Carl Bain let off three more rounds before breaking his run. Luckily, the eerily quiet park was still empty. No crazy bystander gawked at the man with a gun. Cursing, he went back to the subway and emerged in a police uniform with two bullet holes on its back. He walked over to his car parked a few feet away and slid in behind the wheels.
* * *
Sergeant Kimberley Reyna of the Portwood Police Department looked at her handiwork spread out on her office desk. She had realized she could pull the book apart when she discovered a single thread holding all the leaves and the cover together. Ever since she came back to the station, she’d been engrossed in finding out whatever she could about this strange book by taking it apart, but so far she hadn’t made any progress.
Again, she picked up some leaves and scrutinized these using the fluorescent light flooding her office from the ceiling. The papers had blank pages save for some names repeatedly written in different languages through two or three sheets. One of these names was written more times than the other names.
Rachel.
The English version of the name was clear enough.
Whose name was that and who was he or she to the girl the sergeant had tried to save earlier that night? Rather, was it the girl’s name? Was her name Rachel?
Kimberley had grown impatient with the lack of answers to the many questions she’d raised about that night’s incident ever since she picked up that girl from that snow-choked road. Nothing seemed to be working out for her in this difficult investigation.
For instance, no one was looking for a girl that fitted her new friend’s description, not even the mental home down at Bright Street, according to Jim. In addition to this negative news, the stranger who had caused the accident hadn’t been found and brought in…yet. A discouraging development for a very strange evening.
Sighing, she placed the leaves back on her desk, their wet surfaces glistening in the bright light flooding her office from above her. She still wondered how the book’s pages remained permanently wet despite the fan she had left on in the room. She had spent the bulk of her time in the office pondering over this creepy phenomenon. What kept the book’s pages thoroughly wet all the time?
A sudden blast of cold air startled her. It definitely wasn’t the fan.
“We need to see her!” someone said in the main hall and Kimberley looked up to see the girl she’d tried to rescue that evening talking to Patrol Officer Lyndon amidst a very busy night staff, but where did they find her?
Kimberley moved to her office door. The familiar boy with her new friend was also trying to get a message across, but the girl was more persistent. “Please we need to see her! She’s with something of mine!”
Lyndon was trying to herd both kids back to the reception hall as Kimberley stepped out of her office. “This is no place for kids,” he told the children. “Get in there and I’ll go get her for you.”
“Wait!” Kimberley called out to him and the little girl instantly recognized her when their eyes met.
“I want my book back, miss,” she told Kimberley, stepping forward only to be stopped by the tall male officer.
Kimberley couldn’t believe her eyes and ears. Whatever happened to the little girl’s coughing and stammering? “Where have you been?” she asked the strange girl, moving towards the trio in the middle of the boisterous hall. “Why did you run away? What’s with this book of yours? Who did you say was coming after you back in the car?”
“You won’t believe me if I told you,” the girl replied in a tense voice.
“What are you two going on about?” a confused Lyndon wanted to know.
Kimberley grabbed the little girl and started towards her office, the other two following closely behind. “Where did you find her, Aiden?” she asked the girl’s companion.
“I didn’t find her,” Aiden replied with a frown. “She found me.”
“Okay, you didn’t bring her in?”
“Of course, not,” Aiden said. “Why are you all focusing on her alone?”
“Not true, Aiden,” Sergeant Kimberley said. “I haven’t forgotten you escaped from your foster home some days back, if that’s what you mean. We’ll discuss that later.”
Aiden gulped. Was that bad news?
“What have you done?” the girl exploded on sighting the scattered book leaves on Kimberley’s table from her office door. She rushed over to the desk and started collecting the scattered leaves of the book. “You have destroyed it!” she accused.
“What’s going on, Kim?” Lyndon asked his superior as he closed the door behind him. His senior looked at him and shrugged, shaking her head. Now she turned back to the strange girl.
“And what, exactly, have I destroyed?” Kimberley wanted to know.
