About ten minutes later Kana, Carry and Beth were sitting together in one of the two small diners inside the station-building. Each of them was drinking a coffee. To that Carry was eating an open sandwich and Beth a crossaint.
Kana was just not feeling like eating anything.
"I have to go to the toilette for a few minutes," she said to the others.
"Okay," Carry replied. "We are waiting here for you."
"Right," Kana told her.
Then she turned around and left her two friends at the cafe.
She was walking along the long main-corridor that led led from the front entrance-hall to the back-entrance and connected the entire building. With the different stores and cafe´s on both sides, only interrupted regulary by the pairs of stairs leading upwards to the different segments of the station-platform.
She had never been here before, so she did not really know where the toilettes were. But she logically suspected that they would be close to the front entrance, so she went in that direction.
Like she had expected, when she arrived at the entrance-hall, she found the side-corridor leading to the place she was looking for right next to the information.
But as she was looking at it, she suddenly felt dizzy again and nearly stumbled over her own feat. Everyhing seemed to become grey again.
And for a short moment the picture she saw of the room around her was once again replaced with one of some bizarre kind of underground structure.
She looked around. Nobody seemed to have noticed her stumbling.
Good - at least nobody had seen her nearly falling over her own feet, she thought.
Kana walked into the corridor leading to the toilettes.
If she was honest, Kana didn´t know what was going on with her today.
xxxx
She had long accepted that she sometimes saw this strange visions in her dreams. Visions that sometimes showed her bizarre and alien- sometimes nightmarish-looking places and sometimes day to day events... events that in a few cases became reality later.
This one detail made it hard for her to dismiss the things she saw in her dreams as... well - just being dreams. (Because they weren´t.)
But at the same time it was not as if they were really affecting her in her daily life. So she had ultimately decided to more or less ignore them.
Even if she had it in the back of her mind that... yes - the vision probably were real.
But it was not as if she were able to use them for anything anyway. Even if there were bizarre other worlds and dimension out there.
She could not show the strange places she was seeing to anyone. And for the `day to day events visions, she never knew beforehand which of them would become reality later until after they happened. So they were not really doing anything for her... except making her a freak of course, she thought.
She was just a normal girl, that was what she had always been telling everyone... and herself.
But what was happening right now...? The visions were normally not affecting her in her daily life. In fact she normally didn´t see any of them when she was awake at all.
It was like they were suddenly far stronger and more intense than normally for no reason.
Kana admitted she was beginning to feel afraid. If the visions staid like this, she might not be able to hide them from other people anymore.
She already imagined others noticing when she were suddenly seeing things, people starting to treat her differently, her parents sending her to psychological treatment... and she already saw herself being send to an asylum somewhere.
She could only hope that her visions would return to `normal´ soon. As far as you could call them normal in any way in the first place.
What she had no way to know was that another person with the same `gift´ was currently only a few kilometers away.
And she knew even less that right in this moment, Peter saw the very same vision that she did.
Nearly like the two were somehow reacting to each other.
xxxx
Kana had walked into the corridor that led to the train-station´s public toilettes.
She noticed that about half of the lights were not working and there were no windows in this part of the building either. So no sunlight. The entire corridor was dim.
`Great,´ she thought sarcastically.
Of course this just had to be when her visions suddenly became uncontrollable and appearing when she was awake. Just now she had to go alone into some half-lighted room.
She remembered how a few minutes ago the scene around her suddenly overlapped with something she saw inside her mind.
Kana admitted she felt a little bit afraid... of what she might see if he went inside.
She never realized how unsettling it was not to be sure if what you saw was actually reality or not.
She truly hated having this vision.
But she continued to move forward. It was not that she had much of a choice. Unless she wanted to piss into her pants right here in public.
`Visions can not hurt you. They are just things you see in your mind. So just go inside you coward,´ she told herself.
And she walked inside.
To her relief she saw nothing but a dimly lighted toilette room. She opened one of the cabins and sat down.
