Feral

Hannah Chapman returned from summer camp broken.

She was withdrawn, spending most of her time alone in her room. Her mother, Audra, was so concerned that she called the camp for some answers. The director couldn't give her much of an explanation for the sudden change in her daughter's personality. "She seemed fine while she was here!" she chirped through the phone. 

So Audra called a therapist.  

Tossing and turning one night, she confided in Hannah's stepfather. "Maybe she was molested while she was there? Something's definitely wrong." He just grunted and rolled over. 

Jeff had always felt uncomfortable around Hannah. He told her mother before they married that he "didn't do kids very well." Audra was sure that would change with time. He felt even more uncomfortable around the little girl upon her return from camp. She seemed surreptitious and downright creepy at times. He couldn't shake the feeling that she was quietly watching him, studying his habits. When he brought this up to Audra, she dismissed it. "You just don't understand kids," she told him, "you're being paranoid." 

The truth was, he did suspect she had been molested while she was at that camp, but he just didn't want to say anything. He knew if the girl told her shrink she'd been abused, he'd be suspect number one.  

Soon, strange things started happening in the house. The distinct sounds of scuttling through the walls--accompanied by what they could only surmise were the cries of some animal--kept them up at night. They called an exterminator, but he found no signs of animals in the crawl spaces or the attic. 

Then Hannah began wandering in her sleep. One night, Audra went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and looked out of the window to see her standing in the middle of the backyard. She ran outside, calling her name, but Hannah stood completely still in the moonless night, staring into the woods behind the house and making low growling noises from deep in her throat. Hannah's therapist said sleepwalking was a common occurrence in people who have experienced traumatic situations. She prescribed a sedative for the girl to keep her in her bed at night. 

During this time, Jeff was having sleep problems of his own. 

In one terrifying dream, he woke to the sound of scratching within the walls of his room. "Stupid exterminator," he said aloud. "He's coming back for free this time." 

Audra wasn't next to him in bed, so he called out to her. "I'm out here, Jeff, in the bath. Why don't you come join me?" 

Jeff sprang from the bed, but before he could take two steps, the bedroom door closed silently, slowly. There was an animal in the corner, its shadow drawing long figures across the bedroom walls. He could vaguely make out a small, sloping head with what looked like a gigantic lower jaw. The whole animal was rail-thin, and its limbs seemed so crooked and unnatural that it was difficult to tell if it was squatting on two legs or four. 

When it stood upright, the motion was slow, yet jerky. At the end of what Jeff could only assume were arms was a set of ridiculously long, curved claws. The shadow now stood between him and the closed door. He froze with fear as it moved silently toward the bed, revealing more and more of itself to him. A sliver from the street light outside cut through the darkness. He sensed whispers of movement at the foot of the bed. Before he could brace himself, its face was inches from his own, caught in the shard of yellow light. 

Its eyes were milky, golf ball-sized marbles bulging from black sockets. It panted into his face, darting a forked tongue to gather the air around it. Its mouth was open enough for Jeff to see multiple rows of jagged, dagger-like teeth. Jeff woke and darted upright, his clothes plastered to his body with cold sweat. 

"What's wrong?" Audra asked groggily, "Did you have a bad dream?"

"Yeah, it was nothing," he told her. If she had been awake enough to see him in this state, she would have known it was not nothing. 

"Jesus, Jeff, you're not a child," he thought, "pull yourself together." He was almost ashamed to be so terrified.

One morning, not long after the dream, Jeff woke to find a disemboweled cat in his closet. Entrails and brains were flung everywhere like a visceral Jackson Pollock painting. Flies had already begun to gather, and maggots dropped from its flesh into Jeff's expensive Italian leather shoes. 

"It's probably what we heard scratching in the walls. It was injured by some animal and crawled into the house to hide and die. You know this neighborhood is full of feral cats leaving carnage everywhere," Audra offered pensively.

