Frostbitten: The Complete Series (36 page)

“Shitgirl!” Kristi’s voice rang out.

Hanna’s eyes filled up with tears. Turning her back to the cruel torment was becoming harder and harder. She was quickly running out of directions to turn.

“Hey,” someone said to her in the empty back stairwell.

Hanna turned around. It was the young, beautiful blonde haired Megan Gold.

Hanna just stared at her.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Hanna said, wiping the tears away from her eyes.

“I’m sorry people suck.”

“I’m used to it—thanks though.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Megan asked.

“I doubt it.”

“Do you want to come over to my house this weekend?”

“For what?”

“To hang out. Maybe we can have a sleepover.”

Hanna stared at the most popular, beautiful girl in the  whole school.

“I mean—you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought it would be fun.”

“Really?” Hanna asked hesitantly.

“Yeah. Do you like movies?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have a favourite?”

Hanna thought for a moment. “I like The Shining.”

“That’s the scary one, right? Based on the Stephen King book?”

“Yeah. It’s really cool.”

“My parents own the book, but I’ve never read it,” Megan said with a genuine smile.

“The book is totally different from the movie. The director put in a bunch of secret messages and stuff.”

“Really?” Megan asked.

“Yeah—Stanley Kubrick... He was really smart.”

“That’s so cool. You’ll have to point them out to me.”

“Okay,” Hanna smiled. She looked quickly down at her feet and blushed.

“I’m not good with scary movies, so you’ll have to keep reminding me that it’s not real.”

Hanna smiled. “Okay.”

“Cool—It’ll be fun,” Megan said.

“Yeah.”

“See you around, Hanna.”

Hanna watched as Megan walked back up the stairs.

“Megan?” Hanna said.

“Yeah?” Megan asked.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure—what is it?”

Hanna hesitated for a moment. “What’s it like being normal?”

Megan smiled. “I don’t know. Maybe you should ask someone who’s normal.”

Hanna had never been invited to anyone’s house before. Whenever people invited others to their house, they would always whisper so that Hanna wouldn’t overhear, fearing she would randomly show up.

For the rest of that school day, Hanna was immune to all of the torment and laughter. She was too excited about her weekend plans to care about anything that anyone said. She felt a tingling in her bones—a tingling she’d never felt before in her life.

She hurried home after school to tell her dad about her upcoming weekend.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
A CRUEL LIFE, INDEED

The young Hanna’s moment of glory was short lived.

Since Francis started his new job as the prison’s resident executioner, he had always been home long before Hanna, making sure dinner was in the oven and the house was tidied up.

That day, the house was cold and silent.

“Dad?” Hanna called out as she walked through her door, which was still prominently painted with the word “MURDERER”.

There was no response, which was strange seeing as the front door was unlocked. Hanna made her way through her nice little living room, to the staircase, which led upstairs. At the top of the steps, something began to feel wrong.

Her father’s bedroom door was wide open, but it was totally silent.

Hanna walked up to the door. The house groaned and creaked as her feet stepped down on the old floorboards.  She turned into the room.

Then, her heart froze. There was blood everywhere—on the walls, on the floor and even on the roof. The sheets had all been pulled off of the bed in an violent struggle, and there was blood all over the pillows.

And on the ground was a cold, dead body, dressed in a prison staff uniform. Hanna felt sick and faint. She stumbled away from the room, and then fell down to the floor as her body became overwhelmed with emotional weakness.

Completely traumatized, she began to cry uncontrollably. She slowly lifted her trembling hands up to her face and she tried her best to wake up from her nightmare—but she never did.

It took nearly an hour for Hanna to muster up the strength to crawl over to her father’s body.

When she flipped the corpse over, she was frozen by another grizzly sight. His throat had been violently ripped out, and his face had been torn almost completely off. It looked as though he was attached by a shark. Deep lacerations penetrated the entire length of his indistinguishable mess of a face—a grizzly image.

Franticly, Hanna fell back and began to cry. “Dad!” she screamed. “Dad!”

Someone on the street heard her cries, and called 911.

Minutes later, Hanna’s street was filled with every police cruiser in the town of Snowbrooke.

The school principal showed up to take Hanna away from the scene while the police began their investigation. Hanna stayed with the sympathetic principal for the next few weeks—too distraught to go back to school.

The man who had been killed was not Hanna’s father.

The man who had been killed was a man named Aaron Stevenson, a co-worker of Hanna’s father. They never found Francis’ body, but the DNA test proved that much of the blood in the room and on a dropped hunting knife belonged to the missing father. Fingerprints showed that there was another assailant in the home—three people altogether.

The investigation dragged on for months. Police scoured all of the alleyways in town. They searched the dump, the nearby woods and all of the highway ditches, but they never found the body of Francis, or the mysterious third person.

Finding suspects was difficult. Usually, the police would look for people who had possible intent, or people who were known to hate the victim. In Snowbrooke, nearly everyone hated Francis. It was impossible to find a usable lead, as Francis received death threats on a daily basis.