“What will stop them from killing us all?” the girl returned, glaring at the police officer. “And for everyone’s sake, I hope I’m wrong!” She turned back to the desk and started organizing the book’s leaves together.
Cold air swept across the room a second time.
“A bad man is after us, Kim,” Aiden said in the quiet room. “And he has a gun.”
“And why is he after you?” Kimberley seemed only slightly distracted by this news. “What have you done this time?”
“He…He wants this….” Aiden revealed what he had in his hand. A package wrapped in polythene.
“And why are you bringing this up now?” Kimberley asked him absent-mindedly.
“Well, I thought this was the right moment to bring it up if I was ever going to get your attention, since none of you guys have taken any interest in me ever since I came in here with my little friend. Maybe parking the squad car a few blocks away has been a mistake, since its shattered rare windshield would have done a better job of getting your attention.”
Kimberley stared at the boy. “What?” The strange girl moved to pick up the book leaves arranged on the desk and the police woman stopped her by seizing an arm. “Lyndon?”
The patrol officer took the package from Aiden and untied it. He sniffed it and looked at his senior colleague. “Coke?”
“What?” his female superior frowned. “Aiden, where did you get that?”
The girl’s scream interrupted the boy’s babbling reply. Everyone’s attention shifted back to her. Visibly on edge, her hands were trembling as she glared at Kimberley. “They’re coming!” she snapped. “You’ve got to let me go! They will kill everyone here if you don’t!”
“Who are ‘they’?” Kimberley had gotten pretty furious, herself. “Just tell me what I wanna know and I’ll let you go!”
“Calm down, Kim,” Lyndon cautioned. “She’s just a kid.” He turned to another officer drawn into the room by the girl’s scream. “It’s okay, Jack. We can handle this.” Some officers had also been distracted outside and most of them were staring at the office. “Back to work, people!” Lyndon admonished and they hesitantly obeyed him.
“Who are ‘they’?” his senior colleague softly asked the girl. “Why would they kill everyone if I don’t let you go?”
“It’s a long story,” the little girl snapped. “And I have no time! You have to listen to me! Please, I beg you!” She tried to shake herself free and Kimberley let go of her arm.
“Look, young lady,” Patrol Officer Lyndon began, wagging a finger at the strange girl. “We cannot let you go if you don’t tell Miss Reyna what she wants to know…lives could be at stake, you know.” He was beginning to lose his cool like his superior.
“Already told you,” the girl cried, exasperated. “It’s a long story.”
“Which you should be halfway through by now if you have started already,” Kimberley said, rolling her eyes upwards and raising her hands in frustration.
“It’s getting cold in here,” Aiden observed, hugging himself, but nobody even glanced at him. Again, they must have forgotten why he was there despite everything he’d just revealed, he thought.
His strange new acquaintance in this equally strange scenario wen
t for the separated sheets again, but Kimberley stopped her and handed her to Lyndon.
The girl looked long and hard at the stacked book leaves on the table, everyone closely watching her facial expression. “Please, don’t do this!” she begged for the umpteenth time, turning to Kimberley with pleading eyes. “Y-You have to listen to me. Just…Just let me go before they come! I really don’t have any time!”
In reply, the female sergeant shook her head and walked over to her desk. The little girl wasn’t getting it, she thought in dismay. “What’s your name?” she demanded from her young headache.
“Rachel.”
“Figured as much.” The two males in the room turned confusedly towards Kimberley with raised brows. “Her name’s written all over some pages in this…this mystery book of hers,” the female sergeant tried to explain, searching for the word that best described the sheets of extraordinary paper lying before her. “And please, please, please, can someone tell me why the pages of this damn book are always very wet?”
“Uh…because it fell into snow? Outside?” Aiden suggested timidly.