As she was finished a few seconds later, she pulled up her pants, opened the door of the cubicle and stepped back outside.
She then quickly washed her hands and hastily dried them up. The unsettling feeling that she had deep down the entire time had suddenly grown immensely.
She just wanted to get back to her friends as fast as possible.
Then as she pulled the door open, what she saw was exactly something like she had secretly already feared the entire time.
What she saw on the other side was not the corridor that she just came from. It was also not the brickwalled tunnel she saw earlier.
Instead it was some kind of corridor with the sidewalls and ceiling made from some kind of light greenish shimmering metal. It was somehow futuristic looking and could have been right out of the set of a science fiction movie. The only thing that was still the same was the damned unsettling half-dark.
Kana slammed the door shut.
So this truly was it, she thought. She was really loosing it. She could not longer tell the difference between her visions and reality.
`No,´ she told herself. `This is not real. This is not real.´
Finally she got her nerves together and opened the door again.
Behind it, to her dismay, she still saw the illusion of the futuristic corridor instead the real one.
She closed her eyes. Simply hoping that if she saw nothing for a few moments, her senses would just somehow return to normal and she would see the real world again instead of that freaking visions.
But as she opened them again a moment later, she got yet another fright.
As instead of the real empty corridor she hoped for, she suddenly saw a the shape of a tall figure standing right before herself in the entrance.
Or did she?
It was only for a split-second, then the figure had disappeared. She did not even been able to see it clearly.
Just a vaque impression that something had been off about the figure. That there had been something `wrong´ about it - it´s form, it´s limbs, it´s posture.
Nearly as if what she was looking at was not really the shape of a person, she realized deep in her mind.
Kana was once again looking at the corridor. The metallic futuristic looking corridor. Which she knew was not really there, but just an illusion she was seeing.
`No.´ She was really going insane, she thought. Her visions had completely gone out of control... and she was seeing them all the time.
Then suddenly she heard something. Someone was standing behind her, she realized.
But the room had been empty. She was sure of it.
She heard something moving behind her. But that was impossible.
Visions, no matter how realistic, were not really there. They were just in her mind. Did she imagine the sound as well?
But then she felt-... she felt something touching her shoulder. And then pain as something sharp was cutting into her skin.
Who was standing behind her?... What was standing behind her? she asked herself in horror.
She forced herself to turn around, even if her entire body seemed like frozen and her legs like they could give up any moment.
She was not even sure if she really wanted to see it. Or if it was better not knowing and just trying to run out of the room and back into the hall.
As she slowly turned, she saw the... hand? that was lying on her shoulder... and the arm connected to it.
Pale grey skin, looking more like wet concrete than flesh. And the hand that was just releasing her shoulder, only four overly long fingers with sharp claws at their ends. She saw a bit of her own blood on them.
`Oh - no, no, no, no, no,´ was all that was going through her mind.
As she had turned completely around and fully saw what was standing behind her, all what she could do was scream... before her body finally gave in and collapsed.
xxxxxxx
Peter was sitting in Sarah´s car in the passenger seat. Just like he had the entire time.
His mind however was now returning to the here and now. He had not seen every detail of what had happened. Which was probably a god thing, given where exactly Kana had been and what she was doing. Otherwise it would have been kind of awkward.
For the most part, what he saw was just a young asian woman who was walking through different rooms and corridors. Rooms that were however constantly changing around her.
From what he could swear looked pretty much like the main corridor of the same train station he and Sarah were just heading for, to a brickstone corridor that looked like it belonged to a middle-age castle, to another somewhat futuristic looking one and back.
Still, this had been the most detailed and intense vision he ever had when he was awake.
There was however one thing he remembered clearly. The face of the creature that appeared at the end.
Deathly grey skin, a inhumanly wide lipless mouth with overlong sharp teeth that were protruding out of it, no nose, large completely black eyes that looked like they should rather belong to an insect than a being on two legs that were sunk deeply into a hairless skull.
It was literally a being out of a nightmare.
