Hannahwhere Read online

  While she didn’t like the quiet and loneliness, she had become accustomed to it. However, at nine at night, after a highly emotional day, the empty rooms became cavernous and even the cat would have made nice company. On the radio, Boston insisted it was More Than a Feeling. She agreed.

  To Debbie, it seemed the modern mindset regarding broken relationships was the best way to get over one man was to get under another. That might be so, but not for her. Getting another man to fill her empty places wasn’t the problem. She still looked good—so she was told—especially if you liked fair-skinned redheads, and there’d been no shortage of interested suitors. Her problem lay in getting past the pain, rejection, and the continual feeling of inadequacy. Kenny had sworn that her inability to conceive would never matter, but in the end, it had. She feared it would always be that way, being traded in for someone better… someone who could procreate?

  Of course, there was more to the story, but Debbie would rather not dwell on those points. How Kenny, on his way out the door, had called her the beautiful android… physically and sexually alluring, but devoid of real passion in her programming. She had all the right moves, but mentally or emotionally disappeared when it mattered. When it was time to perform, the curtains closed and the heat turned off. Debbie had heard him loud and clear and she knew the translation: she was a barren, soulless fuck. It was a confirmation of her pre-Kenny conviction that she was worthless and undesirable. She was impaired—a misfit on an island of one.

  Debbie had no desire to wade through the relationship cesspool again. She no longer wanted to be a disappointment—not to others and especially not to herself. Instead, she buried herself in children, spending nearly every waking hour at work and at school… cases and classes. If she kept busy, she wouldn’t have time to be lonely… or she wouldn’t notice how lonely she was. She instead focused on the pain of others, the mistreated little boys and girls.

  Hey Red!

  The voice reverberated like a klaxon, vibrating from the depths of her memory into her present mind, sinking a spear of anxiety into Debbie’s shoulders.

  No, not again!

  It wasn’t the taunting drawl of Henry, her intoxicated tormentor from the hospital the previous night. This was lower, syrupy, and far more threatening. It brought with it a sense of dread, turning Debbie’s home into something alien and menacing. She wanted to hide, to become small enough to burrow beneath the floorboards.

  But that’s where the basement is, Debbie…

  “Who’s here?” she called out.

  Her nerves were shot by what had transpired between the hospital and her basement, and the urge to call 911 was strong. What if they sent the same officers that had picked Henry up at the hospital? What would they think if they found nothing? The alarm was active when she got home. She remembered punching in the code… or had she? Now that she tried to remember, she wasn’t sure.

  Had they released Henry?

  Christ! He doesn’t even know my name, or where I live! Pull yourself together!

  Debbie went to the kitchen and glanced at the alarm keypad, assuring it was set. She drew a large carving knife from a magnetic strip mounted to the cabinet near her sink. She headed through the dining room to check the bathroom, which was purely procrastination since the threatening feeling emanated from the living room. After verifying what she already knew, Debbie returned to the living room. If she could get him to talk again, she’d know where he was.

  “I’m here!” Debbie said. Her voice was thin, raspy, and brittle as hoarfrost. “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want, you sweet little bitch,” hissed a tinny, fluctuating voice. It was a phantom, swelling and fading like a feed from a vintage newsreel, yet it sounded familiar. “You know you want it, too.”

  In the right corner of her living room, the doorway to her spare room waited ajar, promising only darkness within. It used to be an extra bedroom, but now served as a store-all, Debbie’s warehouse for things not remembered and memories best forgotten. In numerous boxes, amid old files, unread magazines, stashed candles, and cheap souvenirs, lay the dregs of her marriage to Kenny. Boxes of pain in a room full of relics… and a ghost.

  He was leaning against the doorjamb. Her desk and her Dali print were gone, replaced by a rusted Keystone beer sign, nailed to faded, red pine boards. He was eyeing her lasciviously and laughing. His grossly fat, jiggling belly protruded over the front of his jeans, which were unbuttoned and unzipped. Sour smelling, filthy, and repugnant, beads of sweat ran profusely into rivulets and fell from his corpulent jowls. He entered through the doorway and she obediently followed him inside. She had no choice. Being with him, pain was a possibility, but to resist, pain was definite.

