The Whispering Hollows (14 page)

“Maggie made me,” he said.

His wife, Maggie, really was Jones's better half. A child and family psychologist, a native of The Hollows, and just a good, strong woman, she'd helped a lot of people find their way. Maggie and Eloise also had a long history. Longer than Maggie knew—until recently.

“How's your mother-in-law doing?”

Eloise knew that Elizabeth Monroe, former Hollows High School principal and longtime friend, had been ailing. After a bad fall some years back, she hadn't been the same.

“Old and cranky as ever,” said Jones. “But she's holding her own.”

Elizabeth was a tough old bird, and she and Jones knocked heads quite a bit, but there was love there, too.

They sat a minute. Jones drained his cup.

“You do your thing?” he said. “I'll do mine?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Jones looked at her oddly. That was Finley's phrase. Since the girl had moved in, Eloise had found herself using new words like, “Seriously?” delivered in that flat, sarcastic way. And, “Whatevs” supposedly to indicate a disdainful laissez-faire attitude.

“You sound like Ricky,” said Jones. “Of course, I'm not supposed to call him that anymore. It's Rick now.”

Ricky was Jones's son who was just about to graduate from Georgetown University.

“Did I tell you?” asked Jones. “He wants to be a shrink like his mother.”

There was a twinkle to Jones that wasn't there a moment ago. It was fatherly pride.

“That's wonderful,” said Eloise. “You must be so proud of him.”

She could see it in Ricky, that concern for others that Maggie possessed. Jones had it, too, but the energy was slightly different. He wasn't a Sensitive. But he was a man who saw everything. He was a fixer, a controller.

Jones got up and carried their empty cups over to the sink, rinsed them both, and put them in the rack on the counter.

“I'm just glad we didn't dump a quarter mil into that place only to find out he wanted to join a rock band.” Now he wore a bit of a frown.

Ricky was also an accomplished guitar player, and he did in fact play in a semisuccessful band that worked around the DC area. Ricky was musical, a creative. Free in a way that Jones had facilitated but couldn't understand. He was threatened by it, envied it.
What did you want to do, Jones Cooper, that you pressed down deep?
Eloise wondered.

He moved toward the door, and Eloise followed. Out on the porch, the girl was gone. Usually, Eloise had to go looking for people. If Jones hadn't showed up, she'd probably have found herself seeking him out not really knowing why. It was rare that the answer came to her doorstep. Her relationship to Jones was evolving and influencing her work. It was that way with Ray, too. But her occasional work with Jones felt different. In fact, a number of things were changing. She needed to talk to Agatha.

“I saw that grandkid of yours,” said Jones. He moved down the steps and stood on the path, looking up at Eloise. “She drives her bike too fast.”

Eloise sighed, gazed up at that cloudy sky, felt the cool air on her skin. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

•    •    •

The woman in the black dress was getting louder, stomping a bit more. Eloise had to listen to her pacing the hallway all night. And when dawn broke, she felt exhausted from her fitful night. This morning, the woman in the black dress was standing in the kitchen pointing at Eloise. And Eloise was starting to lose her patience.

“I don't like her,” said Finley.

“It's better if we don't judge,” said Eloise.

Finley swallowed a bit of eggs, then looked over at the woman in the black dress. “She has a bad vibe. Tell her to go.”

Agatha had told Finley that it was within in her power to ask people to leave. Of course, she had told Eloise the same thing. But Eloise didn't do it very often. Only once, in fact. She'd asked The Burning Girl to leave. But over the years, The Burning Girl had visited a number of times. Eloise had tried to help her, even though she knew she shouldn't. The Burning Girl was a black hole; she'd suck Eloise right in if she could.

Eloise sat down at the table with the plate Finley had made her and began eating.

“Mimi,” Finley said after a moment. She put down her fork on the plate with an annoyed
clink
. “You can't just let her stand there like that.”

It
was
getting a little uncomfortable. Still, there was a reason for the visit. It was Eloise's job to figure out what it was. Finley pushed her chair back and stood in front of the woman in the black dress.

