“Why, Hannah Cirric, is that you? I barely recognized you. Haven’t seen you in ages. Have you been sick?”
Hannah should have waited it out in Betty’s lane.
Sheila had been working the Shur Shop checkout for as long as Hannah had lived in town. She was the town busybody, something Hannah had at first found more amusing than annoying. The woman had at one point harbored a serious crush on Joel, and after he died told anybody who would listen about the affair they’d been carrying on in secret. Hannah knew it wasn’t true, because she was pretty sure she would have known if her uncle was seeing someone. Also because Sheila was a blowsy, overdone chain-smoker who always had a little too much cleavage on display and a heavy-handed spackling of makeup. She couldn’t know for sure what Joel’s type had been, but Hannah imagined Sheila was the total opposite. Joel wouldn’t have given her the time of day beyond common politeness, let alone carry on some type of clandestine affair. The thought made her laugh.
Hannah had told Sheila as much in an uncharacteristic snit right after he died, something Sheila clearly remembered. Hannah was sorry she had ever stooped to the woman’s level and opened her mouth, especially today, when it seemed like every bit of temper and source of shame she’d ever had was coming back to bite her in the ass.
“That’ll be eighteen seventy-eight.” Looking up to place a crumpled twenty into the outstretched hand with its lacquered claws, Hannah’s vision was drawn in by the reflection of herself in the mirrored glass window of the manager’s office behind Sheila’s head.
Maybe the self-righteous tone from the checkout was justified. No wonder the Sheriff hadn’t immediately recognized her. She didn’t recognize herself.
Her unzipped jacket was hanging open, displaying the grimy, stained sweatshirt underneath. The hair escaping from under her snagged knit cap was a matted wad, greasy and lank and in a dark ball of tangles. Under the cuff of the hat was a gaunt, pathetic stranger with hollow eyes shadowed by purple rings like fading bruises. How many times in her life had she walked by a person in a comparable state and looked on them with pity or, even worse, derision. Her disgust with herself rose in a hot tide up through her face, burning the tips of her ears.
Hannah grabbed her groceries and forced them roughly into her shoulder bag.
“Your change!” Hannah ignored Sheila’s voice with its thinly veiled laughter and dashed for the door, determined to get as far away as she could from the sad reality of the level she had let herself reach.
A swirly dizziness washed over her and she sank onto a concrete parking barrier. Look at what she had become. Her obsession over proving herself right, finding someone the facts told her didn’t exist, was destroying her life. She hadn’t been able to get past what she was sure she’d experienced and accept the reality of what must have really happened. Now she was as broken and degraded on the outside as she felt on the inside.
Her pulse pounded in her ears and she choked on heaving sobs, growing even angrier at herself for the tears. Carts rattled by, pausing, then passing by without stopping. A car door opened and closed, and someone spoke to her but didn’t linger when they got no response.
It was ultimately the shivering that pulled her back to reality. Hannah stood up shakily and leaned back against the cart return behind her, taking a few less frantic breaths to steady herself, feeling as wrung out and limp as a wet rag.
Somehow she still needed to walk home, make her way back into bed, and find some oblivion. Mostly she needed to get away from herself.
Maybe she should go back inside and have the sheriff haul her off to an institution; she felt ready for one. Maybe that was what she needed. But the thought of walking back past Sheila was a more painful prospect than being committed, so after one more deep inhalation Hannah stepped over the concrete divider and into the snowy parking lot.
He was standing there, just across the parking lot, under a sadly naked winter tree. Light hair, fair skin, tall and broad, just like she remembered. Like she always remembered. Hannah put her hands to her face, grinding her fists into her eye sockets. When she looked up, there was no one there.
This was never going to end. One cruel pause so that time could show her how far she’d fallen, convince her maybe there was a way back up, then back into the blender. Hannah had seen him everywhere for months, glimpses that kept mocking her, jerking her mind back and forth, asking her whether he was her invention or not, never letting the memory of his face fade. It never would; she had really and truly lost it.
