_____Hi, Mr. Ron. No, Hannah isn’t missing. I know right where she went. But it will make more sense to you if I tell the whole story, first.

_____Hannah was very . . . understanding about my suggestion that we help Christine. I don’t know if she really wanted to do it since Christine had been so naughty to her whenever they saw each other. But she seemed willing, and I overheard some of the men that tried to get Hannah to talk about her father in a bad way mention that she seemed in higher spirits and hoped she would start telling them what they wanted to know about Mr. Ron.
_____Which was very silly to me. Mr. Ron was very kind to everyone he met; only monsters had to fear him. That was obvious to anybody that used to visit their house. But that was a long time ago; back when I knew where Ethan was. I hoped Hannah and Mr. Ron would be together and happy again really soon. And Ethan and me. Maybe the lady that is looking for Hannah could come for a visit, too. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? I think Mr. Ron says that her name is Sarah, though I don’t know why he thinks he owes me an apology.
_____My plan to help Christine was simple. She was very often more unhappy after she had visited the unfinished buildings in the back. I was going to talk to her before she snuck back in one of them—the other girls and boys weren’t allowed to go there for some reason—and ask her, “If going here makes you unhappy, why do you do it?”
_____I waited until it was dark and when the people going through the halls and poking their heads in the rooms to tell everyone “Lights out” went away. Then I gave Hannah a hug and told her good night and that I’d be back as soon as I could.
_____Christine was led out of her room by a man who occasionally dropped by. He never talked to the other children, but sometimes he would stand in a corner and stare at the girls. He reminded me of an icky feeling. A really icky feeling. And his dress shirt was always pressed, and his beige sweater was always wrinkle-free, too.
_____I followed them.
_____Even though the sky was covered in clouds, it wasn’t very dark. It was simpler than I thought to get past the men that walked in circles around the building, they were very easy to spot because of the flashlights they used. They could be blind, I thought, and using the flashlights for the dogs’ sake, who were in front of the men, staying with them because of leashes. The feeling in the air was very strict, so I walked carefully past; it seemed like a not very good idea to be seen by anyone right now.
_____The dogs were nice to the man and Christine and to me, too; in fact, they ignored all three of us. I paused at the door and waited to see what the man would talk about that made Christine so unhappy. I watched them inside while hiding from them. The decorations inside the unfinished building were not at all like the other buildings. The lights in this building were dimmer, and they were tinted red. There was a strange air in the scent too, and it made me feel uncomfortable. The man hugged Christine and said something to her before he went into another door. She looked really unhappy. I walked in, getting her attention while the man was gone.
_____“Hi, Christine. I noticed you didn’t look very happy,” I told her. “Can I help?”
_____But I have to confess I fibbed just a little. She didn’t just look unhappy. She looked terribly unhappy. All hope had drained from her face; her skin was waxy and pale, like one of those mannequins in a department store window. I had to listen and watch to make sure she was even breathing.
_____“Clarity . . . you shouldn’t be here. Please go away.” Her pleading confused me.
_____“Christine, I want to help you.”
_____“You can’t help me Clarity,” she insisted, wiping her tears away quickly. “No one can.”
_____“Well, I still want to try,” I smiled. But if you really think nobody can help you, maybe you can help yourself. If his hugs help you to be that uncomfortable . . . why don’t you tell him to stop?”
_____“It’s not that simple,” her angry laughter sounded like a dog’s bark. “You don’t understand, Clarity. I have to do this.” She turned away so I couldn’t see her weep . . . and then I saw the man there, staring at me. His eyes were cold, like frosted pebbles of stone. He didn’t blink, watching me with a strange emotion carved into his pupils.
_____“Goodbye, Christine,” I spoke to her carefully, though my eyes arrowed from her retreating form and quickly back to the man. “I still want to help you. I hope you get feeling better.”
_____She sent a desperate look behind her shoulder, but the man gathered her in one arm and led her away, his foul, ambivalent gaze fastening me to the spot like a railroad spike.
_____A festering smile grew on his face as he walked away; but it wasn’t a nice smile at all. I didn’t like it. It looked like it should be a frown instead.
_____I went back to Hannah.

Clarity? Please go on. Many here want to know where Hannah is.
I have a feeling someone should find this man Christine was dealing with, and ask him some questions.

Clarity,

While I echo everyone elses curiousity about Hannah's where abouts, I have further querries.

