Hanna

I wake early. Michael’s still asleep on the sofa. I sit for a while, taking in the dead silence that surrounds the house. After deciding that Lyn must be still asleep I get up and wander into the back of the house, looking for a bathroom. Once I find it and use it, I sneak around some more, getting to know the place. There’s a small study, a storage room, a door leading a few steps down into the garage and another door to the back yard.

The screen door squeaks lightly as I step outside. The back yard faces a forest and the pines sway in a gentle wind, dropping clumps of snow to the ground. A few steps down from the porch stands a table and a rusty grill. I flit my eyes further to a little snow-covered path, leading into the forest. My breath slows when, behind one of the trees I notice a stone, shaped like a grave.

“Well, this is morbid,” I whisper, curious and concerned at the same time, also surprised that my theory about a family tragedy was correct. In my socks I step down the stairs and start towards the graves.

They appear to be two, hidden a bit further away from the path. One grave has Tom Corben written on it. No date. The other, smaller one, just says Sophie. This can explain Lyn’s cutting and addictions. A tightness I can only identify as guilt settles in my throat. Guilt for exploiting Lyn’s pain and burdening her life with Michael and me.

A door slams in the house and I turn, my hands wrapped around my shoulders. Even from afar I can tell Lyn’s expression is nothing but annoyance mixed with anger. I lower my head and walk back.

“Great, now you’ve seen that,” she murmurs, a joint in her mouth, and cracks a lighter.

I say nothing as I shift from one wet foot to the other. Say something, Hanna. Might as well learn about how consistent her habits are. “You smoke…ugh, often?”

“Obviously,” she says with a sigh. “Many things.”

She exhales and I inhale some of the smoke. But it smells… mixed. Must be weed and tobacco. I’ve never gotten stoned before.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to see the—” I extend my hand toward the graves.

She swats her palm, dismissive, and turns away. “It was a long time ago.”

Her reluctance to share rekindles some of the distrust and I recall that she’s still a stranger who can call cops any moment despite me threatening to expose her. God knows what else she could be hiding. Or maybe I’m just paranoid. “Why are you not at work?”

“It’s Saturday,” she says, not looking at me, then exhales nervously, “Are you sure no one is after you two anymore?”

A yawn escapes me, followed by a shiver rising up from my feet. “Pretty sure.”

“Okay, so you take a few days off and then leave.”

I avert my eyes. Maybe we should go, maybe she’s not safe, but Michael’s in a pretty bad condition. I have trouble imagining him taking care of me, or me of him, if we get back on the road so soon again. I decide to stall. “We will, but my brother, he’s quite injured.”

Lyn doesn’t say anything.

“Please. At least a week.”

“Fine,” she exhales another round of think smoke. “Now get inside before you get sick with your socks wet.”

I snap to attention, glad but scared to stay at the same time and go back inside.

Michael’s still deep asleep on the sofa and I have to shake him awake. When Lyn returns she and I help him to the second-floor guest room. He doesn’t protest and I can tell he’s focusing on shuffling his legs along so not to trip us both. I have no idea how long it’ll take him to fully heal.

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One of the four bedrooms upstairs is all wooden and cozy. Soft purple carpet covers the parquet floors, a TV stands on a dresser next to a bookshelf, heavy brown curtains adorn the windows. It feels…safe.

“You can stay with him in that room if you want, or you can take the one next to it,” Lyn exhales after we tuck Mike into the double bed. He turns away, humiliated by his weakness in front of two women who have to take care of him. Leaving him rest, Lyn and I exit. “I probably should get you two some new clothing as well,” she says on the way down.

“That’d be great,” I say once we’re downstairs. “Lyn,” she looks at me, her black eyes hitching my words for a second. “Thank you again. You’re being very kind.”

She smiles faintly, dimples forming on her cheeks. “No shit. You’re blackmailing me. What do I call you two?”

I gape, recalling that Lyn still doesn’t know our names.

