Chapter 2

I Don't Think We're In Kansas Anymore

The evening passed normally and that feeling of wrongness had long since vanished by the time Katrina once again rolled over in her bed and drifted off to sleep. However, that sense of wrongness returned with a vengeance as soon as the black of unconsciousness claimed her mind. Another dream was beginning, unusual even when adding her sudden increase of dreams to the equation. This one was different, though, which was some comfort, until the dream's contents morphed into a nightmare.

The scent of vanilla wafted around her, a pale, yellow-ish haze surrounding her. Somehow she knew this was meant to represent the smell. Wondering why the haze glittered and feeling reckless enough to disregard the warning bells going off in her mind, which really sounded more like Klaxons than bells, she took a deep breath, inhaling the scent she loved so much.

The darkness surrounding her finally drew her gaze, but she felt no reason to be afraid. It was soothing in a way the darkness of night sometimes wasn't. Then the air in front of her began to warp, the yellow glitter of vanilla remaining unmoved. The world suddenly went gray, revealing a familiar head and shoulders. She recognized her reflection, but something was off. This person did not look exactly like she should. The death glare the reflection pinned her with prevented her from discovering what was wrong. Finally, the reflection spoke, its voice like her own, but deeper and with a demonic echo.

"You will pay for what you have done."

"What did I do?" She asked, her voice coming out as a whisper, causing her to swallow and try again, summoning her courage and repeating in a stronger voice. "What did I do?"

"That is why you will pay," her reflection answered and vanished in another warping of air, taking the scent of vanilla with her. It wasn't until the vision was gone that she realized what had been off about her reflection. The colors were wrong, like she had once been a character in a manga, but reversed. Black where there should have been white, white where there should have been black.

Katrina woke with a start, sitting straight up in her bed and squinting in the glare of unexpected sunlight. The adrenaline still coursing through her body, but for a suddenly very different reason. She grabbed for her alarm clock and brought it to her face so she could read the time, thinking she was late for school. The numbers read 12:01 a.m. But the position of the sun outside suggested closer to noon when she stood up to check out the window.

Confused, Katrina put down the clock and checked for cars in the driveway. Both the truck and the Impala were still sitting where they had been parked last night. Wondering what was going on, the young woman wandered out of her room and checked for other inhabitants, curious to find out why everyone would be home on a weekday and why they hadn't woken her for school.

The house was empty. Not even the two cats they owned were currently in residence, which was odd because her cat, Ihy, absolutely refused to go outside and would have been under foot begging for attention the second he heard her door open. This more than anything made Katrina worry. This was not normal. It was like she had woken up to a ghost town.

Running back to her room she began digging through her clothes to find something to wear. There may not be people nearby at the moment, but she didn't want to go wandering around the town in her pajamas. As soon as she was dressed Katrina moved back to her door and opened it, having closed it out of habit when she re-entered the room, and stopped in surprise and not a little fear.

The vision from her dream stood there waiting for her. The "death glare" from before firmly fixed on her face. Unlike in the dream, this time Katrina noticed the color of those narrowed eyes, which was the only actual color on the being. The eyes were red, a deep ruby red, but they didn't glow as Katrina had expected demonic eyes would. Somehow they were even more fearsome for their lack.

"Who are you?" Katrina asked, her voice wavering only slightly.

"You're worst nightmare," was her only answer.

Katrina would have cringed at the cliché had the being not attacked in that moment. As it was, she did make notice of the statement as she ducked the blow and ran out the door. She also wondered fleetingly at the use of what appeared to be a katana by her new found enemy before fleeing through the house and out the front door, grabbing conveniently located keys on the doorknob before leaving.

The young woman paused for a moment, fumbling with the keys and trying to find the unlock button so she could figure out which vehicle they belonged to. She finally pressed the correct button and watched as the headlights on the truck flashed once. With a groan Katrina once more sprang into motion and wrenched the driver's side door open, jamming the keys into the ignition and turning them, heaving a sigh of relief when the engine started almost immediately.

Katrina threw the truck into reverse and slammed on the gas, speeding out of the driveway and just managing to avoid the neighbor's fence. A quick glance back at her house told her the strange, black-and-white thing with her face had not followed and appeared to have disappeared altogether. With the vanishing of her opponent, Katrina managed to spare a brief thought for potential police and hoped fervently that they wouldn't pull her over as she still had no driver's license even though she was a senior in high school. Then she wondered what she should do now.

oOoOoOo

Elsewhere, in the normal world, things proceeded more or less as usual. The only difference was the sudden absence of four people who had always been there before, but were now gone, wiped off the face of the planet as if they had never existed. Younger siblings became only children, except in the case of Molly's younger brother and sister who thought they were only two instead of three and Julie's parents who thought they had simply never had a child. No one seemed to notice the wrongness except for one person.

Haru Azuma stared through the window of a purple house in the process of being re-painted green. No one within the residence noticed this odd man scrutinizing their every move, but yet he remained, eyes narrowed in instant suspicion. It was against his orders, but that rarely meant anything when it came to the safety and happiness of his catalyst, the young woman known as Molly.

