by Vivien Reis
It was everywhere. There was red everywhere. His stomach turned. It looked like blood, but it couldn't possibly be. There was so much of it.
Where was his mom? Was she hurt?
Ben's eyes followed the trail of blood, smeared to his left to the kitchen and his right into the living room.
He took a step, his right leg heavy and foreign to him.
"Dad?" His voice was louder than he had intended, a scream more than a yell. "Dad!"
He heard a crashing noise from the back of the house and then a door slammed. Someone was there. Ben pushed his body back hard against the wall, searching his surroundings for a weapon.
Instead, his eyes landed on something else.
Feet stuck out from the other side of the recliner.
A body.
Time slowed. Thick red blood painted across the carpet in a line leading to the body. The glass top on the coffee table had shattered, tiny shards twinkling in the crimson blood.
There were loafers on the feet. Brown loafers. The kind of shoes his dad had worn to work every day since Ben was a little boy.
"Dad!" Ben lurched toward the recliner, expecting his father to move. His face was turned to the side, mouth hanging open. There was a gaping wet gash across the front of his neck, blood still trickling out.
Ben's hand flew up to his mouth, and he stumbled backward. His foot caught on the contorted remnants of the coffee table and he went down again, half landing on the sofa. The edge of it struck him in the center of the back, knocking the air out of his lungs.
He sat up, clutching at his chest. Bile exploded up his throat. He tried to cover his mouth but vomit flew out, spewing between his fingers.
What if his father was still alive?
There were bloody handprints on the carpet, on the recliner, on the hardwood floor.
Ben fumbled for the phone in his pocket and his heart dropped when he laid eyes on it. It was broken and the screen wouldn't turn on. He had landed on it when he had fallen.
The house phone.
He scrambled off the ground, nearly falling again, his legs no longer his own. He reached the kitchen but where the phone should have been sat an empty docking station.
Abi! She had been worried the publisher would call her and had answered every phone call for weeks, never putting it back in its place.
His eyes scanned the countertops frantically. Where is it? Where is it!
There were papers of Abi's homework on the dining room table and he raked them off, uncovering the phone. He gripped it tight so his trembling fingers could press the nine and then two ones.
He held the phone to his ear, turning back to face his father's feet. Nothing happened.
He panicked.
9-1-1.
9-1-1.
He tried again and again but nothing happened. He yelled in frustration, forced himself to take a deep breath.
Why isn't it working?
Red smeared onto his hand as he wiped his face, realizing what he was doing wrong.
He wasn't pressing the button to send the call through.
Idiot.
He dialed again and pressed the send button. It only rang twice.
"9-1-1. What's your emergency?"
Ben's words were trapped in his throat, relief and fear choking him.
"Hello, is anyone there?"
She sounded so calm, a stark contrast to the horror scene in front of Ben.
My dad, Ben screamed in his head but a choked sob came out instead. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks, blurring his vision.
"I see your address. We're sending someone to your location. Don't hang up the phone."
The woman's voice was so professional and Ben was pulled for a moment to where the woman must have been sitting. A quiet office away from any blood.
"My dad." The words finally came. "My dad. Someone tried to kill my dad."
"The police are on their way, sir. Is there anyone in the house?"
Ben's ragged breathing made it hard for him to speak clearly. "No...I think they left...when I came in."
"Did you see the attack?"
"Th–the..." He paused, resetting himself. "There's blood everywhere. Someone stabbed him. I didn't see it."
"Okay. Is he breathing?" Her tone was still calm but commanding now. He needed that.
"I don't know, I—it's hard to tell." The words quaked as they left his lips. "He was stabbed and..."
"Does he have a pulse?"
"N-no. I mean, I haven't checked." He was afraid to.
"Use your index and middle finger to apply pressure to the right side of his throat."
Ben rushed to his father's side and saw the gaping wound again.
"His neck. Someone cut it." The words were coming faster. He didn't want to touch his father's neck, the gash.
"Get a towel and apply pressure to his wound." Ben could hear voices in the background. She was communicating with the responders. "The paramedics should be at your door any minute now."
Towels. Towels. He shuttered to the hall closet, hobbling on his unsteady leg. He grabbed a large towel and ran back to his father, awkwardly folding it under his neck. Was he too late? Had his father already bled to death? There was no response as Ben pushed the towel down on the side of his neck, trying not to imagine if it was just opening the wound even farther.
Tears were still running down his cheeks when he tasted something in his mouth. Copper. Blood.
The streams of his tears had run the blood down his cheek and into his mouth. He stifled a gag and dropped the phone, spitting to the side as he held the towel against his dad's neck.
Don't die. Please don't die. Don't die.
"Benjamin." A man's voice sounded like an explosion behind him.
It was the killer. He had come back for him. The man took a slow step toward Ben, stalking him like prey. His hands were outstretched, ready to grab Ben.
"Take a deep breath, Benjamin. It's all right."
Ben blinked. He recognized the man. It was the sheriff. Ben's eyes focused on the scene behind the man. It seemed like there were a dozen people there. Men with bags in dark clothes rushed to his dad, nearly shoving Ben out of the way. Their rushed shouts were indiscernible to him.
