Hannahwhere

by John McIlveen

  “Me,” said Hannah.

  “Why in the world are you watching that?” Debbie asked.

  Hannah shrugged and said, “I don’t feel like watching cartoons.”

  Then why turn the TV on at all, Debbie wondered, but said nothing. It wasn’t worth getting upset over. A cartoon now played. Its characters were frantic and spastic with oddly shaped geometric heads, pointed, angular, and eccentric. Debbie found many of the modern cartoons disconcerting and the characters seemed poorly drawn by artists lacking effort or imagination, as if they were content with scalene triangles with a sprout of hair, or misshapen orbs for heads.

  “What is this?” Essie asked, motioning to the television with a suspect glance.

  “Phineas and Ferb,” said Hannah.

  “They sound like lab cultures,” Debbie said and chuckled.

  “You look very pretty this afternoon,” said Essie. “I love the new clothes. Hey, I hear they’re letting you out of here!”

  “The doctor said I should be ready to leave on Friday,” Hannah said. She looked hopefully at Debbie.

  “That’s wonderful!” Debbie said, trying to appear perfectly positive. “You look fresh as a daisy. You must have slept well last night.”

  Hannah shrugged. Her spirit seemed a little dampened.

  “Did you eat?” Essie asked.

  “A little bit. They had chicken nuggets with some kind of sauce that tasted gross.” Hannah grimaced.

  “Really, what flavor was the sauce?” asked Debbie.

  “Crap,” Hannah said impassively. She was unclear as to why Debbie and Essie found this so humorous, yet she couldn’t refrain from smiling.

  “If you’re up for another sausage sub or maybe pizza, we could stop before we walk in the park,” Debbie suggested.

  Hannah shot a quick glance to Essie and said a cautious, “Okay, but I’d rather have a BLT with extra bacon?”

  “BLT it is,” said Essie. “After that, if you still have room, there’s a bakery in the plaza that makes the world’s best whoopie pies.”

  “Whoopie piiiieeesss,” Debbie said, as if experiencing a divine touch.

  “What’s a whoopie pie?” asked Hannah.

  “You don’t know what a whoopie pie is?” asked Essie, feigning shock.

  “How tragic. This is unacceptable,” said Debbie.

  “We must rectify this immediately—sooner than immediately!” said Essie.

  They ate in a little sub shop in Riverside Plaza, just east of the park. Hannah devoured a large BLT sub with the requested extra bacon and finished the last three slices of Debbie and Essie’s spinach pizza. The amused women watched her as she took a sip from a second glass of lemonade.

  “God bless your appetite,” said Essie.

  “Are you going to eat the table, too?” teased Debbie.

  Hannah smiled and quietly said, “No, but I want to try a whoopie pie.”

  “That girl’s powerful hungry!” said Essie.

  At the little bakery two doors down, Essie bought six whoopie pies; one for Hannah, one for herself, three for her grandchildren, and one for her husband… Debbie demurred. They walked across the plaza parking lot and took a little footpath into Riverside Park.

  “Why do they call it a whoopie pie?” Hannah asked, thoroughly involved with the sweet pastry.

  “Because you want to scream WHOOPIE when you taste one,” Debbie said.

  “But it’s not a pie,” Hannah pointed out.

  “She’s got you there,” Essie said.

  “True enough,” agreed Debbie.

  They continued walking along the tarred pathway until Hannah finished her pastry.

  “Are you full yet?” Essie asked.

  “Yup.” Hannah nodded, wide-eyed and a little more animated.

  Debbie put an arm over Hannah’s shoulder. “Hannah,” Debbie said. “Remember what we did here yesterday? Remember the little boy who saw us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was thinking if we were to do it again, we should have someone with us to be a lookout. What do you think if we had Essie do that?”

  “Okay,” said Hannah. “Are we going from the boat ramp again?”

  “Oh! Yes,” Debbie said, surprised, yet pleased by her easy acceptance. “No dips in the river this time.”

  “You are both being very cryptic,” Essie said, baffled by their curious exchange. “I know there are some curious things involving the two of you, but why are we going to the boat ramp?”

  “We’re going to travel,” Hannah said as if she was telling Essie she was going to chew gum.

