Blood Red Read Free Page A

still more determination against her stepmother’s face,
not knowing what to do or how to stop this thing. She brings up her
damaged hand to press still more forcefully, feeling that she might
never be able to stop whatever is happening, no matter how hard she
presses.
    Abruptly, her hands feel enveloped in wet
heat.
    Rachel screams, yanking away the sheets, and
Susanna’s mouth clacks shut. The red luminescence is completely
gone. Her stepmother’s body scissors across the bed, shuddering,
and Rachel rears back, looking away from Susanna’s bluntly revealed
genitals. She can’t help but turn back to watch Susanna’s entire
body convulse. She drops the clutch of sheets from her hand and
reaches for her stepmother’s arms.
    “Susanna! Stop it! Stop it! ”
    Susanna goes abruptly still and rigid, her
legs half off the bed, her arms thrown above her head. She’s on her
stomach, her face straight down into the sheets.
    Rachel stumbles away from Susanna and the
bed, numb. She takes in the scene. She can hear blood rushing in
her head, loud like a terrible flood. She can also hear that weird,
insistent keening noise coming from outside.
    Susanna’s body is still, too still, in a way
that doesn’t suggest sleep. Her skin seems flat, dull. There is no
glisten, no movement. She’s not breathing.
    “No, no, no, no,” Rachel finds herself
mouthing.
    What—what just happened?
    Her mouth feels dry, and her own skin has
gone cold. Her breath is shallow, racing in and out of her
mouth.
    She has to force herself to return to Susanna
once again. She scrambles back onto the bed, pulling her stepmother
up and away from the mattress, straining with all her might. She
finally positions Susanna so that she’s face up, then places two
fingers beneath Susanna’s jaw, feeling for a pulse. There is
none.
    “ Oh my God!”
    She leans over to place her ear over her
stepmother’s bloody mouth. No breath. The skin feels cold.
    Rachel quickly digs her fingers into
Susanna’s open mouth, feeling for obstruction, then attempts
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation repeatedly. She feels a little inept
at it, considering she’s learned it only from movies and
television, but she thinks she’s doing it right. She can see
Susanna’s naked breasts rising, can see that air is getting into
her, but it’s not working. It’s not working! She won’t let
herself cry. She can’t stop her hands from trembling, but she won’t
give in to tears.
    Okay , she thinks. Need
help .
    She slams her way through the door, toward
the kitchen phone—an old-fashioned corded phone that her dad has
always insisted on keeping. She fumbles with it at the wall and
jabs at the buttons—9-1-1—with crazily shaking fingers, but she
can’t make her fingers work. Her fingers are still slightly numb
from whatever the light did to her palm. She shakes out her hand
and tries again. She fails, and curses at the phone. She can’t make
it work! She switches hands, awkwardly fingers in the numbers, and
finally gets it right. When the phone starts ringing, she lets
herself fall against the wall to the floor, making herself as small
as possible. She’s weeping softly.
    The number goes to a recording. “Sorry, all
our operators are busy with other calls, please stand by.”
    “ What!?”
    She stares at the receiver in her hand, then
around at the quiet kitchen. Her dad! Maybe he’s at work. He has to be there. She pushes herself back to her feet and
dials his office number from memory.
    Please…
    The phone begins ringing.
    “Daddy, please answer,” she warbles meekly
into the phone, although now it’s doing nothing but emitting a
hollow clicking sound in her ear. There is no dial tone, no ring,
nothing. Her hands are shaking so badly that she can hardly hold on
to the now-slippery receiver. It falls from her hands against her
thigh, and she yanks it up again by its cord. “Please, please.”
    She tries dialing 911 again. Nothing. Not
even a dial tone.
    She lets the phone