Hannahwhere

by John McIlveen

  Debbie crouched before Hannah. “Honey, none of this is your fault, not even the smallest bit. You’ve done nothing wrong. In fact, everything you’ve done has been astonishing. You should get a medal. Do you hear me? Look at me.”

  Debbie lifted Hannah’s chin. The stark terror she saw when she met Hannah’s eyes stole her words and the breath to propel them.

  “If I don’t get Anna help,” Hannah said, her chin trembling. “If anything happens to Anna and she dies like Mom, then I’ll be all alone!”

  Alone.

  Abandoned.

  The weight of this fear staggered Debbie as an adult, how enormous it must be for a nine-year-old child. Debbie embraced her tightly.

  “Hannah, you’ll never be alone again. We’ll figure this out. No matter what, you will not be alone. But, like I said earlier, I need your help, okay?”

  Hannah dolefully scuffed at the ground with her sneaker and nodded again.

  “You know how you make all of you, not just the thinking you, go back and forth to places?” Debbie asked. “I want you to show me how to do that. I know, I know… I just need to know I can do it—and I do because I faded with you—but I need help with how to do it myself.”

  Hannah stood thoughtfully for a while and then met Debbie’s eyes. “But you did it last night,” she said.

  “I went to Debtopia… my place,” Debbie said, feeling slightly embarrassed verbally hearing the name she had chosen. Hannah shot her a quick questioning glance but made no comment. “Why would you think all of me went last night?”

  “Anna told me all of you was there. You were scared,” Hannah said.

  “How could she tell?” asked Debbie.

  “She said your eyes were popping out of your head.”

  “No. Anyone could have seen I was scared,” Debbie said. “How did she know all of me—my body—was there?”

  Hannah hesitated then said, “The flowers were squished.”

  Debbie eyed her doubtfully. “Are you telling me our bodies don’t crush the flowers when just the thinking us is there?”

  “Un-huh,” Hannah said compellingly. “Our thinking selves don’t weigh nothing.”

  “Are you messing with me? You just used a double negative. I don’t remember crushing the flowers last night,” Debbie said.

  “Do you remember not crushing them?” Hannah asked. Debbie stared at her and Hannah held her gaze, a smile hiding just beneath the surface.

  “You’re messing with me!”

  “Okay,” said Hannah.

  “And you’re patronizing me?” Debbie said.

  “What does patronizing mean?”

  “It means belittling. Are you making fun of me?”

  Hannah said, “Touché?”

  “What do you mean touché?” Debbie asked, feigning outrage. “Remember, smarty pants, the queen of tickle-torture is bigger than you.” She playfully poked Hannah in the ribs eliciting a giggling shriek. Debbie cocked an eyebrow. Hannah returned the gesture and started walking.

  Debbie watched her walk a few yards along the path and followed her. After a short silence she said, “The second thing I need you to do is take me to Elm Creek.”

  Hannah stopped with her gaze anchored to the ground before her.

  “Yeah, I knew you weren’t going to like it any more than I do, but you know where it is and I’ve never been there.” Debbie rested a hand on her shoulder. “I think I have to go there if we hope to help Anna.”

  Hannah didn’t respond. Debbie felt an edge of panic and wondered if she’d pushed Hannah back into a dissociative state.

  “It’s okay, Honey. You don’t have to,” Debbie said. “I got a good view of Elm Creek from satellite pictures. I can do it by myself.”

  Hannah shook her head emphatically and glared at Debbie. “Never, ever, ever go anyplace you never went before,” she reminded her. “You’re being dumb.”

  Debbie felt as if there were a shift in roles and she wondered who’s protecting whom? “I’m sorry,” she said, stooping before Hannah and trying to give her a reassuring hug. Hannah resisted at first, and then finally conceded with brimming eyes.

  How could I be so thoughtless and so… so stupid? Debbie admonished herself. Hasn’t Hannah been through enough?

  “You’re right. That was dumb of me,” she said. “We probably should head back soon.”

  Hannah extracted herself from the embrace. “I’ll take you to Elm Creek.”

