Nowhere to Hide

For my husband, who forced me to get over my wussy self and learn to enjoy scary stuff.

For my parents, who always believed that I would be a writer someday if that’s what I really wanted.

And for my daughter, who has already shown that she’s way more brave than I was as a child, but who shall not be permitted to read this book until she has successfully watched a George A. Romero flick without having to sleep with a light on for a month afterward.

Chapter One

If you asked Nancy how she remembered it all beginning, she’d tell you that the first thing she recalled was smoke.

She awoke with a start, her back aching from the crossbar of her old couch drilling into her spine. Her left arm was fast asleep from the awkward position she’d drifted off in, and thick black smoke was crawling across her living room ceiling. Her heart leapt into her throat as she sprinted for the kitchen.

“Shit!” she screamed. She berated herself as she yanked open the oven and grabbed blindly for the pizza pan with a dish towel. The towel slipped to one side and the pan scalded her index finger before she could manage to toss it on top of the stove. “Fuck!” was the second profanity to escape her mouth in as many seconds. She turned to the sink to douse her burning skin under a stream of gloriously cold water and leaned her head against the counter with a groan. A few sharp taps from the floor above told her that elderly Mrs Spears upstairs had heard her outburst and was not impressed. “Screw you too, you old bag,” Nancy muttered. Her voice was thick with bitterness. Moments like this made it significantly more difficult to put up with her crotchety old neighbor.

Nancy wasn’t a world-class chef by any stretch of the imagination, but she had picked up a few things at the bar where she’d worked for the past year, and the pizza she had constructed for herself tonight - from scratch, thank you very much - had looked quiet delicious when it had entered the oven. Unfortunately, for the third time this week, Nancy had fallen asleep while waiting for her supper to cook. She was so exhausted these days that she was starting to seriously consider switching to an all take-out diet just to ensure that the food made it to her mouth in the form in which it was intended to be consumed.

With a sigh and a rumbling stomach, Nancy stuck her throbbing finger in her mouth and collapsed at her tiny kitchen table. In the center of the plastic tablecloth lay her fire alarm. She’d angrily ripped it from the ceiling five days ago when it had gone off during one of her ‘naps’ and scared the living daylights out of her. Common sense told her to put it back into place, but she had already driven her neighbors from their apartments once with the alarm and she couldn’t stand the thought of the glares she’d receive if she did it again.

The phone rang. Nancy narrowed her eyes. If it was Mrs Spears calling to nag at her she might just toss the phone out the window behind her head. Mercifully, the name that came up on the small call-display screen was ‘Craven’.

“No, the apartment isn’t on fire,” Nancy said to the receiver without saying hello.

“Glad to hear it,” replied Terri-Lynn. The young school teacher from two apartments down had a smile in her tone. “I
was
just calling to see if you’re working tonight, but from your response I suspect you’ve lost your supper again?”

“Shut up.”

“Would you like me to bring over my leftovers?”

“Shut up again. And yes.”

Terri-Lynn laughed on the other side of the phone. “I’ll be over in a few minutes,” she promised, and hung up.

The phone went back on the charger, and Nancy returned to the living room without her pizza. She scowled at the ugly, flower-print couch for a moment before collapsing on it.

Nancy Elizabeth King was an ordinary young woman. She wore jeans that showed off her round hips and long legs, and t-shirts because she couldn’t care less about fashion. Her long red hair was often pulled into a tight ponytail to keep it out of her face, and the only makeup she bothered with was a bright red shade of lipstick that she’d been wearing since her grandmother gave her a tube on her sixteenth birthday. But though the twenty-three-year-old had no patience for clothes and ‘face paint’, Nancy was a pretty young woman with brilliant green eyes that had gotten her no small number of compliments throughout her life. Her mother’s eyes, she was told, though she couldn’t remember those eyes for herself.

A knock came at the door. “It’s open,” Nancy called around the finger still in her mouth.

