Hannahwhere

by John McIlveen

  “Yes, ma’am, I am,” said the cop. He closed his car door and with a wink and a wave, they drove away.

  Debbie rested her arms on the roof of her car and watched the cruiser’s taillights fade. A sudden fluttering sound startled her and she quickly climbed into the car, her limbs battling the pins and needles of fear as her imagination ran the gambit from bats to vampires. As she slammed the door, a large cardinal settled on the hood of her car, did three quick hops, and positioned itself directly in front of the driver’s side of the windshield. It was vibrant red, beautiful, and somewhat majestic with its peaked crown and regal, attentive stance. Debbie couldn’t remember ever seeing a cardinal after dark before. Are they nocturnal? she wondered, impressed by the bird’s audacity. Was it rabid? Can birds get rabies?

  “Chirby-chirby-chirby-djou-djou!” the bird said, looking straight at her. It cocked its head to the side as if expecting a response. The action appeared intentional and surreal, which seemed appropriate.

  “Are you chirping at me?” Debbie asked. She pictured De Niro using the line in Taxi Driver and smiled slightly.

  The bird took two hops nearer to the windshield, ruffled its feathers, and re-established eye contact with Debbie. “Djou-djou… djou!” The bird seemed to assess her for a moment and then took flight, quickly vanishing into the night.

  “That was bizarre,” Debbie said aloud, trying to alleviate the unease she was feeling. She started the car and shifted into gear. At least he didn’t shit on my hood like every other bird in town, she thought wryly. Her attempt at humor did nothing to lighten her mood.

  Chapter 3

  Elm Creek, Nebraska

  Anna cowered in the back seat of her mother’s car, pressing herself into the corner where the seat and door met, keeping as far away from Travis as possible.

  She remembered Travis dragging her from beneath the house, but little more until she came to, lying on the rear seat. She had been using her left arm to push herself into a sitting position, but collapsed when a blinding pain shot through her, robbing her both of breath and all thought. She had screamed out in agony and started sobbing, the sound of which caused Travis to shout and lash out at her. Fortunately, he had only managed to graze her forehead, but his intent and effort were clear and Anna knew his rage would only elevate if she didn’t remain silent. She forced herself not to cry and moved as seldom as possible so as not to get Travis’s attention, and because even the slightest movement made her arm throb excruciatingly. A deep gouge marked her arm where it had jammed beneath the crawlspace door, and the flesh around it was now an expanding black and purple bruise. When the bouncing of the car wasn’t sending searing jolts through her, the bottoms of her arms burned from the patches of road rash, angry red and seeping like the time she had wiped out on her bike. She eventually managed to sit up, gingerly supporting her arm, but with little relief.

  Even in the darkness of night, and tucked into the trees as they were, she recognized the moonlit dirt pathways of Sandy Channel, an embarrassingly primitive state-run campground on the south side of Elm Creek. Her mother had once said that Sandy Channel was the big park with little-to-nothing to offer. Still, when there was little money and little-to-nothing to do, Sandy Channel was a place to walk and share a picnic. They had gone there regularly.

  The memory of her mother’s words reawakened images of Travis stabbing her—carried back from some safe well in which she had been hiding them. Anna wanted to know that her Mom was okay and all the blood and screaming didn’t really happen. She wanted to be with her mother and Hannah. Anna couldn’t help herself. The longing, the pain, the fear, and the unknowing had become too much to hold inside, and it had oozed out of her in a sob.

  “I want to go home,” she pleaded. “I want my Mom!”

  Travis, who had been sucking a lighter’s flame through a little metal tube, turned sharply and looked at Anna. He had clearly forgotten about her. His eyes, barely visible in the car’s moonlit interior, juddered back and forth sporadically as he tried to focus on her.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he choked out, spitting out his hateful words with little plumes of smoke. He released a pungent cloud at her face. Anna pressed back against the seat, hoping that he’d soon forget her again.

  “You know where it is,” he drawled. “You know where she keeps her money, don’t you, you little shit wad?”

  Terrified, Anna shook her head.

