by Rowan Hanlon
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said softly. “I just couldn’t wait to see you.”
Hadley didn’t respond. She didn’t know how. She wasn’t ready for all of this emotional output from these people. She turned back to her mother and looked over her shoulder to see her father entering the room. He was quieter than her mother and probably the reason Hadley had survived as long as she did. He was a physical education teacher who had instilled in her and her sister the importance of exercise. She’d been running since she was ten years old and her lung capacity was really, really good. It was probably one of the reasons she was able to escape and get so far from the house. It was probably the reason she was able to keep moving once she made it to the road.
Her father didn’t come any closer to the bed and, instead, stopped just a few feet away. The only look he had on his face was absolute relief and, because of this, he gave her a small, gentle smile. That smile meant so much. It meant he had missed her and was so glad he’d found her again. It was too much for Hadley to take.
“How you doin’, Banana?” he asked.
He’d been calling her Banana since she was a little girl. He called her that because when she was little, she couldn’t get enough bananas and one day he bought her a chocolate covered banana at the state fair. She had eaten every bite of it and talked about that chocolate banana forever. “When are you going to buy me another one, Daddy?” she’d ask over and over, to which he would reply, “As soon as the fair opens again, we’ll go and get one.” And they always had until she left for college. That memory was so implanted in her mind, she couldn’t help but feel such fondness for her father and such love.
“Daddy?” she called and burst into tears, holding her arms out just enough to let him know she wanted a hug.
He came to her quickly, took her in his arms and let her sob. He didn’t say anything; he just held her, patting her back gently ever so often.
Her mother stood to the side and watched them, wiping at her eyes as the tears spilled out. She turned once and gave Huck a small nod, then she kept her eyes on Hadley and her father. They let her cry and she cried for a good fifteen minutes, never stopping, never letting up. Her father held her, her mother and boyfriend looked on and time seemed to stand still in that room.
* * * * *
There was an armed officer outside of Hadley’s hospital room. She had round-the-clock care as nurses and doctors came in and out of her room, taking blood samples, checking her wounds, asking her questions in very gentle, hushed tones. A little later, the detective came in, followed by her partner.
Her name was Marisol Smith. She was a petite woman with a soft smile and dark brown hair. She and her partner, Albert Cummings, knocked softly on Hadley’s door and entered without being prompted. They introduced themselves and each took a rose-colored chair and pulled it up to her bed.
Hadley eyed them, already dreading the questioning. She wasn’t ready for it. She didn’t really want anyone to know the things that had conspired in that old house. She felt a deep-seated sense shame over what had happened to her. She knew, on an intellectual level, that none of this was her fault. However, on a more emotional level, she felt that she was, somehow, responsible for it. Maybe because her abductor had told her as much. He’d drilled that into her head often, telling her that if she’d been smarter, more savvy, none of this would have happened. He once said, “You know, this really is all your fault. If you’d just had the wherewithal to understand what was going on, we wouldn’t be here now.”
And now she was in a hospital bed looking like death warmed over with two detectives staring at her with pity and expectation. They wanted her to help them crack the case. They wanted to be the heroes. She didn’t know if she could help them, quite honestly.
“Hadley,” Marisol began. “I don’t want to upset you. Please understand that. However, we have a job to do. And we need to find this guy.”
Hadley eyed her. “So, he’s still out there?”
She nodded and said, “After you were found, we swept the area and found the house. It was an old homesteader’s house, abandoned for nearly fifty or so years. We had twenty agents and police officers, all armed, all ready.”
Hadley waited, feeling that dread she’d felt since she’d left the house: What if he comes after me?
“He wasn’t there,” Marisol said. “And there were no signs that anything had happened. He cleaned it up well.”
Before she could help herself, Hadley had burst into tears.
“It’s okay,” she told her. “We’ll find him.”
“No, you won’t,” she managed to say through fits of rage and despair. “You’ll never find him.”
“We will find him, Hadley,” Albert said. “We will. But we need your help.”
Hadley didn’t respond. She just stared at him, then away.
“We have reason to believe that your abductor is also responsible for other abductions, as well as some deaths, over the course of about the last twenty years,” Marisol said. “All women, all around your age.”
Hadley shuddered at the thought.
“This wasn’t his first time,” Albert told her. “And if we don’t get him, it won’t be his last. Therefore, we need any information you have. We need to get this perpetrator. We want you to help us.”
Hadley turned back and stared at him then wiped at her eyes. He stared back intensely, as if he were peering into her soul. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, so she looked away. “He was sick,” Hadley said quietly.
“Sick?” Albert asked.
She nodded slightly, already feeling exhausted from the conversation. “That’s how I escaped. He got sick. With the flu. He was weak.”
They nodded.
“He would fall asleep for hours,” she told them. “And I managed to… Take advantage of that.”
“You were very brave,” Marisol said and smiled gently at her. “Very brave, Hadley.”
