Guest: You're absolutely right, Lana did not play a part in the other two stories, but she does in this one.
STR2D3PO: Little known fact: Mental hospitals have top notch driving courses.
Lincoln sat between Leni and his mother, his hands clasped in his lap and his head hung. Lucy sat on Mom's other side, her arms folded over the chest of her black dress. Her dark eyes peeked out from beneath her bottle-black bangs and she anxiously chewed her bottom lip. Lily, almost eleven, sat beside her, listening intently but not fully understanding what was going on.
Detective Frank Rudd sat in the armchair, leaning forward with his coat clad forearms resting on his beefy thighs. His white button-up pulled tight against his distended gut and his pants bunched uncomfortably at the point where his legs met his body. The beat cops flanked him like a guard detail, their hands on their hips and their faces stony. After working three years for the highway department, Lincoln was fairly muscular, but the police officers in his living room were bigger, broader, and he suspected, badder.
"Obviously, we don't know for certain that she's coming here," Rudd said, his voice a raspy wheeze that reminded Lincoln of rusted hinges. "It's a possibility, but we're not 100 percent sure."
The 'she' in question was Ronnie Anne Santiago. Ten years ago, she and Lincoln were as close to boyfriend and girlfriend as two eleven-year-olds can get - they held hands once, kissed each other on the cheek several times, and spent their afternoons playing video games at the arcade or doing homework together. She could be distant sometimes, and Lincoln came to believe that she didn't like him the way he thought she did.
Then, a couple days before Valentine's Day, he got a card in the mail. From a girl...a girl who did like him in that way. Her name, he later found out, was Leni...his beautiful, loving, tender-hearted older sister. He accepted her, and they were happy for a time.
Until Ronnie Anne found out.
Even now, ten years later, Lincoln couldn't understand what happened. One day she professed her love to him...then beat him up when he turned her down. Later, she showed up with an ax and tried to kill him. He could get her being hurt and upset...he could even get her punching him into the dirt the way she did...but killing her own brother and then coming after him? It didn't make sense and never had. She seemed so...normal. A little guarded and hot-headed maybe, but definitely not the type to hack people up with a sharp instrument.
He never said so aloud, but it bothered him greatly to this day. He genuinely cared for Ronnie Anne, and at one point, he thought he even loved her. Breaking her heart was bad enough, but breaking her mind to the point that she would never live a normal life, never find the same type of love and happiness that he found with Leni, made him sick if he dwelled on it. He tried not to blame himself, but he couldn't help it. He did not cause whatever was wrong with her - it was lying in wait like a patient cancer cell waiting to mutate and spread - but he precipitated it. Every once in a while, he dreamed of her - in them, she was always as he last saw her, hair soaked with rain and plastered to her jagged face, eyes wide with insanity, teeth clenched and nostrils flaring. She knocked on the front door and when he opened it, she swung an ax at his head. He ducked and it missed. In dreams, he was too slow; the blade smashed into his neck and severed his head, knocking it off of his body and onto the floor. He didn't die right away, though - he was forced to watch powerless as she killed Leni next. She screamed in terror as she died, weeping and begging for him to help her.
He woke from those nightmares in a cold sweat, his heart fluttering painfully against his ribs and his stomach twisting. The next day, he always felt like he was being watched, and every sudden sound made him jump.
Once in a blue moon, Leni would have a nightmare too. He'd wake to her crawling into his bed, her lithe body shivering and tears standing in her eyes. It happened again, Lincy, she would stutter pitably, and he never had to ask what. He wrapped his arms around her, drew her close, and kissed the back of her neck until she fell asleep again.
Currently, Mom shifted and the couch groaned under her weight. "Of course she's coming here, where else would she go?" Her voice trembled with a mixture of fear and indignation.
Detective Rudd spread his hands in a bemused gesture. "I don't know. She's deranged, Mrs. Loud, and that makes her unpredictable. You can't pin down a crazy person. Given what happened, it would make sense for her to maybe want revenge, but psychotics don't always think like us. She might come here, or she might go into the woods and wait for the mothership the voices in her head told her was going to pick her up."
Lily flicked her eyes anxiously back and forth between Rudd and her mother, her hands wringing the fabric of her purple skirt. Lucy noticed her apprehension, and laid her hand on the little girl's leg. "Is the crazy lady gonna come here?" Lily asked her older sister, her low, trusting tone indicating that she knew Lucy would have the right answer.