  They veered onto the ramp.

  “Travel?” Essie asked.

  “Not entirely,” said Debbie. “Though I think that is how it originated for Hannah.”

  “We’re going to help Anna,” Hannah said.

  “Anna? How will you help Anna? Does this have to do with how you both faded the other night?” asked Essie. She was becoming very animated. “Does this go beyond fading? Is that what Hannah means by ‘travel’? Do you really travel, or just disappear… like dissociation?”

  Debbie laughed and rested a hand on Essie’s shoulder.

  “Maybe not dissociation in the clinical sense,” Debbie said. “Maybe not at all… I’m just learning about this, too. The closest definition I can give is teleportation.”

  “Teleportation!” barked Essie. “Teleportation is just a bunch of hype. It’s unsubstantiated quantum theory.”

  “Okay, then call it astral travel or translocation. You were there the other night,” Debbie said. “You saw. Why the denial?”

  “I don’t know what I saw the other night. It was bizarre and inexplicable, but it wasn’t teleportation. You’re calling a flickering light a blackout.”

  “No, it’s more astounding and something Hannah—we—can control.”

  “Control it… like shamanism?” Essie asked. “It’s not involuntary or something triggered under duress?”

  “Stay tuned,” Debbie said and smiled.

  “Whatever you two are playing with, I’m not sure it’s good,” said Essie, nervously wringing her hands. “Triggering it might present a serious risk for Hannah and maybe for a prolonged time… possibly permanently.”

  “We’ve done this a number of times now, Essie. We’ve gotten pretty good at it,” Debbie assured her.

  “I’ve done it a lot,” added Hannah. She sat on the ramp about five feet from the river’s edge and Debbie sat beside her.

  “What do I need to know about where we’re going?” Debbie asked Hannah.

  “Bulls,” said Hannah.

  “Bulls?” Debbie and Essie repeated simultaneously.

  Hannah nodded her head and said, “Yeah, but if you run real fast the second we get there, the bulls shouldn’t catch you. I think… maybe.”

  “What?” Debbie repeated with a heavy edge of concern in her voice. “You’re messing with me again, aren’t you?”

  Hannah just offered her a smart-ass smile.

  “Wait! What are you talking about?” asked Essie, her frustration showing. “Why here? This can’t be safe!”

  Debbie gave Hannah’s back a quick reassuring rub. “Okay, Hannah. On three, take us somewhere outside the house where we won’t be seen, but not inside the house. Understand?”

  “Yup.”

  “We need you to stand guard,” Debbie said to Essie. “Just enjoy the show. If we’re not back within two hours, we’ll be in Elm Creek, Nebraska.”

  “Elm Creek? Wha…”

  Debbie counted, thoroughly amused by Essie’s confounded expression as they left her and tumbled into the ever-more-familiar vortex. As the dizziness expanded, Debbie felt something solid and unyielding behind her head force her forward. A panic started growing in her lower abdomen, twisting eel-like and then burrowing throughout her body and burying its claws into her shoulder blades.

  They had made a fatal error, Debbie was positive. They stopped in absolute darkness and she could still feel Hannah’s han
d clutching hers. She tried to rise, but her world kept spinning, and the roar of traveling still echoed in her ears. Hannah said something that wasn’t clear and Debbie wondered if the girl was hurt or maybe crying for help. She tried to rise and her head connected painfully with something above her.

  “Ow! Shit!” Debbie cried. She sat down again.

  “I told you not to stand,” Hannah said.

  “When did you tell me that?” she asked.

  Debbie vigorously rubbed the tender spot on the top of her head, but the pain was stubborn and set up camp. Whatever was above her would not allow her to sit upright.

  “Just before I heard you bonk your head on the boards,” Hannah said.

  “Boards?” Debbie asked. Well that answers that.

  There were boards above her head, but not impaled through her or in a cellular mesh with her flesh. She wasn’t a physicist but this made sense to her. How could something materialize where something solid already existed? The solid object would be unforgiving and meshing, melding, or interjecting would be impossible unless both objects were atomically loose, like a bag of marbles. The body could not arrive where something else existed, so the body regulated. That would be why she felt the pressure. If something big was in the way, like Hoover Dam, would the body reject arrival and return to where it came from, or would it relocate to the nearest available space like her head had just done?

