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Hannah

HANNAH TWISTED HER HEAD and tried not to lose sight of Malcolm as he worked his way down the hall, but with little light and the heavy table partially blocking her view, that was tough. He reached a closed door at the end of the hall, hesitated, bent, and studied the floor. Then he switched off the flashlight, tried to peer under the door, grunted, and got back to his feet, switching the light back on.

“They came from in here,” he said in a muted whisper. Hannah wasn’t sure if the words were meant for her or if he was talking to himself again, but if someone was waiting on the other side of that door, they’d surely heard him. The house seemed oddly quiet, as if it were listening, too.

Malcolm pressed his palm against the door, then quickly pulled it away, startled. He brought the light up and looked at the spot he’d touched.

Even at this distance, Hannah could see his handprint there. It glistened, as if the door were a cold pane of glass, a window covered in frost.

She grunted behind her gag, and he answered as if he could read her mind.

“The door is freezing cold.” He tentatively touched the brass knob and jerked his hand away. “Like ice.”

That made no more sense to Hannah than everything else that had happened today. It was only October. It would be another month or two before they had their first real cold snap. The temperature outside was probably somewhere in the sixties.

Raising the screwdriver, ready to strike, Malcolm reached for the knob again, gave it a cautious twist, and eased the door open with the toe of his shoe.

A rush of icy air lofted out, a frigid breath Hannah felt roll down the hallway and wash over her. Malcolm blinked it away. He scissored his arm back against his chest with the blade of the screwdriver pointing out, phone flashlight held high in his other hand. He seemed ready to charge the room, tackle whoever might be inside, but even from her obstructed view, Hannah could tell nobody was in there.

Motionless at the threshold, Malcolm shut off the flashlight—he didn’t need it.

There was a large four-poster bed against the far wall, a dresser beside it with an antique lamp, the yellowed shade sitting at an angle on top. The bed was all wrong, too; the frame had partially collapsed at the foot, the side closest to the door. A large tree limb, as thick as Hannah’s waist, rested on top. It had come through the ceiling and sliced through the old wood like butter, leaving a hole in the roof and a jagged gash in one of the walls. Another branch, an offshoot from the first, had punched through the mattress and impaled the floor. Knotty and thick, like a broken bone that had healed all wrong. All of it was stained white, glistening with frost and ice. Branches and leaves filled the far side of the room like some giant houseplant forgotten and grown out of control, and the sun streamed in from above. Several crows were perched about, tiny black eyes watching Malcolm intently when he muttered, “Stop. Just stop, already.”

Hannah thought he was talking to the birds, or maybe the flies buzzing around his head, but he didn’t swat at any of them, made no effort to drive them away. Instead, he peered into the room, as if he were talking to the room.

When Hannah grunted again behind her gag, Malcolm seemed to remember she was there. His head twisted partially around, caught her from the corner of his eye, then went back to the footprints.

“These make no sense,” he muttered. He slipped the screwdriver into his back pocket and snapped several photographs of the prints with Hannah’s phone. “They start at the bed. Like whoever made them started there too, then …”

Malcolm shook his head, and several of the flies rose and hovered above him, buzzing about.

Hannah watched as he stepped into the room, following the trail, moving in slow starts and stops across the room until he reached the edge of the mattress. Still staring down at the floor, he turned and sat.

“They start right here,” he said. “Makes no sense. There are no tracks leading into the room. They start right here like the person who made them swung her legs over the side, stood, and walked from the room, down that hall, and out the front door.”

The fact that he said her wasn’t lost on Hannah. The footprints were nearly identical to her own. Either from a girl or a small boy, but Hannah somehow knew it was the former.

Malcolm turned slowly on the bed, raised his feet to the mattress, and lay down next to the large branch. With the crows watching him and flies clouding the air, he looked up at the ceiling.

And that was when he screamed loud enough to put Hannah’s pitiful cries to shame.