Of course Peter had seen even more terrifying things before. But never that close, never that clear. It was like he had see directly through the eyes of the young woman.
Peter had cried out when he had come back to his senses and `woke up´ from his vision. The term waking up was of course not entirely correct, since he had technically not really been asleep.
Or was he? had he just napped off for a few minutes and seen most of it while he was sleeping? He was not sure.
"Everything alright?" Sarah, who had of course noticed, asked him. "A nightmare?"
"Yes. I have been kind of stressed lately," he answered.
That part at least was true.
xxx
The car was just driving up the large parking lot at the front entrance of the train station.
They had arrived.
The parking area filled the greatest part of the place in front of the building. Right next to it was a bus-terminal. People with collective tickets for both train and bus could so also move directly from one sort of transport to the other without interruptions.
After Sarah found a parking spot and halted the car, they moved out and walked over the parking lot towards the front entrance.
As they passed the doors and entered the entrance hall, they saw a small crowd of people standing at the left, close to the corridor that led to the toilettes. And in the center of the crowd, sitting on a bench, were two paramedicals taking care of a woman.
Peter remembered he had seen an ambulance standing outside.
But the person the paramedics were just examining - it was the same woman he had seen in his vision.
But that was not possible. She had clearly reacted to all the things Peter had seen in the vision, the room around her changing, the creature that had appeared. She had seen and interacted with it.
That could not be, unless... unless she was like him, Peter realized.
Maybe it had never really been his vision, but hers - or one that had been shared between both of them.
He needed to talk with her, he decided.
But there was one more detail about all this that set him off. The creature, it had touched her... it even dug it´s claws into her shoulder and draw blood.
That was also something impossible, even more than the rest. The visions were not physically there. Even if it was true that this creatures truly existed at some other world or different plain of reality. They did not exist in this world.
Had this only happened in their heads?
And... if not?... If he talked to her and she confirmed that the being truly touched her in reality? The thought not just scared him. You could say it sparked some fundamental fear inside him.
What would this mean? That the things they saw were somehow starting to cross over into their reality? No - he would not even consider that idea until he saw some more proof.
Peter walked closer to them.
"Sorry," he said to a man walking close to him. "Do you know what had happened?"
"It seems some woman had collapsed at the toilettes," the man replied.
"Thank you," Peter said.
`Collapsed,´ he repeated in his mind.
He was now only a few meters away.
Sarah had been walking with him, obviously a bit curious herself.
xxx
Meanwhile Carry and Beth were standing very close to the bench where Kana was sitting with the paramedics.
"That´s really a great beginning for this part of our trip," Beth commented sarcastically.
"Come on - it is not as if anybody could have known that Kana would collapse like this," Carry replied.
"She did not seem so well since we arrived here," Beth said.
"But when we started she was alright," Carry responded.
"Yes."
"Entschuldigen Sie," someone addressed them from the side. It was a woman, maybe a few years older than them. She had dark brown hair, was wearing a black coat, high heeled boots and very dark make-up.
Maybe some kind of goth, Beth thought.
"Können Sie mir sagen wie viel Uhr es ist?" she asked.
Beth however was the only one out of their group who didn´t speak german at all.
"Sorry I can not understand you," she said.
"She wants to know what time it is," Carry told her.
"There was a clock right over there." Beth pointed at the other end of the hall. "But - well..."
She decided there was no reason that the woman should walk that 20 or 30 meters extra, when she had her watch right here and so she looked down on her wrist.
In that moment though, the woman made a sudden movement and Beth felt a sharp pain in her chest. She only then fully realized what had happened.
"Beth!" Carry and Kana both called out as she saw the strange woman suddenly draw a knife and stab their friend.
The woman however bowed closer to Beth while she had burried her knife in her chest.
"He is coming," she spoke quietly to her. "Frank said so. And you have the honor to be one of his sacrifices."
xxx
A few meters from them Peter and Sarah also watched in shock as a young woman was stabbed and possibly killed right here in puplic... and right in front of their eyes.