Jones pushed out a little laugh. “Not unless they absolutely have to. These folks don’t like visitors. Locals know to stay away.”
Locals know to stay away.
Something about this cleared the fog from Finley’s head.
“So when you say these properties were thoroughly searched . . .” said Finley, letting the sentence trail.
Jones dialed the cell phone in his hand and put the phone on speaker. The tinny ringing ended when a deep, resonant voice answered. “Ferrigno.”
Jones identified himself and ran down the situation—Finley Montgomery, blood on her hands, someone hurt, heading up north on the rural road.
“Actually, I’m heading up there, too,” said Chuck. They could hear rustling, a car door slamming, an engine coming to life.
“Why’s that?” asked Jones, casting a glance at Finley.
“We got a lead on that missing real estate developer. The beacon on his car is sending out a GPS location, and the warrant finally came through allowing the NYPD to get the information. I was just going to call you, actually.”
“Where is it?”
“Out in the middle of nowhere, where a BMW has no business being,” he said. “From the signal, it
looks
like the middle of the woods. We’re heading up to search. Got some guys coming in from the next county, too.”
Finley watched Jones, who wore a deep frown. Without thinking, Finley reached for the glove compartment, where (of course) there was a notepad and pen.
“What are the coordinates?” asked Jones.
Finley jotted down the numbers. Outside the snow was collecting in the gaskets of the windows, on the shoulder, and in the trees. But the road ahead of them was still black, slick, and wet.
“Satellite image shows a clearing in that location,” said Ferrigno. “Course this weather is not our friend at the moment. We have to try to get up there before it gets any worse.”
“Could be The Chapel,” said Jones.
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Ferrigno. Finley saw a muscle working in Jones’s jaw.
“Coming up?” asked Ferrigno.
“We have to check on the other incident first,” said Jones. “Someone might be hurt up there.”
“Need some backup?” Ferrigno asked. “I can spare a guy if you think there’s an emergency.”
“I’ll call you if I need someone,” said Jones. “Hey, just one other thing. When Abbey Gleason went missing? How thorough was the search on the properties of the folks living up there?”
“Pretty thorough,” he said. “The few families that are still there cooperated fully. But there aren’t that many people anymore—maybe five or six total. There are a few shacks, one or two houses. The landscaping guy has a pretty nice place up there, Abel Crawley?
Makes you think, you know, that there’s something to shedding the modern world. He’s got a generator, chickens, pigs and a cow, a deep water well. Works all spring, summer, and fall, off all winter.”
Squeak-clink. Squeak-clink. Squeak-clink.
The water pump for the well; Finley could see it. Things that squeak. She saw the red metal pump resting on a wooden platform. There was a girl, using all the strength to pump it, the barn off in the distance.
Squeak
as the handle went up,
clink
as it came back down.
They pulled off the paved road and onto a smaller dirt one. Jones shifted the SUV into four-wheel drive. Finley looked out into the darkness, the same questions scrolling through her mind. What had happened to Rainer? Why did she have his car? Whose blood was all over her?
Finley’s whole body pulsed with tension and fear now, her mind a whirl of images and disconnected thoughts. Then, out in the night, she saw a bobbing white light. It went dark for a moment, and she sat forward looking. Then it came on again.
“Stop the car,” she said.
Jones put on the brakes and the vehicle skidded to a stop.
“Do you see that?”
“I don’t see anything,” said Jones. “It’s pitch-black out there.”
She saw it clearly, and then she was outside, running toward it with Jones calling after her.
TWENTY-FIVE
S
he crouched low, making herself very small in the tiny space she found between the wall and the shelves. She could be quiet; she was a good hider. She listened as Poppa clomped up the hallway, big boots on hard wood, then climbed back down the stairs. She waited; she didn’t hear an outside door open and close, but still it grew very quiet as if he had left. She waited a long time, crouched inside the linen closet.
It was moldy, the dust tickling her nose, a sneeze threatening. She buried her face in her jacket, plugging her nose.
If you hold your sneeze in
, her brother had warned,
you’ll explode your eyeballs.
For the longest time, she’d believed him.
She waited and waited, until finally she got up painfully from her crouch and quietly moved toward the door. The hallway was empty, the stairs waiting to lead her down and out the door.
She didn’t know where Poppa was, or Bobo. But she knew she had to go. She didn’t have to listen to the voice. She only had to listen to her mommy, and she was sure that her mommy would tell her to get out of that house and run the way Poppa had told the clean man to go.
The door squeaked a little, but not too loudly. She crept down the hall, trying to be quiet in those boots. At the top of the stairs, she paused, listening. If she tried to tiptoe down the stairs, they’d creak. If he heard her, he’d trap her upstairs. She had to run and burst through the door, and then head straight for the gate and then keep running. She took a deep breath and got ready.