The woman who walked through the door appeared to be Nancy’s polar opposite at first glance. Twenty-six-year-old Terri-Lynn Craven could most always be found in a dress or skirt-and-top combo, and everything she wore was the height of current fashion. Her jet-black hair was cut short in a hip bob style, and her face was always immaculately painted in expensive makeup. She looked good - no one could deny that - but it seemed excessive to Nancy to doll yourself up so much in order to hang out with grade-schoolers all day. Not to mention that Nancy often wondered how a school teacher could manage to afford Terri-Lynn’s expensive beauty habits. She never asked though, because it was really none of her business.

Nancy leaned her head over the back of the couch to look at her guest. “What’s up?” she asked. “Gonna mock me for destroying my supper again...?” Her voice trailed off when she saw the look on the other woman’s face. Terri-Lynn was usually cheerful to a fault, but just this moment she had a strange look on her face, like she’d received some terrible news.

“I have a confession,” she admitted. She placed a Tupperware container on the coffee table and straightened her skirt before sitting down next to Nancy. Her face was uncharacteristically grim. “I heard a disturbing story today, and I was told it would be on the news tonight. I was hoping you’d watch it with me.”

Nancy couldn’t help but blink stupidly for a moment. She was reminded irresistibly of a small child who wanted to watch a horror movie but was scared to do so alone. After a long moment she shrugged and nodded, because what else could she really do?

Terri-Lynn snagged the remote for the 28” television and clicked it on while Nancy heated her second-hand supper. By the time the homemade macaroni was in her lap and she was on the couch again, the local news had begun. Nancy didn’t ask about the ‘disturbing story’ because she was busy stuffing her mouth, and besides, there were enough disturbing stories on the news anyway. The two women sat silently and watched a story about a three-car pileup on highway 4 with two fatalities, a report about a hiker who had gone missing in the highlands and was presumed dead, and an update on riots and violent demonstrations in a war-torn country on the other side of the planet. It was enough to make Nancy lose her appetite - this was why she didn’t normally watch the news herself.

Then came the story that they were waiting for. Nancy knew it was the one because as soon as it began Terri-Lynn drew in a sharp breath and her dark red fingernails began click-clacking against the back of the remote control.

“Late last night, in Spring Garden Park,” said the male reporter, “a strange altercation took place that has left one dead and one seriously injured. The affair was recorded by one of the individuals involved. That recording has been released by the police in hopes that our viewers may have some information on the assailant’s identity, which is as yet unknown. Please be aware, the following video is fairly graphic.”

Nancy leaned forward a little. Terri-Lynn’s nails click-clacked.

The video quality was pretty terrible, and the cameraman was in no way attempting to hold the shot steady. It appeared to have been taken with a camera phone. There were four teenagers in the shot, the fifth being the cameraman, all teenage boys as far as Nancy could tell. The sixth person in the scene was a middle-aged woman, and herein was the focus of the story.

The boys were mocking her, and though it was cruel and childish Nancy could almost understand why. The woman seemed to be either extremely drunk or terribly ill. Her head lolled downward, causing a mop of long, greasy hair to fall around her face. She was shambling toward the teenagers, shuffling her feet along the ground rather than exerting the effort to lift them, and her arms fell listlessly at her sides. Her skin and clothes were dirty, as though she’d been rolling around on the ground.

The boys called out disparaging comments, much of which was being bleeped out by the news’ censor; so much was being edited out that it was barely possible to tell what they were saying. One boy threw an empty beer can at the woman. It hit her square on the top of the head, but she didn’t react with so much as a flinch. Laughing raucously, a black-haired boy stepped forward and leaned down beneath her so he could look up into her face. He made a scathing comment: “Are you even alive in there?”

The woman’s head moved upward, very slowly, and a pair of dark, empty eyes stared through the curtain of hair to look at the boy’s face. Nancy felt a chill go down her spine.
Christ,
she thought.
Those eyes...