  Debbie heard a mild hissing coming from Hannah’s direction. She recognized the sound.

  “You’re laughing at me!” Debbie said, and despite herself, she joined in. “I’m starting to be a little concerned by your sense of humor.”

  Their eyes had conditioned to the darkness and random spots of light became visible around the far edges of the obscure confines. Debbie patted the floor to verify if it was soil as she expected, which meant the boards over her head were rafters.

  “We’re under the house?” Debbie asked.

  “Yeah,” said Hannah.

  My God! What if my suspicions are true and Anna is under here? Debbie wondered. What if Hannah sees her?

  “Shit,” Debbie muttered, but Hannah overheard her.

  “You said not in the house, but where no one can see us,” Hannah said defensively, misreading Debbie’s dismay. The mirth was gone from her voice. “No one can see us here.”

  “You did wonderfully,” Debbie assured her.

  For Debbie, being there brought to mind Hannah’s account of her and Anna’s last time there. She envisioned Travis in a meth-charged rage, yanking Anna out through the access. Her stomach knotted as she thought about the terror the poor girls must have felt, and the dread Hannah probably felt right now.

  “I was wrong having you bring us here,” she said to Hannah. “This is too emotional for you. We should go back.”

  “No, I don’t want to. I want to help Anna.”

  Debbie considered it for a moment and said, “You are one amazing little lady. In that case, let’s get out from under this house, it creeps me out. Where’s the door?”

  Hannah shuffled past her on the right and Debbie followed, ducking to avoid the rafters and trying to leave her fear behind her in the dark. Hannah scuttled along the wall, searching until she found the access door. She pushed against it, but it didn’t give.

  “I think it’s latched outside,” Hannah said.

  “Okay, show me where the door is.”

  “Right here,” Hannah said. She directed Debbie’s hand over the outer frame.

  “Can you hear anyone in the house?” asked Debbie. “It looked vacant online, but you never know.”

  They could hear the distant barking of a dog and the sound of farm machinery, but nothing from inside the house.

  Satisfied, Debbie said, “Move back a little, and be ready to go back to the ramp if anyone’s out there.”

  Debbie faced the access and slammed the bottom of her feet against plywood with all her strength. It held, but a sliver of daylight lit the edge of the door and ignited the space where they sat. Her second kick splintered wood and left the door and its frame hanging in shattered strips. She made light work of the rest.

  “They didn’t want visitors,” Debbie said, nudging the shattered door with her toe. Two unpainted and weatherworn one-by-fours had been nailed across the access, holding it closed. Debbie looked across the crawlspace, which was slightly better illuminated by daylight. The outlines of an assortment of wood, a small stack of patio blocks, two dented gallon-cans of paint were visible, and in the distance, the chimney.

  “Wait here,” Debbie said to Hannah.

  She crawled across the dirt floor, visibility decreasing dramatically as she neared the far end of the building, everything becoming lines and shadows. She glanced back at Hannah, small and angelic in the outlining brightness of the opening. The sunlight illuminated her hair so radiantly it looked like flames.

  Debbie turned back and it seemed even darker. She waited for her eyes to readjust, but the improvement was minimal. She forged onward and then remembered her iPhone had a flashlight app that supplied decent light, though it voraciously ate the battery’s charge. The phone-light illuminated the cinderblock facing of the chimney, which was about four feet wide and ran up into the rafters. She moved hesitantly around the side and then into the two-foot gap between it and the rear wall of the house.

  Nothing.

  She dowsed the light and freed a huge sigh that sent a quake through her body. She’d been sure Anna would be there and had even prepared herself to deal with it, but now she had to prepare herself for the even more disheartening probability that they would not find her. Considering the condition Anna had been in when they last saw her, it didn’t bode well, though the deeper truth was Debbie had no notion as to what Anna’s circumstance meant. Was Anna’s deterioration a positive or negative sign? Was she preparing to crossover to a better place? Was her destination conditional on whether they found her alive and well, or not? If they didn’t find her, would she be trapped in some form of limbo? The million-dollar question was, is she dead or alive? It seemed death was the obvious answer, but Hannah was written off as dead and she popped up alive and mostly well.