“What are you doing in here, girl?”
An electric shock of fear spun her around to see Poppa standing behind her.
“You think you’re the only one who can creep?” he asked, his smile mean.
She had no words. She stared at his sunken blue eyes, his white hair wild. His hands she knew were rough and hard. He was so skinny that his face looked like a skeleton and she could see all his bones. Behind the fear, another feeling vibrated. Hatred. She hated him. She wished he were dead, that he’d rot and the bugs would eat his flesh. She lifted her chin at him.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
She stepped down a single step and he reached for her arm, but she slunk away, down one more step. He inched slowly toward her, as if she were a bird he was afraid to startle.
He laughed a little. “Who said so?”
“Momma said I could leave.”
He frowned, his jaw working. He was missing a tooth on the side of his mouth, and it made his smile ghoulish. She’d never seen an adult with a missing tooth. Plenty of kids had big gaps in their smiles and that was normal. One of the doormen in her old building had a gold tooth. And she always stared at it when he smiled at her.
Good Morning, Little Rose!
he’d say when he saw her before school. Her name wasn’t Rose, but he made her wish it were.
“No, she didn’t,” he said.
“She said I couldn’t help her anymore,” she said. “She needs a new Penny.”
She moved down a few more steps, and he came slowly after her. His smile broadened. She could smell his scent, like grass and wood.
“Was Penny your daughter?” One more step.
“Shut up, girl,” he said. “Mind your business.” It sounded like “yer.”
“Did you hurt her?” she asked. “Like you hurt me.”
It wasn’t right what he had done, what he was still doing. Real Penny wanted him punished. The voices in the trees wanted that, too. He was a pain giver, someone who hurt and wasn’t sorry.
One more step down, the wood creaked loud and long. She was standing on her bad ankle, and the pain was so bad she was seeing those white stars again. The door stood open, a cold draft snaking up the stairs. She wobbled a little, knocking one of the picture frames from the wall. It fell and shattered on the stairs, littering the floor with broken glass.
“Did you touch her?” she said. “She told me you did. You weren’t a good daddy.”
His smile didn’t waver.
“She started a fire because she wanted to kill herself and you, and Momma for letting you hurt her. You’re a bad man,” she said. She took one more step down. “That’s how she died.”
Bobo’s wailing voice carried in from outside, sounding like the call of a dying animal. Just as Poppa lunged for her, she ran down the stairs. The old man lost his balance and came tumbling after her, crashing down with a series of grunts and then a hard landing. The walls rattled.
She burst through the door onto the porch. Bobo was moving up the road she needed to be on, staggering, his flashlight shining. As Poppa came roaring out the door, she ran back toward the barn, the opposite of the way she needed to go. She knew that there was a path that led back into the woods. She headed for that, her mind going blank with panic.
She ran and ran until she had to stop, a big stitch in her side, breathless, her leg screaming with pain. Sobbing, exhausted, she kept moving forward. Everything had gone quiet. No one was chasing her; the lights from the house behind her were no longer visible.
There was no way to know how long she walked, or why Poppa and Bobo didn’t come after her. Maybe Bobo told Poppa that Momma was hurt; maybe they went back to help her. She’d almost forgotten that it was snowing. It accumulated on the path, not much, just a dusting. She looked up and watched as all the zillion little crystal flakes fell. The next thing she knew she was on her knees, overcome. She bent down and started to cry.
One of the girls she’d known here had been the fastest girl in
her school. But she wasn’t that girl. She was lost and afraid and she wanted to go home. She let herself rest on the cold, hard ground. Real Penny and Zoe weren’t afraid, she reminded herself. They wanted to go wherever it was they were going, to whatever was waiting
after
. Wherever it was, it had to be better than here. She heard the sound of her very own name whispered in the leaves around her.
You are home
, the voices said.
She let herself fall to her side. Even though it was cold, it felt good to rest. She was about to let her eyes close when she heard voices. Not the voices in the trees, or calls on the wind. But real voices. Men. Deep and rumbling. A conversation, people talking to each other.
“Up here, to the right.” It was real and solid.
“There’s
no way
to get a car up here.” Another voice, breathless with effort.
She looked up and saw off toward the end of the path, a strange flashing red-and-white light. She almost got up and ran in the other direction, then she realized what it was. The police. Using all her strength to pull herself to her feet, she started to run, opened her mouth to scream for help when she felt strong arms on her, a hard hand over her mouth. A white-hot flash of pain took her words away. Then, there was nothing.