And that’s when it all went to hell. The thin, dirty arms rose, reached for the teenager, and clamped around his left wrist. For a moment he actually laughed, likely expecting her to either vomit or slap him or beg him for money. The reality was much, much worse. She opened her mouth, revealing two rows of disgusting, rotten teeth, and bit into the flesh of his arm with all her strength.

At this point the video got too dizzying to watch. The cameraman and the remaining teens rushed forward to help their friend, who was now shrieking in alarm and agony. Before the camera was dropped and the scene disappeared from view, Nancy saw a brilliant spray of blood. The boy’s scream made her chest go cold. Terri-Lynn’s tap-tap-tapping nails froze as she gripped the remote control so hard that the cheap plastic covering creaked in protest.

There was a lot of crying and shouting. The camera phone had fallen in a tuft of grass, momentarily forgotten by the owner. Nancy stared at the peaceful green strands as she listened to the sounds of struggle. Somewhere was the crash of a beer bottle being smashed in half. Nancy’s hand flew to her mouth as a second crimson spray of blood splashed across the camera’s screen and the innocent grass. A moment later the woman let out an inhuman screech that made Terri-Lynn wince and turn away from the TV.

The news broadcast cut back to the reporter, who now looked almost comically green in the face. For a few seconds he said nothing, then he cleared his throat and swallowed. “The young man was taken to hospital where he was treated for major lacerations to the arm and throat, and is being held in critical condition. The woman, whom police were unable to identify, was also taken to hospital where she was presumed dead due to trauma to the head. No charges are yet being placed. Any information that could identify the woman in the video is being requested by the police immediately.”

The channel cut to a commercial advertising the wondrous world of the most recent Disney film.

Terri-Lynn was quiet.

After a few tense moments, Nancy broke the silence. “What the fuck?!” she exclaimed. Mrs Spears let fly another round of annoyed stomping from upstairs.

Terri-Lynn nodded. “I heard about it earlier,” she said in a quiet voice. “Really creeped me out. I mean...” She shook her head and Nancy could tell that the video was repeating over and over in her mind. “It’s crazy enough that she bit the kid, but I wouldn’t even think that you
could
bite someone hard enough to cause that much damage.”

“There’s something else that’s bothering you about this,” Nancy said with confidence. On occasion, she could be very observant.

Terri-Lynn took a deep breath, sighed, and closed her heavily-shadowed eyelids. “The boy in the video, the one who got bitten...he’s the older brother of one of my students.” When she opened her eyes and looked at Nancy, it was with an almost painful level of concern. Terri-Lynn was a very emotional person on the best of days. “That’s how I found out early. My student didn’t show up for class, so I called his parents. It seems that the brother isn’t, well... It doesn’t look like he’s going to... In the part of the video that we couldn’t see, the woman
ripped out part of his throat
. They say he’s lost a lot of blood because she hit an artery.”

Nancy hadn’t touched her macaroni in several minutes, and now she leaned down to place it back on the coffee table. She had to take a deep breath and swallow a few times to keep from gagging at the image that had just weaseled its way into her brain. Then she put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I’m sure he’ll be fine...”

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d told such a blatant lie.

“Hello... Earth to Nancy!”

Nancy shook her head to snap herself out of the daze she’d drifted into. She looked down at the glass she’d been wiping with a dish towel for the past ten minutes and hastily placed it down on the counter. With a flush in her cheeks she gave a sheepish smile to her customer.

“Penny for your thoughts?” asked the regular.

Nancy had been working at the Deja Vu lounge for a little over a year now. It was average as far as jobs went, but what made it ideal for her was that her hours were predominately nights and evenings. The arrangement allowed her to take double classes at the community college where she was training to... Well, she wasn’t entirely sure yet. She’d taken a little of everything at this point and simply couldn’t find anything that she wanted to settle on. The point was that she was making an effort, trying to make a good life for herself like her grandmother had wanted. And though almost all of her earnings went to pay for the schooling, and the combination of school life and work life left her precious little time for sleep, she was sure that it would all work out in the end and she’d be able to make her grandmother proud of her. That was all she really wanted.