In the darkness and silence, she worked to make the eyes more triangular, angrier, more like one of Jim’s devil-faced pumpkins.
When she finished with the eyes, she stepped back. It was no good. It just looked like a furious version of Hannah leering back at her.
You can’t make me go away this time.
She picked up the knife again, thinking she’d fix it—change the nose and mouth, banish Hannah-beast once and for all.
She froze, sure she’d heard a giggle from somewhere behind her, deep in the dark center of the house.
She listened hard, and it was not laughter she heard this time but the clip-clap sound of boot heels moving across the floor. The sound of her old pink cowboy boots—the boots her mother had shamed her into giving to Hannah.
The boots Hannah had been wearing that night.
The boots look good on you, Hannah.
“Hello?” she called. She waited, knife clutched in her hand, heart pounding in her ears.
“Hannah?” she asked, choking out the name.
The jack-o’-lantern grinned, seemed to give her an evil wink. I’m right here. I have been all along.
1982
Sometimes the best place to hide was right in plain sight.
She sat, cross-legged, in the dark gazebo right in the middle of town, the same spot where she’d been just hours before, trading candy with the girls, taking all their peanut butter cups. The floor of the gazebo was littered with the wrappers they’d left behind.
She sat for so long her legs turned to pins and needles.
The sirens went on and on. It seemed everyone in town was up and awake, walking the streets, talking. They talked over each other, shouted across the street to friends and neighbors.
Did you hear, did you hear? Bad fire at the Caldwells’ place. Both their boys dead. They were sleeping in the barn. It was that Hannah Talbott girl.
She came to my house tonight, dressed all crazy, acting like some kind of animal. Threatened my dog. Screamed right in my face.
Mental, that one is.
What was that crazy costume she was wearing, anyway?
Said she was some kind of beast.
She was all over town, wicked girl running wild. Broke into the Jarvises’ garage, stole a crowbar. Used it to get a gas can from the Blakelys’ shed. Busted up the shed while she was at it. Then she walked right on over to the Caldwells’ place, soaked that old barn in gasoline, torched it. Those poor boys never had a chance.
She could tell, of course. She could tell, but who was going to believe her? Who ever believed a girl like Hannah? A girl who’d been caught with a gas can and a lighter.
That’s her, Manda had said. That’s Hannah-beast.
She was still in her costume, now dirty, stinking of smoke and gasoline.
Girls like that, they’re going straight to hell. You stay away from them unless you want to get burned.
Her face itched, didn’t feel like her face at all. The wig was on crooked. The cape was torn.
She looked up, saw a rope dangling down—an old piece of clothesline maybe—looped around the overhead beam. The rope that had held the ghost piñata earlier. The little kids had swung at it with a stick, the ghost bobbing, dancing in circles until it was hit dead-on, torn open, candy flying out, the little kids all pushing each other, scrambling to collect the most pieces.
Hannah stood, reaching for the rope, hands shaking a little. She gave it a tug like she was ringing an invisible bell.
I ring but I’m not a phone.
The rope was looped over one of the rafters, tied tight with a string of knots. She gripped it with both hands and swung, feet drifting over the refuse of the evening—the clear cellophane of Manda’s Smarties, the bright scraps from Mel’s Tootsie Pops, the wrappers from all those Hershey’s bars Katie had eaten.
She was her own piñata, swinging. The rope held her weight.
She climbed up on the low wall of the gazebo, cape flapping in the breeze like she really was some kind of superhero about to take flight. The cowboy boots were slippery and she had to lean quite a bit to reach the center, but she kept her balance. She made a careful slipknot in the rope. Her hands didn’t feel like her hands at all.
It was like it was some other girl. Like she was watching some other version of herself in some far-off place tie the knot.
A ghost of a girl.
A beast of a girl.
Hannah-beast unleashed.
The real Hannah was home, tucked up all safe and warm in her bed like a good girl, right where she belonged, a girl who wasn’t going to hell. A girl who had a best friend named Manda who’d given her a pair of special pink boots, boots that fit so perfectly it was like she and Manda were one.
The candy wrappers got caught in the breeze, skittered across the floor below her, empty and forgotten.
Hannah looped the rope around her neck over the rainbow wig, over the pink boa. She heard the girls’ voices in her head as she jumped off the wall—Hannah-beast takes flight!—swinging, flying, legs dangling over the floor.
Say boo!
2016
Amanda held her breath, listening to the footsteps come up behind her. They were real; she was sure of it. Not born of paranoia and too much wine, right? She glanced down at the pumpkin, her knife now turning the blocky teeth into pointed ones, giving it a vampire grin.
Hannah-beast’s a real monster, that’s for sure. Be careful, or she’ll eat you up!
Amanda looked up, out across the kitchen at the window over the sink, and saw the reflection in it: the dim kitchen lit only by the candle in the jack-o’-lantern; herself, hunched over before it, whittling away; and a figure behind her—a girl with a blue face, a bright clown wig, a pink feather boa, a silver cape.
She blinked, but it did not go away, just came closer, closer still.
I love you, Manda Panda.
She could hear the creature breathing as it drew near, could smell smoke and gasoline.
Amanda could not move, could not speak or scream.
She was twelve years old again, looking at Hannah as she stood with the gas can by her feet, the lighter in her hand, staring desperately at Amanda: Please. Don’t let them do this to me.
But Amanda had only pointed. That’s her. That’s Hannah-beast.
“Boo!” Hannah roared in her ear, right behind her now.
“Go away!” Amanda screamed as she spun. They were the words she and the other girls had said so many times to Hannah when she followed them around like some pathetic dog at school, when she sat down at their lunch table, when she showed up at Amanda’s house, wanting to ride bikes, wanting to sleep over again. Why can’t you just go away?
Amanda plunged her carving knife deep into Hannah-beast’s belly, shouting, “Go the fuck away!”
But the creature did not disappear like smoke, like the ghost she should have been.
Amanda’s hands were warm and sticky with blood.
Hannah-beast looked down at the knife in her belly, slack-jawed, stupid.
When she looked up, Amanda saw her, really saw her.
And in that moment, she realized Hannah had won.
“No!” Amanda cried, the word a wailing sob. “No, no, nooo!”
Erin looked so surprised, so puzzled, as she reached down and touched the knife, like she couldn’t believe it was real. Amanda could see traces of cat whiskers beneath the blue face paint.
“Mom?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © Michael Lionstar
Jennifer McMahon is the New York Times bestselling author of eight suspense novels, including Promise Not to Tell and The Winter People. She lives in Vermont with her partner, Drea, and their daughter, Zella.
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