F A N F I C T I O N > M I S C . F A N D O M S
Theresa Falls Up the Stairs by Amberina
The sheets were uncomfortable and sticky under her skin. Shannon shifted in bed, a small whimper escaping her mouth. She'd had trouble sleeping the past week or so, and though it was nearing dawn, she'd just fallen asleep.
Moonlight drifted through her bedroom window. She always closed it at night, afraid of creepy burglars and rapist gardeners, but she'd forgotten tonight and a cool breeze was blowing through as well. She unconsciously wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead and pulled her covers over her tighter, shivering.
Inside her head, she was no longer in her well-furnished bedroom, or curling up with sheets decorated in pink hearts and blue flowers. She was in the middle of a jungle. It was dark, and she was lost and nasty bugs kept biting her. She slapped at them, longing for some insect repellent.
She came to a clearing, and in the middle of it sat an old man with a strange vertical scar on the skin surrounding his eye. He was cleaning a knife. A chill ran down Shannon's spine and she backed up slightly.
"What'd you do?" She thought it, nervously continuing to slap bugs away. She had a bad, bad feeling about this. Her entire body itched, but she wasn't about to concentrate on that when there was this man in front of her. With a knife. Coated in - oh, God...
The man looked her straight in the eye and Shannon felt nauseous. There was nothing but white in his eyes, no pupils. "The question, I believe, is what did you do, Theresa?"
"My name's not..." Shannon began, but trailed off as she slapped another bug away. She looked down at her hands. There was blood all over her palms. "No. No, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I DIDN'T."
The old man shrugged, and placed his knife to the side. He pointed up, and Shannon's eyes followed. Above her, caught on some branches, was a body, covered in blood. It looked mangled, it looked like... "Oh, God. Boone."
Then it changed, with a flash, and it was a plane, a little yellow plane, but Shannon didn't get a good look at it before it changed again, with another flash. Now it was a bigger plane, white. The image continued to flash between the three as it began to fall from the branches. Boone, yellow plane, white plane, Boone, yellow plane, white plane... Finally, it hit the ground with an explosion that quickly faded away to just Boone, lying there so broken.
Shannon looked around, but the old man and his knife were gone. She ran over to Boone and knelt beside him. "Boone? Are you... Boone? Boone?" She began to shake him but he wasn't responding. "Boone! BOONE! Boone, please!"
The trees behind her rustled and she turned around, straining her eyes to see anything past a few feet in front of her in the dark. "Who is it?" More rustling. "Old guy?" No answer, and still more rustling. She thought she heard a faint whisper, but she couldn't make out what it was saying. "I can't hear you!" she called out.
The whisper got louder, just so she could barely make it out. "Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs, Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs..." it continued, over and over again, the same thing. The voice seemed disembodied, carried on the wind.
Shannon awoke suddenly. It was freezing, but she was covered in sweat. Sometime while she was asleep, she'd tried to kick her covers off, but had tangled her feet up in them instead. She noticed the open window, and after untangling her feet, made her way to it. She couldn't shake the dream off, though, and continued to shiver even after it was closed.
She swore, and pulled some shorts on, having slept in panties and a tank top. She made her way out to the hall, and glanced towards Boone's room. His door was shut, of course. He always shut the door while he slept.
Boone was her stepbrother, two years older than her. He was kind of dumb sometimes, but Shannon liked him. Sometimes. Okay, she mostly hated him, but the thought of him bloody like that...
Their parents married while Shannon and Boone were still kids, but they were old enough to kind of pass up the sibling bonding and move straight to the hatred. That was about eight years ago, and now the two had an odd sort of relationship. They still hated each other, but under all the bickering and mild violence was a strange sort of affection. Their parents didn't understand it, thought the two would end up killing each other.
Shannon remembered the blood on her hands in the dream and faltered. She felt sick, like a thousand tiny needles were pricking at the inside of her stomach.
She pushed open Boone's door. His room was dark, but she left the door open so a little bit of light from the hall allowed her to make her way towards his bed. He was facing away from her, curled up on his side.
"Boone?" she whispered, not loud enough to wake him if he was asleep, but loud enough to get his attention if he wasn't.
He stirred, and turned over. Shannon was relieved to see that there wasn't blood on his face, though she knew it was stupid to think there would be. He mumbled something and Shannon froze, straining to hear.
"... up the stairs ... Theresa ... "
A cold feeling enveloped her and her breath caught in her throat. The needles in her stomach were now stabbing, and she felt like if she didn't get out of there she would be sick all over her sleeping stepbrother.
She ran out of the room, no longer concerned with waking Boone up. When she reached her room, she closed the door firmly behind her and sat on her bed. She pulled her knees up to her chest, still trying to shake off the dream. Trying to make sense of Theresa. She didn't know a Theresa, and she was pretty sure she knew everyone Boone knew. And falls up the stairs? What?
Shannon's eyes fell on her laptop. She thought for a moment, and then got up and brought it over to the bed with her. After booting it up, she opened the first search engine that came to mind and typed "Theresa falls up the stairs" into it. Maybe it was a line from a song or a movie she didn't remember.
Shannon sighed, as the search results page began to load with absolutely no results. "Fuck," she said under her breath, feeling slightly like a caged animal. She had to know what this was about. She had to. Shannon highlighted the previously entered text with her mouse and typed "Boone Carlisle" and "Theresa" over it. She pressed enter and sucked in her breath.
Jackpot. There were several results now. Shannon scanned them and the cold feeling of dread returned to her. This wasn't good. This definitely was not good.