"No," Lucy said flatly. "She's gonna make a break for Canada that way she won't go back to jail." For her part, Lucy didn't believe that one bit, nor did she believe Rudd's assertion that she might go wait for a spaceship in the forest.
On the other side of her mother, Leni's hand crept into Lincoln's and squeezed, He looked up, and her face was a bloodless mask of worry, her eyes pooled with a fear so raw and abject that his stomach folded in on itself. He weaved his fingers through hers and returned her squeeze. "It's gonna be okay," he said, hoping he sounded more reassuring to her than he did to himself; he agreed with Mom, Ronnie Anne was coming here. He could feel it like a black shadow falling over him, and dread bubbled up in his chest.
"...post a watch until she's caught," Rudd was saying. "And until she's caught, I will stay right here. If she does come, she won't make it past Officer Scott and Officer Johnson" - he gestured to the cops - "and she sure won't make it past me." He flashed a winning smile. Looking at him, Lincoln doubted very seriously that he had the strength and stamina to stop a Teletubby with the flu much less a crazed woman capable of killing two grown men at the same time.
Mom sighed and looked down at her lap, her hand going strickenly to her forehead. "I'd appreciate that," she said. She looked up at Rudd. "How long do you think it'll take to catch her?"
Shifting his epic weight, Rudd ticked his head to one side. "Eh, I wouldn't say long at all. There's an all points bulletin on the car and roadblocks from here to Ann Arbor. If I had to guess, I'd say we'll have her before the sun sets. I suggest all of you go about your day like normal and forget that I'm even here." He turned to Officer Scott and said something that Lincoln didn't hear. He and Johnson both nodded and left through the front door, their footfalls heavy.
When the door closed behind them, Rudd sat back in the chair and laced his hands over his considerable stomach. "She's probably in cuffs as we speak," he said self-assuredly.
Twenty-five miles north, Ronnie Anne Santiago dragged a dead man into a stand of bushes bordering a dirt road adjacent to the interstate. Cars whizzed past like bullets, the whoosh of the air displaced by their passage like voices, and the late afternoon sun painted the thirsty brown landscape a muted orange.
Letting the body flop back in the dirt, she knelt beside it; a small, petite man in his fifties with a mustache, his eyes glazed in death. Ronnie Anne saw him walking along the road from the highway, his truck parked to one side. She knew the police would be looking for Dr. Palmer's car and decided in that moment to kill the man and take his truck.
She dug in the hip pockets of his black jumpsuit, found his keys, and pulled them out. Next, she drew the zipper down and yanked the suit off, looking over her shoulder to make sure no one was sneaking up behind her.
They weren't.
Hurrying nonetheless, she whipped the gown over her head and threw it aside, the warm air caressing her naked body like an unseen lover. She needed to be quick, but she couldn't stop herself from pausing to bask in its soft touch. Her eyelids fluttered closed and she tilted her head back, a dreamy smile spreading across her lips. "Ummm, Lincoln," she purred, her brown nipples stiffening. She brushed her teeth across her bottom lip and ran her hands slowly over her quivering chest.
An image emerged from the darkness and her budding arousal died.
It was Leni.
Her eyes flew open and her jaw clenched, her lips peeling away from her teeth in a hateful sneer. The breeze rustling in the underbrush became a voice...Leni's voice. He's with me now, Mexicunt, and he's everything you've fantasized about and more.
Ronnie Anne ground her teeth.
You can't have him, though. He only loves his sisters. Not you. You're not good enough.
"Shut up," she rumbled dangerously in the back of her throat.
You're too brown for him.
"Shut up," she repeated.
Too brown! Too brown!
Ronnie Anne shot to her feet, the jumpsuit danging from one balled fist. Her pert breasts heaved as she sucked great gulps of air and her frame trembled like a keg of dynamite getting ready to blow. "I'm not too brown for him!" she shouted, her voice reverberating through the pasture,
Only she knew that she was. She was brown because she was not his sister, and he only loved his sisters. She didn't stand a chance. They had him 24/7 and never let him go, how could she fight that? How could she expect him to love her when they were sucking his love from him like vampires? If she was his flesh, he would lay her down in bed and love her but she was not. Her flesh was different, she was different, damned to be forever on the outside while they laughed at her. Laughed and laughed and laughed.
They'd see, though. They'd all see. Leni especially. She was Lincoln's "favorite." She was the one who started this, Ronnie Anne saw that clearly now, and had for years. She knew Ronnie Anne loved him, and she swooped in to take him away from her.