Molly, who was now strangely missing from the world. A girl who had been very close to her family and friends, but now seemed to have been cleanly erased from living memory. In fact, some of her friends had followed her disappearance. It was a strange occurrence. All four of the missing girls had developed territories, quite strong ones too and difficult to master, but, somehow he didn't think this time was like all the others. He could sense no unusual demonic energy seeking to feed off the superhuman high school girls.

So, that must mean something else was happening. Something they had not yet discovered. As if on cue, he felt his communicator vibrate in his pocket. Pulling it out and flipping the round device that looked rather like a girl's compact open, Haru stared down into the face of a toddler sucking on a pacifier. Really, would Koenma never change? The ruler of Spirit World spoke, frantic and loud as always.

"We have a situation here, Haru! Get your patushka down here on the double! I'll explain everything then."

The screen went dark after that, not giving the newest Spirit Detective a chance to respond, not that he would have, but that was a choice he did not appreciate Koenma taking from him. With a last perplexed look at the happy family through the window Haru turned and strode away. He could be in Spirit World within the hour, and that would have to be good enough for his boss.

oOoOoOo

Katrina rolled to a relatively gentle stop in front of the doors to a disturbingly deserted high school. This was not what was supposed to be happening. It was Tuesday, the second day of school. Cars should be parked in the parking lots and people should be wandering the halls just past the glass doors, but none of that was happening. In fact, as far as she could tell, Katrina was the only one here.

For a brief moment she considered driving over to her friend Molly's house, or Kaitlyn's, hoping somebody might be there, but Katrina felt drawn to this place somehow, as if all her reasons for being in this strange world centered around this one building. Unfortunately, staring at the main entrance from the truck was not conducive to actually learning anything that could help her. That did not mean she particularly wanted to go inside and leave the safety of her borrowed vehicle.

"But I won't learn anything at all if I don't go in," Katrina mumbled to herself. "Maybe I can find something in there that will make all this make sense."

Frowning with determination, Katrina turned off the truck, tucking the keys into her pocket, and climbed slowly out, shutting the door and locking it behind her out of habit. After all, there was no need for some random person to come along and steal it, if there were other people that is.

The young woman took a deep breath, gathering her courage to face the dangers of the unknown. When she wished for an adventure, sudden ghost towns of her entire world was not what she had had in mind. Some sword fighting and magic, a little saving of the world and demonic bad guys, yes. But absolute nothingness? No. What was going on here?

Katrina walked up the short sidewalk and up to the doors, tugging on one experimentally. It swung open easily, too easily in her opinion. The brunette was not stupid. She had seen movies and the read books before. If it seemed too easy it usually meant that a trap was in the works. Nevertheless, Katrina reminded herself that you never achieve a goal by going backward, and stepped forward through the doorway.

Inside the school seemed even more deserted, if that was possible. The air was stale, as though it had been locked up for a long time and she was the first to enter it in many years. Everything she could see looked well-preserved, nothing had been disturbed since yesterday. In fact, she could have sworn only one day had passed since she had seen her school last if not for the alarming amount of dust and stale air.

Roaming the now familiar halls served only to make her skin break out in goosebumps. Katrina rubbed her arms quickly, hoping to scare away the creeped out reaction with the warmth of friction. Her strategy failed, but that was the least of her worries. The brunette had managed to wander far into the back of the school, a place she had been to only once or twice, and the faint, very faint, scent of vanilla reached her nostrils.

A shiver ran down Katrina's back as flashbacks of her dream from this morning sped through her mind. Following the scent, which seemed counterproductive but which Katrina could not help, led her back into familiar territory. The band classroom lay just on the other side of the double doors she was facing. Further down this hall would take her back to the main hallway, main office, and the front entrance where she had come in, but Katrina did not take the path to freedom. Something here called to her and she would be damned if she didn't at least check it out.

Seemingly of its own volition, her hand stretched out, fingers gently brushing the cool metal of the door handle. A sudden noise startled her into jumping back, gaze snapping around to stare in the direction of the exit, where the double doors at the end of the hall had been flung open. There, silhouetted by the afternoon sun gleaming in through the main doors she could not see, stood a rather short, feminine figure.

For a moment Katrina's breath caught in her throat. The nightmare version of herself had tracked her down and would try to kill her again. The vanilla scent had vanished at this figure's entrance, but that meant nothing to the mind of the young woman who found herself thrust headlong and unprepared into full-on fight or flight mode.

For several seconds the two women stared at each other, for Katrina somehow knew the other figure was also female, before the stranger moved into the dim light of the hallway. Katrina gasped, shocked at the appearance of someone familiar. She opened her mouth to call out.

A/N: Ooh. A cliffhanger. I'm evil I know, but at least I started posting again. Who did Katrina come across in this mad place? I promise the answer will be in the next chapter. *crosses heart*