"You're all right, son." The sheriff pulled Ben out of the way and toward the kitchen. "Stay right here."
Blood was caked onto his hands and arms, dried just enough that he could see all the pores on his skin.
He had to get it off. He had to get it all off.
There was a nailbrush next to the sink and he grabbed at it, dumping dish soap on to it. He grasped the brush and scrubbed at his hands. Blood washed down the sink but his hands were still red.
He couldn't get it off. As soon as he would scrub one area, the next would gleam red again. The nailbrush scratched at his skin but the red wouldn't leave.
"Hey!"
Sheriff Belmore yanked his hands out from under the water. Something muffled and distorted came out of the officer's mouth as he led Ben out the front door and to a waiting ambulance. They asked him questions.
Are you hurt?
Is any of this your blood?
Did you see what happened?
He shook his head at each of them. Flashing lights bounced rhythmically off the outside of the house. Red then blue then red then blue.
Clouds swarmed heavy above them, blotting out most of the sky. He imagined tiny flakes of snow drifting down, down toward them all.
A woman shouted, the shriek piercing Ben's ears. It was Gran. Her son, Ben's father, was in there.
She pawed uselessly at her face and then her hands went down to her sides and back up again, trying to find something to do, someway to help. A police officer stayed between her and the door.
Ben imagined her sitting in her home, baking or cleaning while she listened to her police scanner, one a deputy had given her after profuse amounts of cakes and cookies. He used to stare at the thing, listening to the blaring beeps and screeches it made before
and after someone spoke. Ben used to think she was like a superhero, waiting for the right call to leap into action.
This wasn’t the call he had imagined her answering.
A gurney came outside, Ben's father strapped down to it. There was a man straddling him, hands crossed over his father's chest and pushed down hard, so hard Ben felt his own chest squeeze.
He was going to die. Ben's father was going to die.
A crowd had gathered in front of the Cole house, all the neighbors curious to know the grotesque details of how Mr. Cole had been found.
How Ben had found him and watched as the ambulance screamed away.
He wasn't sure how long it had been since he’d called the police, but the sun had set long ago. The paramedics had given him a warm thermal blanket as they checked his vitals. But he couldn't feel the cold. He couldn't feel anything.
Someone applied tape to a cut on his forehead, a wound he didn't remember getting. The paramedic had him move his knee every which direction and then put a tight brace on it.
"You'll need to get a scan of your leg. There's nothing broken, but we won't know if there's a tear until we do."
John. That was what the stitched fabric said on the man's shirt. It was such a plain name, one that didn't tell Ben who this man was at all.
"Benjamin!" It was Gran.
Ben's head floated up, nearly too heavy to move at all. She was right in front of him, tears flowing from her unblinking eyes. She grabbed his hands and looked at them.
"Oh Ben, look at your hands."
He did. They were still bloody, except it wasn't his father's blood. Ben had scrubbed them so hard that they were bleeding between his fingers and across the backs of his hands.
They smarted when he flexed them. The pain felt good, real.
"Where's Mary?" she asked, turning to the sheriff.
Mom. How had he forgotten about her? Was she in the house? Was she the one that had done this?
"There's no one in the house. I have some of our units policing the area searching for her."
"I'm going to take Ben to get cleaned up." The usual Gran was back already, commanding in her own way.
"Wait." A police officer stepped in their path and held his hand up. "You can't leave just yet."
"He needs to get cleaned up." Gran's words were heavy.
"He needs to be processed."
"Al." With one expression from the sheriff, the police officer moved away. "Mrs. Cole. Ben. I want you to know you have my deepest sympathies." He didn't reach out his hand or hug them. He just stood there with his hands on his belt. "It's important, though, that we get a statement from you, Ben, and process your clothes before you leave."
"Process them for what exactly?" Gran moved to stand in front of Ben. "You don't think he had anything to do with this, do you?"
"No, ma'am. But his clothes could hold important evidence from whoever did do this. The sooner we handle this, the sooner you can get him someplace peaceful."
The sheriff spoke as if Ben wasn't there. Part of him wasn't.
A quiet moment ensued before the sheriff motioned for all of them to crowd inside the ambulance. The door slammed shut, making Ben jump.
"These are some clothes retrieved from your bedroom, Ben." The sheriff set them down on the seat "We're going to need to photograph you as well. Normally we do this at the station, but..."
Ben looked at Gran whose eyes were sharp and clear, her brows knitted together in thought. Ben imagined her thinking back to her Investigation Discovery shows, debating whether or not this violated any of his rights. Shows that documented crimes like murders and stabbings that happened in little towns like his, with teenagers who found their father's bodies—
"If you would like to step out, ma'am." The sheriff motioned for the door.
"Absolutely not. He needs an adult present with him."
He regarded her for a moment before giving a slight nod to a man dressed in black holding a camera. They photographed the front of Ben, the back, sideways—he just waited for a command and silently obliged.
But it wasn't just the photographs. A man with a large metal case picked under his nails, dried blood falling onto an open piece of paper. A different man, or maybe the same one, swabbed the backs of his hands with large q-tips, on his face, his arms—anywhere there had been any blood.