  Travis pointed to one of Sandy Channel’s numerous ponds. Its icy surface reflected the moonlight, leaving no question about the coldness of the water beneath.

  “You see that? If you don’t tell me where she put her money, I’m going to tie your arms and legs together like the little pig you are and drop you right through that ice.”

  Anna couldn’t respond. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Do you think you’ll drown or freeze first?” Travis cruelly mused. He pinned her with a wolfish smile, but his attention soon wavered and returned to his pipe and the shadowy world beyond the car’s windshield.

  If Hannah were here, she and Anna could sing and together they could go to their secret place where it was always beautiful and where the sun always shined. Instead, Anna’s mind carried her to a solitary place inside of her where it was dark and cold, but where her pain and fear was muted and held in check.

  They had been at Sandy Channel for quite a while. Travis would start the car periodically to generate some heat, but the car had since lost its warmth and Anna, with neither a coat nor shoes, was feeling the effects of a cold so intense it had brought her back to the present. Anna’s mother kept a blanket they had used for picnics on the rear shelf of the car, and Anna had wrapped it around herself. It was thin, but it did offer some comfort in the increasing cold. She wondered why Travis wasn’t starting the car any longer and thought he must have fallen asleep, comfortable in the insulated warmness of his Carhartt jacket. She waited, too afraid to move, but despite the blanket, the cold became almost unbearable. She considered her chances of getting out of the car without Travis noticing. If he was truly sleeping, her chances were pretty good.

  She shifted carefully, reaching for the door handle, and her left arm slid from her lap to the car seat. The pain flared, but it seemed a little less severe than earlier. Encouraged, she took ahold of the door latch with her right hand and slowly pulled it toward her. With a mild click, the door popped slightly open, teasing Anna with the promise of escape. Just a slight push and…

  “Go ahead,” said Travis dismissively from the darkness of the front seat. “You’ll freeze to death before you get to one-eighty-three.”

  Anna had no idea what he meant by one-eighty-three, but his indifference was promising. She pushed the door open and was assailed by a numbing arctic blast that instantly turned the car into an icebox.

  “Close the door, you fucking idiot!” Travis raged.

  Terrified, Anna vaulted back into the car, pulling the door closed behind her. Travis struck out at her as she dropped onto the seat, trapping her arm beneath her. The pain returned in its full magnificence and Anna tried to push herself off her injured arm, but her long hair was also pinned between her arm and the seat, hindering her from rising. She fell to the floor between the front and rear seats, her body petrified in its need for relief from the blinding agony that completely embraced her.

  Too anguished to sob, Anna expressed her distress with a long, quavering plea. “Mmmmmmoooooommmmmmmm!”

  “She’s fucking dead, already!” Travis yelled at her. “You open that goddamned door again, I’ll slice Hannah up the same way I did your momma. And I’ll make you watch! You fucking hear me?”

  Fighting the waves of pain rushing through her, she pulled the thin blanket from the seat and laid it over her. She remained on the floor, out of Travis’s reach and hopefully his sight. He started the car again and allowed it to heat up. Anna welcomed the warmth despite the pain coursing through her and somehow managed to return to the safety of the solitary place in her mind.<
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  Chapter 4

  Riverside, Massachusetts

  It was nearly three o’clock in the morning when Debbie arrived home from the hospital. She entered the kitchen by way of the garage and punched in the alarm code on the keypad. She could hear the strains of music coming from the radio in her bedroom, giving her a small sense of familiarity and comfort. She had not changed the station since Kenny’s departure, nor had the radio been powered off, except for random power outages from lightning storms or blizzards. For more than three years, WODS 103.3 FM—Boston’s oldies station—was Debbie’s constant companion when she was home, and the house’s companion when she wasn’t. Steve Miller begged empathy from a Big ol’ Jet Airliner as Debbie set her laptop bag onto the island countertop that divided her kitchen from the small but cozy dining room. She draped her blazer over one of the stools, ignoring the keys that fell from the jacket pocket onto the floor.