Hadley nodded. She didn’t feel brave. She felt as though she just did the very minimum of what was required of her. She felt like she should have escaped sooner. She felt all these things because he had told her these things. He had told her how stupid she was, how low, how ugly, how cowardly. And Hadley wasn’t any of these things. She was a beautiful young woman, petite in stature with a big, friendly personality. (Or she used to have.) She had light brown hair, blue eyes and a few well-placed freckles on her face. She had graduated college with honors, went on to work in hotel management, and was on the right path to a happy and fulfilling life. Until this, of course. He had halted her growth then slung her backwards.
“How long did it take you to get from the house to the road, Hadley?” Albert asked.
Hadley thought about it. It was a long time, but it probably seemed even longer than it actually was due to her condition. “I don’t know,” she said. “I left… It was still dark… I didn’t have a clock or a watch. He took my watch and my clothes. It was a really nice watch. Huck gave it to me for Christmas. And he took it, the man who abducted me, he took it. He took everything from me, even my underwear, even my bra. I didn’t have any underclothes the whole time. It was cold. It was very, very cold. Most days, it was almost unbearable. Sometimes, though, he kept a fire going in the old potbelly stove. There was an old potbelly stove there. That’s where all the heat came from and… It was still cold most days. I think the stove had a crack in it because I inhaled a lot of smoke. It was old. It was a very, very old stove.”
“I see,” Marisol said and nodded.
Hadley nodded back at her and took a breath, “He made me wear this old calico dress. I think he found it in the house. It was nearly in shreds when he made me put it on. I thought it would fall apart and it did, more or less. And it stank, like old clothes stink that haven’t been washed in a while. You know that smell? It was awful. I hated that dress, but that’s all I had.” She paused, wondering if she was rambling.
“Go on,” Marisol s
aid and took a few notes.
Hadley eyed her black leather notepad, then continued, “My earrings. He took my earrings, too. They were these little gold earrings that I bought for myself just after I got my job, as a reward. Really cute little flower things. Small. Stud earrings. They were earrings. Gold. Small. Flowers.”
Marisol and Albert glanced sideways at each other and exhaled at the same time. Then they turned back to Hadley.
Hadley went on, not being able to get her mind off of the earrings, “When he took them, I knew then that I’d never get them back. I knew he was going to throw them away. He took the earrings. He told me to take them out of my ears and give them to him. He said I belonged to him then. I was no longer with anyone else. He said he would kill Huck. He said he would find him and kill him and…” She stopped, her head began to shake uncontrollably and she began to hyperventilate.
“Nurse!” Albert yelled. “Nurse!”
“He told me if I didn’t cooperate he’d kill my boyfriend,” she went on, her voice beginning to rise to fever pitch. “He said Huck was dead, he was as good as dead if I left. He said he was going to kill him! It would be all my fault! I would kill him if I tried to leave and I left! I left! He’s going to kill him!”
She began to shake uncontrollably. The nurse entered with a syringe and went right to her, then told Albert, “Hold her down!” Albert complied and held her down as the nurse injected her. Hadley kept jerking and shaking and screaming until the drug took over and comforted her. She stared up at all three of those people, people who were strangers not so long ago, and wondered how in the hell she’d even gotten here.
* * * * *
There was a game he played with her almost on a daily basis. It was called “You Better Run.”
In this game, he’d take her out of the house blindfolded and turn her around several times until she was good and dizzy, then he’d remove the blindfold and whisper in her ear, “Shhh…. Shhh… Don’t say a word. Be still… And be quiet. Play the game and never rest because I’m coming for you. Wait it out… Wait forever. But just know there is no running and there is no escape. So be quiet, stay quiet, and wait for me to come for you. If you run, if you dare, you won’t run far. But then again, you better run if you know what’s good for you.”
Then he’d ever so softly back away from her. And that’s when she’d run. And that’s what he wanted, a chase. She gave it to him, gave it her all but it was never good enough. He always caught her. Always.
At first, she’d run like the devil was on her heels, and he was. He was always right behind her, taunting her, tormenting her, laughing at her weakness, at her despair. She’d run and she’d inevitably trip over a fallen branch, a rock or a hole in the ground. She’d go down hard and when she came up, he’d always be standing over her, a belt in his hand. And he’d say, “I told you there was no escape.” For her running, she’d get a beating. But if she didn’t run, she got a beating. Which made her confused. Was she supposed to learn that she wasn’t supposed to run? Because if she did run, she got a beating. But then again, if she didn’t run, she got a beating. It was the proverbial damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Obviously, it was a way to manipulate her, to mind-fuck her, to make her weaker. More obviously, it was a way for him to get his kicks. But the result was the same: She always got a beating. He’d either slap her across the back with the belt, or the back of the head. The buckle of the belt was what hurt the most and the force of it was enough to make her almost pass out. She’d try to stand but she couldn’t. She’d fall back down and he’d growl at her, grab her by the hand and basically drag her back to the house.
Soon enough, the game became routine and she gave up running. He hated that. He’d snap at her and threaten her if she didn’t run. She’d give half-hearted attempts at escape. Mostly she’d just stumble around because, at that point, she was so weak that’s all she could do. This displeased him and he’d curse her, telling her she was the worst human being on Earth.