  “No, it’s all right, honey. I’ll figure out a way. I could take a plane.”

  “No. We have to help Anna. The cold hurts her… and it hurts me, too.”

  “You can feel Anna’s pain?”

  “I’m not cold, but I know she is, and I feel it in my tummy and head. I think it hurts her more than she says. She doesn’t want us to be sad, but I am.”

  Telepathy, magic, witchcraft, miracles, and teleportation, so many things could be explained by this incredible truth Hannah had introduced and given to her; the gift of believing in the inexplicable. Maybe anything was possible if your conviction was strong enough. The ability to exist in such a realm could be wondrous in one person’s control, yet terrifying in the hands of another.

  “I’m sad too, honey. It’s why I also want to help her,” Debbie assured her. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Hannah nodded and took Debbie’s hand. “When should we go?” she asked.

  “Well, I have to confess that this is part of the reason I took you out for a walk. I was hoping that while we were away from the hospital we could try something quickly so we can familiarize ourselves with traveling together, and then we could come right back unnoticed.” Debbie looked at Hannah, trying to appear as contrite as a puppy. “We can start out simple like traveling a few feet, and then we can try something further like my house. It’s close enough that if we can’t travel back, we can walk back easily enough. If that works, we can quickly go to Elm Creek and back, so I know where it is. Then I can go back later without ending up part of a porta-potty or something.”

  Debbie watched Hannah’s expression, but could read nothing.

  “We’d have to do it here,” Debbie added. “It would be impossible to do back at the hospital with all the staff.”

  “Okay,” said Hannah.

  Debbie led the way through a thick stand of trees to a narrow boat ramp that sloped down to the Merrimack River. They were at the head of a hairpin bend in the river, which curved out of sight to the east and west. It gave them the impression of being isolated in this pretty location, surrounded by trees. The distant sound of people in the park was mostly drowned out by the rush of the river.

  “We didn’t have any rivers like this in Elm Creek,” Hannah said. She stepped toward the water, and something small skittered into the underbrush on the riverbank.

  “Well, be careful,” warned Debbie. “It looks mild on the surface, but the undercurrent here will grab you and whisk you away like a leaf.”

  “How about here?” Hannah said, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

  “Yeah, you’re okay there,” said Debbie.

  “No, I mean, what if we go from here?”

  “Travel from here?” Debbie asked uncertainly.

  “No one’s around.”

  “Yeah, but what if I don’t do it right? Someone will come by and find a zombified me standing here, and no you. To make it worse, we’re near the river. They’ll think you’re somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean looking for Nemo.”

  “Nemo’s in the Pacific,” Hannah corrected.

  “It has a Maine lobstah with a Boston accent,” countered Debbie.

  “In Australia,” Hannah replied and stuck out her tongue.

  “Nemo’s a cartoon,” Debbie mocked in return.

  “I’ll hold your hand and make sure you do it right,” Hannah reassured her, again giving Debbie the sense of being the subordinate in their odd little team. “It won’t take long.”

  Debbie was a little hesitant, yet excited by the prospe
ct of traveling again. “We’ll be coming right back once I learn where it is,” Debbie said, and then hesitantly asked, “We will be able to come back right here, and not in the middle of the river, or up in a tree… or in the center of a tree, right?”

  “On a dime,” Hannah said.

  “On a dime,” Debbie repeated. “Dimes are pretty small.”

  “Yup,” Hannah agreed.

  Debbie rubbed her hands together anxiously. “Okay, you’re going to have to lead.”

  “You go to your place and I’ll go to Hannahwhere, but we’ll go together, I think,” Hannah said, unsure.

  “This continues to be very confusing for me, you realize, but I thought about that last night,” said Debbie. “It didn’t make sense that Anna would be in my place, so I figured I somehow went to Annaplace because it was Anna I wanted to see. But I really think all our places are the same place. I bet your mom was afraid when your cat never came back that it could happen to her daughters, so to protect you she said you needed your own places. I would have said the same thing to keep you safe… well, as safe as possible.”