She rolls her eyes. “Just make something up, I know neither of you are gonna give me your real names.”

“Ugh,” caught off guard I search my mind for a hooker name. “I’m Crystal, and I’m sure he’s gonna think of something too.”

…

Five days float by as we rest in her house, not talking much. And as I relax in this forest sheltered abode, every step, every move I make pulls me deeper into my own head, into what has happened, into the murders, and violence. Michael’s the same. Every so often his gaze strays off into the void and a breath escapes him, a laborious puff of air as if he’s breathing a sticky goo. He doesn’t talk to me much and it’s as if the glue that held us together all this time has started to dissolve under the tranquility of this place.

A yell wakes me up at night, throwing me into an instant alert. I vault from the bed, my eyes set on the nearest book to use as a weapon. I grab it and still when I see Michael sit, his legs covered in sheets. We sleep in the same bed, though not once did we touch each other.

He heaves, sweat running down his forehead, fingers of his case-free arm curled into the sheets. This is not the first time he wakes in the middle of the night. I wake often too, but somehow it’s never this intense. Today he looks like an animal about to lash out at anything and anyone. It sends my heart to the pit of my stomach and I fight to control my own anxiety. If he’s mentally weak what’s to become of me? But I can’t stop him either, especially after I pushed him into questioning his beliefs and rethinking his deepest motives to kill.

“Mike, look at me,” I turn on a lampshade and sit on the edge of the bed. “We’re okay, uh, I mean… you’re okay.” I run my hand over his face. Only when the life calms do the horrors and consequences of all we’ve been through begin to show. In both of us.

Defeat and anger twist his features and his trembling hand slides up to my hair. It’s too short for him to braid. “Get out,” he whispers under his nose, digging his fingers into the forearm of his bandaged arm. “Before I hurt you.”

“You don’t have to do it, Michael—”

“Get out!” I rebound, almost falling from the bed, deep-rooted panic shrinking around me. I hurry out of the room. “It’s your fucking fault!” He screams as I shut the door and clamp my hands on my ears, sobs escaping me. “Hear me, Freckles!”

“You made me a promise!” I call back. But it’s as hard for him to control himself as it is for me, if not harder.

Lightweight steps thud up the stairs. “The fuck?” Lyn hisses, a gun in her hands.

“He’s having a fit,” I sob out, gasping. “And I’m having a panic attack too.”

Lyn’s eyes flit from me to the door and for the first time, her face betrays pity. “What do you need me to do?”

I take a few long gasps. Maybe if Lyn speaks to him it’ll make it better? “Tell him he made me a promise to live. That he deserves to live.”

Lyn leans into the door, her gun pointed upwards at the ceiling. “John—”

“Michael.”

She looks down at me. “What?”

“That’s his name.”

She cocks her brow but then addresses the door. “Michael, listen you made a promise to your sister, right? To live, remember?”

“Tell him it’s not his fault.”

“It’s not your fault and you can get through this, right?” Lyn pulls her lips to one side questionably as she looks at me, asking with her expression if what she said was okay.

“She’s not my fucking sister!” Michael calls out from the room.

A gasp of terror escapes me, rendering me incapable of rational thought. I tell myself what Michael revealed isn’t a big deal. But it is!

Everything is! Everything can kill me!

I’m helpless to control my mind, but I finally register Lyn’s hand, rubbing my shoulder. I realize I’m curled in a ball in a corner, sweat piling under my shirt like spring rain. “You’re okay. I’m not gonna call the cops.” Her mellow voice soothes my nerves.

She keeps repeating the same thing as she pulls me up by my upper arms and leads me to another guest room. I stand there aimlessly in what must look like shock and the next thing I know Lyn’s offering me a joint. With a trembling hand I take it. Inhale. A cough leaves me and I succumb on the bed, my body starting to tremble. Lyn covers me with a blanket. My fingers curling into the fabric I pull the sheets up to my face and try to rid my head of all and everything.