Ink and Bone(101)

Eloise shook her head, slow and sad.

“How could she stay with him?” asked Finley. “After everything he did.”

Eloise looked up at the sky, as if the answer might be there, then back at Finley. “Millie Crawley was quite undone by the loss of her daughter Penny. And she wasn’t all there to begin with, had a touch of what her son Arthur has, a slowness. She stayed because she had nowhere else to go, because she couldn’t leave Penny alone in the woods.”

Finley knew that it was so. She understood in that moment that it was Arthur she’d inhabited, his childish mind so confused, angry, and afraid. He was trapped here too with Abel.

“And then when Abel was done with them? Or Millie was? Or they became too much trouble? Then he just killed them?”

Eloise nodded grimly, her mouth pressed into a tight line of anger.

“He was also a Listener. He couldn’t stand the sound of The Whispers. He knew, like you guessed long ago, that they wanted something, all those voices.”

“What did they want?” asked Finley.

“They want to go home,” said Eloise.

“So,” Finley said, struggling to understand. “He thought the girls could quiet The Whispers, give them what they wanted—or needed?”

“Yes,” said Eloise. “Among other darker, more hateful things. He thought because they were Dreamers that they could show the lost ones home. But they were far too young. And their passing was as wrong and ugly as the others’. Even you wouldn’t have been able to help them, Finley. You would have just wound up trapped here, another voice in the trees, calling.”

“Calling who?”

Eloise lifted the flowers, which she’d turned into a necklace, and hung them around Finley’s neck. “Calling me. All this time, and I had no idea.”

“No,” said Finley, a sob nearly taking the word.

“Everything has its time and its season.”

“I’m not ready,” said Finley. She knew it was selfish, but she didn’t care. “I don’t want to stay here without you.”

“You were born ready, my girl,” said Eloise. “You are electric with power. It comes off you in waves. And you’re smart, and stubborn, and have an iron will like your mother. You were more ready at eight than I have ever been.”

“But I don’t want this,” said Finley. Tears fell, big and wet, an embarrassing flow, impossible to stop. Finley’s shoulders shook with her choking sobs.

The young and pretty Eloise leaned in close and kissed Finley’s tears away, pulled her close and then released her, rising.

“We don’t choose, Finley,” she said, her voice warm with loving kindness, but also somehow distant with resignation and understanding. “We are chosen.”

“Mimi,” cried Finley. “Mimi, please.”

Eloise opened the door to the church, and Finley found herself backing away from the energy that seemed to flow out of it, the same glittering black pull that emanated from the hole in the mine. It wasn’t tugging at her anymore, it was pushing her away, farther and farther until she stood on the other side of the stone wall that surrounded the graveyard. She was just an observer here, allowed to bear witness.

“Why do they need you?” Finley yelled. “Why do you have to be the one?”

“It’s my time,” said Eloise, as if she were talking about an appointment she’d made. She gave a wry smile. “It’s on my way.”

At the door, Eloise opened her arms, and Finley watched them. Abigail, Patience, and Sarah danced and tugged at one another. Faith corralled them toward the doorway, giving a fleeting glance back at Finley. Then The Burning Girl dimmed her fire and she was just Priscilla Miller, another victim of violence and neglect. She skipped through the open door. Abbey and the other Snow Angels, as Finley had come to think of them, moved uncertainly, and Eloise extended her hand. And there were others, faces Finley had never seen, so many others. They, too, moved into the luring darkness. But it was not dark at all, not really. It was the presence of all color, a great twist of all the shades and hues of this life and the next. It was the most beautiful and terrible thing Finley had ever seen.

When the parade had concluded, Eloise stood for a moment in the doorway and glanced back at Finley with the very face of love and compassion. But then she, too, was swallowed.

And then the church was just a church, a quiet little place nestled deep in The Hollows Wood. And there was silence, a blessed, -perfect silence, except for the singing of the rose-breasted grosbeak, its pretty notes filling the warm spring air. Finley dropped to her knees and let out a wail that was the single dark note of all her sadness and anger and loss.

When she came back to herself, she was on the edge of the hole in the mine, her torso hanging over the abyss with Jones Cooper holding on to her ankles, and a pale and shaken Chuck Ferrigno with a gun in his hand, the shot he’d just fired ringing in Finley’s head.





THIRTY-FOUR


The smell of coffee, the hum of the espresso machine woke her. Bacon, cinnamon, eggs, a culinary symphony of aroma enticed Finley to pull the pillow from her head. But then it all came crashing back, as it did every morning since she lost Eloise. And Finley stayed in bed, pulling the covers tight around her, turning away from the idea of breakfast, even though her stomach was growling and she couldn’t afford to lose any more weight. She looked like a ghoul, haunted and wasting.