This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Jennifer McMahon
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
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eISBN: 9781542090414
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Halloween 1982
Please, Hannah, please, come out with us tonight.
It won’t be like before, we promise.
Please, please, please, please, say you’ll be our friend again and come with us.
We’ll get candy. So much candy. Whole pillowcases stuffed full of KitKats, peanut butter cups, Mars bars.
So much sugar, we won’t sleep for a week.
Trust us, Hannah.
Come with us, Hannah.
It’ll be a night you won’t ever forget.
Halloween 2016
“There’s no way you’re leaving the house like that.” Amanda spoke in her flat, level I’m-the-mom-here tone, doing her best to hide the shaking in her voice. Really, she wanted to scream. Scream not in fury, but horror. She wanted to run from the kitchen and hide in her bedroom, slamming the door maybe, like she was the teenager. Her skin prickled with cold sweat. Her stomach churned. She worked to steady her breathing as she made herself look at her daughter, take in the whole grotesque costume.
It was like some hole had been ripped in time, and Amanda was twelve years old again, dressed in her lame cat burglar costume with a striped shirt and pillowcase money bag, handing her mask over so that Hannah-beast’s costume would be complete. Thanks, Manda Panda!
Erin’s face was painted blue with thick greasepaint. There was a black plastic eye mask held in place by elastic. A pink feather boa. A silver cape. Topping it all off was a rainbow clown wig.
Jesus, how many rainbow clown wigs did the drugstore in town sell each Halloween?
The costume was spot-on; a near-exact replica with the exception of the face paint—it was the wrong shade of blue and too thick. The real Hannah-beast had worn makeup that was thin, patchy, a dull pale blue that had made her look cyanotic.
“That is totally unfair,” Erin said.
“I thought you were going as a cat.”
“I’m a cat every fucking year, Mom.”
This was a new thing for Erin, the swearing all the time. She’d never done it back when Jim was here. He wouldn’t have stood for it. But Amanda had decided to ignore it. To ride it out and let Erin blow off steam by dropping a few f-bombs here and there.
Pick your battles, Amanda told herself. And besides, didn’t letting the swearing slide make her the cool mom as opposed to the uptight dad? The dad who had walked out on them four months ago, claiming Amanda was too distant, too walled off, and he couldn’t live his life with a woman he didn’t know how to reach.
“You know the rules,” Amanda said to her daughter. “You are not going out like that.”
“Your rules suck and make no sense,” Erin said with disgust. “They’re totally arbitrary.”
Erin always thought she could win an argument if she used big words. Jim had often let himself be distracted or amused. Not Amanda. Amanda said nothing.
“It’s my last year of trick-or-treating,” Erin whined. Next year she’d be a freshman in high school. “Why do you have to ruin it?” Her voice broke a little bit, and Amanda thought Erin might start crying.
She cried a lot lately, mostly while fighting with Amanda over perceived unfairnesses. It had been so much easier when she was younger, crying over a scraped knee or some hardship she’d endured at school—not getting enough turns on the big slide or her teacher saying she hadn’t shown her work properly on a math worksheet. Then, all problems could be solved with a hug—Give me one of your boa constrictor hugs, Mommy, real tight like you’ll never let me go!—and a trip to the ice-cream shop, where they’d split a cookie-dough sundae with extra whipped cream.
Now Amanda took in a breath, forced a smile. “That’s my job. Fun ruiner.”
Erin stared at her through her mask, her eyes angry and a little desperate. They could have been the real Hannah-beast’s eyes.
Manda, the eyes pleaded. Manda Panda, please. Don’t let them do this to me.
Amanda had to look away, glancing over at the kitchen island, where the pumpkin they’d bought last week at the farmers market still sat, uncarved. Pumpkin carving had always been Jim’s job, a task he’d taken seriously, downloading templates from the internet, spending hours cutting out perfect cat faces, witches flying on brooms, and one year, a raven with intricate feathers and glowing eyes.
