WhiteSpace: Season One (Episodes 1-6 of the sci-fi horror serial) (27 page)

As Milo continued to weep, his father dropped his voice to a gravelly whisper and said, “I’m so sorry, Milo.”

Milo heard his father’s feet pound down the stairs as he left his son to grieve alone.

* * * *

CHAPTER 2 — Alex Heller Part 1

Hamilton Island, Washington

Friday afternoon

“We should get back,” Alex said, about five minutes after running from the racquetball courts. They were in the woods just east of school, which rose steeply with the island as you headed north, until you hit the center of the island and Cedar Park. If they went east, they’d reach his neighborhood in about 20 minutes.
 

Alex wanted to head south instead. Hit the ferry and never come back.

“He might be dead,” Alex said, turning back and peering through the woods for any sign that someone might be following them.

There was nothing but the thick of a million branches, clawing at the angry clouds moving in above.

“Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now,” Katie said. “Besides, I’m pretty sure I saw him move.”

“You did?”

Katie met his eyes, then looked down for a moment, biting her lip like she always did when lying.

“I think so. I mean, I’m pretty sure.”

Alex grabbed two fistful of his hair, then paced back and forth, screaming.

“Dammit! Why the hell did he have to come at me like that?”

“He’s an asshole,” Katie said, standing away from Alex, eyes wide and worried, blinking at Alex, looking as though she was frightened by his sudden outburst. “So what if he’s dead? He deserves it.”

Alex stared at her.

“Don’t you get it? If he’s dead, and
I
killed him, I’m going to jail. They couldn’t get my dad, so there’s no way on Earth they’re gonna let me go. Hell, the jurors might kill me before the trial takes its first recess.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Katie said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were protecting yourself! I was there. I’ll be your witness!”

“Who the hell is gonna believe that? You saw what they spray-painted on my mom’s car! Everyone hates us.”

Alex didn’t want to cry. Not like this. Not in front of Katie.
 

The tears came, anyway.

He turned away, closing his eyes as tight as he could, as if that would force the tears back into their ducts.

“It’s not fair,” he said, figuring if he forced words from his mouth, he could keep Katie from thinking he was crying. “Everything was going normal. We were one big happy family, or most of the time, anyway, until BAM, out of nowhere, my dad goes nuts! What the hell?”
 

His words turned into sobs anyway, and he felt like the world’s biggest pussy.

Katie’s hands closed around his chest as she hugged him from behind, leaning into his body.

“I’m so sorry, Alex.”

He turned around and hugged her back, releasing his tears like flow from a faucet.

Katie was crying, too.

“We’re gonna get through this,” she said. “I swear. Everything will work out.”

Alex wanted to believe her. But how could he lay all his faith at the feet of hope, now of all times? Everything was fucked. And now, he might have blood on his hands. His stomach soured as the sound of Jake’s head hitting the concrete wall reverberated in his mind — a sickening thud which sounded like it came with major, if not fatal, damage.

“I’ve gotta run.”

“Are you insane?” Katie said, pulling away. “You can’t go! You’ll look guilty.”

“They’re gonna think I’m guilty, anyway.”

“We don’t even know if Jake’s dead. Maybe he’s just knocked unconscious. I definitely saw Ray getting up. I say we go to the police and tell them what happened.”

As Alex was replaying the sequence in his mind, trying to figure out how guilty he would appear to the police, he remembered what Katie had done to Ray.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“Do what?” Katie said, looking to the side again, though no longer biting her lip.

“Throw Ray off of me?” Alex held her eyes. “You pulled him off of me and threw him at least 10 feet.”

“What?” She said, laughing. “No way. I just grabbed him and pushed him. He went stumbling back.”

Why would she lie about this?

“No, you threw him. I saw it, Katie.”

“How the hell am I gonna
throw someone
10 feet? Hell, I asked you to open the jar of Ragu last night, remember?”

“I dunno,” Alex said, shaking his head, feeling as if he were accusing his girlfriend when he should be thanking her for saving him from getting beat down, or worse. “Maybe it was one of those weird situations like you hear about on the news, moms lifting cars off their children and stuff, I dunno.”

Maybe I didn’t see what I thought I saw?

“Like adrenaline overload or something?” she said. “I’m not sure, Alex. It all happened so fast, I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I saw him on top of you, then grabbed him as fast as I could and pulled him off.”

Alex laughed, though he wasn’t sure if it was from discomfort or the thought of his girlfriend having super powers. Or perhaps at the tail of a miserable week, marinating in grief, it felt good to finally laugh.

“Remind me never to piss you off,” he said.

“You’re a guy, it’s in your nature,” she said, a hint of a smirk at the end of the sentence and the edge of her mouth.

“So, you think we should just go back to school, or head to the police?”

“I think the police,” Katie said. “If you go to school, they’re just gonna call the cops. Plus, who knows how many of Jake and Ray’s friends will be there waiting, ready to form a lynch mob or worse.”

Alex sighed. “You’re right. How the hell am I ever gonna go back to school? We’re gonna have to move for sure.”

The duo fell into silence. The implications of his family moving, and leaving Katie behind, were too heavy to hold in the moment. He couldn’t imagine being without her. He and Katie had been friends since preschool, and boyfriend and girlfriend since the seventh grade. He couldn’t imagine not being near her.
 

But things were changing at the speed of disaster. Right now, their relationship was a luxury compared to his family’s safety.

“I think we should go home first, and tell my mom everything,” Alex said.

”Okay, let’s do that,” Katie braided her fingers into his hand and they started walking together, heading east.
 

