Alison McGovern
Hidden in plain sight.
Alison doesn't wake until it's too late, and whoever has her is already hefting her inside the car trunk. Fog and frost swirl about them is gray-blue mists. From her vantage point, she can blearily see a lone star from beneath a canopy of interlaced branches bare of leaves. It's late, her parents will be wondering.
She struggles against the binds at her hands and feet – she doesn't put up much of a fight, really, shivering like this – coins from her jean pocket fall in staccato rhythm to the metal surface. Her abductors shifts, and the familiar scent of wood and smoke that wafts from him makes her wonder, agonzing hope threading through the terror – Mr. Hinzelmann?
Mr. Hinzelmann? Alison asks again, fingernails digging anew into her palm as she waits for an answer. It's me. Alison. Alison McGovern. You know me. You towed my dad's car last winter. I baby sat for your neighbor.
Her vision have adjusted a little to the dark and she catches a fugitive glimse of him as he closes the trunk, recognizes the planes of his grizzled face, the steely gray hair. His expression is terrifying in a way she doesn't understand, flat and contemptuous and bitter with recrimination.
As any angry god in a land that doesn't treasure legends nor alien deities, Hinzelmann speaks no words to ease her spirit, offers no explanations. The weight of his betrayal slams against her like continual sheets of cold water.
"Why are you doing this," she whispers in dismay before the trunk is closed shut with keystone precision. She struggles fiercely when she feels the rolling motion beneath her, a car moving – it's without the familiar purr of an engine, and Alison realizes, with perfect clarity, where she is: it's the clunker.
The clunker was a fixture in the winters of her childhood, seemingly always there, taken for granted. It's with acrimonious, grim finality that she understands that no one will think to find to look for her in plain sight, she'll be waiting until springtime, until when the iced surface of the lake melts and she joins his hoard of sacrifices at the bottom. All those missing kids...
Her eyes fill with helpless tears.
"I don't want to die," Alison whispers to herself, mouth ungripping as abyssal fear begins licking trails across her skin. She wanted to see another sunset, see her clean smile after her braces were removed (blue bands this time, mom, the lime ones next), grow into her face, write poetry, fall in love, be dazzled by the world. She'd wanted to see life through.
For hours before she dies, her breath coming in fogs, Alison cries and shivers as she thinks about the future stolen by the docile old man she'd so often exchanged waves and smiles with, as was wont in the proctective cocoon of a small town where everyone shared the same extent of sky.
As her mind slackens as her body systemically begins to shut down, Alison belatedly remembers she has a ring, a nice boy gave it to her, reckoned it to bring only good luck, and he'd ran off before she could tell him it was too large. She felt it now, her ring on a silver chain on her chest, like a cold finger against her heart. It reminds her that she'll never get a better one.
The hushed sounds of violet winter – the crunch of snow, rustling trees, a whisper of beating wings – make up her funeral song. Maybe, she thinks, there are still stars outside.
The frost spiders its way across her skin and rattles inside her bones. Tears freeze on their way down her cheek.
Death, as though doing a kindness, closes her eyes.