WhiteSpace: Season One (Episodes 1-6 of the sci-fi horror serial) (43 page)

“Who’s Billy Wagner?” she said, the confusion on her face pushing Brock into a laugh. The laughter hurt his ribs. He winced and pressed the button on the arm of his bed to get more drugs.

“Billy’s a friend of mine back home. Though I’m not sure how he’d fit behind you since he’s seven foot nine.”

“Seven foot nine?! No, he’s not!”

“OK, maybe he’s
a bit
shorter than that. But he’s still a lot taller than you. So, if it’s not Billy, and it’s not Jon, I’m all out of friends.”
 

“You only have two friends?” Emma asked, surprised again.

Houser smiled, “Two friends I can count on, anyway. Well, there’s one other.”

“Yeah? Who is it?” she asked, her smile growing bigger.

“Well, he’s short. Like super short. Even shorter than you.”

Emma stuck out her bottom lip at the short crack.

“And, let’s see . . . He’s brown, and furry, and he eats my cookies all the time.”

“Ta-da!” she said, thrusting her hand forward to display Ted D. Bear.

Houser took his bear, still wearing both his furry legs, despite being in a car accident with him. “How did you find him?”

Jon answered, “The cops on the scene collected your stuff. I asked them if I could get the bear to bring you in the hospital. I’d hate for the big man to be without his teddy.”

“Hey,” Houser warned, “you watch it. Or you’re gonna fall to number two, behind Ted on my best friend list.”

Jon laughed and they all made small talk while Houser couldn't help but notice the shift between Cassidy and Jon. Like animals, they circled one another differently, almost like they’d changed their scent. They seemed much closer then they had the other day. As if they’d . . .

Oh Jon, you slept with her? What the hell are you doing?

Houser set the topic on his mind’s front burner so he could discuss it with Jon the next time they were alone. And when his head wasn’t throbbing. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep his eyes open.
 

“Thank you for my bear,” he said to Emma. “I appreciate it.”

Houser tucked the bear next to the bed rail and then said, “I hope you all don’t mind, but I’m tired.”

“No problem, buddy,” Jon said. “We’ve gotta get something to eat, anyway. These pretzels only made me hungrier.”

He thanked everyone for coming, then waited for their collective goodbyes and promises to return soon.
 

Before they left, Jon reached into his pocket and said, “One more thing. I grabbed your phone from the hotel room. I couldn’t find your laptop, though. Maybe it’s in the car, which is at the tow yard.”

Jon handed the phone to Houser. Houser glanced at the screen: 25 messages and a nearly dead battery. “Can you get my charger when you think about it? It’s back at the hotel.”

“One step ahead of you, and I already thought about it,” Houser said, pulling the charger from his pocket. “Though if I were two steps ahead, I would have charged it. Hold up a second.”

Jon found an outlet behind Houser’s bed, then plugged in the cell and set it on his bedside table. “There you go. Need anything else before I leave?”

He was trying to think of something clever to say, but nodded off mid-thought.

As Houser slept, he dreamed of Liz Heller.

She had given him something before he left her house. Something important. Something she seemed almost afraid to give him. Something small. Something which he could not lose. Something that . . .
 

And though she’d not said it, a voice in his mind filled in the blank . . . something worth killing for.

* * * *

CHAPTER 3 — Liz Heller

12:57 a.m.

Wednesday…

Liz couldn’t sleep.

Tomorrow, she was burying her husband’s ashes. Ashes because someone at the funeral home screwed up and cremated her husband, despite her specifically ticking the box marked “burial” on the forms she was forced to fill out, and double checking her work like everything else she did.
 

Liz was livid at the screw up, and had cried for an hour straight after slamming the phone in its cradle.
 

While Roger had consistently said, in more conversations than she could count, that he didn’t care what happened to him after he died, Liz wanted him buried beside her — bodies, not ashes. She couldn’t help but feel that even though Roger was dead, some part of him suffered during the cremation process.

The cremation also meant that she never got the closure she was seeking in seeing his body.

She never had the chance to make an identification, since the medical examiner’s office determined that her husband’s head was too destroyed to make a positive visual ID. She wasn’t sure how they verified that it was her husband who shot up the school and then himself, but positive identification had definitely been made.
 

It wasn’t that Liz doubted her husband was dead. Too many people had seen what happened for her to believe otherwise. The act was probably caught on video, given the number of cameras in the school, even though she’d not heard anything from anyone about a video of the event. She was sure it was just a matter of time before someone would leak it, and her husband’s final acts would be streaming from any number of disgusting websites which reveled in showing the latest in disturbing video so anonymous cowards could make stupid jokes and condemn him for years to come.

Still, some part of her needed to see and touch him, to find that sense of closure.
 

Until then, Liz couldn’t help but believe that there was a chance he might walk through the door any day, as irrational as the thought so obviously was.

As 1:11 a.m. drew closer on the clock, Liz found herself tuned into the baby monitor, listening carefully.

It had been a few nights since she’d seen Roger . . . or thought she had. She found herself waiting up each night to see if he’d return. Each time he didn’t, the more likely it seemed that Liz was only imagining things the other night. She wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the combination of stress and exhaustion was finally taking its toll on her sanity.

She wasn’t sure which would be more of a relief — that she were losing her mind, or if she’d seen Roger’s ghost. She was worried not only for herself, but her daughter’s safety. If Liz lost her mind, who would take care of Aubrey? And if Roger was a ghost, was he dangerous?

What the hell? I’m seriously contemplating the existence of ghosts?! I should just go to bed. Right now. The more I stay up, the more likely I am to see things.

