Ink and Bone (16 page)

“I enjoyed this,” he said. “Very insightful.”

She saw the letter A scrawled on the title page and felt a little rush of joy.

“I liked your thoughts on how the normal and the paranormal dwell side by side,” said Dr. Burwell. “How the things we think of as extraordinary or impossible may really just be unexplored aspects of the normal human psyche.”

She felt her cheeks flush; Finley was unaccustomed to praise like this.

“It sounded like you were writing from a personal interest,” he said, pulling on his coat. “Have you had unexplained experiences?”

“Some,” she said with a nod. He looked at her as if expecting her to go on. When she didn’t, he said, “Well, good work, Miss Montgomery. Try to make it to class next time. We’ll be talking about some of Jung’s theories on the supernatural. I’d love you to share some of your points with the class.”

She smiled. “I’ll be there.”

Outside, she took a breath. When winter fell in The Hollows, a low cloud cover seemed to block out the sky. She remembered last year feeling so closed in, so heavy with it. Having to garage her bike for three months and hitch rides from her grandmother had been a serious hindrance to her independence. She couldn’t afford her own car, her savings account was dwindling fast. She needed to get a job, a real one with a paycheck. Something that didn’t involve passing out in the woods and seeing dead people or working with desperate living people who needed help that she couldn’t give.

She felt eyes on her and turned to see Jason sitting over by a tall oak tree in the middle of the lawn in front of the building. He waved and she waved back, then he beckoned her over. She walked across the lawn and took a seat beside him.

“You missed class,” he said, looking up from an iPad. She saw the text they were reading for Dr. Burwell:
Man and His Symbols
.

“I had to work,” she said. Again, not a lie exactly.

“Oh, yeah?” he said. “Where?”

“I, uh,” she said. “I just started working with a detective in town. Part-time.”

He raised his eyebrows, as if it were a different answer than he expected. “Doing what?”

The guy had a lot of questions. “I’m kind of an assistant.”

“Like it?”

She shrugged, glancing over at him. He seemed pale and tired, hungover maybe. “Too soon to tell.”

He turned off his iPad and stowed it in a battered old camouflage backpack. It looked military issue, with a big “US” embroidered on the flap.

He nodded sagely, then glanced down at the paper she held in her hand. “You got an A,” he said. “Good for you. ‘Jung and Psychic Phenomena.’ You believe in that stuff?”

She thought about how to answer. “Don’t you?”

“My mom had dreams, feelings, you know—
vibes
.” He wiggled his fingers a little to demonstrate. “She was right a lot of the time.”

Sadness etched its place into his brow and around his eyes. She wanted to ask him about his mother, whom he spoke about in the past tense. But something stopped her.

“Jung believed to some extent that psychic phenomena was an unexplored area of the human psyche,” she said instead. “That just because a thing was rare, or unprovable in the context of the scientific method, didn’t mean it wasn’t real.”

When Finley had first read this, it resonated with her as completely true. Because while she understood that other people might find her “ability” to be extraordinary, to her it was completely normal, nothing more exceptional than a musical or artistic talent, or a gift for numbers.

He leaned back against the tree. “Is that what you believe?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

“Have you had experiences?” Wow. Jason was a very curious guy.

“I have,” she said.

“I’d like to hear about them sometime.”

Oh
, Finley thought.
He’s just trying to pick me up. Smooth. And I thought he really wanted to talk about Jung.

She stood, dusted the grass from her jeans. She liked his energy. He was easy and nice to be around. Cute, too, in a pale, overtired kind of way. Nice hands. But she had Rainer to deal with, and school, and now whatever she was doing with Jones Cooper.

“Sure,” she said. “Maybe sometime.”

“Oooh,” he winced. “Strike one. He hangs his head in defeat.”

She smiled, not just a polite one. He was funny, and the smile swelled from a place inside her. Maybe they could be friends.

“Seriously, though,” he said. But his smile wasn’t that serious, it was full of mischief. “I was thinking I could use a private detective.”

“Oh?” she said. “You have a mystery that needs to be solved?”

She waited for the punch line, but instead his expression darkened just a little. “Maybe,” he said. “Too soon to tell.”