I should like to know where this place is and a detailed description of the 'icky man'. Either in this thread or PM would be fine.

It sounds as though he needs a good, long and private discussion about the appropriateness of his hugs.

Could you be a dear and help me arrange this discussion?

Thank you.

Who's paying you?

Could be he is offering a freebie, but if not I am willing to chip in, particularly if what I suspect is right. Hell I would be willing to help in that case.

He's a merc.

If it's a freebie, there's an ulterior motive.

I just want to talk to the man.

Really.

Do you know someone who doesn't cash their paycheck at the end of the week, Natasha?

Shadowstalker wrote:I have a feeling someone should find this man Christine was dealing with, and ask him some questions.

He better pray we like his answers.

_____Hi, everybody. I’m sorry it’s taking so long to write this, but these men don’t want me to stay. Mr. Shadow, it would be really hard to talk to him, I think. But I’m not sure I would want to. Okay, I guess I better write the story before I’m seen . . .

_____“That’s what she said,” I told Hannah as we crept through the sleeping halls the following week.
_____“It doesn’t make much sense, but if you say she wanted help to get out of here . . . I’ll help you to help her,” Hannah said.
_____“She looked terrible, Hannah,” I replied, holding her hand while she led me through the halls. She was very quiet. “She was crying and sniffling and trembling and—”
_____“Okay, I get your point, babe,” Hannah reminded me, and then shushed me as we neared a hall where some men were supposed to be wandering the halls. But they must have taken a break to get some hot chocolate or something, because nobody was there. We went outside without seeing anybody. It was about as dark as it was the first time I had gone to see Christine, though I thought the thick wings of cloud cover would have made it darker. But they didn’t.
_____Christine met us inside the unfinished building, her face funny-shaped and red, glazed lines running down her eyes. “Thanks for coming you guys,” her voice was scratchy and didn’t sound at all like a girl’s. I told her not to mention it and that we were happy to come, but Hannah just nodded and smiled like she was trying to hide a bad taste in her mouth, sort of like the time Ethan and I had visited Father Dyer’s house and his wife had cooked a potato that tasted like sour sweat, but Ethan said to just smile and say that it was good.
_____I wondered if Christine had done something like that before. She turned to me and said she was sorry that I had come, but her kindness to Hannah seemed . . . strange to me. “I’m really glad that you came, Hannah,” Christine’s smile looked funny too as her head toppled to the side to stare at Hannah with a pretend kind of niceness. “He says he’ll like you very much . . . and that you’ll get . . . along . . . just fine.”
_____Hannah and I bantered looks, but Hannah spoke first. “Who?”
_____“That would be me,” a black-pooled silhouette appeared through a doorway I had thought empty. His eyes were the same chilling color, though it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t know what color it was. He smiled friendlily, showing bright pink gums that looked like fangs next to his white teeth. “We will become good friends,” he told us, a weighty tone veiling his voice like a cloak. “In fact, why don’t you come with me right now?”
_____Christine’s features took on a slack look, smiling dreamily as his words wove around her like fishing lines. I felt an uncanny urge to wrap my arms around Hannah and protect her from his words.
_____I wonder if the Lights were listening to me . . . sometimes they do, I think. Sort of; I think. I’m not sure.
_____I felt my skin grow warm as his fishing lines came toward us, and I was getting warmer and then hot as they approached. When they tried to curl around us, they just burned away upon touching my skin.
_____His fetid gaze turned in my direction, burning with feverish hate. His smooth, angular face was far from nice looking now. “You should not have done that, little girl.”
_____I didn’t even know how I did anything even if I had. But I know that I backed up as he stepped nearer, his hollow eyes widening until I imagined his eyelids would disappear behind his sockets. My breath came in shallow dips as he curled his lip in a sneer, his smooth, even teeth baring themselves in a snarl. A twinge skirted through my skin, and I stiffened reflexively.