TWENTY-SIX
T
he bouncing light was gone, and Finley was alone in the dark, debris thick and slick beneath her feet, trees reaching, tilting into the sky. She kept moving, oddly sure footed. A calm, a new and yet familiar feeling, rose up from her center, giving off a kind of inner heat that kept the cold at bay. She’d heard Eloise describe this, a knowing beyond knowledge. It was a kind of engine that powered you through, even when you weren’t sure exactly what you were doing. Something glowed up ahead, diffuse and large. She moved toward that as quickly as she could, without quite knowing why.
Jones Cooper was behind her; she could hear him moving heavily through the trees, grunting like an old bear. She saw his flashlight and called out to him occasionally so that he would know where she was, though she assumed he was following her tracks. There was enough light to see forms and the way through the trees. The snow was accumulating, growing thick on the branches, powdery slick beneath her feet.
She knew the way as if she’d been here before many, many times—even though she had no conscious memory of when that might have been. Once, after she first moved to The Hollows, she found herself in a small graveyard deep in the woods. She had no idea how she’d gotten there, apparently waking in the night and riding her bike to the edge of the woods, then walking through the trees. Eloise had followed her and brought her back to herself.
Finley knew that Abigail had wanted her to see that place, the place where she, Sarah, and Patience wanted to be buried. But their
ashes had been fed to dogs after they were burned as witches. There was nothing to bury. They were so tired, Abigail had told her, and they wanted to rest.
How do I help you rest?
Finley wanted to know. But no answer came then and it still hadn’t. But she kept finding herself back here in The Hollows Woods. What would Jung say? How would he explain what was happening to Finley?
She came upon the body first, nearly tripped over it. It was deflated, snow settling in the valleys of her eyes, in the folds of her clothing. Finley should have recoiled in horror, that would have been a natural reaction for someone who’d never seen a dead body before. But there was something so unreal about it, so curious, that instead Finley kneeled beside the woman with the ruined face.
Finley had
been here
when the woman died, when she’d been beaten to death with a flashlight. Not
there
, not in the flesh. But she had borne witness from some vantage point. Finley could hear the wailing she’d heard in her dreams, and the cracking soft thud of metal meeting flesh and bone. Was it this woman’s blood on Finley? She swayed between her dream memory and the present moment. The cold, the sound of Jones coming through the trees, the wind, that was now. She held on to it.
Jones came up behind her, his breathing labored with effort, and he shined his light on the corpse.
He came to his knees beside Finley and pointlessly put a hand to the woman’s throat. If there was ever a person more obviously dead, Finley didn’t want to see it.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“He calls her Momma.”
“Who does?” he asked.
“The boy from the trail,” she said. A name swam in her consciousness: Arthur.
“He killed her?” Jones already had his phone out.
Finley shook her head, not certain now. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”
She could see the flashlight coming up and down and hear him wailing. But it wasn’t a boy’s arm that she saw. It was a girl’s hand,
small and pale but powerfully strong. She couldn’t explain what she was seeing. Was it memory or vision or some hybrid of both?
“We have a body up here,” said Jones into the phone. “I’ll send you a pin of my location. You’ll see my vehicle where we came in through the trees. It’s possible we have a lead on Abbey Gleason.”
He released a breath, listening to whoever was on the line. Then, “Don’t ask.”
His flashlight beam fell on the white trunk of a birch that was red with a dripping, bloody handprint. Finley could see the broken branches, a smear of blood on the next tree. She got up and started to move, Jones’s voice growing fainter as she drew away.
“Jesus, kid, where are you going?” he called after her.
But she didn’t stop to wait for him, kept moving toward that light.
“Head for the light,” she called back.
“
What
light?” he called. “Wait for backup.”
But he was already far behind her, and she kept moving. She heard the call of the rose-breasted grosbeak, even though she knew that they had long ago flown south to warmer climates. The only other sound was the crunching of her movements, the wind.
When finally she came to the narrow road that ended in a low gate, she saw the tiny bird. He was black and white, with flashes of red, fat and happily singing his pretty song.
Little bird
. As she watched him, the white became snow, and the black faded into the darkness, and the red became the bloody handprint on the gate. His song faded into the wind.
Finley saw the source of the light she’d been following: a lamp burning over the doors of a barn, the ground around it a field of white. The door to the main house stood open. A red water pump sat on a raised platform, a bucket beside it.
Squeak-clink.
And she heard the worried lowing of a cow. This was it, the place she was supposed to find. She knew it. She’d never been more sure of anything in her life.
“Abbey!” she called. “Abbey Gleason!”
The wind picked up and blew a drift in the accumulated snow, sprayed glitter into the air, but that was the only answer.
“Abbey!”
Finley felt the cold for the first time as it seeped in through her thin jacket. Her shoes were soaked, the blood on her jeans cold to the touch.
