by Lisa Unger
Finley staggered under the weight of a terrible sadness, pushing herself up against the wall for support. She saw, lived each horrible moment of abuse, neglect, and murder, flashing before her eyes like a stuttering horror reel. Not just those, but more, so many more. The gravity of each event sucked all the air from her lungs. And when it was over, the boy with the trains was gone, and Finley lay weak on the ground, shaking. She turned on her side and curled up and began to weep. Not for just the lost girls and all their sorrow, but for herself, the one who had to bear witness. She didn’t want to watch. She didn’t want to see how broken was the world, how flawed were its denizens. She didn’t want to see.
But then there was a horrible screaming. It filled the tunnel, the sound of a little girl in pure terror. Finley pulled herself together, got up, and started to run deeper into the tunnel toward the sound. She felt like she had been running forever when she turned a hard corner, and was nearly blinded by the sudden light.
The scene revealed itself in pieces. A lantern lit on the wall, its light weirdly bright. There was a wide dark hole in the ground, a gaping emptiness that seemed to pull at the energy in the room. A towering ghoul of a man struggled with a little girl who was fighting like a berserker as he tried to drag her toward the hole.
“Stop!” Finley screamed.
Her voice was a bolt of lightning, shocking and powerful, moving everything else to stillness and silence. The man stared at her a moment, stunned. She knew him, the gardener who cared for the grounds at her school. She remembered his searing, haunting stare. Now those eyes filled her with cold terror.
She lunged at him, her shoulder connecting with his skeletal middle and sending them both crashing back against the hard wall. The girl was knocked to the side, where she lay motionless. Finley scrambled to her feet, and when he tried to get up, she used the sole of her thick motorcycle boot to kick him in the face. She saw the girl stir.
“Run, Abbey,” she said. “Run!”
But the girl didn’t move. Abel Crawley tried to lift himself, then quickly lunged at Finley’s legs, knocking her to the ground hard. The hole yawned to her right. Rising from it was a foul odor, the breath of death so strong that Finley gagged.
“What is that?” she screamed at him. The horrible possibilities took shape in her mind. “What’s down there?”
He had a strong grip on her ankle, impossibly strong, and pulled her closer to the edge of the hole. But she flipped herself and sat up quickly to punch him in the face as hard as she could. Pain traveled white hot up her arm. She’d forgotten how much it hurt to hit someone. Her early years had been spent wrestling and play fighting with Alfie and all his stupid friends. They were afraid of her, not because she was strong but because she was so ferocious. When you were small, you learned to claw and bite and pinch to get away. It always ended up with one of the boys crying. Even if she had been hurt, she’d never let them see her cry.
She had developed a good right hook, and she used it now to bash Crawley in the face again, eliciting a roar of pain and a spray of blood. But then he was on top of her, his strength, his weight too much. She was pinned. Never let them pin you, never let it be a match of strength alone. That was the first rule of being a girl in a group of boys. His mouth twisted into a cruel bloody smile, and struggle as she could, she couldn’t get away.
“You can kill me,” she said. “But they know who you are and where you are. And they’ll find you. You’ll never hurt anyone again.”
The girl was a bullet shot from a gun. She flew over them screeching, dive-bombing into Crawley, knocking him back and off Finley. She heard the unsettling crack of skull against rock. He slumped against the wall. The girl went tumbling, and Finley dove for her, catching her by the arm just as her body went flying over the edge into the hole. Using all her strength, Finley pulled the girl back onto the ground. Both of them lay spent, panting with effort. Crawley started moving.
Finley pulled the girl to her feet. It was then that she saw her face for the first time and drew in a ragged breath of surprise. The girl blinked, her gaze glassy and confused.
“Is he dead?” she asked. “Did I kill him?”
Finley could feel the girl’s shine, but it was just a candle flicker, something she might outgrow. She’d grow up to be an intuitive person, might even have a few dreams, or see shades and shadows that others never saw. Her rational mind, her intelligence would rule her, though. Those moments would be easily explained away. She wouldn’t be like Finley. Lucky girl.
“Don’t let him take you,” the girl whispered as she drew closer. “Don’t let him.”
Finley grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her close.
“Run,” she said, through teeth gritted in fear. “Don’t stop for anything. Turn right out of this tunnel and run.”
The girl gave her a tight nod. And then she broke free, disappearing into the darkness. In her place, a form appeared, slim, not much taller than Finley. She knew him, not by face, but by his sad, angry, lost energy. When he moved into the light, she saw that he was a youngish man, maybe in his thirties, though it was hard to say. He seemed young and older at the same time. Lines of blood creased his face like warrior stripes, his breathing ragged and shallow.
“Put her with the others, Bobo,” the old man growled to him, getting to his feet.
“No, Poppa,” said Bobo.
His face wobbled between a frown and a strangled smile, as if he were straining under a terrible weight. A long moment passed between Finley and Bobo, a flicker of recognition in his otherwise blank eyes. Finley held up her hands, offered him a smile.
“You don’t have to do what he tells you,” she said. “Not anymore. The police are coming, yes. But they’ll understand what he made you do, that you helped when you could. You saved her from Momma. I was there. I saw you save her.”
“They’ll take you from me,” said the old man more loudly. “You killed your Momma, boy. They’re going to lock you away forever.”
Bobo looked between Finley and Poppa, the sound of his breathing filling the cavern in which they all stood. There were other sounds coming now, wafting like distant music on the cold still air.
“They’re coming for you,” said Poppa.
