WhiteSpace: Season One (Episodes 1-6 of the sci-fi horror serial) (10 page)

She sat at Roger’s desk, set the mug down in front of her, then ran her hands across the surface, remembering him sitting behind it on so many nights, working on his papers, or writing his books. She hoped the police would return the books and journals he’d been writing. She hated to think that she’d never get to read the things he’d spent so many hours on. Hated to think that Alex might never get to read what his father had written. Though Roger didn’t share his work with them, she knew that in this situation, he’d want them to read what he’d devoted so much of his life to.

She felt her tears returning, wiped her eyes, then leaned her head back, and closed her eyes, feeling tired enough to sleep right there.

A full minute passed, and as it did, the idea of sleeping at the desk seemed all the more attractive.
 

But the baby monitor wasn’t in here. So she opened her eyes, and was about to get up when she noticed that the light in the fire alarm wasn’t lit green. It wasn’t lit at all.

That’s weird. Did the battery come loose?

She got up from the desk and dragged Roger’s chair over to a spot beneath the fire alarm and reached up and twisted the bottom cap. Two objects, hidden in the fire alarm where the battery should have been,
 
fell from the alarm and to the carpeted floor before she could reach out and catch them.

She wondered why the alarm hadn’t gone off to indicate that the battery wasn’t working, and assumed that Roger must’ve cut the wires or something.

But why? What was he hiding in there?

She checked the inside of the cap to make sure there was nothing else squirreled away inside the alarm, then screwed it back into place. She hopped off the chair and knelt down and picked up the fallen objects.

A flash drive and a folded piece of paper.

What the?

She set the flash drive on the desk, not having a computer to access it, and began to unfold the paper.

As she flattened the note, she saw that it was written in her husband’s precise block-like handwriting.
 

A list of five names.

The paper began to shake in her hands; stomach flopping as significance dawned.

It was a list of the students her husband had shot.

Four of them, anyway.

Manny wasn’t on the list.

But Alex’s girlfriend, Katie, was.

* * * *

CHAPTER 9 — Cassidy Hughes Part 2

Thursday

September 7

1:11 a.m.

Cassidy woke to the sound of voices whispering, coming from somewhere in the room. When she opened her eyes, the light from the TV was strobing on, off, on, off, casting the room from bright to pitch black over and over, in unequal measures. The picture on the screen was nothing but snow.

On, off, on, off, like a power surge, in an oddly syncopated pattern.

The effect on her head was disorienting. Cassidy rose from her bed, and the room felt like it was spinning.

On, off, on, off, and then . . . nothing.
 

The TV stayed off, and the room was utter blackness.

She put her hands out in front of her, trying to feel her way to the bedroom door. If she could make it to the kitchen, she could find a flashlight in the junk drawer. She moved slowly, unfamiliar with her surroundings, hoping she wouldn’t stub her toe or knock something over and wake everybody up.

As her hand touched the doorknob, the room went bright again and the TV blared back to life. She spun around to see the snowy screen, something she hadn’t seen since cable went ubiquitous. Beneath the sound of the TV’s white noise, she heard whispering, like the sound of a man saying something.

She walked toward the television, and lowered her face toward the speaker to listen closer to the whispering.

The man was saying the same thing over and over, as if a recorded loop.

“Eleven. Eleven. Eleven. Eleven . . .”

Suddenly a shape appeared, overlapping the snow, like a ghosted image from a distant broadcast from the 1950’s or something. A man’s face, barely visible, speaking the same word over and over. A chill went through her, as if she were somehow seeing a ghost or message from the distant past.

“Eleven. Eleven. Eleven. Eleven . . .”

The TV went dark, returning the room to pitch black silence.

Cassidy reached her hand out again, finding her way to the bedroom door. Her hand lowered, found the knob, then opened it. The moment she opened the door, a bright light in the hallway blinded her, as if someone had placed giant spotlights at either end of the hall, then flicked them on the moment she stepped into the hallway.

She raised her hands to cover her eyes.

The light was so bright, so pervasive, and stinging, that even closing her eyes couldn’t keep the brightness at bay.

Cassidy heard the TV click back on in her room, the sound of the white noise, with the whispering man saying “eleven” over and over. But he was soon drowned out by another sound — a scream from Emma’s room.

“Emma!” Cassidy shouted, as she stumbled blindly into the hall, one hand on her eyes, the other feeling the wall, tracing it to Emma’s door.

“Help!” the girl screamed. “Mommy!”

Cassidy moved faster, found the door, and lowered her hand to the doorknob and twisted it open.

A loud popping sound echoed through the entire house, then everything went black.

**

Cassidy woke to an infomercial on the TV, and saw that the time on the clock beside her bed was blinking 12:00 in its soft blue LED display.

What the hell was in that pill?

Her head was pounding and her body ached. Usually the pills made her slightly nauseous at worst. Nothing like this. She vaguely remembered that she’d had a dream. A nightmare, but it was all a blur behind the headache.
 

She was pretty sure this was the worst headache she’d ever had. She wasn’t sure if it was a reaction to the pills, or an accumulation of all the stress. As a child she used to get horrible migraines, pretty close to the severity of this headache. Maybe she was getting them again, she figured.

Fuck.

She found the pill bottle beneath her pillow, took another two pills, for pain, this time, not recreation, and swallowed some water.