“Go change,” Amanda told her daughter. “Now.”
Erin sighed dramatically. “Can you just explain why? Can you be that fair?”
Every year since she was in third grade, Erin had asked to go as Hannah-beast. She’d seen the older kids doing it, a handful each year, and she’d heard the stories. How the real Hannah-beast came back each year at Halloween, came back with a box of matches in her pocket, so you better look out, better be careful, better hope you didn’t run into her. She was a crazy ghost girl, Hannah-beast was. She’d killed in life and she’d kill again in death, given half a chance.
But the stories were just that: stories. Myths with pieces of truth hidden inside.
Over the years, Erin had seemed eager for these nuggets of truth.
“But Hannah-beast was a real girl, right?” Erin would ask.
“Yes,” Amanda would tell her.
“A girl who died a long time ago.”
“Yes.”
“And she set a fire?”
Amanda would nod, always having to look away. “Yes,” she’d say, the same reply she’d given hundreds of times, beginning back when she was Erin’s age and the police first questioned her about it.
“And people died?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know her, Mom?” Erin would ask, eyes wide and hopeful. “Did you know the real Hannah-beast?”
“No,” Amanda would say, the lie so practiced it rolled off her tongue in a loose and natural way. “I didn’t know her at all.”
But the stories were just that: stories. Myths with pieces of truth hidden inside.
She looked at her daughter now in her blue face paint—thirteen years old, gangly as a scarecrow.
“Please, Mom,” Erin said, voice quiet and pleading now. “Seriously, it’s not fair. At least tell me why.”
“Because,” Amanda said, pausing for a moment to breathe and keep her tone calm. “Because I said so.”
Erin shook her head to express her utter contempt, the bright rainbow wig slipping slightly. She stomped off, out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room, slamming the door with impressive force. Amanda went into the living room and sank down into the couch, eyes focused on the overflowing bowl of brightly wrapped candy in a plastic pumpkin bowl.
Erin came downstairs half an hour later, face cleaned of blue makeup, replaced by cat whiskers drawn with eyeliner, cherry-red lipstick. She wore black leggings, a black hoodie, and a headband with furry black ears gone mangy from one too many Halloweens. She had on her school backpack, which wou
ld soon be stuffed with candy, popcorn balls, and glow sticks given out by the police officers who were out in full force each Halloween, as if by sheer numbers they could ward off what was coming: the small army of Hannah-beasts, the little fires all over town—dumpsters, trash cans, vacant buildings, the old salt shed. And somehow, they never managed to stop a stuffed effigy of Hannah-beast from being hung by a noose from the town gazebo each year, cloth body stuffed full of newspaper and rags, pillowcase face painted blue, rainbow wig stapled on, pink boa ruffling in the breeze as the creepy doll swung in circles from the thick rope.
Erin went straight to the front door, passing Amanda in the living room without a word. There was a rapid-fire knocking, and she flung the door open. Her friends were gathered on the front porch—they must have texted Erin that they were there. Two Hannah-beasts, Wonder Woman, and a red devil in a too-tight, too-short dress.
Erin walked out and slammed the door behind her, but not quickly enough to drown out the first words she spoke: “I fucking hate my mother.”
1982
“Please, Hannah, please, come out with us tonight,” the three girls cooed like sweet little doves, funny partridges, as they stood gathered outside her first-floor bedroom window. They knew better than to come to the front door, deal with Daddy and his fire-breathing bourbon breath telling them they weren’t good girls, they were trash, little dipshit whores.
Girls like that, they’re going straight to hell. That’s what Daddy said. You stay away from them unless you want to get burned.
Their porch light was dark, no smiling jack-o’-lantern to greet trick-or-treaters, no bowl of candy waiting by the front door.
Hannah bit her lip, looked through the screen at the girls gathered outside smiling in at her from the shadows, begging: “Please, please, pleeeeeaze.”