“Nope…I mean…the freaking thing seems to be oozing out water without getting soggy and…and torn, see?” Kimberley picked up the stack of leaves and water trickled onto her desk in a steady stream. She dropped the stack and the bizarre occurrence ceased. Only the girl lacked any sign of surprise amongst the other three, but the senior cop cared less about that now. “I need answers, Rachel,” she emphasized. “And I need them now.”
“I-I can’t…”
“Why not?” This was persuasive.
Rachel began to say something and then swallowed hard, her eyes wandering across the room and resting on Kimberley’s fixed gaze. She had tears in her eyes. “It – It is too late now,” she whispered, blinking back stinging tears. “They’re already here and we’re all doomed.”
Cold air swept through the room again.
“Getting cold in here,” Patrol Officer Lyndon warned, beginning to take his hands to his bosom like his superior officer. A mistake he instantly regretted, because Rachel shook free from him and grabbed the mysterious collection of book leaves on the desk.
Kimberley moved to stop the little girl, but only pulled her up after she had lifted the item away from the table, while Lyndon drew one of her hands towards him, knocking Aiden out of the way in the process.
The lights went out as the room’s temperature fell fast.
Rachel was shouting…
* * *
Aiden woke up first, searching the darkness all around him and feeling a slight headache. He must have hit his head somewhere. He discovered that someone’s lower limbs lay across his and realized it was the male cop, Lyndon, whose legs were sprawled over his own.
“What–What happened?” someone demanded to his right. Kimberley. Lyndon stirred and got up.
The lights came back on.
“Where’s the girl?” Aiden asked, flinching from the glare.
“She–She must have disappeared, again,” Kimberley said, getting up to look around at the chaos now her office. Her things from the desk were all strewn across the floor and the table was lying on one side. The mysterious book was also missing. “We must find her,” she said in a shaky voice, feeling another headache coming right up. “She’s the key to unraveling all this.”
“I’m still here,” someone called out from outside Kimberley’s office.
Rachel sounded so defeated. The three inside the room stepped out into the main hall of the police station only to discover why the strange little girl’s voice had turned into a sad one. The scenario was as if a hurricane had swept through the hall, throwing down chairs, upturning tables and smashing television screens.
And the lifeless lay everywhere.
“Jesus bleeping Christ!” Patrol Officer Lyndon exploded, scampering over to turn one of his colleagues and feel the officer’s pulse. Nothing. The man was visibly and accurately dead.
Kimberley buckled to her knees in a daze. She was still trying to take it all in. Aiden’s hands remained on his head.
Lyndon moved over to another fellow lying a few feet away. Dead. He saw something like ash on the ground near an officer’s desk.
“T-They take their dead with them,” Rachel pointed out.
Her voice was like a ghost’s, wafting into Lyndon’s consciousness like the implausible scene they’d just been surrounded with.
“It’s quite unbelievable, but true,” the little girl continued in a shaky voice. “We’re still alive! It still works!”
“What the hell do you mean by that?” the policeman demanded from her, visibly surprised by her present utterances.
“It – It still works,” Rachel repeated in a small voice, looking around her with unease. “But we’ve got to leave now before they come back for it!”
“What the hell do you mean by that?” Lyndon repeated with a frown. “What the hell have you been saying all this while?”
“There’s no one here to save!” Kimberley interrupted, cutting the conversation. “Everyone’s dead!” She crept up to Kate, the female dispatcher she’d radioed earlier that evening.
This officer sat on her chair staring into oblivion amidst the chaos surrounding her.
Feeling the girl’s pulse, Kimberley dropped the hand and shook her head in bewilderment. They were all dead. What had happened that very instant the lights went out? Who had come into the station and smothered all her colleagues in the twinkle of an eye?
Aiden’s immobile figure stood near Kimberley’s office door. He closed his eyes and opened them to stare again at the chaotic situation around him.
Lyndon stepped into the chief’s office and froze when he saw the man lying near a water purifier. He stepped up to the body and bent down to close the eyes as a mark of respect. Dazed, he closed the office door behind him as he stepped out of the room.