Well, she was going to take Lincoln back, and she would make Leni pay for the things she did to her...for making her kill Bobby and locking her away in the mental hospital. He doesn't love you because you're not his sister, well she was going to be his sister and then he'd love her and everything would be okay and she wouldn't have to go back to the hospital because Leni would be dead and no one would listen to her evil powers anymore. ANYMORE. She had to focus and not let Leni distract her. Stay here and talk to me while the cops close in, hear them slipping through the grass? See them moving in the brush? Stay here, talk to me. Ha, you can't trick me anymore, Leni.
Casting a look around to make sure the police weren't moving in, she hurriedly dressed and pulled the zipper up. It was baggy but she didn't care. Next, she took the dead man's boots from his feet and stepped into them. Grabbing the keys, she went to the side of the road and waited to see if someone would try to stop her, then darted to the truck, a battered red 1975 Ford F-250 with a rifle rack in the rear window and two revolving caution lights on top like antler nubs. She opened the door and slid in behind the wheel; tools, gloves, a clipboard, and other miscellaneous things littered the bench seat, and trash from a thousand fast food restaurants filled the passenger footwell. She slipped the key into the ignition; the engine sputtered, coughed, then turned, music blaring from the speakers and startling her. She turned down the radio, gripped the wheel, and navigated the truck along the road, stopping when she reached a strip of blacktop that followed the interstate.
She turned right, then got onto the highway, merging in front of a speeding Mac truck with BLACK MARIA across the driver side door. A sign appeared ahead for Royal Woods, and a shark-like smile carved across her pallid face. I'm coming Lincoln I'll be your sister and you can love me you can be mine...or else.
"Do you think she's gonna come here?" Leni asked.
She and Lincoln were lying in Lincoln's bed, Lincoln on his back and Leni curled up next to him, her head resting comfortably on his shoulder and her hand on lying over his heart. His arm was around her, but while that normally made her feel safe, right now, she was still scared. Ronnie Anne was out there somewhere and even Mom was worried - so worried, in fact, that she sent Lily to spend the night with a friend just in case. She didn't say that's why she did it, but Leni wasn't dumb, she could put two and four together.
Lincoln brushed his fingers up her bare arm and took a deep breath. "I don't think so," he said. "And if she does, the cops are here. It won't be like last time."
A shiver went through Leni at the mention of last time. Ten years ago, Ronnie Anne tried to kill them with an ax and it scared Leni so bad that she had nightmares for, like, ever. She still did sometimes; Lincy died and she didn't have him anymore, and when she woke up she was crying because that was the worst thing that could ever happen to her. Lincy was the bestest brother ever and she wanted to have his babies one day - she was like a cute little fishy and he was the water she breathed. He made her every day warm and special, and every time he held her hand, she felt like she was going to burst with love and joy. She didn't care if she died, but if Lincy died she would cry and never stop because if he died, her heart died too.
Snuggling closer, she clutched the front of his shirt in hooked fingers and held tight as if by doing so, she could keep him safe from Ronnie Anne. She didn't think she could, though. Ronnie Anne scared her so much. She was like...the bogeywoman, and ever since the policeman said she escaped, Len's heart had been throbbing like an infected tooth. Every sound she heard made her jump and each shadow glimpsed from the corner of her eye struck electric fright into the center of her skull. At dinner, her belly was so upset that she couldn't eat, and the policeman ate her food for her. "I hope not," she said. "I don't want to lose you."
Lincoln turned his head to her and regarded her with something like sorrow. "You won't," he said and kissed her forehead. "We'll be fine. Detective Rudd is right, she's probably in jail already and they just haven't called him yet."
Leni hoped so.
When a knock came at the door a few minutes later, she tensed, but relaxed when Lola poked her head in. "The sink is clogged again," she said simply.
Something was wrong with the kitchen sink and every once in a while it wouldn't drain. Lincoln had fixed it a dozen times over the past two years, but he wasn't a plumber and didn't know what the hell he was doing.
"Okay," he said reluctantly released Leni. Their sisters knew about their relationship but their mother did not, and Lincoln wanted to keep it from her, for her sake, not theirs. Life was topsy turvy enough now that Dad was gone, adding that would probably put her in the ground. Normally they weren't as brazen with their affections - cuddling together in the middle of the evening like this - but if these circumstances weren't extenuating, he didn't know what would be.
He got up and Leni followed, her fists balling at her chest in a gesture of nervousness. "Everything's gonna be okay," he said at the door and kissed her cheek. "I promise."
Leni nodded, resolute in her determination to believe him. "Okay," she said.