Hannah let her bag slide to the ground with a thud, and began to run.
7
By the time Main Street was behind her she’d lost her hat, and her matted hair hung down her back in a heavy knot that thumped her between the shoulder blades with each step. She hadn’t slowed the entire trip back, and when she finally reached her driveway she was exhausted and stumbling, dragging her coat by one sleeve. At the turn she finally lost the coat altogether, then tripped over it and skidded, falling face first toward the ice. When her hands went out to catch her, Hannah didn’t feel the crusted surface cutting into the skin of her hands. She didn’t feel the pain or the cold. She didn’t feel anything at all.
At the front door she reached automatically to her side for her keys—keys that were in her bag; the bag that was lying somewhere on the ground outside the supermarket. Hannah made a fist and punched out one of the glass panes in the door and reached through, raking her wrist over the jagged edge in the process. She barely noticed the red bracelet it drew across the pale underside of her arm, or the blood that ran down from the ragged cut, except that it made her fingers slip and slide on the lock. When she finally managed to fumble it open she pushed her way inside and slammed the door shut behind her.
The stairs looked like a mountain, and she climbed them like one, dragging herself up the narrow flight on her hands and knees, desperate to put the world behind her, anything to get the hell away from this nightmare that wouldn’t stop.
And it won’t stop, will it? I’ll close my eyes, and he’ll be there. I’ll open them, and he might be gone for a little while—just long enough for me to scrape myself back together and drag myself out the door—and then, he’ll be there too.
In the bedroom she crawled into bed, still in her boots, arm bleeding, and burrowed like a mole under the mountain of covers into the familiar mustiness of unwashed sheets. Even in the rank, warm dark, it didn’t disappear, the image of him standing under the naked tree, staring at her with strange, pale eyes. He was so real, so detailed and defined she couldn’t comprehend where in her mind she’d gotten him from.
Leave me alone. Leave me alone. I’ll admit it, I’m messed up. How’s that—I’m fessing up. I’m crazy and none of it is real. I made it all up. I made it all up. I made you up, now leave me alone. Leave me alone, you’re killing me.
Unburying one arm, Hannah groped for the bottle on the nightstand. She knocked it off, sending the contents skittering away across the bedroom floor. She felt around blindly until she managed to close her hand around some pills and crammed them into her mouth, not caring what they were, or how many, only about making it all stop. Chewing them and forcing them down dry, Hannah prayed they would take effect quickly and give her a moment’s peace. She’d do anything just to make it go away.
Hannah lay rigid as a statue, every muscle clenched, seeing him under the tree, seeing him before she hit him, seeing him after when he was torn up and bleeding, seeing him in the car at the stop light before the car hit her. He was there again and again, mocking her, disappearing and reappearing until finally the drugs began to take effect. Blessedly he began to blur, and fuzz, and grow indistinct, until finally he melted away into nothingness.
Uncle Joel’s home, thank god. She heard him coming in through the front door, jiggling the finicky old lock until it opened. Maybe he’d make the coffee, since she wasn’t ready to get up. He couldn’t cook, but he made coffee just fine. “Don’t make me get up. I want to sleep in,” she
mumbled to herself under the blankets. “I’ve been having such a terrible dream.” The terrible double dream, a dream within a dream. But he was coming up the stairs; she heard the squeak of the second step. He was going to make her get up. Were they supposed to be somewhere today? She didn’t remember. Were they going hiking, up Barclay Mountain?
It was the squeak that made what she’d thought was a dream step sideways into reality; suddenly she was fully awake. It was a house of clicks and rattles, filled with the sounds of loose glass panes in shrunken wooden frames and wind under shingles, the constant death clacking of its old bones knocking together. But the squeak of the second step from the bottom, it was unique, the way it protested when someone stepped on it. She’d know the sound anywhere, and it sliced cleanly into her foggy oblivion, poking a finger into her stoned sleep. Hannah was wide awake, and there was someone in the house.