  The kitchen was the first and last area in the old house on which she and Kenny had splurged… as much as their budget had allowed. They had agreed that the kitchen was the heart of their home, so they’d given it a transplant.

  Debbie wasn’t particularly hungry, despite not having eaten since lunch. She knew if she didn’t put something in her stomach, she’d soon be suffering a mean bout of acid reflux, which occurred whenever she neglected her nutrition. She scanned the contents of the refrigerator, wondering why she bothered. The only items lining the lonely shelves were a half-empty quart of lumpy milk, raspberry jam, Kraft parmesan cheese, a half-dozen eggs that were probably laid by Jurassic chickens, salad dressing, a half loaf of bread that could be an experiment in moss growth, and a few condiments. Time to pull out ol’ dependable.

  From the cabinet over the refrigerator she retrieved a large container of whey protein powder. Although the label proclaimed vanilla, its taste was indefinably bland and in grave need of flavor enhancement to be considered even remotely palatable. Unfortunately, she had no fruit or Ovaltine to sweeten the mix, only water and ice.

  Delish! Nothing beats an ice-cold glass of liquefied dust.

  She added two scoops of protein powder, a handful of ice, and a glass of water into the blender jar, covered it, and pressed the button. The room fell into darkness as the betraying click of a circuit breaker rang out from the basement. It was a lesson she’d refused to learn. More often than not, all was well, but if the compressor on the refrigerator happened to gasp and wheeze to life while she was using the blender or microwave, things got quiet.

  “Oh, come on!” Debbie cried. “Shitty-fuck!”

  She blindly felt her way along the kitchen counter, past the refrigerator, and through a doorway. Patting the dining room wall, she found the switch and flipped it, bringing two brass wall sconces to life.

  When she and Kenny had remodeled the kitchen, they hadn’t the funds to gut it to the studs and upgrade the horsehair wiring, though that would have been the preferred route. Replacing the cabinets and tiling the floor had strapped them, although at the time, seemed like a monumental step in the right direction. That was one of the downfalls of owning a circa 1900 home with a history of do-it-yourself homeowners. Old homes had charm, with their elaborate accents and moldings and unique fireplaces, but modern homes adhered to building codes and refrigerators now had dedicated circuits… and modern refrigerators didn’t cause small cities to brownout.

  The simple fix would have been to move the blender to the left side of the stove, where the outlet was on a different circuit, but the blender looked awkward there and it made the kitchen seem unbalanced.

  Screw aesthetics, thought Debbie. I want my flavorless, nutrient-filled sludge. She moved the offending blender to the left side of the stove, intent on delaying her trek into the creepy basement until later… maybe even tomorrow.

  Debbie plugged in the blender and pushed the Crush button. The blender growled to life, making light work of the ice while whipping up a colorless mush. She poured the contents into a glass and took a large swallow.

  “Oh God,” she gasped, cringing at the pasty concoction. She forced down two more gulps and then dumped the remaining dreck into the sink, rinsed the glass, and took a drink of water to cleanse her palate. As she rinsed the sink, a thought occurred to her. The refrigerator has no power.

  “Sssshit,” she hissed.

  A peek in the freezer revealed a two-pound bag of jumbo shrimp, a pot roast, Delmonico steak, a pound of haddock, and a four-pack of Angus burgers; all foods she could and would eat if she ever remembered to thaw them.

  Well, here’s your big chance!

  “Damn!” Debbie huffed and shut the freezer.

  She walked to the basement door, opened it, and pressed the old push-button light switch. Another negative of most circa 1900 homes was that square, vacuous, and therefore dry basements, had been exclusive to the elite who could afford large granite block foundations. The average Joe had to settle with stacked fieldstones with cracks and crevices to allow in copious amounts of moisture along with a generous assortment of crawling and slithering critters. Anything with more than four legs freaked Debbie out, and her basement was a critter metropolis.

  The basement was very well lit. She had insisted that Kenny replace the four incandescent bulbs with six four-foot fluorescent fixtures, but it did little to make the idea of descending the stairway less foreboding. She thought about all the leggy slithering and skittering critters that would have a well-lit view of her from their comfortable little fissures in the fieldstones and along the rafters, and nearly reneged.

