by Lisa Unger
He took them from her and squinted at them. “These are too old to be useful,” he said. “Trust me. I grew up in this place and I was a cop here for a good long time. I’ve pulled kids out of those mines. There’s no accurate map in existence.”
“There was a man,” said Finley. “A guy named Michael Holt who dedicated himself to mapping out the mines. It wasn’t that long ago.”
“The guy you’re talking about was a nutcase,” said Jones.
“And his father before him,” she said. “He was a professor, wrote a couple of books.”
“Another crazy person,” said Jones. “He was a hoarder.”
Stubborn, Finley thought, holding on to fixed ideas that he didn’t want changed. Or was it that he didn’t want to think that they’d missed something when they were all looking for a missing girl? That they’d all been up there searching and she’d been there, just out of sight.
“Didn’t Michael Holt hide in the mines for a while?” Finley asked.
“He did,” Jones admitted.
“So it’s possible then that whoever took Abbey did the same,” said Finley.
Jones blew out that sigh again. “Even if he had, it was ten months ago.”
“But it would mean that maybe they didn’t have to go far,” said Finley. “That there was no car waiting. That maybe Abbey is still right here, in The Hollows.”
He looked at the maps, then up at the sky.
“All right,” he said after a moment. “Let’s head out there and see what you saw or didn’t see. We’ll take my vehicle because, I’ll tell you what, it doesn’t look like you should be driving. I’ll call Chuck.”
Finley guessed he was talking about Chuck Ferrigno, the only detective at The Hollows PD. There had been others, according to Eloise, but budget cuts had reduced the department to the bare bones, which is why Jones Cooper consulted regularly.
A pretty woman appeared in the doorway as Jones and Finley were headed over toward the SUV. He walked to her and they exchanged a few quiet words, a quick embrace, and she went back into the house, casting a motherly, concerned glance in Finley’s direction. Maggie Cooper offered Finley a wave, then disappeared back inside. She came back a minute later with a blanket and some towels, and handed them to Jones. After giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, she closed the door.
In the car, Finley used the towels and some antibacterial ointment Jones had in the center console to wipe some of the blood off her hands. Then she wrapped herself in the blanket, still shivering, foggy headed, afraid.
“There was a girl there, too,” Finley said, as he pulled out of the driveway. Finley could see her, slight and dirty, standing among the trees. Her face was a strange blur, in focus but not. A pulse of frustration moved through Finley. What was happening to her?
“Are you sure?” he asked.
Finley nodded. She wasn’t crazy; she knew that much. Whatever she saw was real; she just couldn’t get the pieces to coalesce, couldn’t understand where she’d been when she saw what she saw.
“Who was she?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. How many times had she said that? She thought that she must sound like an idiot. She bet Eloise was never so uncertain. “Her face is unclear. They were deep in the woods.”
“How did you get up there?” he asked. “Did you walk from the path?”
She wasn’t going to say “I don’t know” again.
“Is there another way up into the woods?” she asked instead. “Is there a road that goes up to wherever someone who veered off that trail might go?”
Jones seemed to consider her question. “There’s a rural road that leads to private drives connected to old properties—all of which were thoroughly searched when Abbey disappeared.”
She’d never been up that way on her bike. “Who lives up there?”
Jones shrugged. “Back when I was a kid, we called them hill people. I suppose that wouldn’t be considered politically correct these days.”
“Hill people?” asked Finley. The phrase sounded strange, made up.
“Yeah, you know, folks who live off the grid. They have generators, hunt for their food, come into town to do odd jobs, get supplies. But mostly they stay up past The Hollows Woods.”
Finley tried to process this. It was totally new information to her, something her grandmother had never mentioned, something she’d never read online. “You mean like a Deliverance kind of thing?”
“Well,” said Jones. “That’s a little oversimplified. They’re just people living the way folks used to live. They’ve rejected the modern world. Some might argue that they have good reason. Not everybody wants wireless internet, a smart phone, and a latte or whatever from Starbucks.”
“So they just live up there and never come down? The kids don’t go to school? What if someone gets sick, or dies? What if a crime is committed?”
Jones shook his head. “The kids get homeschooled, some of them. We’ve had a few people come down for medical care—but you know they don’t have money, insurance. Most of the babies aren’t born in hospitals. They bury their own dead up there.”
“Is that legal?”
“It’s legal to live the way you want to live,” said Jones. He had pulled out his phone and was dialing. “Within reason, anyway. This is America.”
“That’s not true,” said Finley. “You can’t just not have a Social Security number, not pay taxes, bury your own dead. Can you? Don’t the police ever go up there?”
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?”
“Pr
etty 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
She 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 he
r 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
The 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.