Jeff threw a tantrum, wildly gesticulating as he yelled at her, "That doesn't explain why there were guts all over my clothes! Or the fact that this cat had to have been put here, it didn't just crawl in here and die, Audra. I think Hannah's fucking with me because she hates me." Audra rolled her eyes irritably. She began to speak when he cut her off. "I'm serious! She's sick, we may need to start thinking about sending her somewhere where she can get real help." 

Adra slapped him as hard as she could and strode from the closet, leaving him to clean up the mess.  

A day or two later, the family dog went missing. "He probably ran away because Hannah's freaking him out, too," Jeff laughed at his own joke. It was around this time that Audra began contemplating divorce.

Summer came and went with little progress in bringing Hannah out of her shell. Her therapist said going back to school might help her to re-establish some semblance of normalcy.

As Hannah sat at the kitchen table one morning, eating her cereal before school, Audra asked her to clean out her gerbil's cage. "It's been a while; he'll probably appreciate fresh bedding," she offered, trying to sound cheerful. 

"Yeah, that, and you can smell the nasty thing down the hall," Jeff sneered. Hannah smiled at him but said nothing. It was painfully artificial. "Like a mask," he thought.  

"Hannah, get dressed, baby. We need to leave in a few minutes," said Audra, glaring at Jeff. 

As Hannah ascended the stairs slowly to her room, Jeff glanced up at the girl. Her eyes were still fixed on him, that plastic smile still on her face. Jeff shivered despite himself.

"I've got to get ready for work," he muttered a few minutes later, reluctantly climbing the stairs. As he passed Hannah's room, he heard whispers and giggling from the other side of the door. 

"Hannah, who are you talking to?" He rapped on the door with the back of his hand. "What are you doing?" 

He turned the knob and swung open the door. Hannah was standing next to the gerbil's cage, dangling it from its tail between her delicate fingers. She turned her head, looking at Jeff as she raised her chin and lowered the animal into her abnormally large mouth. Jeff heard the crunch of its bones and squeals of pain as the little girl chewed. Within a matter of seconds, she had consumed the whole animal. Blood dripped from her chin and down the front of her favorite unicorn t-shirt.

Jeff couldn't make any noise, nor could he turn to run. He had no idea what was standing in front of him. He knew it looked like a little girl, but it most certainly wasn't human. 

Her eyes were empty. They looked like milky, golf-ball-sized marbles. Warm, stinking piss cascaded down his legs into his running shoes as he realized it was her he had seen in his nightmare.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs behind him.

"Jeff, have you gotten in the shower yet? I need to start the laundry," called Audra as she ascended the stairs. Jeff could only stammer out some random noises. His mouth hung open, and his mind went numb. 

"What's going on?" she asked. "Is something wrong? Did Hannah get the cage cleaned out?" 

As she approached, Jeff blocked the bedroom door. "SHE ATE IT," he screeched, "I don't know what the fuck she is, but she isn't human! GET AWAY!"

Audra rushed past him, determined to get into the room. They grappled their way through the door, but Jeff froze when he saw the little girl crying vulnerably next to the gerbil cage.  

"I'm scared, mommy," she said. There was no blood on her face- no blood on her favorite unicorn t-shirt. Jeff was stupefied. 

"JEFF, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!? GET AWAY FROM HER!!" Audra screamed. A shoving match ensued, spreading into the hall. Hannah's mother stumbled backward, her foot catching the rug. She plummeted down the stairs. 

"Audra! No!" Jeff raced down the staircase after her. She was conscious, but her leg lay at a sickening angle beneath her. 

He dialed 911 frantically, shouting the address and sobbing into the phone as he explained what happened to his wife. He was so caught up in the trauma of the moment that he hadn't noticed Hannah crouching at the base of the stairs next to her injured mother. She was sobbing uncontrollably, stroking her mother's brow. "I love you, Mom! Please, please be ok, please," she cried. 

All he saw was a terrified little girl who wanted her mother more than anything in the world. He started to think he needed a shrink, too.