  Steeling herself, she descended the stairway, studying the railing for spider webs or any telltale movements. A few cobweb strands taunted her from the ceiling at the bottom of the stairway, softly swaying like antennae trying to sense her presence or lull her into obedience. Steering wide, she locked her sights on the breaker panel at the far corner of the basement and stepped onto the uneven concrete floor. She wondered why it had to be at the furthest reaches of the cellar, and why it wasn’t installed somewhere smart, like near the stairway or in the kitchen.

  The basement always felt damp, which was part of the reason the critters thrived. A small dehumidifier—long defunct—sat on an old workbench to her right. A long plastic tube ran from it like a catheter into a sump pit cut into the cement floor. From the pit, a black garden hose ran up to a pipe trap, which connected to a waste line hanging just below the ceiling. She wondered what manner of vermin might reside in that pit, and it gave her a severe bout of the willies.

  At some point in the house’s history, someone had made an unfortunate attempt at painting the fieldstone foundation white. The paint had since peeled extensively, leaving the walls water-stained and scabrous, which only added to the already ominous atmosphere.

  Debbie tiptoed gingerly across the basement, stopped before the breaker panel, and scoped it out for any evidence of arachnid habitation. The panel had Pushmatic breakers… the breaker of the future—fifty years passé. She ran her hand gently over the breaker caps, feeling for and finding the slightly raised crown of the one that had tripped. She pushed it firmly and the little black “off” indicator switched to a little white “on” one. She was rewarded with the rumbling vibration of the refrigerator overhead.

  A loud whoosh erupted from behind Debbie. She squealed, spun, and darted for the stairs, chased by the awareness that it was only the hot water heater igniting. She halted, feeling a little embarrassed even though no one was present to enjoy her humiliation or the drum solo her heart was performing.

  She stepped towards the stairs again, and paused, hating how the backs of the steps were open to the darkness beneath. Anything hideous and feral that hid there could easily reach her feet…

  “I don’t want to go!” she said, her voice fearful and childlike.

  It was uncomfortably hot in the basement. The floor had somehow transformed into packed earth and a smell of fuel oil and coal hung heavily in the air. To her left rumbled an old monolithic furnace. It was se
t on large granite blocks, with asbestos wrapped pipes sprouting from it at various angles like tentacles on a giant octopus. Brilliant red flames swirled in a vortex beyond the damper slots on the iron hatch. The more modern furnace that Kenny and his brother had installed was nowhere to be seen.

  It wasn’t the same basement.

  A lean, red-haired boy with wide, urgent eyes stood near the stairway. He looked about thirteen years old.

  “Help! Hide me!” she begged in her frightened little voice.

  “Here!” said the boy, his voice alarmed and breathless. He motioned underneath the stairs. “Hide under here!”

  He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. Another boy, blond and younger, maybe eight, stood silently near the older boy. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt, both soiled and loose fitting, maybe hand-me-downs from the older boy. It looked as if he’d been playing in the coal bin.

  She shook her head, not wanting to go beneath the stairs… not where the spiders and millipedes lived!

  “Red! Where are you!” a man’s voice called from somewhere outside the basement’s windows, strong enough to be heard above the roar of the furnace.

  “No! Please hide me, but not there! I don’t want to go there!” she pleaded.

  “Come on, Little Red, you have chores to do!”

  “You have to hide here!” said the boy, his words hushed. “It’s the only place! It’s too late to hide anywhere else!”

  He took her by the arm and pulled her forward, closer to the stairway. He pushed her downward, a hand on her head, the other on her back, and directed her under the stairs.

  “Now stay there and be quiet, or he’ll find you.”

  He moved away from the stairs, leaving her in the sweaty, damp, darkness.

  “Get back in the bin,” he directed the younger boy. “Pretend we’re playing.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know… anything. Coal miner. Get in there!” he said, and climbed into the little stall after the younger boy.