Ink and Bone(13)

Next, she typed in: “things that squeak.” An article from Better Homes and Gardens topped the list with a bunch of potentially squeaky things—the door, the floor, drawers, a bed frame, a mattress, a faucet. The faucet gave Finley pause, the image of the running water. She closed her eyes and saw a rusty stream of water pouring onto the ground. But was it connected to the sound?

Squeaking engine, definition of squeak (a short, high noise), bicycle noises, a common problem with the rear wheel of an Audi; the coins on the bus go clink, clink, clink—a children’s rhyme; the sound one blogger said the rusty wheel on his old wagon made. Finley chased links and read chats and articles and blog posts until hours had passed and her back started to ache from hunching over her laptop.

Finally, she closed the lid on her computer, her brain fried. How did it get to be ten thirty? She noticed then, with a giddy sense of relief, that the squeaking was gone. She got up from the bed and stretched high, hearing her neck crack. Then she walked down the hall.

In the bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror, ran fingers damp from the faucet through her spiky pink and black hair. She put the glasses she wore for reading on the white porcelain of the old sink, lined her eyes with black pencil, put on some lipstick.

Back in her room, she changed from her cotton bra to a lacier affair, something her mother sent with a designer label and a big price tag. (Amanda was the queen of mixed messages. Really—what kind of mother buys her single young daughter lingerie after a lifetime of hammering into her the consequences of casual sex?)

Finley pulled on a tight black tee-shirt—cotton, not too sexy. Sexy enough. Still in jeans and boots, her jacket over her shoulder, helmet under her arm, she walked quietly down the hall. The television was on in her grandmother’s room, but Finley didn’t knock. She didn’t want the look, the not-saying. Downstairs, the little boy was playing with trains in the living room. Faith—in her old-timey black dress, with her salt-and-pepper hair pulled tight into a bun and her perpetual disapproving frown—stood predictably by the door, that look of warning on her face.

“Go away,” Finley told her.

And Faith obeyed, but only to turn and clomp up and down the hallway, calling attention to herself. Finley really couldn’t stand her. Even though the woman had suffered and was ostensibly (according to Eloise) well meaning, she really got under Finley’s skin—for all sorts of reasons.

But then Finley was gone, straddling the bike, the engine beautifully loud in her head, traveling fast, too fast, up the long rural road into town.


*

Finley couldn’t remember how old she was when she first started seeing The Three Sisters. Young—maybe even as young as five. Or maybe they had always been there. However old she’d been, Finley already understood that there were people around her that were not visible to others. And she already knew better than to say anything about them, because it scared her mother.

There was a certain frozen look Amanda would get on her face when Finley asked about the old woman at the table or the girl sleeping under her bed. There was a blanching of the skin, a dropping of the jaw, kind of like the look her mother got when their cat Azriel brought dead mice or birds into the kitchen and deposited them on the kitchen floor. A gift certainly, but not the type anyone would ever want.

There’s no one there, Finley.

She’s right there in the blue dress.

Stop it right now. This is not funny.

Confused, Finley would fall silent. Thinking about that now—how her mother knew what Finley was and what was happening to her—still made her angry. Finley had been so ashamed and afraid, confused, had held so much in, when all Amanda would have had to do was pick up the phone and call Eloise.

She never wanted this—for either of us, her grandmother explained. Eloise was always making excuses for Amanda.

You can’t ignore a thing just because you don’t want it, countered Finley.

Parents make mistakes, usually out of love.

Control is not love.

Oh, Finley. A sigh. There’s a lot you don’t understand about mother-hood.

Finley knew right away that The Three Sisters were different from the other people she saw. Those who came before them were almost like images on a screen, projections with no awareness of Finley. They often repeated the same action—like the old woman knitting the same row on the same blanket over and over. Or the girl clutching her teddy bear and turning over onto her side in sleep—over and over. Finley had been too young to intuit that perhaps they wanted or needed something from her. Anyway, the others never stayed for very long.

The Three Sisters had movement, awareness of Finley and their surroundings. They were curious, talkative. Patience was the youngest, the sweet one—slender with dark hair and big doe eyes. Sarah was the middle girl; she was a follower. There was a pleasant plumpness to her, a twinkle to her eyes, roses in her cheeks. She didn’t talk much. And then there was Abigail, the oldest. With her mane of auburn hair, that mischievous knowing to her gaze, she was the one who always got Finley in trouble.

But since Finley had come to The Hollows they hadn’t been around as much—maybe because Finley was busy with school and helping Eloise with “the work” and the house. She was busy in ways she hadn’t been before. Engaged was the word. Finley wouldn’t say she was happy exactly, but she wasn’t raging, miserable, or looking to act out the way she had been when she was back in Seattle. She understood herself better here; she was calmer.