SUNNYVALE

(6) A BATHTUB FULL OF BLOOD

"Tobin, please, wait up" 

The brunette in question turns around, rolling her eyes at her younger sister. 

"I'm kind of busy, Baby T"

"It'll just take two minutes, please" Tierna insists, visibly quite alarmed. 

Tobin ends up nodding.

Although the two girls have been apart most of their lives, they could not deny the natural bond that existed between them: Tobin could not be mad at Tierna for too long because, 1) it wasn't her fault her mother left, 2) she could see her younger self in her younger sister, 3) she had a very pushy envy to defend her at all costs.

Sighing, Tierna continues:

"Thank you"

"Tell me then"

"I heard about what happened to your best friend-"

"I really prefer not to talk about it, T. No offense."

Tierna sighs.

"None taken, but I really want to understand what's going on in this town and I feel like it'd be best if the explanations came from you, so that there wouldn't be false information or rumors..." the younger girl insists, honest.

Tobin sighs in turn, before showing her the table right in front of them on some coffee shop's, where they sit down at. After ordering two coffees, the two sisters remain in silence for a while, before Tobin finally lifts her head up.

Sighing again, she starts:

"Listen, it's a complicated story..."

"Was it Allie Long? Your childhood friend?" Tierna interrupts her, eager to help her sister express her buried feelings. 

Tobin's eyes immediately become dark, and the younger girl knows that she went too far. When the older girl gets up, Tierna looks down.

But Tobin declares:

"Funny how you claim to not know anything on the subject, and somehow you already found out who it was."

"I did some digging on the old newspapers dad kept in the cellar" Tierna admits, shameful. As her older sister rolls her eyes, she adds: "Listen, what I found was disrupting..."

Tobin bursts into laughter.

"What was?" she asks, raising her voice a little bit, her hands thrown in the air. As Tierna nods, conscious to have hit a sensitive nerve, she goes on on the same tone: "The fact that they weren't able to establish the cause of death? Or maybe the fact that they never found her body? Perhaps it astonishes you that nobody was ever punished for her disappearance even though the police is 90% sure somebody killed her and disposed of her body?"

Speechless, the other girl just shakes her head slowly. 

After a long moment of silence, she then starts taking pieces of old papers out of her bag, as Tobin starts getting angry: as the brunette is eager to just get up and leave, she notices something weird - a piece of paper she hadn't seen before. The headline - SCHOOL GIRL NEVER FOUND ; TWO LITERS OF HER BLOOD DISCOVERED IN AN ABANDONED BATHTUB IN THE WOODS - just didn't make any sense. The title of the paper, 'The Fourth', just made Tobin frown even more.

Grabbing the paper and carefully reading its lines, she then looks up and asks:

"Where the hell did you find that?" 

"Dad's cellar, as I just told you."

"It doesn't make sense..." Tobin whispers, before turning the paper around, only to find out that nothing was written on the other side. Frowning, she adds, looking straight at Tierna: "This isn't a paper that actually exists... It looks like some archive or something... Nobody ever talked about a damn bathtub full of blood."

Tierna is confused. 

"How could something like that go unnoticed?" she asks in a self-reflexive way, "I mean: I'm not sure they have a murder where only the entire blood of the victim had been drained and found, but not the body..."

"She died three years ago, and yet the case seems to have been closed... What if this is just a big cover up?"

The two sisters look at each other, and suddenly they knew something big happened when three ambulances and two police cars drive quickly past them into the Eastside neighborhood. 

***

The atmosphere is quite disturbed in the Eastside, as a glacial silence has fallen over the busy streets around Eastside High School, where a dreadful discovery was made a little bit earlier this morning by none other than one of the brightest students, Samantha Mewis.

The police had arrived quite fast in the scene, but somehow for hours nothing had happened - the students have been ordered to go home, although most of them remained outside their school, worried to death, their blood iced by dread. Something bigger than them was in the air, and somehow they felt like they were personally attacked. 

Indeed, a bathtub full of blood was discovered in the showers of the girl's bathroom where the soccer team has limited access. 

The sheriff, Bob Mewis, arrived late on the scene of crime, held back by some Westside thugs, but thankfully, a traumatized Sam Mewis was held inside the arms of her older sister, Kristie, who was as pale as a ghost. 

"Sheriff" a random woman calls, causing Bob Mewis to turn around. As his two daughters were listening, the official states: "The blood test came back positive: it is human blood. More tests are being run to determinate the victim's identity."

"No sign of the body inside the school so far?" Bob asks, frowning.

"No, sir. None so far."

"Thank you, Ella."

As the woman turns around and walks away, the family man kneels next to his traumatized daughter, before caressing her knee softly, in a very protective way.

While Kristie is caressing her sister's back, their father inquires: 

"Tell me again how you found the bathtub, Sam. It is very important you tell me every detail."

The young girl starts crying softly, visibly out of her mind, her whole body shaking. Nevertheless, she manages to say:

"I-I was the first player to go to the showers after the g-g-game, and everything seemed normal until... Until I reached the s-showers: there was this bathtub, but I couldn't see what was in it y-yet. There was written with blood all over the walls, a huge II in roman numbers, a-a-and I... I thought it was a joke from one of our teammate at first, but then I-I went closer to the bathtub a-a-and I realized it wasn't ketchup on the walls, but b-b-blood..."

As she erupts in tears, her sister just holds her tighter, as their father just caresses her arm, before getting up and walking toward the crowd. 

Here stands Andrew Dahlkemper, Sunnyvale's mayor, who looks anxious.

"Andrew" the sheriff says, before getting closer to his friend's ear and whispering inside of it: "It is happening again..."