Ink and Bone(95)

She was about to close her eyes when she saw a point of light ahead, a tiny burst of white and red, a flicker of inky blue-black. And the birdsong, the song of the bird she heard the day Poppa took her. She remembered looking and looking for him, knowing that he must be as pretty as his voice and so he was. He flew toward her, then perched above singing, fat and puffy, reveling in his own prettiness. How could she see him in this dark? But she did. Maybe she was dreaming? His song was so sweet. Little Bird. Her daddy’s nickname for her. And his song reminded her that her family was waiting for her; she knew they were. But then the little bird was gone, disappearing like ink into ink. The sound of his song turned into something else, notes so beautiful and familiar that she almost couldn’t let herself believe that they might be real.

Abbey! Abbey Gleason!

“Mommy?” She could barely whisper, her voice cracked and dry.

A white glow approached, the sound of steps and voices yelling. And then a light, causing her to blink. She heard the sharp intake of a breath, a shocked pause, and then yelling.

“Abbeyabbeyabbeyohmygodabbey!”

Arms warm and strong lifted her. She was dreaming. Dreaming those soft arms, and the scent of her hair, and the notes of her mother’s voice pulled taut with fear and worry and joy. And her daddy taking her and holding her close, carrying her like he used to do before he said, You’re a big girl. You’re too old to carry now. Which was no less sad because she knew it was true.

“Oh my God, she’s so thin,” he said. “There’s nothing to her.”

“My baby,” she said, holding tight. “My little girl.”

And if it was a dream, so be it. It would be her last, and she would dwell in that moment of enveloping love and blissful relief from pain and fear forever. But there was something wrong. Something not right. The woman wasn’t her mother. And the man wasn’t her daddy.

Before the world went black again, she managed to tell them: “My name’s not Abbey. It’s Eliza.”





THIRTY-TWO


Rainer was obsessed with survival stories, those people who had found themselves in extreme circumstances and through will, luck, or accident had emerged from scenarios in which others had perished. The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook was his Bible—what to do if you’re caught in a flash flood, attacked by a shark, wrestling an alligator, have to jump off a building and land in a Dumpster. According to Rainer, one of the biggest factors that determined survival—other than a positive attitude—was hand strength, the ability to hang your body weight from your fingers.

Of course, this didn’t motivate him to strengthen his fingers or exercise in any way. He just thought it was notable. Finley, as she hung from her fingertips over a dark abyss, was praying she’d have the opportunity to tell him that he was right.

She gazed up into the eyes of the boy who pushed her, his feet next to her fingers. She saw a helpless regret on his face, a kind of sad mystification.

“Please,” she whispered. “You don’t have to do this.”

Then she was standing in the corner of his bedroom while he slept. The room was filled with smoke, and orange licked under the door. The house seemed to creak and groan, and the floor was hot beneath her feet. She was there and not there.

The door slammed open and a younger version of Poppa stood in the frame, a black shadow against a backdrop of swirling orange, red, and white. An intense blast of heat filled the room.

“Bobo!” he called. He moved into the room. There was nothing in him yet of the ghoul he would become. Still Finley could see what he was, a bad man with dark appetites. But it hadn’t started to waste him. He was young and strong, handsome in a wiry, lanky way. “Fire!”

But Bobo couldn’t be roused. The smoke, the poison of it had already leaked into him. He was small, not even six. Poppa lifted him easily and carried him from the room. Finley followed as he started down the hall toward another bedroom, but the flames were wild and there was no way through, a wall of heat driving him back.

As the man ran down the stairs, there was a horrible crash above. He burst through the front door before a great explosion blew him out the rest of the way. He fell to the ground with the lifeless child in his arms. On the ground, a woman wailed staring at the house, her eyes wild and wide with grief and pain.

“Penny! My baby! Penny!”

She never even glanced at the boy, didn’t reach for him or check if he was breathing. She could only scream her daughter’s name, a blade of sound cutting the night. Finley was the watcher; she saw everything. The abuse, the neglect, the desperate act of a girl who’d had enough.

When Finley came back, she was still hanging, her fingers slipping a sliver at a time, dirt giving way beneath them.

“She set the fire so he wouldn’t come for her anymore,” Bobo whispered. “Penny tried to kill us all. But Momma still loved her best.”

“Help me, Bobo,” said Finley.

“Bobo.” Poppa’s distant voice. “Is she gone?”

“Yes, Poppa,” he said, holding her eyes. “I put her with the others.”

She thought he’d step on her hands and that she’d fall to her death. How deep was the hole? What was it? What was down there? Instead, he stepped back disappearing from her view. She wanted to scream for him, but she’d just alert the old man. She heard Bobo blow out the candle, and a total darkness fell.