Hannah
Mud, rain, pain.
Hannah woke on the ground, mouth full of dirt, rain coming down hard. The smell of gasoline. A flash of lightning, a distant rumble of thunder. Her head throbbed, pain radiating down her neck, her back, her arm. Hannah drew a ragged breath, stayed still.
Blissful unconsciousness called her back. It was a lake, a deep black lake, that she could sink into and all the pain would go away. The weight of the water pulled her under, and she slipped back into the depths.
Don’t you dare just lie there and give up, Hannah Gale. Sophia. I raised you to be stronger.
But I’m so tired, Mom. I just want to sleep.
Sleep sweet, Mama.
That little voice, so innocent, so in love with her mama. That was the voice that had Hannah clawing back up through the depths of unconsciousness. Her eyes flew open to be greeted by the lightning and the rain.
“Gigi.” She pushed herself up to sitting. “I’m coming.”
A voice.
Hannah! Hannah where are you?
What the fuck had just happened? Who had hit her? What had hit her? A fallen branch? Had she been struck by lightning?
She tried to stand, hands slipping in the mud, the taste of dirt and blood in her mouth. She put tentative fingers to the huge, painful knot on her head.
Pieces came back: The electrical box—main line cut; the generator—out of fuel; tree down—and road blocked. Liza was missing. They were trapped.
Hannah!
“Cricket!” she called out, summoning her voice, her strength. “I’m here.”
When Cricket came around the side of the house, her face was a mask of fear. She dropped down beside Hannah into the mud.
“Oh my god, is that blood?” Cricket asked, putting a hand to Hannah’s head.
Cricket was bleeding, too, from her nose. It ran down the front of her cover-up which was otherwise transparent, soaked through. The rain was coming down around them.
“Are you hurt?” asked Hannah, letting her friend pull her to standing. Her head.
Oh god, the world was spinning.
Words, nonsensical—a strange woman, Joshua in on it, he said she’s dangerous—came tumbling out of Cricket’s mouth. In her hand, Hannah finally noticed, Cricket clutched a huge kitchen knife.
“Woah, woah, wait,” said Hannah, putting both hands on her friend’s shoulders. “Breathe.”
They locked eyes. Cricket drew in and released a breath. Rivulets of rain trailed her face, dripped off her hair.
“There’s a woman here on the property,” Cricket said. “Joshua’s half sister. She was also Mako’s assistant at Red World. Trina? Do you remember her?”
Hannah did remember her, never liked her, assumed Mako was fucking her because she was just his type. But he went through assistants like they were disposable utensils at a company picnic. He used them up and they quit, or he fired them. So she didn’t bother getting attached to or annoyed by any of them. But—what?
“Trina. She quit before Christmas.”
“She’s here,” said Cricket. They were both so wet that it had stopped being an issue. The rain was loud against the leaves, the roof, the ground. “She’s got some axe to grind.”
“Joshua is her half brother?” asked Hannah.
Cricket, wet, bloody, looked like a horror movie version of herself. “That’s what he said.”
Hannah shook her head, her mind grappling with all of this information—none of which made any sense.
Maybe I’m still unconscious, she considered, the world still tilting unpleasantly, nausea coming in waves. I could be dreaming. I’ll wake up next to my husband at home down the hall from my daughter. And this is not happening. Right, good. Let’s go with that.
But no. The rain, coming down harder, was swamping the ground, traveled down the slope beneath their feet in a river of mud.
“What does that mean?” Hannah asked. “What does she want?”
How did the pieces fit together? Liza missing, power outage, Bruce and Mako out looking for her, Hannah hit as she tried to fix the power. Trina, Mako’s old assistant on the property with dark intentions.
Then Hannah noticed in the beam of her flashlight, which lay on the ground casting its light up, that Cricket’s nose was swollen and purpled. “She did this to you? Tell me what happened?”
Cricket recounted the whole scene for Hannah. When she was done, she held up the knife. “I took this and came after you. We have to find Mako and Bruce and get out of here. On foot if necessary.”
“Give that to me,” Hannah said, like Cricket was a child, and took the knife from her.
Hannah told her about the electrical and the generator, how someone had hit her from behind. Who had hit her? Trina? Why had Hannah been hit and left there in the mud? Maybe just to incapacitate her. So that Trina could do what?
Cricket seemed dazed, like she wasn’t taking in information.
“She said we were his enablers,” said Cricket, holding on to Hannah’s arm and looking out into the darkness. “That we were his handmaidens.”
Again, Hannah thought about Libby. In fact, she thought about Libby a lot—more than she ever said. Libby who accused Mickey of raping her that night. She went to the police with the claim. No one at school believed her; she became a kind of joke. There was no physical evidence to support her claims—maybe because of the shower. Libby didn’t finish out the school year. She sank into depression, never made it to Cooper Union. A few years later, when Hannah was in college, Libby killed herself by getting drunk and driving her car into a tree not far from the house where Hannah grew up.
That just shows how fucked up she was, Mako said when Hannah called to tell him. She was a mess.
Hannah shook it off. Ancient history. They had more immediate problems than mistakes they’d made as teenagers.
“Okay, look,” said Hannah, still holding the knife and retrieving the flashlight. “Let’s just go to the other cabin. Bruce and Mako will be there, maybe Liza. We’ll figure out what to do.”
Cricket looked out into the dark. “She’s out there. Joshua said she’s dangerous. And the road is blocked.”
“Says Joshua,” said Hannah. “Who is obviously a liar and a bad, bad guy.”
Cricket gave a quick nod. “I loved him.”
“I know,” said Hannah, feeling a rush of sympathy. “This—whatever it is—is fucked.”
Hannah flashed her light around. They were alone. Maybe Trina had hit her and then been surprised by Cricket. Maybe she was still out there waiting, just outside the beam. Who was she really? And why was she fucking with Hannah’s family?
Her head cleared, and a familiar deep focus set in, the kind that came on in crisis. She had her purpose: find her husband, get back to their daughter.
“Whoever she is,” said Hannah. “She can’t take all of us.”