She opened her eyes in the dark, listening of the shuffling sound of someone moving up the stairs. Dropping her arm down the side of the bed, Hannah felt around silently for the shotgun she’d kept there since her uncle died, quietly picking it up from under its cover of dust bunnies. Sitting bolt upright in total stillness, she tried to listen around the sound of her own racing heartbeat, trying to focus on what was coming. There was another sound, a thud this time, heavy, somewhere higher and nearer to her than it had been before. It was the sound of someone setting both feet down on the landing at the top of the stairs, just in front of her bedroom door.
She considered calling out, but the jiggle of the bedroom doorknob made her throat constrict. Her words stuck, but a squeak forced itself out when her sliced forearm protested against the weight of the shotgun when she raised it and trained at the door. Hannah was shaking, and it made the gun quiver up and down, the moonlight reflecting in thin, wobbling lines on the top of the barrels.
“Who’s there?” she tried again to call out, though it came out as a hoarse croak. Focusing, taking a deep, silent breath, she stilled the gun at the door and forced the lines of light steady and unmoving like a laser sight. No one answered. The doorknob stopped moving.
“I’ll shoot…”
Suddenly the door swung inward, the opening fully blacked out. A large shape moved through it, toward Hannah. She pulled the trigger.
The gun bucked against her shoulder, pushing her backward and slamming her head against the headboard with a painful crack she felt but didn’t hear, deafened by the blast of the shotgun. She lost her grip on the gun and it dropped off the side of the bed. Hannah barely heard the second barrel discharge when it hit the ground, just saw a flash of fire, then it was dark again.
The spent gunpowder burned her nostrils and stung her eyes. Shaking, Hannah reached over to turn on the bedside lamp. When it threw a ring of smoky light across the room, she wished she hadn’t.
A man was crumpled against her doorframe, still moving, sliding sideways slowly against the wall. Finally, he came to rest with a thud, slumping on the floor. His chest was a scatter of bloody dots that were quickly growing toward each other, turning the white shirt red. He was staring straight at her, eyes wide open. She recognized those eyes. It was him, all over again. Cramming her fists into her eyes, she ground them to tears then opened them back up.
He was still there.
She got up and stood over him, watching the red spread over his chest. He was motionless and bleeding, but Hannah was afraid of him, this man who had climbed so fully into her mind. The only explanation was that this was some kind of full-blown psychotic break and none of it was really happening. But if that was the case, it was pretty damn convincing.
It occurred to her that maybe this was some kind of screwed-up cosmic test. If this was a do-over of her failed attempt to save him the first time, this could be her chance to make it right. She needed to do something either way, whether this was as real as it felt or a breakdown-induced fantasy. She’d hesitated before and failed to save him. She wasn’t going to this time, delusion or not.
Reaching out, she put her hand on his neck, feeling for a pulse; there was a beat, but it was faint. She pulled her hand away from the almost feverishly warm skin and groped through his pockets—this time he had pockets, thankfully—searching for a phone. He felt real enough to Hannah, and her hands came away sticky with blood, though empty. No wallet, no phone. No way to call for help. She didn’t have a landline and the nearest neighbor was a mile away, and that was as the crow flies, through the snow and in the dark. She was on her own.
“Oh no. Don’t you dare die. Not this time.” She’d hoped he’d give her some sign of life, but there was nothing. Hannah reached over to the bullet-ridden dresser, pulling out a clean t-shirt. She ripped apart his shirt—now entirely red—the scattered holes making it shred like paper, and covered the worst looking places the best she could, putting pressure on them to try to stem the bleeding.
“Come on, don’t do this again. Either you need to wake up or I need to leave you and find help. Don’t you dare do this to me again.”
