When Hanson Returned

The old woman barely put up a fight when I killed her.

My name isn't important. I don't tell it to anyone, and I don't remember it myself most days. If you want my skills, you either know where to find me, or you don't want them bad enough. I'm paid my commission, I do my work, and that's the end of it. No repeat customers, no chit-chat, no "could you do this as well?" One person dead, any item of theirs procured from wherever they died. I don't go the extra mile to rob somewhere else after the body's gone cold.

Why anyone wanted Lisa O'Malley dead was not a question I asked, but it came to mind. I don't ask anything beyond the details I need; only the anxious novices keep blabbering on. Mr. Kent wasn't one of those people: he was a tall man in a dull pinstripe suit with impassive, lined features. He managed to say less than I did, and I respected him for that. But he gave me a card with Lisa O'Malley's name on it, her address, and a particular item he wanted. A little wind-up toy--one of those creepy monkey things that clacks its cymbals together. I almost smiled at that; it was certainly one of the stranger things I'd been asked to procure. But Mr. Kent did not smile in the few minutes I met him, and paid out what I asked for in advance. So off I went.

I don't ever kill someone on the first day of tailing them. That's a rookie move: it's better to follow them, to watch them, to learn all their patterns. If you go in guns-blazing, you wind up on the news as another sicko that's been caught. If you give a damn about doing things professionally, you learn the best time and you make things as simple as possible. Relatively quick, relatively painless, no room for error or help to intervene. Eliminate as many risks as possible and the only ones left are those unforeseen ones that nobody avoids.

It was lightly snowing all of today, which made things a bit more annoying; I'd have to trample over my tracks at some point. Lisa O'Malley's schedule was very easy to get down; she was a retiree, she went out Thursdays to a bingo hall and Mondays to get groceries. She catnapped in the afternoons from 3 to 4:30. She woke up at 6 in the morning and went to bed at 8:30 in the evening. The TV was on around midday, and otherwise her house was quiet and she most likely read her hours away. The only issue at all with her was that she lived on a relatively populated street; it would thus be easiest to kill her in the early hours of Friday morning, when the traffic was lightest and the only time anyone would notice she wasn't around would be an entire week afterwards for the Thursday night party.

Directly across the street from her house, there are two apartment buildings and an alleyway. I waited in the alley from 9 at night to 3 in the morning, and it wasn't comfortable. I'd bundled myself up all I could, huddled up with blankets and layer after layer to look like some poor soul without a home. It didn't stop the cold from coming in, but it gave me enough anonymity. The few people who saw me as they passed by into their apartments didn't give me a second glance--and from my seat, I saw Lisa O'Malley go into her house after bingo. The usual lights came on. They went out at the usual times. And nobody on the street would wake up from the sound of a car pulling up, had I decided to drive and be warmer instead.

At 3 A.M. proper, I got up and stretched my poor limbs out. I crossed the street, leaving a weaving set of footprints in the snow that would be gone by morning. It was coming down heavier than I'd anticipated. I didn't mind that one bit; I rather liked how the tiny flakes looked, sticking up against one's coat. I went up to her door--

As I did, I heard a noise within.

I frowned; the old woman should've been in bed hours ago. And she never got up in the night, as best I could tell. But suddenly footsteps--unmistakably her heavier gait--were coming down the stairs. Before I could move back, she headed directly for the front door; I glanced around, confused, and saw the flicker of a lit candle reflecting in one of the upper windows.

Then the door opened.

Lisa O'Malley looked up at me at first with a beaming joy in her expression. As startled as I was, I took the opportunity to move into the home, pressing past her, and to my surprise she shut the door. She said nothing, just looked at me. It was such a strange face to behold: her eyes told me at once that she did not know my purpose there, but her smile was one that welcomed me at once.

I moved to her and wrapped my gloved hands around her throat.