The investigation quickly went cold. The final theory was that two men—Aaron Stevenson and the unidentified intruder broke in to murder Francis. Francis put up a fight—killing Aaron after being repeatedly stabbed. The unnamed remaining man took Francis to dispose of the body—or to further torture him before he died. Investigators concluded that no one could survive with the level of blood loss Francis suffered without immediate medical support.

Hanna was moved into a foster home where somehow, life managed to become worse.

Her new foster parents—The Clarksons were terrible human beings. They were a religious couple—probably less than forty years old. They fostered ten children, including Hanna. For each child they fostered, they got six hundred dollars from the government every month—tax free. The district only allowed a limit of five children per foster parent, but because of an old loophole, the Clarksons were able to exceed the limit.

Because the money wasn’t considered “income”, both of the Clarksons also collected their monthly welfare, as well as their monthly disability cheques. Neither of the Clarksons were disabled, but they claimed that they couldn’t work because of persistent headaches they suffered from being rear-ended by an important army official—Sam Quick. Sam claimed that he was stopped at a red light, behind the Clarksons while he was on his cell-phone with his wife, who was in labour.

In reality, the Clarksons noticed the distracted army official talking on his phone behind them, and they intentionally reversed into him in the hopes of receiving some insurance money. There were no witnesses to back the official’s story up, so the Clarksons were free to get away with their tale.

The money they got for fostering the children was meant to pay for the children—their schooling, food, clothes, allowance, and daycare. The money they got for their “disabilities” was to pay for their “headaches”. In total, the Clarksons made over one hundred thousand dollars every year, completely tax-free, and they used none of it for their “headaches” or their fostered children.

Hanna had to share a small bedroom with three very young girls—one baby and two toddlers. Every kid in the house was at least five years younger than Hanna.  Because of her older age, the Clarksons expected Hanna to take care of the children, and make sure they didn’t cry at night. When they did cry, The Clarksons would scream at Hanna—reminding her that they “took her in when no one else would!” A phrase they used on all of their foster children.

The saddest part of it all was that The Clarksons truly believed that they were good people. They taught Hanna how to cook and how to clean—explaining that they were valuable lessons to have in life, and that she could work a plethora of jobs if she mastered them.

But in reality, they were just looking to get out of having to cook and clean for themselves. Hanna cooked and cleaned, every single day. Effectively, the Clarksons were getting paid to have a full-time employee working for them. The bastards.

The absolute worst part of The Clarksons’ apparent altruism was their effort to “fix” Hanna’s compulsive shyness. But The Clarksons had no psychological training whatsoever—nor did they have any patience whatsoever. Every “session” would end with them yelling at Hanna and screaming in her face, “we only took you in because no one else would!”

Every Sunday, The Clarksons dragged the whole “family” to church. As they became increasingly frustrated with Hanna’s silence, they started to demand that Hanna “pray” to be cured.

The fact that Hanna never changed led The Clarksons to believe that Hanna may be some sort of psychotic Satan worshipper.

In case life at home wasn’t bad enough, life at school hadn’t changed at all.

When Hanna finally returned to school after two months of grieving absence, she once again found herself the victim of relentless emotional torment. Students continued to spray paint her locker, pass her upsetting notes, and mock her in the hallways.

Hanna was initially excited to go back to school, and possibly see Megan again—thinking Megan would be the solution to her lingering unpopularity.

But Hanna was upset to learn that Megan was no longer a student at the school—apparently having run away from home just a couple of weeks after Francis’ murder.

The teachers asked her to leave the school because of the reputation she carried with her, but Hanna’s foster parents didn’t let her leave. They couldn’t be bothered to find and apply for a new school—they didn’t see the point. Soon enough, the rumours started up—rumours that she was sleeping around—rumours that she killed her own father when his friend from work was visiting.

Now that students actually believed she was a murderer, they became terribly cruel. The girlfriends of the rumoured flings would spit on Hanna, and they would even beat her up after school, when the teachers had their backs ignorantly turned away.

For Hanna, life was only getting worse and worse, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
THE STRANGER OF THE NIGHT

It was a cold winter night and, as was becoming increasingly more common, Hanna couldn’t sleep. She stared up at the ceiling from her bed, feeling the cold air from the poorly fitted window blowing over her face.

Zelda, one of the young girls in Hanna’s room woke up and asked Hanna if she could turn on the heat.

“I can’t,” Hanna explained. “Misses Clarkson told me to stop touching the heat.”

“Why?” the young girl asked.

“She says we’re running the bill too high.”

“What’s a bill?”

“It’s how much they pay for heating the house.”

“But I’m cold,” the young girl said.

“I know—Me too,” Hanna said.

“When are we going to be adopted?” the girl asked, with tears forming in her eyes. All of the Clarksons’ children were sick of their awful lives.

Hanna’s heart broke every time the girl cried—knowing that she’d been through a lot in her short life. Like Hanna, her parents were both dead. She was an incredibly tough girl, and unlike most girls her age, it took a lot to make her cry.

Hanna took the blanket off of her bed and walked over to Zelda. Hanna crawled into bed with the young girl and threw her blanket over Zelda’s, doubling up the coverage and adding some body heat into the mixture.