“Please go,” she said. “Now.”

“Finley.”

But the woman in the black dress turned her back and walked away. She began pacing the hall again, stomping those hard little heels. Finley sat back down, continued her breakfast.

“She can't just stand there like that, pointing,” the girl said. “Who does she think she is?”

“She's angry,” said Eloise. “Somebody took something from her.”

The image of The Three Sisters came vividly to mind. Eloise saw them: Abigail, the wild one; Sarah, the one who asked too many questions; Patience, the beautiful one. They were the daughters of the Reverend Good, and they lived in The Hollows in the late 1600s. It was not a good time to be wild, to ask questions, to be bewitchingly pretty.

“Why is she just getting an attitude about it now?” asked Finley. “She's obviously been around awhile.”

Eloise didn't know the answer to that. “Everything has its season.”

Eloise got up and took the manila envelope she'd left on the counter, walked it over to Finley. She slipped the drawing out and handed it to her granddaughter.

“Whoa,” said the girl. She stared at it for a long time.

Eloise cleared the dishes and waited. Finley didn't say anything until everything was done, and Eloise had poured more coffee and returned to her seat. Then she turned those glittery eyes on Eloise.

“I know them,” said Finley. “I've dreamt about them. They were witches.”

“So-called, yes,” said Eloise. “But they were probably just like us.”

Finley shook her head. “No,” she said. “They were different from us.”

Eloise frowned at her granddaughter. “How so?”

Years ago, at Agatha's insistence, Eloise visited The Hollows Historical Society for the very first time. The HHS had just moved into the Victorian, and Joy Martin had just taken her place as president and head librarian, though she'd been doing the work for some time. Agatha had been certain that Eloise would find a host of colorful characters in her genealogy. Eloise's power had almost certainly been passed down through a long line of mystics, Agatha insisted, and was certainly not the result of a head injury, as Eloise had believed. Agatha had not been wrong.

Eloise learned about The Three Sisters. Another distant cousin had been a fortune-teller. Her mother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, which Agatha said was often the case when people didn't understand what was happening to them and didn't accept it. It drove them insane. Eloise's aunt, who helped raise her and then disappeared, worked as a psychic healer in New Mexico until her death. Eloise had also discovered that her lineage crossed with Jones's mother-in-law, hence the connection there.

“Abigail was a telekinetic,” said Finley now. “She could move things with her mind. Sarah could predict the future. And Patience, she was more like us. She could communicate with the dead, had visions.”

Eloise didn't say anything, just let Finley go on.

“Their mother taught them to hide their powers,” said Finley. “She knew how dangerous it was. They were very, very powerful.”

“Yes,” said Eloise. “And of course, then as now, no one likes female power.”

“They were burned at the stake,” said Finley. Her eyes had filled with tears. “All of them.”

“That's right,” said Eloise.

A familiar notch in her throat—sadness, anger, a kind of helpless sense of injustice. The Three Sisters were just children, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, when they were tried and convicted as witches.

“You think the woman in the black dress has something to do with them?”

“I do,” said Eloise. “But I don't know what yet. I haven't found any information on her.”

Finley wiped her eyes and stood. “I'll Google today,” she said, all business. She walked out of the kitchen. And for the first time Eloise wondered if Finley was as easy with all of it as she seemed. Maybe it was taking its toll in other ways.

•    •    •

Michelle Asher was lying on the porch again when Eloise saw Finley to her motorcycle. Eloise could tell that Finley
didn't
see Michelle, as she marched by to her motorcycle. Finley threw one slender leg over the bike and slid on easily as Eloise watched. The tall oak tree whispered. The sky was a threatening gunmetal. Eloise considered what words of caution Finley might actually hear over the din of her own youthful, arrogant thoughts.

“Don't tell me to be careful, Mimi,” said Finley gently. She put her helmet on. It was shiny black, with hot pink flames. “I will be.”

Eloise looked right into Finley's eyes. She lifted a hand to the girl's cheek but instead wound up touching the hard, cold surface of the helmet.