Her surprise was immediate. But she could make no noise, except for a faint gurgling as I crushed her windpipe. She blinked once, twice, her hands reaching up towards my arms--then she let them fall. She shut her eyes. Her chest heaved out, letting the breath go; I could feel the life still in her, the franticness of her stoppered veins, the way her head was heating up from excess blood, reddening, expanding slightly, like a scarlet feverous balloon in my grip--her body went limper, her eyes opened once to only whites as the pupils rolled back, her mouth hung open, her knees buckled; the heat of her blood burning at my palms. I lowered her to the ground, tightening the grip. The house was silent. A minute passed. A second one. I made sure she was dead. She was.

It was one of the strangest deaths I'd ever been a part of.

Well, the old woman was dead. I let go of her; the bruises on her throat were already turning purple. I lifted the corpse in my arms and took her up the flight of stairs in front of the door, pausing at the top to step over a patch of loose carpet. I looked around to find the bedroom. I found it on the right, which surprised me; it was not the room with the candleflame in it. But I laid her in bed, tucked her in. Made everything look neat and tidy. Looked around the room to try and find the monkey toy; it wasn't there. But I did find a journal, opened next to the bed. I glanced through one entry--Wednesday, the day prior:

JANUARY 14:

I saw him again! It's been too long; I heard it, just as I ended the first part. He called my name, outside, and I rushed to the window. He was waving from across the street, but when I went downstairs to invite him in, he was gone. I do so wish I'd stayed put and finished the second part, but I didn't have the courage. I don't know why I don't; but I wish, I wish, I wish

Oh, my little boy. Oh, my sweet darling boy. I will see you again.

Tomorrow: it must be tomorrow. I cannot bear any more.

I should've searched everywhere systematically first for that damned monkey, but without thinking, I went out and down the hall, looking for that flickering light.

I found it at the other end; a door with a plaque in the center. A small, wooden thing, with the word "Hanson" scrawled along it in childishly large letters. I took a low breath; the woman was supposed to live alone. She did live alone. Her little darling boy, then. I went in.

It was a child's bedroom, a boy's, preserved to a degree of tidy attention no child has. There were posters, a baseball bat and glove, a desk, books, a rocking chair, a bed neatly made with stuffed animals on it.

There were two candles in the room. One was on the window, and its flame was lapping almost sideways towards the glass.

The other was on the floor, where the rug had been thrown haphazardly aside, and a circle had been drawn. It was drenched in red, and the stench of the room attacked my lungs so violently I had to cover my nose and mouth at once. I gagged, but held it in; I could barely see any details in the darkness of the room, but as if at my necessity, the candle in the center of the circle flared up tall, illuminating it: nine lines intersected and pointed, symbols in a language I'd never seen, and at the center--

I made out a muddled heap of fur and blood and bone before I stopped looking.

A shudder ran through me, along with a wave of confusion, nausea--my eyes wandered the room, uncertain; there on the wall, a picture of a sweet little boy, in his baseball uniform, white with blue pinstripes. A picture of him with the old woman looking far younger. But no pictures of him as a teenager; none as an adult.

I was about to leave--to rush out the door with the monkey forgotten--except as I turned, I saw it among the toys on the boy's bed.

Covering my nose and mouth with my scarf, I eased into the room. The candles died back in their light again, leaving me with shadowed forms. I couldn't totally avoid the circle, though I tried to move only around the outer wall--I still felt the tacky, wet floor beneath my boots. I shuddered again; the room was completely still, wallowing in the candlelight. I made it to the bed, leaned over it and grabbed the monkey.

My face, almost close now to the frosty glass, turned for any distraction to glance at the world outside. And then I saw him.

Standing in the center of the road; standing on the snow itself, not making any indentation in it. A little boy, dressed in a baseball uniform. White, with blue pinstripes.

His face turned up towards the window, with two sparkling eyes staring into mine.

I turned and ran out of the bedroom, the monkey clutched in my hands, the cymbals clacking together once. I collided with the banister of the stairs; rushed around it to get to the front door and lock it--

From the top of the stairs, I saw it open, and tiny fingers curling around the edge of the wood. A burst of icy air rushed up the hallway towards me, and I heard the candles in Hanson's room extinguish.