“I don’t know,” Hanna said.

“Why do the Clarksons hate you?” Zelda asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“We should run away.”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere.”

“Maybe,” Hanna said as she thought about it. “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

“Japan.”

“Japan?” Hanna asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why Japan?”

“I don’t know what’s there,” Zelda said.

“Why do you want to go somewhere if you don’t know what’s there?”

“Why would I want to go somewhere that I already know everything?”

Hanna smiled. “You’re going to be alright, Zelda.”

“Why don’t you talk?” Zelda asked as she snuggled in close to Hanna.

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“I mean, why don’t you talk around the Clarksons?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have anything to say.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You should just say whatever comes to your mind. Then they won’t hate you as much.”

“I’m afraid that if I say whatever comes to my mind around the Clarksons, they would hate me a lot more.”

Zelda laughed.

Hanna sighed. She wrapped her arm around the cold girl, offering up her body heat. “How did we get into this mess?”

“If my mom could talk to us, she would tell us how to get out of it.”

“How do you know she can’t?” Hanna asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you ever get that feeling that someone is around even though you’re alone—like a shiver in your heart? I’ve gotten it since I can remember.”

“Yeah—sometimes I guess.”

“But you didn’t get it before, right?”

“No.”

“That’s your mom talking to you—her spirit.”

“Like a ghost?” Zelda asked.

Hanna laughed. “No—Not like a ghost. Not like a scary ghost, anyway.”

“So my mom is sometimes here?”

“Your mom is always here—and she sometimes talks to you.”

“What does she say?” Zelda asked.

“Only you can hear her—and you have to listen really hard. Sometimes it’s easier to hear what she’s saying when you’re dreaming.”

“What does your mom say?”

“When I’m feeling down, she tells me that it gets better and to not worry.”

“Does it?”

“Not yet—But I still believe her,” Hanna said.

“How do you respond?”

“You don’t need to—she’ll already know your response. Just like she did when she was around.”

Zelda smiled and snuggled in closer to Hanna’s warmth. “Good night, Hanna,” she said.

“Good night—sleep tight.”

Hanna wasn’t lying about the feeling that she told Zelda about—she knew the feeling all too well. As a matter of fact, she was feeling it in her heart during that very conversation.

Sometimes the feeling was warm, and sometimes it was cold—as if whatever was causing it was happy or sad.

That night, it was sad—and it got even sadder as Hanna’s eyes began to water.

She wanted to believe that it would get better—but it was becoming a harder and harder notion to believe. Every time she had a glisten of hope, it only ended up becoming worse.

“It doesn’t get better you know,” an unfamiliar voice said. The voice was deep, hoarse and inhuman.

Hanna looked around the room, careful to not wake the freshly sleeping Zelda. “Who’s there?” Hanna whispered.

“It’s not fair—the things they make you do. You don’t have to take it,” the blood curdling voice whispered.

In the corner of the room, above the crib of a sleeping baby, were two glowing red eyes. Hanna could just make out the silhouette of the strange intruder.

He was hunched over, and appeared old, and decrepit. The faint moonlight that bled through the window defined the deep, weathered lines on the assailant’s face. He seemed to just float in place.

“Go away,” Hanna said. “Leave us alone.”

Hanna held Zelda closer to her body, gently covering her ear with her hand.

“I won’t hurt you—I just want to help you. I hate to see you struggle like this.” The creature was strangely articulate.

“What are you?” Hanna asked.

“I’m someone who was just like you—someone who wants to see you happy.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you.”

Hanna stared at the strange creature.

“They’re so cruel to you. The nasty children spit on you. To those terrible foster parents, you’re nothing but a slave. Your teachers treat you like a diseased insect. I’m going to give you something to get back at them.”

“I don’t want to get back at them. I just want them to stop.”

“Oh, they’ll stop.” The creature let out a hoarse, throaty laugh. He slowly leaned over the baby crib and reached down. With his long, spider-leg fingers, he stroked the sleeping baby’s head.

“Leave her alone!” Hanna said sharply.

“At what point does human life go from being so precious, to being so malignant? At what age does one become a festering cockroach? Have you every wondered that?”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to give you incredible things, Hanna. Power. Confidence. Protection. You’ll be able to leave here. You’ll be able to return to your home. Do whatever you want.”

The offer sounded too good to be true. All her life, Hanna had always dreamed of a handout.

“How?” Hanna asked.

“Very simply—but you have to want it, of course. Do you want power, and confidence? Do you want protection?”

“I told you, I just want to be left alone.”

“So yes?”

Hanna stared at the strange creature in her room. “O—Okay,” she said reluctantly.

The young, naïve Hanna could see the ominous smile of the stranger widen as he began to float closer. Her body was filled with fear and her heart shivered with a cold dread.

“Just a single sip,” the creature said, reaching out its feeble, pale wrist. Using one of his long, curled sharp fingernails, he cut a vein in his wrist, drawing a trickle of blood. “One, simple sip and everything changes.”

That night, everything changed…

Everything.