“I've heard that you're driving too fast,” said Eloise. “Slow it down.”

Finley looked away from Eloise for a moment, then back, offering a wide, winning smile. But there was something behind it, something wild. Something that didn't want to be tamed.

Eloise had only recently discovered that the girl's arms were becoming sleeves of tattoos—richly colored dragons and fairies, butterflies, graveyards, mysterious-looking women in long gowns, dark shadowy figures of men and ghouls, a witch burning at the stake, a vicious dog on a chain. Eloise had surprised Finley one afternoon as the girl had been coming out of the bathroom in a towel. Eloise wasn't supposed to be at home; her regular meeting at The Hollows Historical Society had been canceled. Eloise wasn't sure what she'd found more shocking, the tattoos or the fact that Finley had been hiding them under long sleeves.

“Oh, Finley,” Eloise had said before she could stop herself. She actually got a little choked up. “Your beautiful skin.”

Finley flushed. “I'm sorry, Mimi,” she said. “This is me. This is who I am.”

Eloise wasn't sure what that meant.

Some of the art, which was snaking slowly up Finley's shoulders, was just a black outline.

“It's a work in progress,” said Finley. Eloise had put her hand on her granddaughter.

“Meaning you're getting
more
?” asked Eloise. “When are you going to stop?”

Finley had lifted a defiant chin. “When the outside looks like how I feel on the inside.”

Eloise considered this. Yes, her inner life must be very different from her outer life. Eloise could certainly relate to that. The world of the spirit was separate altogether from the world of the body.

“Okay, dear,” she forced herself to say. “I understand.”

Finley had rushed off after that. And they hadn't discussed it again. Eloise certainly wasn't going to harp on it the way Amanda surely would. Then Eloise would be just another person driving Finley away, and the girl needed a safe haven. That's why she was here. She needed Eloise and Agatha to usher her to the seat of her power.

“Okay, Mimi,” Finley said now. With the twist of a key and a hard step with Finley's right foot, the engine rumbled to life. “I'll slow down.”

It
did
seem as if the girl was trying to pull more slowly down the street. But once Finley was out of sight, Eloise heard her gun the engine. Then the wild roar of the motorcycle picking up speed. She sighed.
I do not seek to control things that cannot be controlled.
A lovely and completely useless mantra that Eloise tried repeating to herself when she was feeling helpless. It did not work. At all.

•    •    •

Eloise returned to the porch to sit with the dead girl. Michelle Asher. Once she learned a name, she tried to force herself to use it. Though names didn't mean much in a universal sense. They were creations of the flesh, not of the spirit, which existed without a name.

It didn't take long before Eloise was standing in a nicely appointed darkened room. Big windows revealed a stunning view of New York City, and the room smelled of peppermint and cedar. Michelle was alone, lying naked on a low platform bed. She held a smartphone in her hand. She dialed and put it to her ear.

“Hey,” she said. “It's me. Why haven't you called me? I've been waiting for you. Call me back.”

Michelle ended the call with a sigh, tossing the phone down onto the bed. She rose and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window, stood naked, looking out. The silhouette of her body was a perfect, compact hourglass against the glittering night.

She seemed to have a sudden thought, moved back over to the bed. She grabbed the phone and quickly dialed.

“You know,” she said. She sounded a little edgier. “I'm getting a little sick of this. I'm not going to wait forever.”

She sighed again, her face cast in the glow of the phone, a siren wailing down a distant street outside. Eloise saw a helicopter drift past up high.

“I thought you loved me. You said you did.”

Michelle ended the call again and started to cry. It started small but then grew. The sound that emitted from the girl cut through Eloise, who stood in the shadows. A wail of pure despair, it came from someplace deep inside. It was a hole that had opened long before this moment. Everything in her life was disappearing into it.

“It's okay,” Eloise whispered. “Don't cry. You'll be all right.”

Of course, Michelle didn't hear. They could never hear Eloise. She was a watcher, an observer. A Listener. Nothing more.