“I’ll be in class on Thursday,” she said. “You can let me know then.”

“Cool,” he said.

She gave him a little wave and started toward her bike. She had the strange feeling that she should go back, that she should find out why he needed a PI. But the
squeak-clink
was starting up again, and the air was growing colder. And when she turned back to look at him, he’d shouldered his backpack and was walking off in the opposite direction. She let him go.

SIXTEEN

T
he sun was a white-yellow ball, fingers of its light spearing through the dark gray clouds. It was sinking low in the sky and soon it would be dark. It always amazed Penny how fast it dropped at the end of the day. If you watched, you could see it as it dipped below the tops of the trees. Once when she was another girl on vacation in Florida, she watched as it sank below the horizon, painting the sky purple, orange, and pink, the water growing dark, the air growing cooler. The sun was there one minute, then gone the next, like a Popsicle melted on concrete.

The golden light had washed all their faces and made her mommy look so young, and her eyes were smiley. She remembered that trip because her parents didn’t fight. They were relaxed, building sand castles with her and her brother, sleeping late. They hugged and kissed a lot, which they didn’t always do. She could feel how happy they were. It wasn’t just that they were “trying not to fight.” The energy was not tense or eggshell fragile. It wasn’t that they “had nothing left to say.” When that was the case, the air felt heavy and suffocating. Penny remembered how light and free everything felt on that sunset beach.

When the door opened to her barn room, softly, carefully, it wasn’t Bobo or Poppa. It was Momma. Penny nearly let go of a scream, but instead she sat up quietly and pushed herself as far back on her cot as she could with her leg chained. Which wasn’t that far. Momma stood for a moment, her spindly dark form just a shadow in the doorway. Then she stepped inside.

“No,” said Penny. But the word just stuck in her throat and sounded more like a cough.

Momma knelt down beside Penny. When the old woman looked up, the fading yellow sunlight lit up the details of her face—deep lines, and strong ridges for cheekbones and sunken holes for eyes, which were a strange gray-green.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Momma.

“I don’t want to,” said Penny.

“Hush, now,” said Momma. “You’ve always been such a hardheaded little thing ever since you were a baby.”

She unlocked the chain on Penny’s ankle, and it felt so good to be free from it as it fell to the floor with a clatter.

“That’s better,” said Momma.

She stood and held out her hand. Penny moved back, all the way into the corner.

Bobo could be mean. And Poppa filled her with dread and disgust. But she didn’t fear either of them as much as she did Momma—though Momma had never laid a hand on her.

“Please,” said Penny.

“She’s waiting,” said Momma. “Come now.”

If she didn’t go, Poppa would come and carry her. If he had to do that, any number of bad things might happen afterwards. So Penny slowly, reluctantly got up. She let Momma take her hand, and they walked outside into the semidark and growing cold. Penny still didn’t have any shoes, and her clothes were threadbare. Her ankle was more swollen, more painful than it had ever been. It was an ugly black and blue and didn’t even look like her other leg. Still, she kept up with Momma as she walked past the house, and out through the gate, Penny shivering.

On the dirt road, Momma let Penny’s hand drop and Penny followed obediently behind her.
Now?
she wondered.
Should I try to run now?
But how fast could she go with her leg like that? Then, she heard a sound behind them and turned to see that Bobo was following. He stayed back, hiding behind the trees, then running to catch up.

Not yet.

After a while, they turned off the road and onto a path Momma had worn into the brush. Penny’s feet were so calloused and her calves so scarred that she barely even felt the hard ground or the branches whipping around her ankles. But every step sent a rocket of pain up her leg. There was no choice but to ignore it, keep moving.

The trees whispered singsong. Penny started to cry a little; she couldn’t help it. The place where she was going, all that trapped sadness and despair, all that loneliness and helplessness, it leaked into her bones like a chill in the air. Would she ever be warm again, safe and loved? Weak, puppyish whimpers escaped her though she tried to swallow them back.

“Hush, now, little Dreamer,” said Momma. “We’re almost there.”

