Finley walked across the clearing to the barn and pushed open the big door, its hinges emitting a long squeal into the night. She saw the cow she’d heard, some chickens in a coop. The relative warmth of the indoors was a relief, even though she could still see her breath in silvery clouds. Her sinuses tingled with the smell of hay and the scent of animals in an enclosed space.
The little bird perched on an overturned bucket, singing its pretty song. She moved closer to it. It sat, puffed up and pretty, black eyes shining like jewels. When she reached for it, it disappeared. She moved to where he’d been, looking hard at the area around her. What had he wanted her to see? And then she saw a seam in what from a distance had looked like the wall of the barn. It ran from the ceiling to the ground. She looped her finger into a knot in the wood and pulled. It was a door and it opened out toward her, revealing a hidden room.
A tiny cot, a chain with a cuff attached to a ring in the floor, a battered baby doll, a broken mirror on a beam over a small, cracked sink. Finley pushed away the ugliness of it, the horror that radiated from the floors, the wall. She bit back another choke of tears, that terrible anger that burnt like acid in her throat. This is where they hid her. When the police came looking, she was in here. How many others? Where were they now?
Over in the corner, a small girl wearing a pair of jeans and an owl tee-shirt, her hair white blonde, her skin moonstone, stood.
“He took us because we’re like you,” she said to Finley, as if she had been waiting. “He calls us Dreamers. We see the other things, the people who aren’t there.”
“Who took you?” Finley asked. “Who calls you that?”
“The old man,” she said. “You’ve seen him. He knows you.”
Finley took a step closer. For a moment Finley flashed on the girl’s face as it had been, bright with innocence, the glitter of mischief, a big toothy smile that could light the world. This girl was solemn and grim, her eyes just shining black holes containing all the knowledge of the world. Not a ghost, just a form of energy that Finley could recognize and understand. She couldn’t stop shivering.
“You can still save her,” the girl said.
“How?” asked Finley, moving a careful step closer. A rush of hope. “How can I save her?”
A shot rang out, shattering the quiet of the place. She felt the sound rattle her bones, spinning toward it. When Finley turned back, the girl was gone.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Wherever he was, it was so dark that he was essentially blind. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. And he had some vague awareness that he was hurt in a significant way; his leg felt odd, as if it didn’t quite fit on his body the way it was supposed to. There was pain, but it was oddly distant like a siren just out of earshot. Where was he? How had he gotten here?
He had a foggy recollection of Finley kneeling over a woman who was obviously dead, her face smashed. And Rainer had been trying to pull her away. Clearly, they were out of their depth, and the snow was getting heavier. They were both getting frostbite; Finley’s mouth was literally blue. It was time to take charge of the situation, he remembered, thinking, and if Finley thought he was being controlling and overbearing, well, that was too bad.
“Finley,” he said. “She’s dead.”
Finley hadn’t said a word, just kneeled there, rocking in a weird way. She’d gotten blood all over herself, and it was seriously freaking Rainer out. He was about to lift her to her feet and carry her out of there, when he saw something in the bushes, a dark form that slipped in and out of the trees and then was gone.
“Who’s out there?” he called. He didn’t like that his voice sounded high pitched and scared.
Man, he really hated the fucking woods. There was a primordial wildness that unsettled him. It was like you could die out here and your body would just become one with all the other organic debris. Animals and insects would come and feed on your flesh; your body would decompose in its own acids, and the earth would rise up to swallow it. No grave, no headstone. There was nothing clean or sanitized or palatable about it. There was not some part of you that stayed forever, body preserved in a coffin, ashes in an urn on someone’s mantel. You’d be gone as if you never were, just absorbed like a rotten log. Only your bones would bear witness to the form you’d held.
“But that’s what it is,” Finley had said, though Rainer hadn’t said a word. She’d done that before when she was like this. “That’s as it should be. We are one with the earth.”
“Sure,” he said. “But not today. We are out of here, Finley.”
He saw the shadow again, and then there was the laughter he’d heard before. Or was it just the strange way the wind sounded, caught in the hollows of the trees, whistling?
“I have to help her,” said Finley.
He leaned in as close as he could stand to the bloody mess on the ground. Dead. Definitely dead, skull smashed in, face just a mass of ruined flesh.
“She’s dead,” he said. “The only way we can help is to get the police.”
Finley was light, and he hoisted her easily.
“Put me down,” she protested weakly. Rainer headed back the way they came, with Finley pounding on his back. That’s when he saw her.