by Sean Platt
Five days of having her husband’s life dissected and invaded by specialists, authors, and news anchors, who were all suddenly experts on the subject of Roger Heller.
But there had been no sign. Not that she’d seen, anyway.
But Liz wasn’t even sure if she would have recognized a sign if it had been there. Though Roger was sweet, he was often in his own world — distant and holed up in his office for hours on end on nights and weekends. But he’d always been that way.
He needed his personal space to write. He’d had a few stories published in literary magazines, and a few articles in writing magazines, but he’d never been able to finish a novel, not one that he liked, anyway. And after he turned 40 last year, he began to spend even more time than ever writing, convinced he was running out of time to write the “Great American Novel.”
Though Roger’s distance had bothered her at times, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have her own life going on. Until Aubrey was born in May, Liz was a ninth grade English teacher at the school, which had kept her busy day and night. She had decided to take an extended maternity leave so she could be with Aubrey until her daughter turned one. During her leave, Liz managed to get a few freelance illustration gigs for magazines and a few websites. She’d always loved cartooning, and was thrilled to have a chance to get back into it, and make money in the process. She had hoped to get enough work that she might never have to go back to teaching. The way things were going, she could work from home and not have to put Aubrey in daycare. They could’ve gotten by on Roger’s salary and her freelance work.
Now everything was in limbo.
With trying to get her husband’s body from the medical examiner’s office so she could arrange a funeral, she’d not even had time to figure out whether Roger’s insurance policy would pay out, or whether she or the children could collect his pension or Social Security. She was pretty certain that insurance wouldn’t pay anything since he shot himself.
As for everything else, Liz had no idea.
Then there were the families of the victims. She wasn’t sure what they might do, and didn’t know if they could sue his estate or her for civil damages. She needed to talk to a lawyer, and soon. But at the moment, she was overwhelmed, and all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and wake up when everything was over.
But now she was a single mother, raising two kids on her own. Well, raising Aubrey on her own. Alex was self-sufficient, though that could change now that his father was gone. The two had been so close, and though Alex hadn’t shown much emotion in the past few days, it had to be tearing him up.
Liz closed her eyes, the sound of the TV barely audible over the sound of the baby monitor on the nightstand beside her bed. The monitor that had kept her up so many nights, braced for the sound of Aubrey waking to another nightmare, or a stuffy nose. But at that moment, the sound of Aubrey’s fan coming through the monitor was giving Liz comfort, a white noise to drown the thoughts racing through her head.
Liz was drifting off when a sound woke her; her daughter murmuring.
Aubrey did that a lot at night as she shifted between phases of sleep. She’d make sounds for a few minutes, and would either wake up crying or drift back to silent sleep. Some nights, Liz was lucky to get four hours of shuteye between Aubrey on the verge of waking, or actually waking and needing to be comforted back to sleep. Liz didn’t remember Alex being such a finicky sleeper, but perhaps that was just a rose-tinted memory.
Liz waited anxiously, and then her daughter grew quiet again. Liz drifted into sleep, praying for a night without visions of “rampages.”
**
1:11 a.m.
Liz woke to the sound of Aubrey giggling over the baby monitor.
Though she was tired, she wasn’t too exhausted to find some joy in the sound of Aubrey laughing in her sleep. She smiled, found the remote, turned off the TV, and cast the room into darkness.
Liz’s eyes were heavy. She closed them again, listening to the soft white noise, waiting for it to lull her back to sleep. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep when another sound came through the monitor.
More laughter, followed by a sound she couldn’t possibly have heard, a whispered “shhhh.”
Liz’s eyes shot open, as she reached out and turned the monitor up, to make sure she wasn’t just hearing things.
Nothing but the white noise, albeit louder, of the monitor.
Then, more giggling, followed by Aubrey saying, “Da-da.”
A voice whispered, “Don’t wake your mommy.”
Liz shot from her bed, and out through her bedroom door in seconds, bursting into Aubrey’s room, fists balled and ready to attack whatever intruder dared come into her house.
But there was nobody in the room, except Aubrey, staring out the window, through the open curtains which Liz was pretty certain she’d closed.
“Da-da,” Aubrey said again, looking at the window.
Liz went to the window, checked to make sure it was locked, and saw nothing but darkness outside, and the black security van parked across the street.
“Da-da,” Aubrey said from her crib.
A chill ran through Liz’s body.
* *
2:00 a.m.
Liz couldn’t sleep after rocking Aubrey back to sleep.
No matter how many times she’d gone over what she thought she heard, it failed to make sense. Just like Roger shooting people doesn’t make sense, eh? There was nobody in her daughter’s room. The window was locked tight. And even though Aubrey was saying, “Da-da,” there was no way in hell Liz was going to start believing in ghostly visitations from her dead husband.
The only answer which made sense was that she’d imagined the voice. She was stressed out, tired, and had been running on empty for five days running. She needed sleep before she lost her mind completely.
She headed downstairs and into the kitchen where she made some hot cocoa. She pulled the large green mug from the microwave, added a splash of milk, then scooped a handful of marshmallows from a glass canister on the counter. She took a sip, savoring the creamy, sugary, chocolate concoction.
Hot cocoa made her feel like a kid again. She also hoped it would help her sleep. She glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was blinking 12:00.
She couldn’t remember the power going out.
She went into the living room and looked at the clock on the cable box which read 2:04 a.m. She might get four or five hours of sleep if she fell asleep right away. Emma usually woke up somewhere between six and seven in the morning, which made some days tougher than others to get through. Tomorrow looked like it would be a long one. Especially if she didn’t get to sleep soon.
But something was bothering her. An itch in her brain; something she felt like she was supposed to remember, but couldn’t.
She walked from room to room with the mug of cocoa in her hand, hoping she’d see something to jog her memory.
Is it something I’m supposed to do tomorrow? A bill I need to pay?
She found herself in Roger’s office, clicked on the light, and smiled when she saw that Alex had straightened it up so it no longer looked like a burglar had tore through the room.
Poor Alex.
Roger’s death had rocked them all, but Alex seemed to be taking it the hardest, even if he hid it the best. Liz knew he was hurting. She’d tried to reach out to him, but she didn’t know what to do. Part of her felt like she needed to give him his space to deal with this and come to terms with what happened. But another part of her felt that no matter how old Alex was, he still needed his mother.
She’d tried a combination of both approaches, but nothing seemed to be working particularly well. Which was why the cleaned office made her smile. It was the first thing he’d done since Friday, and seemed to suggest progress.
She fought a fresh batch of tears, and just as she was about to turn the light off, that itch returned to her brain, demanding she give it attention.
She turned around, wondering w
hat she was supposed to see in Roger’s office.
“What is it?” she asked the room.
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.
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* * * *
Cassidy Hughes (AGE 10)
Hamilton Island, Washington
20 years ago
Cassidy lov
ed 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.