As if to respond, his head suddenly tipped sideways, and a trail of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
“No, no. Don’t you dare.” She felt for a pulse again. This time she didn’t feel even the smallest movement. Making sure his airway was clear, Hannah tipped his head back up, put her lips on his, and forced his chest to rise. She did it again, watching it lift and then fall back into place. Blood sputtered out of one of the wounds, air escaping from where the buckshot had punctured his lung. She grabbed another shirt and covered the wound, pushing down, hoping it was the right thing to do.
Was she just making it worse? “Damn it,” she cursed, “why is this happening?” She didn’t know what to do, other than to keep trying. Interlocking her fingers, Hannah put them on his chest.
“Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive,” she mumbled under her breath while she did chest compressions. When she reached thirty, she returned to his face, forcing air into his lungs again. His lips and face felt colder now than before. Again, she laced her fingers and pressed against the wet, red chest.
“Come on now, don’t you die. You’re going to survive and you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on. I don’t care if you’re real or not. You need to wake the hell up and let me off the hook.”
Nothing. She needed to get help, but she was afraid to leave and stop trying to force blood through his body and air into his lungs. And she was afraid if she looked away for even a moment, he would be gone.
She breathed into his mouth again. His skin was colder and clammy and she thought it looked paler. There was still no pulse she could feel. Hannah sat back on her heels, stunned. He was dead, again. Why was this happening?
Suddenly frustration and fear overwhelmed her and she screamed out loud. “You can’t die!” Hannah slammed her fists down onto his unmoving chest.
His eyes shot open, rolling crazily back in his head and he jerked forward, sitting straight up. One of his giant arms swung wildly and struck Hannah, throwing her backward into the bed’s footboard. When her head connected with the wood the world went gray, and she saw him sliding back to the ground before it faded away completely.
It was so cold her limbs didn’t want to move at first, and she just lay there blinking away the weak sunlight coming through the bedroom curtain. Watching dust motes drift through the light, Hannah tried to remember how she had gotten there, lying on her bedroom floor. She reached a hand up and felt the lump that was throbbing on the back of her head, and it all came back.
It felt like a dream, but it hadn’t been, at least some of it. There was a scattering of buckshot like a negative constellation in black on her white wall. But that was all there was. There was no one there. He was gone. No body, and no blood. None on the pale floor boards, none on the wall where he’d left a red arc when he first slid to the ground. None on her. She looked at her hands in disbelief, completely clean except for the crusty bracelet of dried blood around her wrist. None of it was his, though she’d b
een covered with it.
Why was this happening? Was this really her life now, the same insane nightmare repeating over and over again? How had she become so far detached from reality? Hannah felt like the toy gyroscope she’d had as a child, which started in a stable spin, over time its grip on the axis deteriorating into wobbling chaos, more and more off center in ever-widening circles. She had gone too far off center and now spun wildly, beyond recovery, about to skid to a lopsided halt.
Pulling herself to her feet, Hannah walked past the splintered remains of her dresser and out of the bedroom, pausing only to trace the dots in the doorframe with her fingers, feeling the rough edges of the irregularly spaced holes.
One methodical step at a time, she made her way into the hallway and down the stairs. She retraced a trail of frozen blood drops—her own—out through the front door, leaving it open behind her as she stepped onto the porch. In the bitter cold she walked across the yard and up the driveway.
Hannah floated, the bite of the air rolling off her, oblivious to the speckles of snow that stuck to her hair and freckled her face. She didn’t move to brush them away as she walked toward the place where she had first seen the man’s face and turned it into a pulp of blood and mangled flesh. Tripping in the slush, she continued to place her numb feet one in front of the other. Her head felt broken.
She heard the whoosh of the rushing water and followed it to the center of the metal railroad bridge. Hannah stopped there, dislodging clots of snow with her boots, watched the frozen snow tumble haphazardly downward. The wind was blowing harder here, buffeting her body, the cold cutting through her thin sweatshirt like a knife. She climbed over the rail to stare at the river below, like she had done so many times before.
Echoes (Book 1): Echoes Page 6