2

An upstairs clock at the top of the stairs chimed twice amidst the family portraits of varied sizes on the wall. Two faces in these pictures remained nearly constant, but the other three showed the physical development of three infants into their recent childhood years. Beautiful, blonde Bridget Hennessy was the proud first child born to this family. She had been a precocious child and had grown through youth into the pinnacle of the teenage young girl. Kerry had not embraced her teen years as much; rather than follow the teen cliché, she followed her own rules, appreciating the things important to her over the material and invisible boundaries of the high school norm. She didn't completely hate her materialistic and self-centered sister, but she hated what she represented – the ridiculous myself-ego of the stereotypical teenager. Rory was slowly succumbing to those ideals, but he had also learned and developed ideas from watching his sisters test the patience of his parents. Careful not to repeat their mistakes, he instead chose to see what he could do and what could he get away with it. He had the spirit of the con, but the brain of a young man. Trying to be a young man in the adult world, he saw himself as a revolutionary among teens if only he could get accepted by his peers.

A breeze rattled the oak tree outside the house and scraped its limbs on the side of the Hennessy house. Its shadows broke the beams of light entering the Hennessy house and created the shapes of long spindly fingers clawing up the upstairs hallway. Of the errant shapes of moonlight entering the house, one reached out further than the rest and separated from the shape of the window on the floor. It could have been a spirit, maybe the ghosts of any one of countless souls separated from their bodies. It moved with a sentient wave crossing over the floor and then climbing the wall like the searchlight from an invisible entity. Its energy form could peek through the crack of a doorway into the first room it found. Against the far wall, columnist Paul Hennessy laid in the arms of his wife, Cate. They were both very much in love, and they both had found their directions in life. Paul had the life he wanted and Cate had the family she wanted if not the time to be with them. Groaning and shifting a bit in bed, Cate had turned away from her husband trying to recatch her dreams. A chill in the room had woken her and the silvery light receded to keep from being noticed. Looking to the door, Cate blinked her eyes, yawned and checked her alarm clock before turning to the arms of her husband. In four hours, she had to get up to go to work at the hospital.

The next bedroom in the house belonged to the boy. The energy field had poked through the crack in his door and saw a young man looking at pictures of naked women in a magazine taken from a friend's house by flashlight. Rory knew he shouldn't have had these magazines, but this was his only portal into seeing the physical dimensions of the women he wanted to know. They didn't give him a window into the inner natures of the female mind, but that wasn't nearly as important to him as devolving back to his basest primitive nature. Out the corner of his eyes, he saw the light atop the door and feared the hall light was on as one of his parents made a nightly retreat to the bathroom. Bending his mattress back and tossing the controversial magazine under it, he bounced under his covers and pretended to fall asleep.

Past the top of the back stairs was the girls' room. Shivering through the crack in the doorjamb, the sentient searchlight sensed two more lives in here: one was the intellectual yet sarcastic redhead with a direction in her life and the other was the aimless self-obsessed manipulator whose life began with her looks and ended with what she could get. She had no moral center much less a destination in her life. Such was a hole that could be filled. That was the job of the universe to find and locate beings of potential going nowhere and then to take them somewhere. The redhead had a future; the blonde was still aimlessly pursuing unrealistic goals. Her soul was missing a fragment and that absent portion could be filled. It was not too late. The girl known as Bridget Hennessy could still reach her potential if it was given her. It was the mission of the universe to remove from the world those that were destined to give grief, and it was mankind's destiny to live to its fullest potential.

The silver splinter of sentient moonlight now encroached near Bridget's bed, pausing briefly and then lighting up its underside. Crawling up beneath a layer of blanket and sheets, it followed the warmth of the human body on the bed near it, shining brightly through the bed sheets and shining a pale glow around the bed. The light began dimming a bit as Bridget reacted to rub the sensation in her leg. She thought it was a cramp, but then she felt the stimulating shock of a spark passing through her body, and the overwhelming presence of an invisible force pinning her to her bed.

Her eyes wakened with alarm and she tried to scream. Something was in her bed! Her voice only emitted a barely audible whine from her lungs. Was she being attacked? What was happening to her? She felt as if she were being possessed! Her breath wouldn't come, her heart began pounding faster and harder and she couldn't lift her arms. There was a sound in her head of a million voices whispering a million messages at her at once. Was this a dream? Was she having a heart attack? Her body writhed in pain and then arched up off the bed trying to break free. A tear dropped from her face in fear of what was happening to her. Her sister was sleeping just a few feet from her; why didn't she hear what was happening to her?!