1:08 a.m.

She turned up the baby monitor’s volume, listening to the whir of Aubrey’s fan whispering through the speaker. No sign of Aubrey waking yet.
 

No other voices.
 

Liz thought about getting up and going into Aubrey’s room, which was what she’d done the night before, but thought better of it. Perhaps if Roger’s ghost saw her, he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, show. Liz debated the rules of ghost travel in her head, waiting for the clock to bleed another minute.

1:09 a.m.

Her heart pounded with anticipation. Liz picked up the monitor and set it beside her pillow, watching the row of unlit lights, indicating noise, and the green light glowing at the top to prove it was on.
 

1:10 a.m.

Something banged in Aubrey’s room and the row of lights lit from the bottom blue to the top orange, then back to dead as the room fell silent of every sound except for the fan.

What was that?

Liz forced herself to relax. She often heard noises just like that, at times that weren’t around 1:11; sounds of the house settling or something falling in another room. Surely the din was somehow amplified by the monitor in Aubrey’s room.

Liz sat in bed, one foot on the floor, waiting to burst from the room.

The clock’s digits changed.

1:11 a.m.

Liz heard a faint whisper — something she couldn’t quite make out.

Then two words, this time clear and audible over the speaker.

Roger’s voice: “Hi, sweetie.”

A chill iced her entire body.

I am not imagining this.
 

I heard it!

Liz leapt from her bed, then ran to her door, throwing it open, and burst into Aubrey’s room. As the door swung open on its hinge, Liz saw Roger standing in the center of the room, holding his daughter, lightly swaying back and forth humming “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Only now he wasn’t a ghost. Roger wasn’t half there. He was all there — in the flesh, looking exactly like he had the last time Liz had kissed him goodbye.

Her mouth hung open. A loud gasp fell from the opening and into the room, teetering at the edge of a scream.

Roger shook his head, turning to Liz as he whispered, “Shhh, you’ll wake her.”

“H-h-how?” she stammered as Roger held his daughter close, stroking the wispy hair at the back of her head.

“I wasn’t done,” he said. “I had to come back.”

She stared at Roger, unable to believe what she was seeing.
 

How can he be here?
 

How is this possible?

Wasn’t done with what?

Liz inched closer, trying to get a closer look at her dead husband, clearly breathing on the other side of the room. He looked perfectly healthy, no sign of injury. Yet, there was something off in his eyes, and looking more wrong with every inch.

His eyes narrowed, then turned angry as he took a step back. “Stay away,” he growled.

“It’s me, Roger. It’s Liz,” she cried, not sure why he was turning her away.
 

A miracle meant he had somehow survived. Why was he rejecting her? He seemed almost afraid of her. She inched closer, despite his warning.

Pressing Aubrey against his left shoulder with his left hand, Roger reached behind him with his right, pulling a pistol from nowhere and aiming it at Liz.

“I said, stay the fuck back!” he snapped, backing his body toward the window.
 

“What are you doing?” Liz cried, confused, suddenly terrified for her baby. “Please, Roger, put Aubrey down. Let’s talk.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
Talk.
So you can trick me. What then? You gonna turn me over to them? Are you one of them, Liz?”

“One of what?” she cried.

“One of them!” he screamed.
 

Aubrey woke and started crying.

“Don’t you fucking lie!” Roger screamed, the barrel of his gun shaking between her eyes.

Liz was paralyzed with fear. If she said the wrong thing, he would kill her.
 

God knew what he’d do with Aubrey.

“Please,” she cried. “Please, Roger, I love you.”

Aubrey screamed, turning to Liz, eyes wide and wanting her mommy.

“Shut up!” Roger screamed not at Liz, but at Aubrey. “Shut the fuck up!”

How can he scream at a baby?!

Roger turned the gun from Liz, then put it to the back of Aubrey’s head, his face twisted in rage as he screamed, “Shut the fuck up, you little cunt!”

Liz screamed, reaching out to stop Roger.

But she was too late.

He pulled the trigger.

Liz screamed as her heart shattered.

* *

Liz woke up screaming, “No!!” and wailing, “Oh God!”

“Mom, are you okay?” Alex said, shaking her awake. “Mom?”

Liz opened her eyes to the stark daylight soaking her room. Alex was sitting on the bed beside her, holding Aubrey, who was very much alive and drooling.

Liz broke down sobbing, hugging both her children close to her body, thanking God that she’d only been dreaming.

* * * *

CHAPTER 4 — Milo Anderson Part 1

Wednesday morning…

Milo aimed the remote in front of him, trying to give a shit about anything on any one of the nine billion fucking channels on the TV.
 

His dad was upstairs, probably trying to decide between the red tie with the black stripes, or the black tie with the red stripes. He had to look good for work. He could dress for his son’s misery in sweats, but that would have to wait until sometime at night when his dad got home — assuming Milo was still awake.

Milo wasn’t bitter, though his credit in the Bullshit He Had a Right to be Pissed About department was damned high.
 

Someone at work was riding his dad. His father’s stupid phone had rung three times just that morning. Not the phone from AT&T. It was the new one, the one that looked like a glass credit card. The one his dad always had to answer, no matter what.
 

Milo wasn’t pissed that his dad had to go into work, and wasn’t even pissed that he’d taken every crooked road around an actual conversation since first visiting him in the hospital. Milo was pissed, however, that no matter how many times he stared into the mirror, the kid staring back was living a life that had been shattered by a half-clip’s worth of bullets and a Big Bang’s worth of downright impossible.