  Her spare room was no longer. They were now inside a run-down shed. Someone latched the door behind them, and a crunch of footsteps receded on the gravel outside.

  It was nighttime, but light from some unknown source—maybe the moon—slanted through cracked panes in the higher reaches of the sole window. The lower section had been covered by cardboard and duct tape. Dust motes traversed the room at chaotic angles amid the reek of alcohol, cigarettes, and betrayal.

  The fat man sat down upon a small cot, the springs shrieking in wild protest under his substantial girth. The thin mattress was spattered with a legacy of stains. Innumerable and grotesque, they covered the single worn pillow as well. There were no sheets.

  Unsure what kind of depravity he would force upon her this time, and what level of pain she would have to endure, she started crying. Crying was bad. It would result in fierce disciplinary action, but one fear trumped the other and she could not hold back the tears. Fear of the searing, splitting pain always prevailed, and then there was the bleeding.

  “Come here, Little Red,” he said. Red was what they all called her. None knew her real name, and she was forbidden to tell them, or she’d get the belt across her legs and back.

  She didn’t move.

  The fat stranger stood again and dropped his pants to his ankles, exposing his erect hideousness. He grabbed her arm and sat back down, almost falling and dragging her after him. She shook her head, her eyes pleading and awash with tears. He put a massive hand on either side of her head and directed her, and she was almost relieved that it was this he wanted, and not the thing that hurt so badly.

  Her teardrops left small circles on his bunched up pants and she saw the contrast of her coppery hair on pasty white legs. She stared at the rainbow-colored winged unicorns on her sneakers and closed her mind to the sour smell of the vile stranger. She concentrated on the unicorn’s noble wings and thought… fly away. Just fly away from here.

  The floor swayed and swooped beneath Debbie and she fell to her knees, landing on the braided carpet in her living room. The fat man’s pungent odor still surrounded her, and the demanding pressure of his hands still felt present on the sides of her head. The taste… his taste… she felt she would vomit. She scrambled on hands and knees to a small trash basket beside her desk, barely making it before losing everything. She gagged and retched until her tears flowed freely and she thought her abdomen would rupture.

  “Oh my God, what’s happening to me?” Debbie gasped.

  A few remaining dry heaves rattled her body, and then she rolled to her side and pulled herself fetal, needing to shrink and to disappear. She lay unmoving and stared into the woolen weave of the rug wishing she could hide inside the braiding like a flea or a maggot, so vile and unwanted. She drifted off, thinking she would be content knowing that no one wanted her.

  Her eyes refocused on the rug. How long had she been there? An hour? A day? She didn’t know. She pulled herself shakily to her feet.

  The doorway to the spare room still stood open and sinister, mocking her. Stepping forward to close the door, she saw the carving knife lying on the floor, well inside the room. She couldn’t recall leaving the living room.

  Had she been inside the room? Had she thrown the knife inside?

  She
yanked the door shut, hoping to close the images inside. She dealt with cases like this daily—neglect, child abuse, sexual abuse, and incest—and as horrendous and utterly heartbreaking as they were, she’d always kept an emotional barrier between herself and her cases. It was a requirement for her career and a means of emotional survival. Like a high wire act balancing between compassion and professionalism… lean too far to either side and you might fall. Debbie had trained herself early in her career to keep a buffer between her and her children. It might be a thinner buffer than most caseworkers had, but it had always been thick enough to protect her.

  Were these visions or some kind of premonitions triggered by her encounter with Henry? She had experienced a brief vision there. That’s when they’d started.

  Debbie had been first person in all three visions. She was the main act, not an observer, and she had seen her own coppery hair on the fat man’s pasty white legs. All three men had called her Red.

  Were they memories? If so, what triggered them?

  Debbie shuddered, lifted the garbage basket, and carried it into the bathroom. She dumped her vomit into the toilet, along with a balled up sheet of paper and a handful of Post-it notes. She flushed, relieved that it didn’t clog, rinsed the basket in the shower, dried it with paper towels, and returned it to its place beside her desk.

