SUNNYVALE

(25) GRABBING ONTO THIN AIR

The halls were trembling as if the whole building was about to collapse all at once.

Christen woke up directly, as soon as she felt the first earthquake. She immediately got up, looking around her room with dread: alarms were beeping everywhere, but somehow she knew she was the only person to feel a earthquake. She heard distorted voices coming from the halls in which security agents, doctors and nurses were running around, probably getting to the bottom of the problem. 

After a while, only alarms were making noise, as all human presence seemed to have vanished. She'd hear some long-gone screams - probably disturbed patients. In her oversized white patient's dress, she rushes toward the bars that separated her from the long, dark hallway that was creepily empty at the moment. She tries to see more from where she stands, but it is now impossible. 

Suddenly, this weird feeling - now way too familiar - takes over her whole body again, especially her mind: she knows they're there, the shadows, creeping around the hall's corners, without a doubt looking for her. 

She closes her eyes, knowing that the shadows weren't peacefully coming to free her - she takes it all in, wishing that the bars would just bend themselves so that she could find her way outside this God-forsaken room.

She opens them again after feeling a light pain in her lower brain, before her eyes go wide: what the actually fuck? - the bars were twisted until there was a large enough exit for her to squeeze through without too much trouble.

Not really able to process what just happened, Christen hears the voices coming closer and closer to her: Christen... Christennnnn... Don't run.... There is nowhere to run, you are exactly where you belong... Quite obviously - I mean, who other than a hot and dumb white girl in trash horror movies directed by cisgender males would just stand there and say 'hey, voices, come and eat me up please!'? - Christen starts running, with no idea how to exist the big hospital. 

She felt the voices more and more distant, until she reaches the common dining room, that was obviously empty. She checks the clock hanging on the wall in front of her: 3:33 AM.

Christen... You are a child of the prophecy... You can't run from your destiny...

Taking deep breaths in, she feels a sudden earthquake, before her headache gets worse, and that she suddenly sees flashlights coming her way. When she gets up from behind the counter, Christen comes face to face with two security guards.

"Here she is!" one of them says, viciously pointing his gun at her.

Raising her hands, Christen is breathless.

In the meantime, another security agent gets in her way and grabs her arms from behind her back, pushing her down on the ground. She feels a harsh pain on her belly - probably one of the guards who thought it was okay to beat her up in the process - as one of the exclaims:

"We got you, fucking lunatic!"

Still, the voices kept getting louder and louder in her head: Christen... Christen... Christen...

Suddenly, the fuse seems to blow, as the dark-haired starts feeling weird sensations in her hands. She gets lost in the pain of her headache for a while, before the lights come back on: the two security guards are hanging in the air, grabbing their necks as if they were hanging to a robe, gasping for her. Christen is snapped out of her trance: she soon realises her hands are up in the air in front of her, and a newly found energy was running through her body.

Holy shit, am I the one doing that? Christen asks herself, alarmed.

She stares at her hands in distress, unable to make whatever was happening stop, as the guards' face colours start to change from white to violet. Somehow, deep in her chore and guts, she knew she was the cause of those two men hanging out in the air, choking on something invisible. To Christen, it felt like she just had grabbed the inside of their neck and squeezed them so hard that they couldn't breathe - her hands indeed seemed as if they were grabbing something that did not exist.

Please make it stop! Please make it stop! she tries to order herself, but nothing seems to work.

And, still, the voices that whispered: Christen...

All of a sudden, Christen manages to release her grip on thin air. 

As a result, the two security guards' body heavily fall on the ground, both of them being dead, their eyes translating the last feeling they felt before rendering their last breath: utter dread. Out of energy, Christen falls on her knees, crying: was she the now causing those two men's deaths? What was this odd energy coming from within the deepest ends of her body into her hands? And was it the same energy that came from her mind when she moved the bars? 

Her eyes drowning in tears, Christen doesn't hear a group of people calmly walking toward her, and all she hears are voices conversing between each other right after she felt a quick pain on her neck, as if she was injected with something.

A female voice states:

"You were right about her: we found the first one."

"Of course I was right: it was written all around her DNA" another voice - this time a man's - states, quite confident.

A small break follows his sentence, before the woman says:

"Four more to go."

Everything becomes dark from now on to Christen, who knows that she won't be ever get out of this hospital...

***

Sheriff Bob Mewis stands in front of the cameras, taking deep breaths, looking right at the camera with sad eyes.

His voice shakes a little bit when he says:

"I stand there, beside you, my beloved people of Sunnyvale, to announce you one of the most terrible news of my life: during the night, two more bodies were found near Eastside High School. We were able to identify Jane Campbell, a respected and beloved citizen of the Eastside, daughter of the local priest, as well as Adrianna 'AD' Franch, a known criminal recorded several times of aggrieved violence and theft living in the Westside. So far, we only can reveal to the press that it has been linked to the other murders of The Bathtub Killer, as two separate bathtubs were found near the Black Forest. Our teams are currently searching the area, as the details of this current investigation are kept secret because-"

Tierna switches the TV off, as Tobin bursts into tears, staring at the screen looking for answers: but her younger sister somehow knew that neither the police or any other human way would help at the moment.

She hugs her sister tight, thinking to herself: I gotta understand the mess that is going on around here, before everybody die...