But it wasn’t true. This walk was endless; maybe it was miles and miles. She had no sense of time or distance; she never had.
How long until the cookies are done, Mommy?
Penny used to ask.
About the time it would take you to watch an episode of Scooby-Doo
, her mommy would say. That made a kind of sense. But here, the hours, the days, the minutes, the miles had no beginning and no end.

Bobo trailed behind, a white spot in the dark. His pale hand was a starfish on the bark of a tree; his face a moon around the bend. He wasn’t supposed to come, and he knew it, but Penny was no tattletale.

The moon was climbing high by the time they got where they were going, Penny growing sick from pain and fatigue.

The little church had been recently restored. It stood as white and stoic as the moon among the trees, with its black shutters and bright red door. It was a new thing in a place that was very, very old. The stones, which used to tilt at the heads of graves long overgrown and forgotten, had been righted. Where the names and dates of the departed had been worn away by time and weather, little plaques had been placed beside, naming the dead. Penny didn’t know how she knew this, but she did.

She could see them, all the little girls who had been buried here.
Some of them played together, some of them sat and cried. Some of them were babies, and some were teenagers. One of them was on fire, and one of them was always wet, hair in filthy ringlets, skin blue.

Lately, there were three new ones, older, who lingered on the edge of it all, watching, sometimes laughing cruelly. One of those older girls never took her eyes off Penny.

“Where is she?” asked Momma. Her eyes darted around desperately. Penny knew that Momma couldn’t see what she could see. No one ever could.

“Over there,” said Penny.

Real Penny sat by the old oak tree. She was slouched and pale, her hands resting palms up on the ground, her head tilted to the side like a doll’s. She didn’t belong here anymore, but she stayed because of Momma, who couldn’t let her go. Penny knew this like she knew all the things she shouldn’t know. Things no one had ever told her or helped her to understand.

Momma knelt beside the tree and stared. “How is she?”

“She’s happy,” Penny lied. “She misses you, but she’s happy.”

The first time Momma brought Penny here, Penny was so stiff with fear that she could barely talk. Even when she was another girl, with another name, she’d had strange dreams and seen people who weren’t there. But nothing ever like this place.

“Tell her to let me go,” Real Penny had begged her the first time. “Please tell her I can’t stay here anymore. She won’t let me leave.”

But when Penny told her that, Momma had fallen to the ground weeping, and when she recovered herself, she took a hold of Penny and brought her face in very close, so close that Penny could see the deep lines, the clumps of mascara on her lashes.

“You’re a liar,” she said. Her breath was hot and rancid. “A sick little liar.”

And in the blankness of the old woman’s face, she saw such fear and sadness, that Penny just lied from that day forward. She made up stories about Real Penny, how she loved to garden, and rode horses every day, how she ate all the ice cream and pizza she wanted. How she had friends and was with her grandma. And Penny knew
these were the things Momma wanted to hear, even though she didn’t know how she knew them. And as long as she told Momma things that made her smile, Penny knew she’d be okay.

“She went riding today,” said Penny. “A big black horse with white socks.”

It was a picture she’d seen in Real Penny’s room. The picture was so old and yellowed, Penny figured it was safe to assume the horse was dead, too.

“Racer?” said Momma, with a pleased smile.

“That’s right,” said Penny, even though she had no idea.

That’s why they brought you here
, Bobo had told her.
Because you’re a Dreamer. Poppa can tell a Dreamer from a mile away. There’s a light that comes off, a golden shine. He collects D
reamers, for Momma, for himself.

Real Penny tilted her head back and her eyes were two black holes, empty, bottomless things. “Tell her to let me go.”

Penny closed her eyes, but she could still see two white spots looming like after you’ve looked at light that’s too bright.

“Tell her!” the girl shrieked, and her voice was like the sound of the wind wailing. Her mouth opened into a maw, and inside Penny could see the girl strong and alive, atop a great black stallion. Then Penny saw her kissing a boy with long black hair, watched as they got into his car. Then there was nothing.

“She says she loves you,” New Penny lied. “So much.”

Momma put her head to the ground and cried.

When Momma lets her go,
said the voice,
you can go home, too.