“No! Please, God, no!” Kimberley screamed on spotting someone’s body lying a few feet from the hall’s entrance. “No! Oh, please…no! No! No!” She ran over and fell beside the body, realizing it was really her boyfriend. Her tears poured out like a fountain as she shook all over. The others could only watch in despair as she cried her heart out.
Rachel had tears in her eyes as well. “I-I tried to…to warn you this would happen…,” she croaked, and the female sergeant turned to her, their eyes locking across that lifeless hall.
Slowly, Kimberley got up, reaching for her side arm. “It’s time to talk!” she hissed. “Who the hell did this? I know you know.”
“Jesus, no, Kim!” Lyndon warned, getting to his superior as she started towards the cowering girl. The police woman’s eyes were red with rage as Lyndon blocked her path, physically halting her steps.
“I swear to God I’ll kill you if you don’t start yapping!” Kimberley kept saying to herself, struggling to wriggle out of her subordinate’s strong grip. She started swinging the gun around in blunt anger, while Rachel kept drawing further backward. Aiden had also drawn back in alarm. “I swear to God I’ll kill you if you don’t start talking right now! Who did this?”
“She’s just a kid, Kim…contain yourself!” Lyndon snapped at his superior and she turned from him and the girl. “Okay,” he began, easing his hold on her, “you have to hand over the gun…right now!”
Kimberley bowed her head in indecision.
“Sergeant?”
The gun exchanged hands.
“You know I have to put you under arrest for this?”
Kimberley nodded, looking away. Aiden and Rachel appeared confused by this new twist. “But she’s done nothing wrong!” the boy protested. “She didn’t shoot anyone, did she?”
“No, boy, she didn’t, but she just got way out of line. I just need to read her rights to her and chain her, and then we can find out what’s happening here.”
“W-We’ve got to leave this place before they come back,” Rachel warned. “Can’t this wait?”
Lyndon ignored her, trying to app
ear calm and in control as he turned back to his superior officer and brought out the chains. Despite what had happened – the tragedy all around them – he knew he must do what he was about to do. That was called protocol. “Sergeant Kimberley Reyna, I’m putting you under arrest for…”
The shot was deafening, its aftermath devastating. Patrol Officer Lyndon let out a loud cry and dropped like a sack of sand as Kimberley swooped down on the gun she’d handed him. Another shot rang out but the kids were already scampering into her office as she scurried in behind them.
“Who’s the new guy now?” she breathed, peering out from around her door. Another shot wheezed past and she ducked, hitting her head on the leg of her upturned desk. “Damn it!”
“Don’t think he’s new,” a wide-eyed Aiden began. “Bet he’s the guy I’ve been trying to tell you about! I think he has found us!”
Kimberley peered out again, searching the vast hall for signs of movement. She saw the man hiding behind a shattered window. The boy could be right.
Rachel swallowed hard and turned to the sergeant. “We’ve gotta leave right now?” she croaked. “M-My book?”
“I’m not done with you, yet, honey,” the older female hissed. “I’ll get those answers if it’s the last thing I do.” She swerved out and let off some shots at the window. The fellow outside responded with a sustained volley. Kimberley drew back and shook her head. “This is not working!”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Rachel wondered aloud, looking at the officer long and hard. “I said we could leave this place with my book.”
Aiden stifled laughter and rather scoffed. “And how is that possible, Miss Magic? How are we gonna do that?”
In reply, the girl brought out the separated book leaves from underneath her arms and the other two started. “So, you took it?!” Kimberley accused. “You took it and caused all this mayhem! Y-You killed him! You killed Jim and the others!”
“No,” Rachel stressed. “I didn’t kill anyone!”
Another shot whistled into the room and all three shifted further away from the door. Kimberley stretched out her right arm and fired thrice into the hall. “Wait till we get out of here!” she whispered as she drew back from the doorway, but Rachel was just busy shuffling through the book’s pages. The little girl was barely listening.
The White Book Page 2