She didn’t see the opening at first, almost walked right past it. But there it was, obscured by trees that had grown around it, by snow-covered debris. It was the trail in the snow that she saw, a long, thick gully, as if something had been dragged. When she got to the crooked opening of the mineshaft, she saw a bent nail, red with fresh blood, the wooden slats tossed to the side. A vein started to throb in her throat. Not fear, but an urgency that was beyond fear.
There was a kind of warmth inside the shaft, a breath blown from the darkness. At least she was blocked from the wind. Finley followed the sound she heard emanating from deep inside the darkness. She should be afraid; anyone would be. And her heart was an engine in her chest, pulse pounding. But it was as if that fear dwelled on another level of her awareness. What her body knew to fear, her mind did not. For better or for worse, she was exactly where she needed to be. She used the light from her phone to guide her way.
TWENTY-NINE
She’d never heard a man cry before. It was a strange sound—ugly and hopeless. Sometimes her dad got a little watery in his eyes when he told her that he loved her, or that he was very proud of her. But sobbing, moaning? No. Not even when he’d been shot had he cried. Then, he’d just been yelling for her to get away.
So the sound was weird in her dream. In it, there was a bear, a great snorting bear, wobbling toward her. She could smell it, a musty, sweet-foul odor that climbed up her nose and stayed there tickling. She felt bad for it. The way it was wobbling, she could see that it was unwell. But she knew, too, that it was dangerous, that one swipe of his great paw would slice her open. It was coming on fast, and there was nowhere for her to run.
“Go back!” she yelled. “Go away, bear!”
Then she was awake and it was dark. So dark that, for a long moment, she couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open or not. The wailing was nearby, echoing all around her. Where was she? She struggled to remember what had happened and slowly it came back—Real Penny, Momma, the voices in the woods. Her head was heavy with pain, and she felt so leaden and sick. Once she’d had the flu and her mother wanted to take her to the doctor, and she wailed, begging to stay in bed. She was so tired then, couldn’t imagine rousing herself. Her daddy had to carry her, and even that was hard. She felt like that. Worse.
The crying seemed to come from above her, from the right, from the left. Where was she? The ground beneath her was dirt, the air heavy, thick with a scent she couldn’t name. She never thought she’d wish she were in her barn room on the hard cot. But she did wish that now. Even that was better than this.
“Mommamommamomma.”
Bobo. The sound he made, it was horrible. Once she’d heard a dog howling, a mournful, desperate sound. She and her daddy had been walking up Eighty-Sixth Street. He’d taken her for frozen yogurt at the deli, and they were licking big creamy towers and laughing about something when they saw the small, tawny dog shut inside a beat-up yellow hatchback. It was hot, the kind of day in the city where heat rose up off the blacktop and shimmered, and everyone was cranky and flushed. The driver’s side window was open, but just a crack. When they approached the car, the little dog came to the window and tried to push his nose out. She’d felt so bad for him that she gave him some of her frozen yogurt, his pink tongue slurping out the window crack.
“Don’t do that honey,” said her daddy.
Her father had called the police on his cell phone, and they’d waited as the dog continued to bark and howl, then went quiet. A man finally came out of a brownstone and yelled at them to get away from his car.
“You shouldn’t leave your dog in the car like that,” her father said. “I called the police.”
“You should mind your own business,” said the man, who wore a tank top and had so many tattoos on his arms that she couldn’t see any skin. He had an earring in his lip, too. A thin mouth and a long, mean nose. He climbed into his ugly car and drove off, the dog perking up instantly. But that sound, it stayed with her, the sound of something trapped, calling for help.
“Bobo?” she said.
“She’s dead,” he wailed. “Momma’s dead.”
She couldn’t see him, which she didn’t like. She forced herself up from where she was lying and pushed against the wall. Slowly she started to see shapes, light draining from an opening to her right. Was that him? That lumpy object on the ground? She started to move away, toward the light. That must be the way out.
And she had to get back, back the way she came in, back toward the lights and the voices of the men in the clearing. She stood and started edging along the wall. Where was she? In a tunnel? Something in the air tickled her throat. But then the flashlight came on and there was Bobo, face streaked with blood, eyes bloodshot from crying. She shrieked, a loud echoing sound that seemed to go on forever. She backed away from him.
Then she heard another voice, Poppa’s distant growl off in the distance toward the light. And something else, a scraping, dragging sound as if something large were being moved.
“He’s going to put you with the others,” Bobo said.