Ink and Bone(70)

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She started walking.

“Finley,” he said. It was so dark, unnaturally quiet for a city boy. It made him laugh that people were always so afraid of big cities. These quiet rural places where no one was around to hear you scream? These were the places that gave Rainer the creeps. Anyone, anything could be lurking in those woods. “Let’s get someone. This isn’t safe.”

He didn’t really expect her to listen. She was already moving fast. He lingered, took his phone from his pocket. The signal was weak. They didn’t have any food or water. They weren’t dressed warmly enough, and the snow was still falling, heavier now.

“Do you hear it?” she asked from up ahead.

“No,” he said.

He never heard what Finley heard or saw what she saw. Only when he drew for her body did he get pictures sometimes, things he saw as vividly as if he were watching it on a screen. People like The Three Sisters or the boy with the train. But he suspected that it had to do with her and not with him, some kind of vibe she was shooting off. He wasn’t like her. If there was something more to the world than what he could see with his eyes, he’d never experienced it. Dreams that came true; people that weren’t there; sounds that no one could hear? No. He’d dropped acid a couple of times, but even those hallucinations were tame and meaningless.

“Fin,” he said. He’d lost sight of her, so he jogged a little until he came around the bend and saw her slight shadow up ahead.

Then he did hear something, some kind of distant wailing. All the hair came up on the back of his neck, his arms. Was it an animal? A person? Shit.

“Finley,” he yelled. He had to run now to catch up with her. When he did, he grabbed hold of her arm. She stopped and turned to him, but her eyes were blank.

“Let’s go back,” he said. “We’ll go get that guy Cooper. Or the cops.”

He heard it again, the distant wailing.

“You go,” she said and tugged her arm back, kept walking.

Rainer stood. He should go back; he knew that. He should get Eloise or Cooper, or even the police. Or he should pick Finley up and carry her back. She was no match for him physically; he could easily pick her up and throw her over his shoulder and carry her back to the car, even kicking and screaming. But he didn’t do any of those things. He did what he always did when Finley took off. Into the dark, with the snowfall growing heavier, he followed. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard the faint sound of laughter.





PART TWO


ANGELS IN THE SNOW


You cannot hide in snow No matter where you go You leave a trail behind That anyone can find.

—Anonymous

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; Who looks inside, awakes.

—Carl Jung





Snow falls on The Hollows, a silent silver glitter through the starless night, resting on trees, coating roofs, dusting the ground. The wind whispers through the branches and the temperature drops. Where water was, ice forms. Winter has arrived, bringing death with it. Everything green and bright will fade to brown, then rot to black, then return to the earth as all things must.

The Hollows sleeps; houses are dark and shops are closed. Most people are tucked into bed, dreaming. But out deep in the woods, a girl, small and barefoot runs through the trees. No one can hear her, and no one knows where she is. Except the boy who follows her, wailing for his lost mother who lies still and lifeless far behind them both.

Another girl with hot-pink hair and pictures on her skin kneels over the dead woman, getting blood on her hands, her clothes. A young man stands beside her, watching, saying that they have to go, that they need help and can’t go on alone. It’s too cold; they’re lost, and the phone isn’t working. They have to go back the way they came and find help.

Wake up, Finley, he says, pulling at her. But she can’t hear him.

Off in the trees, he hears something, the sound of a little girl crying. He follows the sound.

Who’s there? he calls. “Hello?”

The darkness swallows him. And the girl with the pictures on her skin doesn’t notice, because she is there and not there.

A truck drives up the rural road from town. The man who drives it is as much a part of this place as anyone. His bones are as old as the trees, grown from this place, roots dug deep. He has lived here all his life, like his father before him, and his father’s father and so on. He will never leave, and when he dies, his body will become one with the ground. He will be part of The Hollows forever. He will be a blade of grass, a knot in the trunk of an old oak, the blossom on a flower. What he is in life matters little to The Hollows, which never judges its children.

Outside of town, Eloise Montgomery stirs in her sleep, troubled. Maybe it’s the wind moaning through the eaves, or The Whispers in the trees telling her that something is not right. In her yard, the oldest oak in The Hollows grows. Its branches reach high up into the sky, its roots dig deep, deep into the earth, burrowing, fingers taking hold. The leaves that were fresh and bright green in the summer have turned from gold to brown and fallen from the branches. What hasn’t been raked away returns to the ground. Even as the death of winter comes to The Hollows, already it is that much closer to the rebirth of spring.

She wakes up with a start and sits up in bed, listening. She walks from her bedroom and moves down the hall. Standing at the doorway to her granddaughter’s bedroom, she heaves a long worried sigh when she finds it empty. She hesitates, then goes back to her own room and starts to dress, pulling on warm clothes and heavy boots. Downstairs, she dons a coat and scarf. She stands a moment in the hallway, as if considering her actions. From the table by the window, she picks up a photograph and looks at it for a long time. Then she puts it down and walks out the door, careful on the slick porch, taking mincing steps up the snowy walk to her waiting car. She climbs inside and starts the engine, even though she doesn’t like driving in bad weather. She doesn’t see well in the dark anymore, and the going will be slow.