He smiled and brushed his fingers through her hair.
Downstairs, Detective Rudd sat in the armchair and paged through a magazine. He looked up as Lincoln passed, then back down. In the kitchen, Mom stood by the sink with her arms crossed and a faraway look in her eyes. Before dinner, she tried calling Lana to tell her about Ronnie Anne, but she didn't answer, which worried Mom sick.
While he worked on the sink, she called Lisa and gave her the rundown; Lisa was in Chicago on a school trip and wouldn't be back for another three days, which should be plenty of time for Ronnie Anne to be recaptured.
Next, she called Luan. Luan and Clyde lived in an apartment across town with their one-year-old daughter Ciara. Clyde worked for Geek Squad and Luan was a teller at the bank. Stay inside and lock all your doors and windows, Mom said as she paced back and forth. Lincoln knelt, opened the cabinet, and unscrewed the pipe using a wrench that he left there for just this purpose. Grabbing a pot, he sat it under the pipe and let it drain.
Why hadn't they caught her yet? Despite what he told Leni, he seriously doubted that she was in custody already. If she was, Detective Rudd would be one of the first to know. That he hadn't been informed told Lincoln Ronnie Anne was still out there, moving through the lengthening shadows and possibly stalking the house this very moment.
That thought sent a shiver down his spine.
Done with the sink, he replaced the pipe and tested it: The water went down the drain, but just barely.
Someone laid their hand on his shoulder and he started. "It's just me, honey," Mom said, "I have some paperwork I have to do. I'll be in my office, okay?"
Lincoln nodded. "Okay."
She flashed a wan smile and touched the side of his face. "Everything's going to be okay, baby." She said tenderly, echoing the encouragement he gave Leni moments ago.
"Yeah, I'm not worried," he said. In actuality, he was...very much. Rudd was wrong; there was only one place Ronnie Anne would go, and that place was here. The cops were here too, though, and despite the hulking, large-than-life pall she cast over him, he was certain that she wouldn't be able to fight her way through three police officers. The people she killed at the hospital didn't have guns, Rudd and the others did.
Mom kissed his cheek and disappeared into the living room, leaving him alone, hands splayed on the edge of the sinktop, shoulders hunched as if under a great weight. Restless energy surged through him and he drew a deep breath as he lifted his head. Through the window over the sink, purple twilight filled the backyard like black water, and stars twinkled in the deep blue sky. Where are you, Ronnie Anne?
He didn't know the answer to that...and h didn't think he wanted to know.
Pushing away from the counter, he went into the living room. Leni, Lucy, and Lola sat on the couch, all of them with strained expressions. That was normal for Lucy, but not for the other two. In the chair, Rudd stared at the TV, his legs crossed and one loafered foot tapping in mid-air. Lincoln started for the couch, but bypassed it at the last minute and went to the front window instead. He drew back the curtain and scanned the street, spotting the RWPD cruiser instantly: It sat at the curb on the opposite side. He squinted and made out two shapes inside. Scott and Johnson.
He tried to lift the sash, but it was locked.
Good.
He went to the door and tested the handle.
Also locked.
Back in the kitchen, he tried the window over the sink and the back door. Both were locked as well.
Satisfied, he returned to the living room and sat next to Leni, Lola scooting over to make space without being asked to. He put his arm around his older sister and she leaned into him with a happy smile. "Hi, Lincy," she said and rested her hand on his chest.
"Hi," he said and glanced at the screen. "What are we watching?"
A boy in a headband slipped on a banana peel and fell on his ass while a canned audience shrieked with laughter. Why can't I win?
"I dunno," Leni said and laid her head on his shoulder, "but it's dumb." She rubbed her hand slowly over his chest and giggled when he squirmed.
Detective Rudd lifted his brows, then turned back to the TV. He was waiting anxiously for the call that Ronnie Anne Santiago had been picked up. When his phone rang shortly after dinner, he was certain that it was that call.
It wasn't.
A state trooper found Dr. Robert Palmer's car abandoned in a field after spotting it from the highway and going to investigate. He also found the strangled body of man dressed in only his underwear. From the bruising on his neck, they thought she did it by hand.
That was troubling. Ronnie Anne Santiago was five-six and 105 pounds according to the teletype. How in the hell could she throttle a grown man to death? The paperwork said she was a schizophrenic, but it didn't say anything about her being fucking Superman. Then again, it also said she was catatonic...which she sure as shit was not.