She was about to call out again when a girl slipped from between the barn doors, which stood ajar. Finley took an eager step closer, her heart filling with relief, when another girl, this one with dark hair, emerged from the trees. Finley stepped through the gate, only to see another terribly thin child laying on the ground making snow angels.
Finley’s heart dropped, and she stood rooted watching them as they watched her. Waves of emotion pulsed through her—fear, anger, sadness. She gripped the icy gate to support herself, and the cold was razor sharp on her skin.
When the girl from the barn drew closer, Finley recognized her. Finley moved to go get her, to scoop her up in her arms and carry her away. But something stopped her. She stayed rooted as the girl moved closer, walking through the snow but leaving no trail behind her.
“She’s gone,” the girl said. “You’re too late.”
“No,” said Finley.
“You’re too late for all of us,” she said.
Finley bowed her head against a powerful rush of shame and anger. The blow of failure was so brutal that it nearly doubled her over. It filled her throat and took her breath. If she’d followed her instincts, she’d have come up here sooner. She
knew
that time was running out. Instead, she listened to everyone else. And now it was too late. How did Eloise stand it? The failures. No wonder she always looked so haunted, so sad. Instead of sadness, Finley felt the heat of anger. This was so wrong, so unfair.
When Finley looked up again, fists clenched, all the girls were gone. Jones came up behind her, panting with effort.
“Is this the place?” he asked.
“She’s not here,” said Finley. She bit back her tears of rage. “She’s gone.”
“You don’t know that,” he said. He put a strong hand on her arm. But she did know it. The whole place vibrated with negativity. Terrible things had happened here, just a few miles away from people who could have helped. It was infuriating, like trying to keep sand from slipping through your fingers.
Jones pocketed the flashlight he was holding, drew the gun he had in a leather holster at his waist. Finley looked at it and realized that she’d never seen a gun up close. It was flat and black and full of menace, gripped in his hand that was red and raw.
“Stay here,” he said. He gave her his signature frown—something between concern and disapproval. “Meaning, don’t go running off by yourself. You’re flesh and bone, you know. You’re not invincible.”
She was shivering now and hung back at the gate, trying to collect herself, while Jones knocked loudly on the door.
“Investigator Jones Cooper,” he said. “Your door is open and I’m coming inside.”
When he disappeared, she marveled at his nerve. Could he do that? Just walk into someone’s house? Then she thought about following him inside. But unarmed she was just a liability, wasn’t she? There were other sounds now, sirens and the approach of vehicles, though still distant. The police were coming. Too late.
Finley walked across the clearing to the barn and pushed open the big door, its hinges emitting a long squeal into the night. She saw the cow she’d heard, some chickens in a coop. The relative warmth of the indoors was a relief, even though she could still see her breath in silvery clouds. Her sinuses tingled with the smell of hay and the scent of animals in an enclosed space.
The little bird perched on an overturned bucket, singing its pretty song. She moved closer to it. It sat, puffed up and pretty, black eyes shining like jewels. When she reached for it, it disappeared. She moved to where he’d been, looking hard at the area around her. What had he wanted her to see? And then she saw a seam in what from a distance had looked like the wall of the barn. It ran from the ceiling to the ground. She looped her finger into a knot in the wood
and pulled. It was a door and it opened out toward her, revealing a hidden room.
A tiny cot, a chain with a cuff attached to a ring in the floor, a battered baby doll, a broken mirror on a beam over a small, cracked sink. Finley pushed away the ugliness of it, the horror that radiated from the floors, the wall. She bit back another choke of tears, that terrible anger that burnt like acid in her throat. This is where they hid her. When the police came looking, she was in here. How many others?
Where
were they now?
Over in the corner, a small girl wearing a pair of jeans and an owl tee-shirt, her hair white blonde, her skin moonstone, stood.
“He took us because we’re like you,” she said to Finley, as if she had been waiting. “He calls us Dreamers. We see the other things, the people who aren’t there.”
“Who took you?” Finley asked. “Who calls you that?”
“The old man,” she said. “You’ve seen him. He knows you.”
Finley took a step closer. For a moment Finley flashed on the girl’s face as it had been, bright with innocence, the glitter of mischief, a big toothy smile that could light the world. This girl was solemn and grim, her eyes just shining black holes containing all the knowledge of the world. Not a ghost, just a form of energy that Finley could recognize and understand. She couldn’t stop shivering.
“You can still save her,” the girl said.
“How?” asked Finley, moving a careful step closer. A rush of hope. “How can I save her?”
A shot rang out, shattering the quiet of the place. She felt the sound rattle her bones, spinning toward it. When Finley turned back, the girl was gone.