Finley inched closer to Bobo, away from the dark, empty hole. What was down there? The energy, a cold breath inhaling and exhaling, tugged at her and repelled her. She wanted to get away, and yet a part of her didn’t want to. There was something, a hypnotic hum, something dark that lured and pulled. She’d felt it before, on her bike when she drove too fast, when she explored that abandoned warehouse with Rainer, when she played chicken on the train tracks with her friends watching that moon of light growing closer, hearing the wailing of the horn. When she was under Rainer’s needle, feeling the heat and the pain, the metal in her flesh. How deep could he go? Her bones vibrated with the pain of it. She wanted it to stop—How much longer, Rain?—and yet she didn’t. She wanted it, the pain, to swallow her, the ink to leak into her soul and color her blue-black so that she disappeared. Because she was tired, tired of being what she was, tired of trying to alternately hide it and understand it. It was always there in her, that desire to surrender to the dark.
It was so close to the skin, that hunger for the darkness, that when Bobo tackled her, knocking her back, she didn’t even try to keep herself from falling. She let it rise up and swallow her whole.
THIRTY-ONE
Penny was on her knees, crawling, her leg throbbing, her body so heavy, her energy so used up. She was free from them, but she couldn’t go.
She could hardly move, as if there were still a tether to her ankle. Too much was asked of her and she could not perform, like sometimes in math class where the numbers on the board floated, frustratingly incomprehensible. Sometimes she’d get so angry over her homework that she’d cry. Oh, honey, don’t cry, her mom would say. I don’t get it either.
She let the ground take her, falling from her hands and knees with a sigh to her bel
ly. She felt the earth rising up and embracing her, the dirt and blood in her mouth. She wasn’t sad or afraid as much as she was tired.
The tunnel was alive with sound, voices behind, voices ahead. She could hear some kind of song that was eerie and somehow beautiful. Little flowers in the garden, yellow, orange, violet, blue. The echo of it was like a lullaby. That’s what she was, a flower in the garden, attached to the ground beneath her, rooted, one with the black earth. She couldn’t leave this place. She belonged here.
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.
She tried to find purchase with her foot, but the wall was slick, nothing to put her toe on. Fingers slipping. Darkness calling. Her mother had tried so hard to keep Finley from this place. Amanda knew all along that something horrible would happen to Finley here, hadn’t she? Some deep mother’s instinct, or maybe she was more like Eloise than she let on. And all Finley could do was rail against her and rebel, do exactly everything her mother didn’t want her to do. As her fingers lost their grip, she was sorry, truly sorry for being such a little brat. She hoped on the other side, she could find a way to go back and tell her mom that she’d been right all along. Amanda deserved that.
She couldn’t hold on anymore, not with the dark pulling her and her strength waning, fingers cramping. She was going to fall. How far down? What was down there? She closed her eyes and prayed.
Voices and light broke into her awareness.
“I heard her.” Rainer’s voice was strident with worry. “I heard her voice.”
“The tunnels play tricks,” said someone else. “It’s hard to know where sounds are coming from.”
“Yeah,” said Rainer. “The tunnels play tricks. But I heard her.”
“I’m here,” she called, her voice strangled with effort. “Hurry, I can’t hold on!”
“Finley!” Rainer called. “Where are you?”
“In the hole!” she said. “Here!”
“Oh my God—where?” She saw a light bouncing on the ceiling. It gave her strength. She gripped her fingers, worked her feet, still struggling to find someplace to dig her toes in.
“Here,” she said again to give them the sound of her voice. She wasn’t going to make it; her fingers slipped another millimeter, the dirt soft, breaking away.
“Rainer,” she managed, her voice strangled with effort, with fear. “I’m sorry I brought us here. Tell my mom I’m sorry.”
“Tell her yourself,” he said.
There were strong hands on her wrists then and she was looking up at Rainer, into his beautiful dirty face.
“Hold on,” he said, gripping hard on her arms, taking her weight. She felt blessed relief, started to wee
p with it. “We are so going back to Seattle. This place is fucked.”
She laughed a little, more a choking sound as he pulled her. But even then she knew it wasn’t true. She was sorry that she hadn’t listened to her mother, that she’d come to The Hollows. But she also knew that this was where she belonged.
Jones caught up to them then, and he and Rainer lifted Finley out of the hole. When she was safe on the ground, she started to cry, dropping into Rainer, who held on to her tight. She let him, clung to him hard. She didn’t even think to ask him what the hell he was doing in the mines.
“The girl,” she said to Jones. “It wasn’t Abbey Gleason. It was Eliza Fitzpatrick. Did they find her? Do you have her?”
“The police have her,” said Jones. “She’s going to be okay. But the Gleasons—”
He let the sentence trail with a sad shake of his head. “Eliza’s mother has been called. At least we’re bringing one little girl home.”
The signs were all there, Finley just hadn’t understood them completely. The Little Bird, the boy with the train turning out to be Eliza’s brother. She tried to stop the downward spiral of self-recrimination, but she could feel its tug. If she’d been more, better, more open—if she’d focused more on understanding, rather than setting boundaries, would the messages have been clearer?
“Poppa and Bobo,” said Finley. “They’re gone.”
“The police are searching for them,” said Jones. He peered off into the darkness with a squint. “There’s nowhere to hide down here.”
Finley knew he was wrong. There were a million places for them to hide; they belonged to these tunnels, in these woods. The Hollows would hide them until she was ready to give them up. Finley tamped down the tickle of unease. We’re not done here, she thought.
“How did you get down here?” she asked Rainer as she helped him stand. He was hurt, his leg stiff and bloody, his face pale and strained. Jones stood and dusted himself off, and headed in the direction of lights and voices.