Bridget's hands clawed at her bed for something to hold on to it. Her chest felt as if it was exploding and her head was pounding from the inside out. Her bed creaked under her again as she bounced against it, and her tear-worn eyes stared up to the ceiling from the stress trying to pull it apart. She tried to scream, she tried to catch her breath and she tried to catch her voice. Whatever was violating her was attacking her mind, body and soul. She tried to scream once more, coughing on air blocked from her lungs. Her heart was going to burst. Her body was going to flay itself apart. Whatever was happening to her was trying to kill her!

Shaken from her sleep by the noise in her room, Kerry turned from facing the wall and then toward the source of the sound that had stirred her from sleep. Her eyes attuning to the darkness, she heard Bridget whimper in pain and the sound of her mattress creaking. At first, she had the frightening thought of a boy sneaking into their room and seducing Bridget, but then she realized that her sister was fighting to catch her breath. Slowing sitting up in bed, she looked over to her sister's vague form in the other bed and realized she was fighting off something she couldn't see. She wasn't getting air, her body was jerking and shaking, her lips were gasping and her hands were restlessly grasping for something that wasn't there. As much she sometimes hated her sister, Kerry realized she also sometimes loved her.

"Mom!!!" Kerry brushed her curly red hair over her shoulder and rushed out of the room. Her bare feet sinking into the thick rug of the hallway, she made her parent's room in few seconds and even less footsteps. Her mother was a practicing nurse; she dealt with stuff like this. She grabbed her mother by the shoulders and shook her awake.

"Bridget is having a seizure!!"

"What? Bridget?" Cate shook off sleep and realized what she had heard. Paul emerged from his sleep and dreams of being a single guy living with two sexy girls who weren't his daughters and realized something was wrong. Not to be left out, he raced out for himself behind the steps of his middle daughter if but to see what was happening. He reached his daughter's room and stopped at the sight of his teenage firstborn daughter lying on her stomach on the far side of her bed. One hand draped off the bed, one leg stuck out from the blankets, she looked as if she had been attacked and dumped. With Kerry turning on the lights, Cate grabbed and turned over Bridget's body with the experience of a registered nurse and the care of a worried mother. She checked her daughter's breath from her tilted back head and peeled back her eyelid for pupilary response. Her other daughter stood leaning in the doorframe scared of the possibility of what was happening. Her husband was aghast, unable to speak. From down the hall, Rory wandered barely awake and yawning in his t-shirt and pajama pants.

"What's going on?" He wondered yawning.

"Bridget stopped breathing." Kerry barely spoke.

"Beej," His hand covering his mouth with concern, Paul called his daughter by her pet name. "Beej…"

"Bridget," Cate began seeing her daughter drift from out of her spell. "What did you eat tonight? Did Steven give you something? Are you on something?!"

"Mom, mom…" Bridget gasped a moment taking a breath and placing her hand to her chest. Her eyes rolled sleepily and lazily, her head trying to shake off a spell of dizziness, her left hand reaching to her forehead, she exhaled deeply and looked to her mother with the composed presence of a different person. "I just had a bad dream. Just a nightmare."

"A nightmare?!" Kerry stepped forward. "A nightmare? You scared me to death over a bad dream? What? Did you dream you woke up as a brunette?" At that note, Paul just breathed a token breath of relief and turned guiding his only son back to his room.

"Kerry…" Cate tried to keep the peace.

"I'm sorry." Bridget took another deep breath.

"Kerry, go back to bed." Cate dismissed her other daughter and looked to Paul still in the door. Bridget pulled her blanket up to her chest and pretended to be distracted. "Bridget," Cate again turned to being a nurse. "I want you to come by the hospital after school. I'll have Dr. Masterson check you out."

"I'm not sick."

"Beej," Cate made her worried look. "For me." She stroked a long lock of her daughter's blonde hair out of her face.

"Okay…." Bridget answered as her mother kissed her on the head. She watched her head out and turn off the bedroom light in her path out of the room. Her father gave her a comforting look as well in closing the door. In the dark and light blue light of the moonlight of the room, Bridget looked to Kerry gazing back at her.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, positive." The blonde one responded while adjusting and trying to realign her blankets and sheets. Flipping over her pillow, she laid back down sinking into her bed and looked to her right hand. In the dark room, it looked white, barely pink through the darkness. It sort of tingled now to her. In fact, her whole body was just sort of tingling now… and she liked it.