They had been walking for five minutes when the scent of ozone gusted toward them on the tail of a cold heavy wind, shaking the surrounding trees and sending torrents of leaves raining to the forest floor. A long, dark shadow fell over them, so suddenly that Alex turned his eyes to the sky to see if there was something above them.
 

Alex saw nothing but black, quickly drifting storm clouds rolling in waves over the island. Thunder boomed above them. They picked up their pace, with no words between them, both knowing there was no way they’d avoid the coming deluge.

They made it another hundred feet before the rain began to fall in buckets. Katie broke out in a laugh as she ran ahead of Alex, “Come on!”

Alex followed her, as hail began to assault them like hundreds of rocks being cast by God himself at the murderer and his girl.

“Shit!” Alex said, pushing himself to run faster.

Ahead, Katie found cover in a small cave.

A tree cracked and fell somewhere behind Alex, crashing to the forest floor as the wind cried chaos and the hail thickened the world around him to a gray wall of pain peppering his body.
 

Alex could barely make out the rise of the cave ahead, could barely see the maw of its dark mouth.

“Come on!” Katie cried, her voice barely rising above the angry howl.

Alex raced in as lightning ignited the sky in a celestial fireworks show.

Inside the cave, Alex almost collapsed leaning against a wall, then bent over and sucked in a gallon of air to recover his breath.

“Holy shit, where did that come from?!” Alex said, staring out at the wall of gray. He set his backpack on the ground, then turned toward Katie, peering into the depths of the cave, which seemed to go deeper and farther back than he’d have ever guessed from the outside. “And where did this cave come from?”

Alex and Katie had lived on the island forever, and had explored most, if not all, of the parts of it they’d been allowed to traverse. But he had never seen this cave before. Maybe the sudden, blinding rain had pushed them off their familiar path. The woods on the island were like that — deceptively complex and always showing you new sights, if you were the type to open your eyes to exploration.

“I dunno,” Katie said, shaking her answer through a shivering body and chattering teeth.

The squall outside the cave intensified as the howling wind raced through the cave turning the inner quiet into an eerie reverb. Yet, standing in the safety of the cave, it felt as if they’d found their own little hideaway on the island, a place only they knew. Safe from the world and all its ugliness.

Alex moved to her and hugged her tight, to provide warmth. The moment they drew close, he felt movement in his pants, and was awkwardly aware of his erection. Despite having dated for so long, Katie had never let them go further than heavy petting — outside of clothing, at that. Katie’s eyes looked up and met his. She bit her lip again.

Only this time she wasn’t lying.

She threw her arms around his neck and pulled herself up. Their open mouths found one another, in a passionate, hungry kiss. Alex closed his eyes, as his hands moved over her wet shirt and down her back. Her hands left his neck, going down to his chest. She lifted his shirt, peeling it from his body.

He flinched as her hand brushed one of the purpled splotches on his ribs.

“Sorry,” she said, throwing his shirt aside, then lowering herself to get a closer look at the bruises.

She ran her fingers lightly around the bruised areas, and kissed them while saying, “I’m so sorry.”

Alex looked down at the dark welts that looked as painful as they felt, but the pain did nothing to dampen his piling desire.
 

As Katie looked back up to Alex, their eyes locked, and he put his hands on her shoulders, then moved down the front of her shirt, slowly unbuttoning it.

She didn’t resist, looking up at him with a shy smile, but also something else.
Hunger.

He removed her shirt, then reached around her back, to find her bra, and fumbled with the clasp, feeling like an idiot when he couldn’t unhook it. Katie smiled, reached behind her back, and unhooked the bra, spilling her breasts to the cool air of the cave. Her nippled were light pink and a bit larger than he’d imagined, but no less beautiful.

Oh God.

He reached up gently cupped her breasts from below, then moved his hands up, running the tips of his fingers over nipples, feeling them harden beneath his touch.

“You are so beautiful,” he said, feeling like an idiot, as if he were saying it not to
her
, but to her breasts. She moved toward him and her hands reached toward his belt, unfastening it, and pulled his jeans down, leaving him in just his boxers, which stuck out like he was pitching a tent.

She stared down at his erection, and then put her hands back, “Do you want to?”

“Oh God, yes,” he said.

Katie giggled.

“Hold on a sec,” Alex said, opening his backpack and pulling out his black hoodie sweater. He found a soft spot on the ground and laid it down, then draped his shirt beneath it to make an impromptu bed.

**

After Alex and Katie made love, they stayed entwined on the ground, feeling the cool air blow over their nude bodies. All the pain, angst, and horror in his clouded mind seemed to melt away with the rise and fall of Katie’s head on his chest.

As they drifted to sleep, Alex could do nothing about the big, goofy grin that had swallowed his face.

* * * *

CHAPTER 3 — Cassidy Hughes

Friday afternoon

Cassidy watched the girl, wondering what things she was seeing behind her eyelids as she dreamed in her hospital bed. Wondering what hell she’d been through while she was missing.

If Whistler had touched the girl, Cassidy would move heaven and earth to make sure the fucker never touched another living thing.

Jon and Emma sat in chairs on either side of the bed, neither of them saying much as they waited for an update. It had been more than two hours since Dr. Don Close had checked her over, and said he’d be right back. Houser sat in the waiting room down the hall, since the hospital wouldn’t let all three of them stay in the room with Emma.

“Maybe he forgot about us,” Cassie whispered. “What the hell is taking so long?”

“I dunno,” Jon said, sighing.