3. Houseguest

Hank resisted the urge to drop the screaming bundle in his arms and bolt. Stumbling footsteps fell on the cedar planks of the hallway, and he began to weigh his options. Window? Too high. Closet door? No way out. Through the doorway and down the stairs? Foolhardy if not fatal. His clumsiness had cost him dearly; he’d have to give up the job—that much was clear. Hank shakily determined that gunfire would be the quickest way to alert Penny. He placed the squalling infant back into its crib and peered into the hallway.

Outside, Penny had been squatting near the porch stairs and fighting to keep a steady line of thought. She gazed at the front entrance. Hank had told her roughly what to expect when he came through the door. Still, she’d begun trembling almost as soon as he’d disappeared into the cellar. She was fearful not for him or for the child he intended to spirit away, but for herself. Bullets and blood were no phobias of Penny’s, but knowledge was something else entirely. Gear upon gear had been turning in her brain and she figured that she was closing in on a new revelation about Hank’s behavior. Until now, her evidence against him had been readily-available but shadowy. Until now, the original daughter in Hank’s household had not considered her own upbringing as part of the equation.

 

Penny had never met her mother, but Hank always said she lived in the city, miles away. And that she kept a room in a shiny apartment building near a lake. He’d heard rumors that she’d died a few years back—-a boating accident. But he claimed to be uncertain about the truth of such gossip, given that newspapers were hard to come by in this district anymore. And even those were dubious at best. So as it was, Hank could never make up his mind about whether to tell Penny about her mother in the present or the past tense. Just like Penny could never make up her mind about whether to call him just “dad” or just “Hank.” Her mother’s name, Hank had said, was Edith.

Penny’s teeth dug at her lower lip as she tried to focus on the house once more. When she heard a muffled smash and a scream ring out from the second story, she began to brace herself for disaster. Penny curled her fists tight and willed herself back to the moment before the awful thought had struck: Who’s to say that you didn’t draw your first breaths in a house just like this?

 

No, Penelope. No further. She tried hard, but couldn’t check her imagination. The next logical conclusion took root and bloomed of its own accord. Shivering outside the broken farmhouse, Penny could now think of no reason why she mightn’t just be one of Hank’s stolen children too.

Hank was readying his weapon for fire as he glanced around the edge of the doorframe. The baby continued to howl, agitating him. Before he could nudge the nose of his rifle across the threshold, he noticed that a small white form had wandered into the hall in front of him. It must have trailed out of the bedroom he’d struggled to see from the staircase earlier. The figure rubbed its eyes and blinked at Hank. It was nothing more than a tiny boy in an oversized nightshirt.

The kid gestured frantically at him to keep quiet, and then scurried toward what Hank judged to be the parents’ bedroom. Baffled, Hank prepared to make a run for it, but was a second too late.

“What in hellfire—-?” a small but stealthy-looking man cried out, emerging from the door at the hallway’s end.

The boy blocked his path. “Papa, I came to get you. I woke up baby Shelby again. I am really sorry, Papa!”

The man, disoriented, simply repeated the phrase about hellfire.

The boy shifted about awkwardly while he talked. “Well, you see, I was thirsty and I could not sleep. So I wanted to get some water but first I went into Shelby’s room to see if she was sleeping good like you wanted her to. It was really dark, so then I tried to turn on the lamp but I knocked it over and then she woke up. I am really sorry, but Papa, can you put your gun away? Pleeease? It is scary.”

“Kai, you pullin’ my leg? You know if someone’s in here, you oughta say so right now. Ain’t nothin’ good comes of your tricks, you know that. Now stand aside, bud. I’m gonna go look in on your sister.”

As soon as Hank had realized the little waif was bluffing, he’d stolen into the closet in the baby’s room, his movements partially muffled by Shelby’s persistent shrieks. But after the father entered, Hank could hear the man’s rough breathing and his every footstep as he inspected the fallen lamp. Hank wagered he still carried a weapon.

After a few minutes, the infant’s noise still continued to permeate through the house. Like to split the roof wide open, was Hank’s analysis. But as much as he loathed the pain that was developing at the base of his cranium, he deemed that fortune was on his side for once. The addle-brained father, still groggy with sleep, would be more concerned with silencing the infant than with hunting all over the darkened house for an intruder.

Sure enough, the man eventually scooped up Shelby and carried her back toward his own room. Hank heard him tell Kai, “I’ll have your sissy come sleep in with me tonight. Be safer, ‘n might settle ‘er down a piece.” The man sighed. “You look like you gave yourself a fright, Kai. Gotta stop your wanderin’ ‘round at night like this. Go on back to bed.”

“But I am thirsty still…”

“Then go get you some damn water from the sink ‘n be done with it. Bring your flashlight next time and don’t do nothin’ foolish again.”

The door to the father’s bedroom thudded shut. Hank held his breath, wondering just what the hell this little fellow was up to. The boy moved noiselessly into the room before rapping lightly on the closet door. Hank opened it, ready to run. Kai gave his brandished rifle another wide-eyed look, then abruptly grasped Hank’s free hand. The boy’s other hand clutched a lit flashlight three sizes too big for him.

Taken aback, Hank blustered at the small, almost ghostly figure. “What’re you playin’ at, boy? I ain’t here for nothin’. You heard what your daddy said. Nothin’ foolish, now. Just let me pass. You’d do best to stay quiet ‘n out of my way.”

He couldn’t bring himself to knock the kid out, but moved to cover his mouth in case Kai had second thoughts about ratting on him. Before Hank could extract himself from the child’s grip, however, Kai put a finger to his own lips and made an exaggerated shushing noise. Still clinging to Hank’s calloused palm, the boy silently led him downstairs.

Hank’s confusion was reaching its peak. Out of desperation at the strange circumstances and the threat of returning home empty-handed, he decided that he could claim this strange boy instead of the infant sister. The kid looked about six, seven at the oldest. This was old. Much too old. But Hank needed a captive and his mind had already seized upon the possibility.

To Hank’s surprise, Kai didn’t direct him toward the kitchen for a drink of water once they had reached the first floor. Instead, he pushed through the front door and onto the porch as Hank intended. He was still holding Hank’s hand.

Penny was there to see the pair slip through the doorway. One day years from now, she would sit in a clean cool room on an upper floor of a building somewhere in the city. There, people would ask her what had driven her to do what she did next. She would answer that she couldn’t rightly tell. Only that she had been expecting trouble to come through the door, expecting that she would have to use her pistol quick and wisely. She would say her reflexes had leapt ahead of her. What her answer would not include, however, were the thoughts that had directly preceded the incident: the lingering notion that Hank had snatched her from another family under the same design he was using that night. And the fact that when she’d seen Hank emerge onto the porch with the little boy in tow, her imagination had replaced the child’s face with her own.

Something was wrong, Penny could see. This was no infant. She hadn’t prepared for this at all.

All in one instant, she imagined scores of heinous threats or sugary lies Hank could’ve spun to coax the child away from his family, his safety, his warm bed. She could feel bile rising in her throat. No, it shouldn’t happen like this.

She couldn’t tell whether she’d thought it before or after her trigger finger had squeezed, and Hank had fallen in a heap at the foot of the porch stairs.