"Open." The man paused in front of Ben's face with a long swab in hand. Ben obeyed.
"Whoa. What do you think you're doing?" Gran had reached out to halt the man's progress and looked to the sheriff. "What is this?"
"He spilled blood in there. We need it to rule out his DNA being in the living room."
"Oh no, sir. You can't just take his DNA without his permission, what kind of show are you running around here?"
"Gran—" Ben started, but stopped at one look from her.
"I know his rights, and you're not about to store his DNA in your system for the rest of his life, when he's done nothing wrong."
"Ma'am. I understand your concern. But your grandson isn't being accused of anything. There's a possibility that the attacker's blood is in there, and we would like to rule your grandson's out if that's the case."
"No. As his new guardian, I say no."
New guardian. The words were metallic and harsh. Was Gran his legal guardian now?
They stared into each other's eyes in a standoff until finally the sheriff relented. "Very well. We'll still need his clothes and a statement."
One by one, he removed a piece of clothing and one of the men placed it in a large brown paper bag. While he worked, the sheriff began asking more questions.
"What were you doing home at that hour, son?"
He wasn't his son, and Ben wished the sheriff would stop saying that. "I forgot my history book."
"That's why you weren't at school? Was there anyone else in the house when you arrived? Any cars in the driveway? Anything suspicious or strange? Do your parents have any enemies? Did someone hold a grudge against your father?"
His questions wove into one another and Ben's voice was muffled to his own ears. "Yes. No. I didn't see any. No. I don't know. I don't know."
One question cut through his fog. "Do you know where your mother might have gone?"
Ben looked at the sheriff for the first time. She couldn't possibly have done something like this. Had all of this escalated from him leaving his cereal bowl out that morning?
"Son?"
"Don't call me that!" Ben huffed, and the close walls swam from the outburst. "I don't know where she is. I didn't see her."
"There's a bronco in the driveway. Is that yours?"
"Yes."
"And your father's car?"
"Gone."
The sheriff spoke a string of mumbled words into his radio.
"I think he's answered enough questions now." Gran moved in front of Ben, uncomfortably close to the sheriff. He scooted across the bench away from her, even though she was half his size. "If you want any other questions answered you'll just have to wait until we speak with our lawyer."
The world hazed away again and Ben vaguely heard Gran talking with the sheriff.
When Ben redressed, he stared down at his hands again. They didn't look like they were his at all, and someone had bandaged the areas he had scrubbed.
The fluorescent lights were too strong and the constant buzz made him flex his hands periodically, pain pulsing behind his eyes.
Gran and the sheriff said a few words and then Ben followed Gran outside to her car. There was a horde of people now, cameras flashing in Ben's face. They got in Gran's old Buick and she sped away, no concern about whether people got out of her way.
He glanced once more at the house, so eerily lit up and crowded with people.
With every pass of a streetlight, Ben's head erupted against his temples, but he couldn't stop looking at them.
Dark. Light. Boom.
Dark. Light. Boom.
The car slowed to a stop and Gran opened his car door and
then he was in the bathroom at her house.
If his father was still alive, Gran would be at the hospital with him, wouldn't she?
"Dad?" Ben's voice was low and gruff.
A hard swallow and Gran stood straighter. "He's in surgery. Doctors will call me as soon as they know anything."
Ben's eyes stung, a faint and painful bubble of hope rising in his chest. They should be there, at the hospital, waiting for the doctors to come out. Instead, Gran had to take care of Ben. Because there was no one else to do it anymore. It was just them and Abi.
As if sensing his train of thought, Gran explained, "Abi's with Cora but her mom is driving her here now. We'll go to the hospital as soon as you're cleaned up. Okay?" She pulled his face around, cupping it in her hands. She stared at him, her hazel eyes speaking words he didn't want to hear aloud.
Gran opened the door and turned on the shower for him. She left and then reappeared a moment later with a towel and a change of clothes. And then she was gone.
It didn't feel right, just washing off his father's blood so unceremoniously. The longer he thought about it, though, the more anxiety grew like a jagged mountain in his mind. He was wearing his father's blood. His insides burned and bile rose in his throat. He rushed to the toilet and gagged, the effort causing his head to throb wildly.
Nothing came up. He stripped the clothes and the knee brace off and stepped inside the shower, purposely not looking at his body, ignoring the red water swirling down the drain.
Ben stood there for a time, not moving, letting the hot water take off as much blood as it could. He moved his head under the water, letting it sting the cut on his forehead.
And then he felt something strange, as if a thread tugged at his chest. He opened his eyes, gasping.
He wasn't in the shower anymore.
He was standing in the field again. It was bright, and the sun beat down on his neck, the smell of dry grass floating around him on a gentle breeze. He looked down, expecting to see himself naked, but he was clothed. The grass was level with his knees and he held his hands out, the rippling waves of yellow brushing along his palms.
"Ben." It was low and breathy, but it didn't scare him this time. It was peaceful. Warm.
A tree towered before him, higher than any he'd ever seen, and with more branches than he could ever count. It stretched toward the sky, the leaves blotting out all sources of the sun.