The moment they saw what was inside the room, both men froze in the doorway. Their expressions went beyond mere tension into something closer to raw, primal dread.
A woman sat on the bedroom floor, her hair hanging loose and wild around her shoulders, wearing a long scarlet dress that pooled around her like spilled blood. In her arms she cradled a little girl whose eyes had rolled back completely white, foam bubbling from the corners of her mouth, her small body seized by violent, uncontrollable tremors.
The woman in red was weeping, her voice cracking as she called out the same name over and over again. "Clementine... Clementine..."
If this scene had taken place at night, it would have been the kind of image that stopped a person's heart cold. Even in daylight, it was deeply, viscerall