I rushed into the corpse's darkened bedroom, keeping my footsteps as light as possible, and shut the door, looking around for anywhere to hide. Thoughts whirled through my mind; I had no answers--I found a closet, sliding through the partially cracked door and shutting it just as a wave of tiny footsteps rushed up the stairs. They were accompanied by the lonesome sound of a child's laughter.

The boy rushed first around the banister, into his room. There was silence. I peered out of the closet with straining eyes. I could make out the bed; Lisa O'Malley's resting body, utterly still in the non-light. The closet was crowded around me, and my fingers grasped in the dark for something to wield; a bat, a gun.

There were low footsteps as Hanson came back through the main hallway of the house. Another youthful giggle filled the air--so remote and disinterested, as if this were all a school play. The door to the bedroom creaked open on silent hinges. The light from the hallway illuminated in great swaths the dust, swirling in the room. A tiny silhouette stood fixed at the corner of my vision. My fingers found a broom handle and gripped it tight.

"Mother? I'm hoooome!"

The voice filled the room, a voice of life's springtime, and I noted with unblinking coldness how the boy's silhouetted jaw hadn't moved in the slightest.

"Mommy? Why are you sleeping, silly! I'm home!"

Hanson danced his little form to Lisa O'Malley's bedside. Two tiny arms reached out, gripping onto hers, shaking her form. Her head flopped over against one shoulder, and even from here I could make out the purpled neck.

"Oh. I see."

The boy said it with the disappointment of a someone losing a coin to a broken vending machine. Then he let go of the body, straightening up again and standing perfectly still.

"Where'd you go? I know you're still here, Mister."

I gulped, and thought that even that small noise was enough for Hanson to hear me. I redoubled my grip on the broom, feeling how loosely it seemed to be sliding through my sweaty palms.

"Are you-- here?" Hanson's silhouette collapsed, and humbled on the ground a black mass of limbs raised up the blankets off the floor, looking under the bed. Then the shadow unspooled, straightening up into a boy again. Its head swiveled around the room, stopping on the closet door.

Even though my face was hidden behind the slats, I could feel two eyes staring into mine. And as I stared back, I saw them in the dusty light: two black pinpricks in an otherwise shadowed face.

"Mister, why'd you kill my mother?"

Hanson moved over to the closet.

"Mister--"

I threw the door open and brought the broom cracking onto the boy's head.

His little body ricocheted with the impact, reeling backwards; I saw the cap fly off his head and the hair splay out; his arms came up, surprised--I brought it down again, and again, and again--the final one at an angle, filling the room with a jagged CRACK! of bone.

Then I ran, gasping, for my life.

The hallway seemed blinding compared to the bedroom. My salvation was there; the open door; the frigid wind was a godsend--

My feet slid out from under me on the loose carpeting on the stairs, and I fell into nothing.

My breath was held in my chest as my mind tried to process all that had happened--then the sharp edge of the stairs collided with my cheekbone, shattering it. My breath was gone; I fell helpless, end over end, tumbling and feeling a wet pain along my left arm, my right knee; the world collided with an explosion of sound as my ragdoll form finally crashed into the ground at the door and fell still. The cold air screamed over exposed bone. The echo of a broken cymbal clashing against the ground filled my ears. I rasped for breath, my head spinning still, one unbruised eye open and able to flicker between the door, the beautiful outside world, and--

At the top of the stairs, Hanson stood watching me.

His head was cocked to one side, the neck broken, but those beady black eyes watched me all the same.

Then the boy shivered, pieces of him going limp, wrinkling and sliding down, and something darker appeared, something I couldn't see in the faded hallway. Something that had come when Lisa O'Malley called it; something that was shedding her dead son's face like old snakeskin.

It giggled its practiced boy's laugh as it descended towards me. And in the cold winter light, I saw the glimmer of rows and rows of teeth, wettened by the anticipation of two meals instead of one.