  Debbie took a settling breath and returned to Hannah who wore an expression that was somewhere between indecision and expectation. Debbie considered the tidal wave of emotions that were probably washing over Hannah. It had to be terribly upsetting to return here.

  “Are you alright, honey?” Debbie asked.

  Hannah hesitated, looking more uneasy. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “If it gets too much for you, just tell me and we’ll return to Riverside.”

  “I’m okay,” Hannah insisted.

  “Okay,” Debbie said as she led her into daylight. “Watch out for nails.”

  They emerged from the crawlspace and stood up side by side on the gravel driveway, taking in the property Hannah used to call home.

  “Yuck,” Hannah said. Her voice was emotionless and her expression forlorn and bewildered as she looked over the yard her mother had tended so well.

  What had once been a twenty-by-thirty-foot patch of flourishing flowers and vegetables was now a litter-strewn blotch of weedy clumps and leaves. The two-foot-tall white border fence that had once surrounded it now lay trampled and faded, the brightly colored plywood animal cutouts of bunnies, lambs, and geese, now bleached and dirty. Debbie gauged Hannah’s reaction as she approached the ghost of her mother’s garden. Hannah rubbed the toe of her sneaker over the cutouts, outlining a lamb and then a blue-eyed skunk.

  “Mom made these for us,” she told Debbie. “She said they made the garden happy so it would grow better. She had the prettiest flowers. People used to stop their cars to look at them. Some people would ask if they could have some and other people just took them.” She pushed her foot down on the goose cutout until its neck snapped. “Now everything’s dead.”

  “Did it upset her when people took her flowers?” Debbie asked.

  “No. Mom said if we share
what we have, God makes sure we always have enough.”

  The sad irony of this statement caught Debbie. How often it seemed the more compassionate a person, the more they suffered at the hands of others. It was just another of life’s cold, hard injustices.

  Something in the back yard grabbed Hannah’s attention. Debbie followed her as she made the corner of the house. A rusted and ivy-choked swing set stood waiting like a forgotten friend. Its bars, once striped white and cherry red with hand-painted scrolls and lettering, were now faded, and sagged with age and the longing of two snowy-haired children. The swings were long gone or stolen, and the chains hung at varied lengths like broken promises.

  “Anna and I used to sit there, facing each other with our lunches on our laps,” Hannah said.

  She nudged one of the four L-shaped bars that hung arbitrarily, swinging with silent, insolent ease. It was all that remained of the glider. She looked at Debbie, gave a solemn shrug, and headed for the dilapidated rear deck of her former home.

  “We should go,” Debbie said. “I’ll come back later, now that I know how to get here.”

  Hannah gave a mild shake of her head. “We’re already here,” she said. “If we go now, you might not get the chance to come back, or it might be too late to help Anna.”

  Debbie wanted to dispute this, but Hannah seemed to be holding it together amazingly well, considering the magnitude of what she was facing. She also saw the truth in her words; a logic so advanced in a child who should have been thinking about Barbie dolls and the Disney Channel, not about odds and emotions. She followed Hannah to the rear deck, still monitoring her from a few steps back.

  Debbie had earlier told Hannah that the house looked vacant, which was a huge understatement. The place more than reeked of abandonment, it gave the sensation that it had been dropped and forgotten… aborted. The atmosphere that surrounded it—in the yard, the garden, and the swing set—told that life here didn’t taper off or fade away, but was guillotined and cut off mid-breath.

  Waist-high weeds had conquered the lawn and the garden and forced their way through the cracks in the driveway and along the base of the house. The vinyl siding looked in decent condition, but some creative sorts had spray-painted colorful and swishy logos and jargon across a lot of its surface. “Pimp”, “The Dead House”, “Badass”, “Pham”—whatever that was—and several more adorned the rear of the house in various tones from black to fluorescent. The rear door was shoddily boarded over with plywood and a sign—No Trespassing – Police Take Notice—was stapled to the face of it. Someone had covered Police with black spray paint. Clearly they were not taking notice. A fist-sized hole was punched clear through the double-paned glass of what Debbie assumed was the kitchen window.