“It won’t be like before, we promise.”
“Please say you’ll be our friend and come with us,” they begged.
Hannah shook her head. “I’m not supposed to.”
It was more than the fact that her daddy would skin her alive if he caught her going out with these girls. It was that she didn’t trust them. Not one bit.
They’d given her dog biscuits, telling her they were oatmeal cookies, then barked out their own laughs, saying, “Hannah’s a dog! Bowwow, Dog-face! Bow-fucking-wow!”
Then she’d cried, actually cried, and they’d said they were sorry, sorry, so, so sorry. It was a joke. Just having a little fun is all.
Some days they took her lunch money, saying it was a tax she had to pay, and if she didn’t pay it, they wouldn’t be her friends anymore, wouldn’t let her sit with them, not ever. Not like they did all that much anyway. Mostly she was greeted with disgusted snarls of “Go away, Hannah.”
The worst was the time they’d tried to turn her into a real girl. “Trust us,” Mel said. “We’ll make you pretty. You want to be pretty, don’t you, Hannah?”
And they took her to Katie’s house, where they made her soak in a tub full of “pretty-girl bath salts” that made her break out in a hot rash all over her body. Then they coated her legs with shaving cream, and Mel shaved her with a pink razor, saying, “You’ve got quite the pelt going on here, Hannah. What are you, a wolf-girl?”
And Hannah had bared her teeth, laughed, and said, “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m going to eat you up.” She gave them a growl, deep in her throat, and snapped her jaws at Mel, made like she was going to bite her.
This had startled Mel. Or maybe she just pretended to be startled. Maybe she slipped on purpose.
The next thing Hannah knew, she was dripping blood down her leg, not like little weeping dots, but like a spring stream that runneth over.
“Fuck,” Mel said. “Sorry.” But then she smiled ever so slightly and shot a quick glance at Manda and Katie, and Hannah knew she wasn’t sorry. Not one bit.
Hannah still had the scar.
“It’s Halloween, Hannah,” Manda said now, pleading. She was dressed up like a cat burglar with a striped shirt and watch cap, a black mask, and a pillowcase with a huge dollar sign drawn on the outside. Katie was a girlie clown, a feather boa draped around her shoulders. And Mel, she was some kind of superhero space princess with a silver dress, tall black boots, a silver cape, a tiara, and a big plastic laser gun strapped to her back.
“Don’t you want candy?” Katie asked as she stood shoulder to shoulder with Mel. “We’ll get candy. So much candy! Whole pillowcases stuffed full of KitKats, peanut butter cups, Mars bars.”
“So much sugar we won’t sleep for a week,” Mel promised.
“Then we can swap,” Manda said. “I know you love peanut butter cups—I’ll give you all of mine.”
Hannah let herself imagine it: roaming the streets, going door-to-door with these girls, opening her sack up, and watching the candy fill it until it was heavy, so heavy that it was hard to carry, bulging with chocolate, lollipops, wax lips, candy she’d never even heard of, never even tried.
“Come with us,” Mel said.
“Come with us,” Katie begged, an echo of Mel. Which was how Hannah thought of her. Not a person all her own, just an echo. Whatever Mel said, Katie did. Whatever Mel wore, Katie wore. She even brought the same kind of sandwich as Mel to school each day—peanut butter and fluff, with the crust cut off.
Hannah looked at Manda. The only one she half trusted. She’d been to Manda’s house before, spent the night once even. It had been during February break, and the other girls were away; Hannah knew this would never have happened if they’d been around, if there’d been even the slightest possibility that they’d find out.
Manda’s house was big and beautiful. Her parents were real nice too. They took Hannah and Amanda to the video store, let them pick out whatever they wanted; then they stopped at the grocery store and bought a pan of popcorn that they cooked on the stovetop—pop, pop, pop—and the foil over it puffed up as it filled, turning it into a crinkly, metallic mushroom. She and Manda made pink cupcakes with purple sprinkles, and Manda’s mom wrapped the leftovers up for Hannah to take home. Hannah stayed in her clothes at bedtime, and Manda’s mom was all like, “Where’s your nightgown, sweetheart?” and Hannah said, “I forgot it,” when the truth was she didn’t own one at all.