_____He lunged for a throat.
_____I tackled Hannah out of the way, both of us tumbling to the floor.
_____“Is this the part where we run, or fight?” I asked Hannah breathlessly; Mr. Ron wasn’t here; Ethan wasn’t here; there was no grownup except the man; but even if there were, I doubt they would help us; Christine looked funny, and I was certain that she would rather follow the strange man with the odd eyes. Hannah rolled to her feet and jerked me to mine.“When I give the signal,” she put the words quietly in my ear, “run away as fast as you can, ‘kay?”
_____I nodded and waited for the signal, Hannah edging a retreat along the wall, squeezing my hand so tightly I thought of asking her if that was the signal. The man was creeping closer, not quite in a crouch, but hunched over so far there was no other word for it. There was a lean, hungry glimmer to his eyes. His mouth was peeled back in a grimace that looked painful.
_____An explosion of thunder shattered the tension like a bowling ball through a glass floor, shaking both of us.
_____“Run!” Hannah screamed.
_____Wait, I wanted to shout. Which was the signal? The thunder splitting the air, or you shouting “Run!”? I thought she was going to say “Signal” or something.
_____But I guess it didn’t matter, because the man leaped for us. I screamed and instinctively pulled back my fist and shot it, hitting him in the bottom lip. But he kept coming, and he knocked me on my back. He tried holding my wrists, but I was twisting too frantically. I tried recalling everything Ethan had taught me about fighting; I tried remembering all my instincts; I tried defending myself.
_____A knee several inches below his tummy got him off me, but not for long. I scrambled to my feet and dashed to catch up to Hannah.
_____“Nice hit, babe,” she took my hand and continued to run. The man was growling like a rabid dog, on his feet and racing for us.
_____Hannah tried to stop him with fire and wind, but they sputtered and fell silent after only singeing his leg and knocking him into a wall. “Somethin’ is . . . blocking me,” she huffed, her face white and not looking like it usually does, smiling and pretty and happy, but instead strained and taut and something else. We jumped over a pile of cylinder pipes, while the man slipped on them and fell. We kept running. It felt like the very shadows were grabbing for our hair.
_____“Did we lose him?” Hannah asked. I looked back, seeing only tattered shadows and pored concrete walls and pocked concrete floors, with rolls of smelly carpet.
_____“I think so,” I nodded, gasping for breath. “That is, I don’t see him.”
_____“Good. Look! There’s another exit! If we can reach it . . .” I looked to where she pointed, smiling in relief as I saw the glass door, the greenish glow of the exit sign beckoning us on urgently with a faint illumination of green. The stormy air outside brightened once, a growl of thunder following, the lightning that followed was enough to light the way through the darkened corridor, throwing tattered shadows on our faces. We were almost there; Hannah was pulling the door open . . .
_____And then a hand was pushing against the glass, slamming it shut out of Hannah’s hands.
_____“Going somewhere, girls?”
_____The man’s smile was friendly, but I wouldn’t say he was a friend. He kept his hand against the glass and until he had stepped in the way, while I pulled Hannah back several paces.
_____Thunder rolled and lightning speared the sky, and the man’s flesh suddenly transformed into something demonic or devilish, I’m not sure. But in the storm’s brief exposure, he suddenly had horns and reddened skin. Fangs hanged from his lips while tiny arms waved feebly from his back. A thin tail with a triangular end etched signs in the air.
_____And then the revelation of thunder and lightning ended, and with its passing, all the lights went out except the glowing “EXIT” set in a square over the door that showed us the way outside. His black silhouette was left looking human again, his neat clothes faintly illuminated by the flame of the green sign, marred only slightly by the burnt leg. I didn’t think he was human.
_____“Come here, children!” he called, stepping nearer with his hands outstretched as though he wanted to hug us. “I want to be friends with you!”
_____We raced into the embracing darkness.
_____P.S. Mr. Nemesis, I don’t even know how to be a “dear,” so you don’t have to call me that if you don’t want to.
_____P.S. Again. I don’t know where Hannah is anymore, Mr. Ron. I’m really sorry.

