“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.