James Moore - Blood Red

While she kept him as entertained as she could, his parents argued with the hospital staff and made clear that if anything should happen to their boy, there would be Hell to pay and a few demons sent along to charge interest besides.

Visiting hours ended at nine P.M.; Kelli left for the Lister house at five after, her eyes almost crossing from exhaustion. By the time she got to her room, she was wide awake again. She couldn’t get past the very idea that Teddy might be “willing himself sick.” The doctor was an imbecile. Just because they couldn’t find a physical cause for his ailments didn’t mean there wasn’t a legitimate health risk.

The Listers got home a few minutes after she did, and Michelle immediately went up to her office. She’d let her work go all day long and now she needed to catch up on a few briefs. Kelli understood. Bill was less pleased. He had attorneys in his office that could take care of his cases for the day. Apparently his wife didn’t have the same resources in her own firm.

They both sat on the porch, Kelli and her employer. She looked at the gray house across the way and saw no sign that anyone lived there at all. Bill lit a cigarette. He’d smoked three times as many in the last day as he normally did in a week.

“I don’t think it’s psychosomatic, Bill.”

“There’s no way it could be, Kelli. He’s a good boy and his mind is as sharp as a razor.”

She nodded in the darkness. “I think something bit him and he’s having an allergic reaction.”

“It’s possible, but the doctors already gave him a wide spectrum of antibiotics and enough Benadryl to keep him from sneezing for the next six months.” He shrugged his broad shoulders and inhaled deeply. Most people would have thought he was perfectly calm, but Kelli knew all of the Listers well enough to see the worry in his actions, even if he never let it show on his face.

She sighed. “I hope he’s okay, Bill. I’m so sorry this happened.”

“It’s nothing you did, Kelli.” He looked her way and smiled for an instant. “You’ve been wonderful. Remind me to give you a raise.”

“Oh, no. No raises. I’ll be perfectly fine with having Teddy back here and safe.”

“You’re too good to us, Kelli. This is two days in a row where you had to miss school.”

“I’ll be fine, straight As and all of that.” She dismissed his compliment and waved it away like a pesky gnat.

Theodore Thomas Lister was declared legally dead twelve minutes after Kelli went to sleep that night. The cause of death was undetermined.

The body disappeared sometime during the night.

The Cliff Walk carried the scent of the ocean and scrubbed away the filth of the city beyond its edges. The breeze was invigorating, and Alan Tripp normally loved to spend his time walking along the edge and feeling the air rush past. It was enough on most occasions to make his problems dwindle away into nothingness.

Some problems are bigger than others.

Avery Tripp was still missing, and it was killing Alan. He thought for certain that he would go absolutely insane if he didn’t know what had happened to his son, one way or the other.

The stranger who walked past him nodded amiably as he watched the waves crashing against the black stones of the cliff. He nodded back out of reflex, and felt a twinge of disappointment when the man stopped not far away to look out at the ocean. He wanted to be left alone.

“You’ve lost your son, haven’t you?” The man’s voice was deep and calm, with a faint accent.

Alan nodded his head.

“Don’t worry. He’ll come back to you.” The man smiled briefly, and Alan looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. “I have a good feeling about your boy.”

Another well-wisher: Alan knew the man meant well, but he was not thrilled with the idea of any more false hopes. “Thank you.”

“I’m very serious, Mister Tripp. Your son will come home soon. I can feel it.”

Alan closed his eyes and ground his teeth. If the man didn’t leave him alone, he was going to have to get angry.

When he opened his eyes again, the man was gone. He looked around and saw no sign of him. There was not a place for a hundred yards where the man could have gone except over the side of the cliff.

He stood up and double-checked. No. There was no body down there.

“Perfect,” he sighed. “Now I’m fucking hallucinating.”

He left the Cliff Walk and slowly headed for home. Something about the man he’d met stuck with him, his earnestness, perhaps. Or maybe he was just tired of looking for his boy and not finding him.

Whatever the case, long before he reached home he was running, his legs pumping and his feet slapping the ground roughly; his heart wanted to explode and his lungs burned, his side felt fiery twitches, and his brow was covered in sweat. Alan wanted to push the thought aside, but he was certain that the man had been right: Avery would be coming home, maybe even waiting for him when he got there.

And then the dread set in, crushing the wings his legs had grown and extinguishing his hope. What sort of pathetic lunacy had captured him? A perfect stranger was telling him that his boy would be coming home soon and in his mind he’d already painted a thousand different fantasies in which Avery was there, waiting just ahead of him and around the corner of the neighbor’s house.

Alan stopped himself; his hands on his knees and his head lowered; he gasped and gulped for sweet oxygen until he felt less lightheaded and more like a rational adult again. Sore and tired, his legs still protesting his sudden jaunt into energetic adolescence, Alan Tripp rounded the final corner to his house.

He found his son waiting for him at the front door and suddenly believed in miracles.

Avery Tripp was all over the news broadcasts that night. Every local channel in the area tried for an exclusive interview and instead got the same fifteen-second sound bite of the boy mumbling that he was glad he was home. It wasn’t the best they could have hoped for, but it was newsworthy. Naturally, every station felt obliged to rip open old wounds and remind the world at large that Black Stone Bay had been lucky this time. Three of the four local stations made a point of retelling the story of Carla Whittaker in graphic detail; two of them ran specials called “Remembering Carla.” Both thought they were being original. The fourth failed to give blow-by-blow descriptions of the body parts and when they were found, instead merely making mention of the tragedy.

Kelli was happy that Avery was back, but could find little to be excited about otherwise. First they said that Teddy was dead and now they said they couldn’t find the body. The hospital was in a complete panic, and the Listers were in an unholy outrage. Currently the Tripps were explaining in vivid detail how completely and utterly the hospital staff had fucked up when they lost the son of two lawyers.

Until the situation was resolved, they’d asked her to stay on, just in case Teddy should be found alive.

She hadn’t planned on leaving before then, anyway. He was a part of her life and had been for over two years.

She tried studying and gave up in disgust within twenty minutes. Her mind couldn’t focus on anything other than Teddy’s disappearance, and she refused to accept that he was dead until she saw a body.

Avery had come back, hadn’t he?

Teddy could come back, too.

She had to hope. Kelli looked out the front window of the house and stared at her neighbor’s place. A car had just pulled up and moved up the driveway all the way to the distant front door. She couldn’t see who it was that got out, aside from the fact that it was female and shapely.