by Sean Platt
Milo’s world went black.
TO BE CONTINUED...
WhiteSpace: Episode 4
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.
Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
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eBook Edition - May 22, 2012
Updated 5.22.12 to fix typos
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Published by Collective Inkwell
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* * * *
CHAPTER 1 — Milo Anderson Part 1 (age 12)
Hamilton Island, Washington
5 years ago
Milo woke to the sound of his father screaming at someone downstairs.
He glanced at the clock on his nightstand: midnight.
Who’s here?
He felt a chill ice through his insides, wondering if someone had broken into their house and was hurting his father. His mother had left in the middle of the night four months ago, and Milo often wondered, especially at night, if something would happen to his father next.
He opened his door quietly, then slipped through the crack and sneaked to the end of the hall at the edge of the staircase, where he realized they were alone in the house.
His father was on the phone. “No, and that’s my final answer. Don’t call here again,” his father said, sighing as he flipped his cell on the coffee table and plopped on the couch.
Milo sat crouched at the top of the landing, peering down. Even staring at his back, Milo could tell that his father was furious. His dad rarely showed emotion, fury least of all. To see him in an unguarded moment made him feel uncomfortable, and like he should just go back to bed. He inched back, the stair beneath his foot creaked.
His father turned, startled by Milo’s presence.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Milo squeaked, “I thought I heard something.”
“It’s nothing, Milo. Go back to sleep.” His dad sounded exhausted.
Milo was already at the foot of the stairs, slowly approaching the couch. He circled his father, thinking how odd he looked, how . . . distraught. His hair was a mess and his eyes were red, as if he’d been crying.
“I said go back to bed,” his father snapped, staring at the floor instead of Milo.
Milo sat beside his dad on the couch, cautiously. Nervously.
“Was that call about Mom?” Milo asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
His father looked up, eyes wide. His dad didn’t just look worried, he seemed almost scared.
“How much of that did you hear?”
Milo’s voice split with creeping fear. “What do you mean?”
“Answer the question!” His father grabbed Milo’s arms tight. Milo tried to pull back, shocked by his father’s sudden violence. But his father’s grip was too strong to shatter. “How much did you hear?!”
“Nothing! Let go!”
“It’s not polite to spy on people, Milo,” his father said, his eyes slightly closing, as his grip loosened.
“I didn’t hear anything!” Milo cried out, standing. “I’m not spying!”
His father shook his head and then ran his hands through his hair.
“I’m sorry. I’m just having a tough time at work right now. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Sorry”
He patted the cushion next to Milo.
Milo sat, then fell into his father’s hug.
“I’m sorry, buddy.”
“It’s okay,” Milo said, as tears started to fall from his eyes. He wiped his pajama sleeve quickly across his face, hoping his dad wouldn’t say anything. Of course, he did.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Milo said. It didn’t make sense to bring it up again. Whenever he tried talking about his mom, or the possibility that she might come home, his father always changed the conversation.
“Not now.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe some other time, Milo. Okay?”
His father never wanted to talk about it, always pushing it off for “later.” But maybe later never came. Milo decided to spill his guts, “I miss her.”
For a long while, his father said nothing. Silence stretched, then after what seemed like forever, he wrapped his long arm around Milo’s skinny back and said, “I miss her, too.”
“Then why don’t you ever talk about her? Why do you pretend like she never even existed?” Milo said, tears choking half his words.
His dad handed him a box of tissues from the end table and Milo blew his nose.
“It’s hard to think about her,” his dad said. “Without wondering what I could’ve done differently. That maybe she’d be here today if I’d just done something differently.”
“It’s not your fault she left,” Milo said, even though he secretly thought it might be.
His father worked long hours as an analyst for Conway Industries. Milo wasn’t sure what his dad did, exactly. The few times Milo wondered out loud, his father said it was complicated, and that it was mostly paperwork and “managing too many people and moving parts.” Whatever his job was, it kept him away from home sometimes for weeks at a time.
“Do you think she’s going to ever come back?” Milo asked.
His father met his eyes.
“I don’t think so.”
Fresh tears stung Milo’s eyes. “Why? Doesn’t she love us enough?”
“Oh, no, buddy. It’s not that,” his dad said, hugging him even tighter. The same sort of hug that used to make everything okay, back when his dad was still Superman. Back when he could do anything, and his answers never came with “not now,” “I don’t want to talk about it,” or “maybe some other time, Milo.”
His mother’s disappearance was Kryptonite, however, turning Milo’s father into a mere mortal.
After Milo cried some more, his father pulled away and met his eyes again. His father swallowed a knot in his throat, then forced the something he’d been working up to say from the frown of his mouth.
“Your mother was sick, Milo.”
Milo was confused.
“Sick? What do you mean?”
“She never wanted you to worry, so she never told you, but she wasn’t well. She was clinically depressed.”
“Depressed? No. Mom was always so happy!” Milo said, confused by his father’s clearly wrong confession.
“She was, Milo, and she was taking medication to help her. For a long time, it seemed like she was better. Earlier this year, the depression started coming back again. The doctors prescribed her something else. And I thought it had been working.”
Milo sniffled, then wiped his nose. “What do you mean, thought?”
“After your mother left, I found out she hadn’t picked up her meds in over a month.”
“Maybe she didn’t need them anymore?”
“When you have clinical depression, you can’t always tell when you need your medication. And sometimes, when people go off it, they can get real bad.”
Milo’s dad stared at him for a moment, as if waiting for Milo to finally understand what he was saying. But Milo couldn’t f
igure out what his dad was trying to tell him.
“Sometimes when people go off their meds, they get suicidal.”
Milo stared at his dad, unable to believe what his dad was suggesting.
“No! She didn’t kill herself!” Milo shook his head violently back and forth, suddenly sobbing.
“I don’t know if she did,” his father said, looking down. “But we have to consider the possibility, Milo.”
“No!” Milo screamed, launching himself from the couch. He ran up the staircase, taking the stairs two at a time, then went into his room and slammed the door so loud that his lamp, which was turned off, fell from his dresser and onto the ground.
Milo heard his father running up the stairs, calling after him, “Milo!”
Milo locked the door, then fell into his bed and pulled the covers over his head.
“Milo, please. Open the door.”
“She didn’t kill herself!!” Milo screamed.
“I was just saying that . . .” his father started.
“She’s alive!!” Milo repeated, screaming louder.
A deafening silence thundered on the other end of the door.
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.