The doctors said Audra would need multiple surgeries for her shattered leg, and she would have to stay in the hospital for at least a week. Over the next few days, the police interviewed Jeff. He knew they suspected domestic violence. 

He was positive Hannah would tell them he tried to murder her mother, but when DCS interviewed her, she told them it was an accident. She sobbed and told them she wanted her mommy and daddy. The caseworker looked dubious, but released them both to go home. 

From this point, Jeff plummeted over the edge of no return. He didn't sleep at night, keeping all the lights on in the house at all times. He installed motion-sensing cameras inside and out. He spent most of the time locked in his bedroom, only leaving to put food out on the kitchen counter for Hannah to fix herself, mostly peanut butter sandwiches or instant mac and cheese that she could put in the microwave. 

Eventually, Audra returned home. She told Jeff she wanted a divorce. He set himself up in the guest bedroom until he could find a place, installing his cameras to cover the window and door. "He's lost his damn mind," Audra told her friends. 

During this time, Hannah began to return to her old social self. She played with friends, did well in school, and was in good spirits for the first time in months. 

The day before Jeff was to move out and into some shitty apartment across town, he sat at the kitchen table with a beer and a bottle of Jameson. Hannah and Audra had gone out. Jeff was glad to be alone. He knew that the little girl wasn't a little girl, no matter how good her act. He had seen her for what she really was.

He stumbled to the bathroom to take a leak.

"Mr. Chapman? Are you home? I need to talk to you, it's urgent."

Was that Hannah's shrink? How the hell did she get in here? 

"Hang on, I'm in the bathroom, be out in a second."

She wasn't in the hallway when he came out. She wasn't in the kitchen or living room, either. "Where are you?" he called.

"I'm upstairs, there's something up here in Hannah's room that I think you should see." 

Jeff Chapman was woozy--maybe just a bit too woozy--from the beer and whiskey he'd been tossing back all afternoon. He suddenly didn't feel so good. "Whatever happened to those sleeping pills Hannah used to take?" He thought. 

He reached the top of the stairs and heard drawers being rifled. He pushed open the door.

Shock consumed him as the monster rushed at him with a shrill laugh. Curved claws closed around his throat. Once again, he found himself within inches of its horrible face. Its milky orbs stared blankly as its forked tongue reached impossibly far to flicker against his lips. "There might be something wrong with Hannah," it said in its perfect therapist's voice.

Audra and Hannah returned to find Jeff at the bottom of the stairs. They called 911, but it was too late. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest; he had fallen down the stairs in the middle of a heart attack. Funeral arrangements would be made, affairs would be put in order. Time heals all.

About a year after Jeff's death, Audra woke to banging on her front door. "Mrs. Chapman! My name is Detective Ross. I need to speak with you, please!" 

She hobbled downstairs as best she could, still in her nightgown. She was surprised to see Hannah already up, watching cartoons on the sofa with a bowl of cereal in her lap. 

Audra answered the door to the solemn expression of Detective Ross. He flashed his badge. "May I speak with you?"

"Sure," she said, moving aside so he could enter the living room. When he saw the little girl on the couch watching cartoons and eating her cereal, the color drained from his face. 

Audra led him to the kitchen table, offering coffee as she poured some for herself. "No thanks," he said distractedly as he kept an eye on the living room sofa. 

Detective Ross explained to Audra Chapman that the partial remains of a little girl had been recovered by a fisherman in Lake Widgeewagan approximately three months ago. They dragged the lake, found the rest of the girl's remains, and sent them to the county coroner's lab for analysis. There had been no missing person cases filed in the area for years, so they named her Jane Doe. They estimated she was about 8 years old, 4'5'' tall. Slight build, she probably weighed somewhere between 45 and 55 pounds. After issuing a request, they obtained dental records that matched hers. The dentist remembered the little girl. Her name was Hannah Chapman.

Detective Ross and Audra Chapman both looked at the little girl eating her cereal and watching her cartoons. She looked up at them with her sweet face and flashed her best, toothiest smile.