  Returning to the bathroom she hurriedly undressed, shoved her clothes directly into the washing machine, turned on the shower, and climbed in. She scrubbed for nearly half an hour. She tried to make sense of whatever it was she had witnessed in her basement and then her spare room, and tried to wash the memory of it away.

  She toweled off, pulled her robe on and tied it tightly. She forced herself to look in the mirror.

  “Houston, we have a problem. Mayday! Mayday!” she said to the haunted woman before her and laughed. It was a frightening sound.

  Was she losing it? Was everything an illusion, or a delusion? There was so much in her life recently that seemed surreal.

  Hey - little Red!

  “Fucking shut up!” Debbie screamed at the room… at her mind… and at wherever the goddamned voice was coming from.

  “I need help,” Debbie said. The confession, her first, spilled from her lips like a prayer. “Lost and helpless” was a clear indication that her life was moving out of control. A self-proclaimed control freak, Debbie was not accustomed to being on the other side of help.

  Friday

  March 14, 2008

  Chapter 7

  Kearney, Nebraska

  Travis was getting more and more agitated, pacing back and forth on the far side of Mom’s car like a caged lion. “Come on, Marcus!” he fumed. “Just a gram! Today’s Friday, right? Listen. I’ll have it to you by Sunday night at the latest. I promise!”

  Anna was sitting on a large pile of empty burlap bags, upon which the words NORCO poultry feed, Norfolk, Nebraska were printed in red and blue ink. She had chosen a corner of the building as far away from the unstable man as possible, wrapped herself in the blanket to protect her from the abrasive bags, and then piled a number of them over her legs and abdomen. They didn’t look dirty, just dusty—and they smelled old.

  The pain in her arm had become tolerable as long as she moved carefully and didn’t jar it, but it remained a dogged reminder of her situation. She was unsure how long they had been inside the metal building—Travis had called it a pole building on the phone—but she felt it must have been a couple of days. She knew it was daytime by the long blades of sunlight that cut across the floor and walls of the building from the gaps around the big door, and that it was noticeably warmer—not warm, but warmer. When that small element of comfort reached them on their first morning, both Travis and Anna had slept for hours… until the alarming rumble of a Union Pacific coal hauler roused them. Trains rumbled by her home in Elm Creek numerous times daily, but never had it been so loud. The tracks were clearly right outside the building.

  Anna’s stomach gurgled with what almost seemed a howl. She had eaten two pieces of cold pizza and some chips, and drunk half a bottle of beer the night before. She had taken them from the front seat while Travis was sleeping, and brought them to her spot at the burlap bags so he wouldn’t hear her or catch her eating his food. She thought the beer tasted gross and she knew she shouldn’t be drinking it, but she couldn’t help it, the pizza and chips had made her thirsty. She had hidden the half-full bottle behind an old wooden nail keg, but it was unnecessary. If Travis noticed the missing food or beer, there was no indication.

  Travis met Anna’s gaze and quickly looked away. He was sweating and his eyes were desperate and scared. He slapped the roof of the car and ran a hand through his mussed hair. “Marcus!” he begged. “We’ve been doing business for a long time. I’ve never screwed you!” He dropped his head onto the car, and then raised it, newly alert.

  “What?” he said. “Looking for me? Who? Murdered who?” Even to Anna’s ears, Travis’s words sounded forced and fake.

  Murder.

  The word sounded foreign to her. It seemed like something that could not be associated to her, but she couldn’t escape the thought that Mom must really be dead. She burrowed deeper into her burlap nest, pulled one over her head, and watched Travis through the narrow gap. The voice on the phone said something and Travis pulled it from his ear and stared at it dispassionately. Looking dazed and defeated, he put the phone in his pocket and sat down on an old chrome kitchen chair. He remained seated, staring at the ground with lifeless eyes—for how long, Anna couldn’t be sure. It might have been fifteen minutes or it might have been two hours, but the light around the overhead door had faded by the time Travis vaulted upright and went into a frenzied rage. From the gap in her burlap hideout, Anna watched his meltdown. He grabbed the chair and hurled it the length of the structure, then followed it with just about anything he could lift, from bottles and hubcaps, to lengths of fence rail. He finished his rant by repeatedly kicking the door to her mother’s car, leaving a deep dent in the lower panel and causing the glass to fall down off its track, and land inside of the door. Travis stood in one spot, short of breath and scanning the room… and then his eyes locked onto where she lay. Dread snared Anna in its clutches, driving a frozen trail from the back of her head to her ankles and numbing her extremities.