Clarity Grace wrote:_____Mr. Shadow, it would be really hard to talk to him, I think. But I’m not sure I would want to.

That's okay, I'm sort of an expert on non-verbal communications.

_____ Hannah tried to stop him with fire and wind....

How did she do that?

Ron Caliburn wrote:You've been away a bit lately Willie, Hannah seems to be developing talents.

...are you sure they're her own?

I'm saying they might be her alleged father-in-law's talents, manifesting because she's come of age and it's time for her wedding.

_____Hi, everybody. Mr. Ron, we were running from some strange noises in a dark forest. The trees and branches were shaking as though the wind was following on our backs. We were all wet and tired, and Christine was getting really scared; we had to carry her between us a few times. She also said it was really dark, which concerned me, because I thought maybe the wind was getting to her. And I was feeling drained, as though I’d run for a really long time. The wind kept getting in front and behind us. Finally, Hannah suggested that we split up, and that’s the last I saw her. I wanted to stay with her, but she insisted, and Christine agreed; so we left.
_____P.S. I saw some strange lights after Christine and I slipped down a hill, and they lit in Hannah’s direction. They helped some strange shadows move eerily, too. I hope they helped Hannah to see in the dark, though.
_____P.S. Again. That’s okay, Hannah. We’re still friends, right? I tried to get Christine to say something good about you when we played that game, but she couldn’t, so we stopped talking and kept going. I’m sorry about that. Next Christine suggested I run away from her when we got to her house, and I did. But I think maybe a grownup should check on her, just in case.
_____P.S. Again, again. I think I better finish the story, shouldn’t I? All right, here it is.

_____Shadows were everywhere, too thick for workers to build anything. Hannah stumbled once on a pile of forgotten papers when she tried to turn around and slice her hand through the air, but nothing happened. I grabbed her under the arms and carried her until she was running alongside me again. I wouldn’t leave her. I couldn’t leave her. Every time we looked back, he was there, his hands outstretched for a hug, a grin I think I would call evil still on his unlined face.
_____I was feeling feverish, my skin burning like a sheet of paper in a fire. I didn’t understand when Hannah said something to me. She wanted to stop at several corners, and each time she did, she waved her hands in the air and said stuff, and then turned to me in panic, nothing happening. So we would run again. Several times we saw the echo of a light in a doorway we would be running near, but each time we heard thunder, a shadow like the thingman wanting to hug us would appear inside.
_____We didn’t go into those doors.
_____“Children . . . please come to me . . .” echoed in the halls. His footsteps were loud and everywhere, and we spent a lot of time looking for his shadow. We ran through a door that didn’t have it.
_____“Look, Hannah! There’s another way out,” I pointed to a hallway that went right. But Hannah was looking at the hall that went to the left.
_____“Quick, let’s go this way,” Hannah urged, sniffing with a ghost of hope and pulling me down the left hall. I nodded and followed.
_____“Careful, Hannah,” I pulled her away from a large bucket of gray, brackish water she had been stepping toward, and the hole where a big part of the floor should have been, covered instead by long planks of wood. They looked rickety and dangerous.
_____“What is that smell, Hannah?”
_____“Smells like . . . wet cement,” she sniffed again, and I couldn’t understand why she was suddenly smiling, though I’m glad she was. It made her look very pretty.
_____“Clarity, would you go and check to see if he’s following us? And then come back here and duck when I say ‘now.’” Hannah told me her plan, holding the bucket as though she were ready to dowse a campfire. I nodded, looking out the empty door of the hall we had gone through. My heart was pounding so loud I’m surprised Hannah didn’t say something about it. Loud echoes of footsteps were thudding heavily on the floor and in our ears, shaking the floor beneath us.
_____“Children . . . children . . . I’m coming for you . . . chillllllllldren . . . chilllllldrrrrrrreeeeeeennnnnn . . . .”
_____I went out.
_____“I’ve got you!”
_____His words were playful as I shrieked and smacked into his chest, though I didn’t feel like playing. I ducked his wide hug and quickly ran back toward Hannah.
_____“I think he’s here, Hannah!”
_____“Now!”
_____I dropped to the floor and rolled to the right; Hannah doused him with the bucket.
_____The man flinched in surprise, covered in wet gunk.
_____I jumped to my feet and quickly pushed the man where the floor should have been. He fell with a shout, boards breaking under him and falling with him. Hannah wobbled only slightly..
_____“Now let’s get Christine and get out of here,” Hannah sidestepped back to the floor and grabbed my hand. We ran towards the right hall.
_____Thunder and lightning trailed our footsteps.

_____P.S. That’s really it, not much else to tell, I think, is there?
_____P.S. Again. Mr. Ron, how’s Mr. Fluffers? And Gabrielle? You haven’t mentioned anything about them for a long time. I hope they’re all right.
_____P.S. Again, again. I hope Eilonwy is okay, too. And Sarah.

Clarity Grace wrote:_____The man flinched in surprise, covered in wet gunk.
_____I jumped to my feet and quickly pushed the man where the floor should have been. He fell with a shout, boards breaking under him and falling with him.

Nemesis wrote:I just want to talk to the man.

Sounds like you better bring a hammer and chisel.

Hannah wrote:...the Lord of Greenwood...

This bothers me, Ron.

Its no hero, Hannah, deserves no title. Its just a thing, and it wants to kidnap you.