  Hannah looked confused and doubtful.

  “Well, I’m determined to get to the bottom of it and figure all of this travel stuff out.” Debbie huffed.

  “It’s common sense,” said Hannah, rolling her eyes.

  “Are you kidding me? There’s nothing common or sensible about any of this!” Debbie blurted. “How long will this take?”

  “Not long. When we go, I still want to go to our own places. We’ll still be together, but I’ll be in Hannahwhere and you’ll be in…Deb…”

  “Debtopia,” Debbie said and Hannah unconsciously scrunched her nose. “What, you don’t like the name of my place?”

  “No, Debstupia is fine,” Hannah said and giggled.

  “Fine, wisenheimer, let’s hear you come up with something better!”

  “I would have called it Abracadeborah.”

  “I refuse to believe you just thought that up,” Debbie said with mock aloofness.

  “Okay,” Hannah said, unperturbed.

  “Well, I’m stealing it,” Debbie said.

  Hannah made a la-de-da expression, fortifying just how much Debbie loved the girl’s personality.

  “Okay, we have to sit,” Hannah instructed, looking for a suitable spot.

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” Hannah replied, and then with conviction said, “Trust me, you want to sit.” As if in example, she sat cross-legged facing the river and motioned for Debbie to join her. She did.

  “So, how do we do this together?” Debbie asked. “Have you traveled with Anna at the same time?”

  “Sometimes. We tried with Mom, but she never could.”

  “Did you ever have problems when you and Anna traveled?”

  “No,” Hannah said. “We always knew we could do it.”

  “Mind sharing some of that childlike faith?” said Debbie.

  Hannah took her hand. “Don’t let go. You have to think about going to your place, but don’t just think the thinking you going, think about all of you going.”

  “That’s a lot of thinking,” said Debbie.

  “Try not to hurt yourself,” said Hannah.

  “I beg your pardon!” Debbie barked, stunned, but humored.

  “That’s what Travis used to say to Mom when she’d say I’m thinking, or let me think. I don’t get it, but Mom used to tell us Travis was just teasing her.”

  The barb suddenly wasn’t funny now that Debbie pictured the cruel words thinly disguised as a joke spilling from the sneering, spiteful mouth of Travis Ulrich. His image from file photos floated in her memory. His dark malevolent eyes glared from a face that would have been handsome if not transformed by the demons inside the man.

  “Did I say something bad?” Hannah asked, wide-eyed with alarm.

  “Why would you think that?” asked Debbie.

  “You look mad or something.”

  “No, baby. Not at all. What you said isn’t bad, it was funny, but when I thought of Travis saying that to your mom, that turned it ugly,” Debbie explained. “Words, no matter how pretty or ugly, don’t just tell you what a person is saying, they tell you who the person saying them is. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeaa… no,” said Hannah.

  “If you took the world’s most beautiful rose and flushed it down a toilet, what kind of shape would it be in after?”

  “Shitty.”

  “I supposed I asked for that, but that’s right,” Debbie said. “Travis is like a toilet, but enough of that. What were you telling me about how you travel?”

  “Okay,” Hannah said. “I start thinking about my feet going where I want to go, and my legs, my butt, my back, until I get to my head. Let’s go to our places first, okay?”

  Debbie closed her eyes and envisioned herself flying. She instantly felt the familiar centrifugal spin, and they were soon sitting in the fields, the flowers around them as brilliant as ever.

  “Wow, that was easy,” Debbie said, starting to rise.

  “Don’t get up!” said Hannah. ”Let’s go to your house. This time you go first and I’ll follow. Think about landing somewhere safe, like a couch or a bed, but don’t get scared.” She grabbed Debbie’s hand again, not giving her time to rebel. “Go!”

  Debbie went without allowing herself the chance to doubt. She envisioned her home and willed her thoughts toward flying safely to her bed. Again, they catapulted through buffeting winds with swooping gyrations, though it was different from last time. Her whole body felt as if it was latching onto the pummeling winds and gliding. The swooping feeling was still present, but there was an added sense of weight as the gyrations increased, intensely magnifying the vertigo until it was so dense Debbie started to black out.