  Don’t move a bit! she warned herself, but Travis raced over, ripped the bags from atop her, and flung them to the floor. He squatted beside her, grabbed a fistful of her shirt and pulled her nose-to-nose with him. Tears flowed freely from Anna’s terrified eyes and her body shook so badly she felt on the verge of convulsions. The unexpected urge to pee was nearly uncontrollable.

  “I have to go somewhere for a while,” he said to her through clenched teeth. “You stay here. If anyone comes while I’m gone… you fucking hide.”

  His breath was vile and Anna could see some yellow ooze coming from the gash on his cheek where Mom cut him with the knife. She fought to hold back her already rising gorge.

  “You don’t listen to me I’ll stick a knife in Hannah. I’ll make you watch and then tell the cops you killed your mother and sister. I’ll tell them you were jealous because she liked Hannah better. You hear me?”

  Anna nodded, spilling tears onto Travis’s hand. He had made this threat the previous day, before he crossed the tracks to get food and beer. Anna believed he would kill Hannah if she didn’t listen, but the threat gave her some hope that Hannah was okay. He couldn’t kill her if she was already dead, could he? Travis dropped her back onto the bags, and turned. She watched him leave through the passage door directly across from the overhead door. The wind slammed the door soundly behind him.

  Freed from the burlap bags, Anna was aware of how brutally cold it had become since sunset. She sat for a few moments pondering which necessity to address first, nature’s call or warmth. She didn’t want what happened in the car to happen again; it was cold and it had taken a long time to dry.

  Anna stepped to the floor and the chill
of the concrete entered her feet and rushed throughout her body. She ran to the opposite corner of the shed, hurriedly dropped her pants and squatted where she had the day before. She had covered it with a burlap remnant, equally self-conscious and concerned that Travis would discipline her for it. She didn’t bother moving the remnant because she only had to pee today. She didn’t bother wiping, either. She may get a rash, but it was preferable to using a burlap remnant as she had yesterday. Her girl parts burned for hours. Anna clumsily worked her pants up with her right arm and returned to the pile of bags.

  Her feet were aching from the cold, which was becoming as frigid as the first night. Anna wondered how she could best stay warm. The burlap bags helped, but she felt Travis would start the car for heat like on the other nights. It would still be cold, but not as cold, she thought, but then she realized she could do both. She could make a nest in the back of the car with the burlap bags!

  Her left arm rebelling but tolerable, she grabbed an armful of bags, returned to the car and formed a mattress on the rear floor. Folding Mom’s blanket in two, she created an envelope to slide into for insulation from the bags’ abrasiveness, and then retrieved another armful of bags. As she lifted, something metallic fell to the floor.

  Anna picked up the screwdriver by its wood and metal handle, surprised by its size and weight. It was nearly as long as her arm. The metal was darkened by age and use, but it wasn’t rusty. She wondered if she could use it against Travis. Maybe she could bonk him on the head with it when he was sleeping, or jam it into his chest the way he stuck the knife into Mom. Shhcck… Shhcck… Shhcck!

  Anna knew she probably wasn’t strong enough to do that, and bonking him on the head might just wake him up and make him really mad, but what if she stuck it in his eye? Or both eyes! He can’t catch me if he can’t see where I am.

  Anna feigned a stabbing motion with the screwdriver, and pictured it sinking into Travis’s closed eyelid and cringed. She doubted her capability to stab anybody with anything, but then she recalled her mother lying on the couch, blood covered and shrieking, “RUN!” Maybe she could.