She laid her head back down on the pillow, watching as the clock’s blue digits blinked on and off, on and off, on and . . .

When she woke again in the morning, Emma was gone.

* * * *

TO BE CONTINUED...

TUESDAY MAY 8, 2012

WhiteSpace: Episode 2

by Sean Platt &

David Wright

Copyright © 2012 by Sean Platt & David Wright. All rights reserved
 

Cover copyright © 2012 by David W. Wright

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The authors have taken great GIGANTIC liberties with locales including the creation of fictional towns (and islands!) The authors rarely leave their home states and research is limited to whatever the spirit of Magellan tells them via Ouija Board.

Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends or blog readers about this book, to help us spread the word.

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* * * *

Cassidy Hughes (AGE 10)

Hamilton Island, Washington

20 years ago

Cassidy loved the twilight, the last vestiges of freedom before darkness swallowed the world and she and her sister had to go home.

The sky was that beautiful shade of blue that wasn’t quite blue, almost on its way to purple, giving them just enough light to play “chase” in the woods surrounding their neighborhood, even though their mom never wanted them in the woods so close to dark.

“Ready or not, here I come,” Jonny Conway called from home base after counting to 40.
 

Cassidy crouched behind a large tree about 20 yards away, probably closer than the other three kids hiding. While the others sprinted off as far as they could go in 40 seconds, Cassidy thought it better to hide closer, figuring Jonny wouldn’t think to look so close.

She perked her ears above the howling wind and leaves scraping along the forest floor, a wind which only added to the spookiness of playing in the woods at night, straining to hear the sound of Jonny’s footsteps. Cassidy wanted to peek around the tree, but didn’t dare. Jonny was 11, the oldest of the group, and the biggest and fastest, so she was as good as caught if he spotted her.

The silence stretched, and Cassidy became more convinced that Jonny was sneaking up on her. The anticipation made her feel like her bladder might burst at any second.

Cassidy crossed her legs, wishing she hadn’t drank so much grape Kool-Aid with dinner.

A twig snapped nearby, and a chill shot up Cassidy’s back as she looked back and prepared to make a run for home base. There was nobody behind her. Yet. But she had to get moving soon before the others made a run for home base.

Chase was like hide-and-seek, but better. Whoever was “it” had to find
and
catch the hiders before they reached home base. If all the hiders made it back to home base before they were caught, the person had to be “it” again. However, if the seeker caught you, you were “it” next.
 

Cassidy’s strategy was to stay close enough to home base to easily sneak back once Jonny went off searching for the others.
 

Suddenly, she heard laughter from the north, along with running. A chase was on. Jonny was running after Tommy or Eric. Somewhere in the woods, her sister, Sarah, was also hiding, and likely eying home base. Sarah, despite being Cassidy’s identical twin, was faster, though Cassidy always played a smarter game.

“Safe!” the boy shouted. Cassidy peeked to see it was Eric.

Jonny turned his attention to the surrounding area to see if any of the other hiders had moved closer to home base during the chase. If he headed south, she was as good as busted. As Jonny moved closer, Cassidy was pretty sure she’d start peeing the minute she tried to run.

Crap.

She stepped out from her hiding spot. “I surrender” she said.

Jonny ran up to her as if he thought she might run away at the last second, a strategy she had used to catch him off guard twice before, and nearly tackled her.

“Sheesh!” she shouted. “I surrendered. You didn’t need to jump on me!”

“OK,” Jonny said, laughing, “Cassidy is it!”

“All right,” Cassidy said, “I need to take a time-out to pee.”

Sarah and Tommy emerged from the woods now that it was safe to do so. Sarah looked up at the darkening sky. “We should get home, Cass, it’s getting late.”

“No way! She’s it,” Jonny said. “You’re not bailing now. It’s her turn.”

“I’m not bailing,” Cassidy said. “I just have to pee. Then we’ll play one more round.”

“Mom’s not gonna let us back out if you go home to pee now,” Sarah said.

“I’m not going home to pee. I’m gonna go over there,” Cassidy said, stepping deeper into the woods, looking for a spot out of sight.

One of the boys laughed, but she wasn’t sure which. They all sounded sorta the same when they laughed their stupid laughs. Cassidy found a spot, made sure nobody could see her, then pulled her pants down and squatted to pee. She finished, pulled up her pants, and went back to the group.

“You took forever. You sure you weren’t pooping?” Tommy said. Tommy was eight, the youngest of the group, and chubby and slow, which made him fun to chase. Tommy was sometimes “it” for three or four rounds in a row, usually until someone felt sorry for him — usually Sarah — and let themselves get caught.

“Ha, ha,” Cassidy said as she headed to home base. “You’re so funny.”

“I think we should go, Cass,” Sarah said, her voice growing whiney as it always did as nighttime approached. “If we’re late, Mom’s not gonna let us out tomorrow.”

“One more game,” Cassidy said, “don't be such a goodie goodie.”

“I’m
not
a goodie-goodie,” Sarah whined.

Tommy and Eric laughed and Cassidy cringed. She hated having to bring Sarah along when they played with the boys, especially since Jonny and Eric were two of the coolest kids on the island. Sarah always embarrassed her. Times like these, Cassidy wished she was an only child.