White Space Season 1

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

    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