Once, she asked him, “What made you turn into this person?” She actually couldn’t believe she’d said that to him. It had just popped out of her mouth. She put her hand over her mouth and hoped her question didn’t infuriate him enough to turn to violence.
“What’s that?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She was so afraid he’d start beating her, she became mute.
“It’s okay,” he said, almost in a gentle manner. “You can repeat the question.”
“What turned you bad?” she murmured but didn’t look at him. He hated her to look at him and would yell whenever she did.
He shook his head and almost laughed. “Well, as they say, I was born this way.”
But she reasoned that something had to have happened to him in order for him to be this terrible. She’d come up with things that might have happened to him to turn him into the monster he was and these thoughts would occupy her time. It would help her pass the time, which always seemed to move so slowly. She lost track of time, of what day it was, what month. She had nothing to help remind her of these things. And, soon enough, it didn’t matter. Each day was just pure hell. Passing a day seemed like the hardest thing to do. Each minute was excruciating and there were a lot of minutes in each day.
* * * * *
“I’m going to end up in a mental ward, aren’t I?” Hadley asked.
The psychiatrist looked at her and said, “Excuse me?”
“That’s where I’m headed, isn’t it? A mental ward?”
“We don’t really say that anymore,” she replied. “We just say mental health facility.”
“Oh,” Hadley muttered. “Sorry. My mamaw used to say that whenever she was getting overly aggravated. She’d say she was going to end up in a mental ward. I guess that’s where I get that from.”
“I see,” she replied.
“She’s dead now,” Hadley said out of nowhere. “She died about four years ago. I miss her.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
“I really loved her,” she muttered, then stared out the window. “But I’m glad, in a way, that she wasn’t around for this. It would have killed her.”
“You can’t place blame on yourself like that,” she told her.
“That’s just the way I feel,” Hadley said.
“Hadley,” she said and shut the folder she’d been perusing. “You’ve been through an enormously traumatic event. You have to have time to recover.”
“What if I don’t?” she asked and started to cry. “Will I end up in a mental… Facility?”
“I will say this,” she told her in a soothing tone. “I have never had a patient that has gone through what you’ve gone through, and I thank the Lord for that. But I am qualified to deal with it. And I have to say, that given your circumstances, you are a strong person. You are doing better than any of us could have ever hoped for.”
“I feel the opposite,” she said. “I feel very out of control.”
“You will for a while,” she said. “You will suffer over this, Hadley. I won’t sugarcoat it. You will have post-traumatic stress. But I will be here to help you. If you need me at two in the morning, you call me. If you need anything at any time, you call me.”
“I won’t,” Hadley said honestly. “I won’t do that. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t like to bother people, especially at night.”
“You don’t have to be strong right now,” she said. “You can be weak and just know that I am here to help make you better.”
“How is that even possible?” Hadley asked, almost aghast at her postulation. “Help make me better? How? It’s not possible.”
“It is possible,” she said and smiled gently at her. “And we will do it together. You understand that, Hadley? We will do this together.”
Hadley eyed her and nodded slightly. She wasn’t buying it but she’d play along. She was sick of being in the hospital, dealing with new people every day. She’d
given up even trying to remember their names. This woman, this psychiatrist, had been in to see her a few times and she didn’t even know her name. She was just “the psychiatrist” to her. She wasn’t going to bother learning her name because, as soon as she was out of the hospital, she had no desire to keep seeing her. She didn’t want to see anyone. Not even her parents. Not even her sister, who had flown in from her home in Texas. Not even her boyfriend, who stayed by her side as much as possible and tried to take her hand whenever she’d allow it. But she never allowed it and soon, she knew, he’d stop trying. She dreaded the day he’d stop trying but it was all she could do to just hold it together. She wanted nothing more than to be left alone. She wanted to go home, get in her own bed and, God willing, forget everything that had happened.
But that wasn’t going to happen. She knew they were keeping close tabs on her. Since her disappearance, she’d been everywhere, on TV news programs, in the papers, all over the internet. Huge search parties had formed to try and find her. And yet, with all of this publicity, she had remained in that shack in the woods for almost six months with that monster.
Already, her body was healing but her mind was another matter. It would never be like it was before. It would never be as sharp. It would always be clouded with doubt. She would always think bad, terrible thoughts about herself as her self-esteem had been totally destroyed. She would always think it was her fault, even though she knew there was no way that it was.
“I never asked you this,” the psychiatrist said. “And, if you’re not ready to talk about it, then we don’t have to.”
Hadley nodded a little, eying her, her pretty face and blonde hair. She quite liked her hair and thought about dying her own to that color. If she looked different, then he might not recognize her if they passed on the street. If they passed on the street… Then this thought struck her: Will I ever be on the street again, walking along like a normal person, by myself, in my own world? And that’s when she realized she never would be that person she was before. She would always be different, paranoid, thinking of him, trying to rationalize her very existence.