“Well, I’m sure Amanda has something you can borrow! Let’s go see.” Then Amanda’s mom was opening all the drawers in her dresser and going through the closet and making a whole pile of stuff that she said was either too small for Amanda or that Amanda never wore anymore. Not just nightgowns, but jeans and a dress and shirts and this pair of pink cowboy boots that Hannah tried on, and they fit perfect, like her feet and Manda’s were the same shape and everything. “Take them,” Manda’s mother said. “Take all these things. Amanda doesn’t wear any of it anymore.” Amanda looked kind of surprised, a little angry maybe even, so Hannah said, “No, thanks. I’ll just borrow the nightgown for tonight.” Manda’s mom gave Manda a look, and Manda smiled at Hannah and said, “No, you should take all this stuff. I was just gonna give it to the Salvation Army anyway.”
Hannah went to sleep that night curled up against Manda, wearing her white nightgown, Manda’s heavy comforter on top of them, and it was the happiest she’d ever been. “I love you, Manda,” she said. “Manda Panda,” she added, giggling the new name into Manda’s shoulder.
“Go to sleep,” Manda said.
She wore Manda’s pleated acid-washed jeans and lavender polo shirt (with the collar turned up, the way Manda always wore it) to school when they all came back from break the next Monday, and Mel had laughed, then got all angry, and asked, “Amanda, isn’t that your shirt? And your jeans?” and Manda turned bright red, and Hannah said, “Yeah, they are. I stole them. When I was at her house.”
Mel glared at Manda. “When was Dog-face at your house?” And Manda—she looked all frantic, little drops of sweat dotting her forehead.
“I broke in,” Hannah said quickly. “Broke in when no one was home.”
“Thi
eving little bitch,” Mel said. “Give them back. Right now.”
“Yeah, go take them off, or we’ll do it for you,” Katie said. She took a step closer to Hannah like she was going to start ripping them off right in the hall.
“It’s okay, really,” Manda had said. “They’re like a hundred years old, they don’t even fit, just let her—”
“It is not fucking okay,” Mel snarled. Manda hadn’t said any more.
And Hannah had gone into the bathroom and taken off the clothes and put on her gym clothes and worn those all day instead—her stinky T-shirt and too-tight shorts. She’d folded Manda’s clothes up neatly and returned them to her during study hall. Manda slipped them into her book bag without saying anything, but she smiled apologetically at Hannah. When Hannah got home from school that day, she put the rest of the hand-me-downs in a kitchen garbage bag, sealed it tight, and hid them in the bottom of the trash bin in the garage. One of her chores was rolling the bin to the curb every Friday night, so she knew it’d be gone soon, and her daddy would never know.
But the boots, those lovely pink boots, she kept those. She knew better than to wear them to school. She put them on every day when she got home and danced around in her bedroom, imagining she was Manda, and she lived in a big house with a big closet full of clothes she never wore and sweet pink cupcakes baking in the kitchen.
The real Manda, just outside her bedroom window, smiled at her now, held out her hand. “Come on,” she said. “Come trick-or-treating with us. It’ll be so much fun. Promise.”
“I . . . I don’t even have a costume.”
“It’s cool. We’ll make you one,” Mel said. “We’ll give you parts of ours.”
Then Mel reached up, untied her beautiful silver cape, and held it out.
It sparkled in the streetlights.
“Katie will give you her wig,” Mel said.
“But the wig is—” Katie started to protest, then Mel shot her a glance.
“The boa too,” Mel ordered.
Katie took off the wig and boa without question and held them out to Hannah.
Hannah-Beast (Dark Corners collection) Page 1