He was starting to wonder if she was even crazy or not. Switching cars the way she did showed a level of forethought that you don't often see in full-blown psychos, and it bothered him. That car was their only lead, now she could be in anything and they'd never see her coming until she was on top of them.
Where the body was found told him that she was indeed headed to Royal Woods. Hopefully she got caught on the way - he transfered from Detroit eight years ago to get away from the action. He wanted peace and quiet.
Not this crap.
Maybe she wouldn't come.
Maybe she'd stay away.
Ronnie Anne Santiago turned off of Main and followed Park Place past a rush of quiet middle class houses with wide front lawns. Trees lined the sidewalks and rustled in the soft breeze. Street lamps cast pools of murky illumination against the gathering night, and Ronnie Anne watched the occasional pedestrian moving through them, sure that one would be Leni come to finish her off. None were...at least she thought. Leni played dumb but she was crafty, and Ronnie Anne wouldn't put it past her to shapeshift on top of everything else.
It was just past sundown and she was running behind. Leni made the gas tank run low and she had to stop at a BP off the highway. The old man behind the counter transmitted funny thoughts into her head, so she killed him and a woman cowering in the bathroom. Neither was Leni, but both were her agents.
At the intersection of Park and Pine, she turned left. Her old house was on the right, and as she crept past, she craned to see if her mother's car was in the driveway. It was not; the windows were dark and the lawn overgrown, which suggested that she moved at some point after Ronnie Anne's committal. She visited occasionally, but Ronnie Anne played dumb and stared into space, pretending not to hear her voice or see her tears of sorrow. It killed her to see Mom that way, and every night as she laid in bed, her hatred toward Leni for making her kill Bobby grew. Look what you did to my mother, you bitch. YOU MADE HER SAD! She lost one child to death and the other to the system all because of Leni, and Ronnie Anne could only imagine how deeply that affected her.
Which was why she planned to kill her mother...to free her from her burden. Leni must have read her thoughts and made Mom move. How sadistic is that? Forcing an old woman to live with the pain of her children's demise?
Ronnie Anne's teeth clenched, and in the green glow emanating from the dashboard, her face morphed into a demonic nightmare visage. She was going to enjoy killing Leni so, so, so much.
A block past her childhood home, she came to a rolling stop at an intersection and waited for a group of teenagers to cross. She scanned their faces...and froze when she recognized one.
Lana Loud was six the last time she saw her, but the blonde, smiling and gesturing with her hands as she talked to a boy in a thermal shirt, jeans, and a mossy oak baseball cap, was undoubtedly her. Ronnie Anne's grip on the wheel tightened and her breathing sped up. You can never be one of us, Lana said, you can never be one of Lincoln's ssssssiiiiissssttttteeeeerrrrrssss.
"Shut up," Ronnie Anne snarled.
Lana and her friends disappeared down a side street, and after a moment, Ronnie Anne followed, killing the headlights. She didn't know where they were going and she didn't care - she was going to kill the Loud bitch then prove her wrong. "I will be Lincoln's sister," she hissed through her teeth, her voice like the rattle of dead leaves.
The group walked leisurely, unaware of the truck creeping along behind them like a submarine stalking a passenger liner, its torpedos loaded and ready to fire. Ronnie Anne stared intently at Lana's back, willing her to fall over dead. She didn't; she laughed, shoved the boy, and stumbled when he did the same. "Jerk!" she cried, the happy inflection in her voice making Ronnie Anne hate her all the more. While she languished in a cell, Lana and her bitch sisters lived it up, sharing Lincoln back and forth like a bottle of cheap whiskey and laughing at her. That was going to change...soon their laughter would turn into screams and she would have Lincoln all to herself.
They turned down another street, this one without lights. Ronnie Anne rolled to the intersection and watched as they approached a house burning with lights. Cars were parked up and down the way, more on the lawn. Cocking her head, she detected the faint sound of music. Lana and the others crossed the yard and went inside, leaving the night to its own devices.
Coming alive, Ronnie Anne turned down the street and parked behind an Altima. She cut the engine and sat behind the wheel for a long time, glaring at the house. The music was louder here and she could make out lyrics: Dirt roads, fried chicken, kissing by the riverside, going to church on Sunday morning.
You'll never be one of Lincoln's sisters, Lana taunted.
Ronnie Anne bit down hard on the inside of her bottom lip, numb to the coppery taste of blood filling her mouth. Her fingers grasped the wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white and her heavily lidded eyes narrowed to animal slits.
You'll never be his sister...you'll never be me.
"We'll see about that," Ronnie Anne said.
Then got out.