretched out and his eyes grown frightfully wide. He kept rising, a black, fluttering form going with him until they were both lost in the fog. She kept running, breathing hard and suffering a stitch that started burning in her left side. Jayce’s legs around her waist were cutting off half of her air and she needed to put her down where she would be safe.

Jayce was screaming. So was Kelli. She made herself snap out of it and set the girl down. Somewhere along the way she’d stopped running on the road and wound up in uneven dirt and mulch.

“No! Don’t leave me, don’t leave me!” The girl clung to her with desperate strength.

“Hush, honey, I’m not leaving you.” She pulled off her jacket and wrapped it around Jayce’s shoulders. “You’re going to hide, okay?”

“Where are you going?” Jayce’s wide, dark eyes were filled with tears.

“I’m going to get help, and I want you to hide.”

Kelli was looking all around them. She’d screwed up. She had no idea where she was, but there were trees all around them in the fog and she couldn’t see the road anymore. One of the larger trees was close enough that she could make out the details. She moved with Jayce and pointed to a rotted-out hole in the center, what her grandfather had called a faerie door. “You see that hole, Jayce?”

“Y-yeah . . .” The little girl sounded dubious.

“Can you hide in there?”

“I don’t know.” She was starting to cry more, starting to get nervous and Kelli couldn’t blame her.

“Try for me, baby girl, okay?” Kelli took off her coat.

Jayce backed into the spot carefully and managed to crawl completely in. Kelli smiled.

“There you go. I’m gonna give you my coat and you use it to cover the hole up, okay?”

The poor kid was crying, but quietly, and she nodded her head. Kelli tucked her jacket in around her and tried not to cry herself.

“Okay. You stay right here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Finding her way wasn’t as hard as she expected. She just had to listen to the sounds of the screams. She said a silent prayer and jogged back the way she had come, searching for lights. Something above her dropped a plastic Spider-Man mask to the ground. The mask was broken in three places.

Kelli stopped and looked up, her heart thudding into overdrive.

Her baby boy looked back down at her. Teddy was crouched on a limb, Nicky draped across the heavy branch a good ten feet above her head. Nicky wasn’t moving at all. Teddy was licking his lips.

“Hi, Kelli!”

“Oh God, Teddy.”

“Miss me?” He sounded amused.

The worst part was, even with the blood on his face, even with a dead boy pinned under his weight, she was happy to see him. Some part of her was rejoicing.

“Oh, Teddy, honey, what did they do to you?”

Teddy stood up and Nicky’s body rocked threateningly as he moved across the branch to look directly down at her. “I’m coming for you, Kelli. And we can be together again.”

“Teddy, no . . .”

He didn’t listen. He dropped out of the tree, his preposterous black costume fluttering around him like batwings. He landed in a crouch and stood up. By all rights, his knees should have been driven through his shoulders from that height.

“You wouldn’t let me in, Kelli. I should be mad at you.” He was pouting, but it was a playful, mocking pout that she knew well from when bedtime came and he didn’t really want to go to sleep. Unlike Bill, Teddy’s skin was soft and fresh and firm. He was just very pale.

“Teddy . . . what happened?” God, she wanted to hug him to her. She knew better and had no intention, but he was so perfect to her and so alive.

Then she looked into his eyes and saw how perfect he really was. His sweet face and his crazy messy hair and his goofy costume and she knew she was being stupid. He would never hurt her, and every other sin was forgivable. She could take him to a doctor and get him patched up. “Oh, come here, baby boy.”

He moved closer, smiling. His eyes glowing with a light as bright as what she felt for him inside her heart. Such a wonderful boy and always so sweet.

The sound of his foot breaking the plastic Spider-Man mask made her look down. The instant she did, she knew she’d been played.

Kelli backed away fast, looking at his water-logged tennis shoe instead of at his face. The skin wasn’t pale; it was gray and filthy.

“Oh Teddy . . .”

She turned and ran again and heard his anger when he spoke again. “Get back here you BITCH!”

The words shocked her so much she looked over her shoulder and saw him as he started moving, gaining speed and coming up so fast he almost blurred. Kelli caught her foot on a root and dropped like a rock, barely covering her own face before she hit.

Teddy was fast, true, but he seemed to lack reaction time. He overshot and had to come back around.

Kelli was up and running again, this time with a rock in her hand. She’d brain him if she had to.

They came out of the fog in droves, some of them wearing the black costumes and some of them wearing the remains of whatever they’d died in. All of them stank of stagnant salt water and darker things, and they were hungry. The worst of it for the babysitters was being recognized by some of the frat boys. They got creative with where they bit and how long they could make the suffering last.

The children died quickly for the most part.

Jason Soulis watched it all, standing on the top of his roof as the attack took place. He willed the winds to gather stronger and summoned the fog to go further inland, and the elements obeyed.

The night was only just starting and he wanted to savor all of it.

One of the children ran away and he let him. The boy cowered against the side of his house and cried soft music into Jason’s ears.

He loved to hear children cry.

Soon enough it was done and the bodies were left behind. Jason had expected nothing else. The new ones were too hungry to care and the older ones had awakened enough to want to settle a few scores or just to be with their families.

It was going to be a long night.

Off to the left, he heard the girl from across the street struggling in the woods. He wasn’t alone. The rest of the new ones heard as well, and a few of them seemed to take particular interest: Lister and his wife, her previous employers, as well as a large one from the fraternity.

He watched as they moved toward the woods and the sounds of the struggle.

Kelli felt Teddy’s hand grab her shoulder and, as he spun her toward him, she brought the rock into play and cracked him across his face as hard as she could. Teddy’s face broke. So did the rock and two of her fingers.

He staggered back, teeth bared in a feral snarl, and he covered the left side of his face with his hands. She kicked him in the knee as hard as she could and felt the bones of the joint give out and break under the impact.

Teddy fell down and spewed obscenities at her.

Somewhere along the way, her rational thoughts were submerged in white noise. She couldn’t let it get away. This thing, this nasty, vile creature that had been Teddy Lister was a mockery of everything she’d loved about the boy and she would not let it live. She couldn’t, just in case it looked at her again and made her come close enough to think Teddy was still alive.

She took the largest piece of rock and hit it again and again, her fingers throbbing with each strike. He fought back, of course. He pushed at her with his arms and he hit her and clawed her, but she wouldn’t let it go.

“Elli . . . shtob . . . heb me.”
Kelli, stop. Help me.
She meant to. She intended to help Teddy the only way she could, by ending his misery.