  They had arrived, sitting cross-legged on Debbie’s queen-sized bed. She was dazed and floaters swarmed her vision as she fought to keep her gorge down.

  “Yay! You did it,” Hannah cheered, raising her arms in the air. She paused and critically asked, “This is your bedroom, right?”

  “Yes,” Debbie said, gasping. “Oh my God, that was terrible, far worse than last time!”

  “Yeah, the first time was really bad for me, too,” said Hannah. “You gonna hurl?” She moved cautiously away.

  “You told me…” Debbie started to say, trying the settle her nausea. “Wait a minute! You lied!”

  “Yup,” Hannah said, just as perky as ever.

  “Why?”

  “That’s how I got Anna to go the first time, too, but she chucked all over,” Hannah said. “See, you did it without chucking!”

  Debbie held Hannah’s gaze, feeling a combination of irritation and gratitude. She had been duped, yet, if she hadn’t, she and Hannah would still have been sitting at the river’s edge while she procrastinated.

  Hannah jumped from the bed and headed into the connected room. “Wow! You have your own bathroom!”

  “Yes,” Debbie said, still shaking off the last of the butterflies.

  “It’s cool and it connects to the dining room!” Hannah’s voice faded, and then she reappeared full circle at the bedroom door that connected directly to the living room. “Neat!”

  Debbie laughed at her expression. This little girl could perform feats that would make her appear a deity in the eyes of most, yet she found a common bathroom a thing of wonder.

  “You didn’t make your bed,” Hannah informed her.

  “Neither did you,” Debbie countered.

  Hannah sent her a smile and dashed back into the living room and onward to farther reaches of the house. Debbie followed, amused by Hannah’s enthusiasm.

  “Do you have a cat?”

  “No.”

  “Dog?”

  “No.”

  “Why is your sink in the middle of your kitchen?” Hannah asked.

  “It’s called an island,” Debbie explained.

  “We had one, too, but the sink was still in the right place,” said Hanna
h.

  “Maybe your sink was in the wrong place,” Debbie offered.

  Hannah formed a slightly pained expression as she mulled over the question. Choosing to dismiss it, she was off again. She traipsed through the living room and stopped before the closed door. She looked back to Debbie.

  Debbie halted as uneasiness built. It’s just a room, she reminded herself. The visions are mine, not Hannah’s. It still didn’t keep her from picturing the grossly porcine man stepping through the doorway, putting a hand on Hannah’s back, and directing her inside.

  Hey, Blondie.

  Debbie closed her eyes, trying to drive the disturbing visualization away. It’s just a room…It’s just a room…It’s just a room.

  “Can I look?”

  Debbie nodded and moved forward. Hannah twisted the doorknob and slowly pushed the door open.

  “I can’t see,” she said.

  “The light switch is on the wall inside.”

  Hannah searched around and seemed to be struggling.

  “Push the button,” Debbie said.

  With a click, the room illuminated.

  “Cool!” Hannah said, brightening again. “We don’t have switches like that.”

  “It’s an old-fashioned switch. This house is very old.”

  Hannah stepped into the lighted room and sized it up. There were two file cabinets, a rolled Oriental rug, numerous boxes of books, kitchen supplies, clothing, and countless other items stacked haphazardly throughout. It was unlikely that Debbie would use most of it, but she didn’t have the heart to dispose of it. She would let it linger under a stratum of dust in The Realm of All Things Abandoned… like the wedding photo album set alone atop a pile of boxes. Much like me, Debbie thought, and then pushed it away. This was not the time for a pity party.

  “Hey, if we cleaned this room up and put beds in here, me and Anna could stay here!” Hannah said enthusiastically.

  “Anna and I,” said Debbie.

  “Okay. I’ll take your room.”

  “Nice try, Cupcake,” Debbie said.

  Hannah watched her, waiting for a confirmation, but Debbie said, “We have to get back soon. You lead.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said, trying to mask her disappointment.