Shannon heard footsteps in the hallway outside her door, and looked up from her computer. She half expected Boone to open it, but he didn't, and the footsteps passed. Shannon had been reading the results for the last few hours, and now the morning light shone brightly through her window. She had a pounding headache, probably from a mixture of her extremely traumatic dream, lack of sleep, and staring at the computer screen for too long.
She decided it would be best to go talk to Boone. She could ask him about it and then maybe the horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach would finally go away. Maybe. She really doubted it.
Shannon made her way downstairs and towards the kitchen. She assumed he'd be there, seeing as he ate like a pig, or a boar, or some other kind of disgusting animal. And he never gained a pound. Stupid boy metabolism.
She was right. He stood in the kitchen, leaning over the island, shoving spoonfuls of dripping cereal into his mouth. He wore nothing but a pair of loose jeans. His eyes drifted towards her, and floated up her body. He wanted her, obviously, but that was old news.
"Boone," Shannon began, and tried to think of how to say this without sounding like a total retard. He mistook it as a greeting and he grunted "morning" in her direction. Shannon sighed and continued, more bluntly than she would have preferred, "Who's Theresa?"
His hand froze halfway to his mouth, and he just stared at her. The cereal fell back into his bowl, but he didn't move his hand.
"Who's Theresa?" Shannon repeated, a little stronger now. The feeling in her stomach got stronger too.
Boone seemed to recover slightly, and placed his spoon back into the bowl. He turned around, and picked up the box of cereal, putting it in its place in the cabinet. "I don't know a Theresa."
"Boone."
He turned around, and now he seemed angry. "How do you know about Theresa?" His nostrils flared and Shannon could see a wild rage in his eyes. He didn't scare her, though. If there was one person that didn't scare her it was Boone.
"You said her name in your sleep, and then I looked it up," Shannon said softly, almost urging him to not hear her.
That seemed to enrage him even more. "What were you doing in my room?"
"She died, right?" Shannon said, hoping if she repeated what she knew it would force him to fill in the details. "She died when you were little, fell down the stairs. She was your nanny. Right?" He didn't say anything. "Boone?"
"Yes, Shannon, she died," he said. He seemed less rage-filled and more annoyed now, which was good. Annoyed wasn't anything new. Annoyed she could deal with. "She fell down the stairs, and she was my nanny. You know the whole story."
"The papers said there was an investigation."
Boone looked down. "I didn't kill her."
The feeling in Shannon's stomach was even worse now. She felt as if the needles had stopped stabbing, but were inserted into the walls of her stomach, and something was reaching in and twisting them inside, gutting her from the inside out. "I didn't say you did."
"What the hell is this, Shannon? Want to hear about how I murdered my nanny when I was a kid? Pushed her down the stairs and watched her fall? All about how her head hit against the eighth and the fourth stairs on the way down? Want to hear all about the way the blood pooled around her head?" Boone picked up his bowl and threw it against the wall. It shattered in an explosion of broken glass, corn flakes, and milk. Back to rage again, apparently.
Shannon shook her head. "You didn't. You didn't."
"I didn't, but that's obviously what you want to hear." Boone shot her a dark look and made his way past her and out of the kitchen.
That didn't go well at all. Shannon sighed and followed Boone. "You know I wouldn't have had to ask if you weren't such a secretive psycho."
"Don't you have nails to paint or a facial to apply?" Boone shot back, not looking at her.
"Oh, fuck you. Why didn't you tell me about Theresa?"
Boone looked back at her. "Because you so obviously care. You find out about it and you accuse me of murdering her. Really nice, Shannon. Makes me want to share with you. Really."
"I didn't accuse you! I just asked, it's not my fault you went all psycho!"
"Yes, I'm a psycho. A murdering psycho." Boone plopped down on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table that sat in front of it. Shannon stood in front of him, but he flipped on the television and pretended to care about the Hair Club for Men.
"You know, from the way you're acting, now I do think you killed her. I bet you enjoyed it, too. Psycho." Shannon spun around and began to make her way out of the room.
"What if I did?"
Shannon froze in her tracks, but she didn't turn around. She tried to open her mouth to speak, but the words seemed as frozen as her legs.
"What if I did kill her, Shannon?" he continued. He coughed and his weight seemed to shift on the couch, but Shannon didn't look back at him.
"Did you?" she finally managed to get out.
There was a long stretch of silence, until he said, very softly, "I don't know."
She turned back around, and looked at him. He was still looking at the television, but obviously wasn't very involved in it. "You don't know?"
"I don't know," he repeated. "I can't remember anything from that night. I... can't remember anything from that night or before. It's like my memory's been wiped clean. One long blackout."
Shannon wasn't sure what to say, but a nervous "I'm sorry" spilled out.
"Yeah," he said. "Right."
Shannon just looked at him as he looked at the TV for a moment, then she went back upstairs, so many thoughts buzzing through her aching head. She sat down on her bed and sighed.
Her palm itched, and a faint thought about that meaning she'd be getting money drifted through her brain as she scratched it. Not even thinking about it, she glanced down at her palm. It was coated in thick, red blood. Warm blood. Very, very warm. Burning. Getting hotter, and hotter, and hotter....
"Oh, God," she whimpered, sure the burning blood would catch her hands on fire any second. She went insane, trying desperately to wipe the blood off, onto anything, but not even a trace of it transferred. And then, suddenly, it was gone, and Shannon sat on the floor and cried.
She could have sworn she heard someone whispering "Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs" as she cried.