The Whispering Hollows

by Lisa Unger

  Nick blanched. He handed the baby back to Miriam.

  “Why don’t you take her upstairs and put her down. It’s time for her nap, right?”

  “Nick,” she said. Miriam glanced at Eloise apologetically.

  “Please, honey,” he said. It was gentle, not bullying or bossing. No, he wasn’t that. He was a man acting to protect his family. The baby started to wail then. Babies were such keen receptors, especially for their mothers’ feelings. Miriam was going to do what Nick said. She always did; Eloise could feel that. She trusted him more than she trusted herself.

  “Eloise, I’m sorry,” said Miriam. She offered a little eye roll that said: “Men! What are you going to do?” Then she took the baby upstairs; Eloise could hear her comforting Ella as she climbed the steps. Then a door shut.

  “There is no girl in the woods,” said Nick. He put down on the table the tulips and bear he’d been carrying, and crossed thick arms across his wide chest. He was a big man, with a thick head of ink-black hair, handsome in a rugged way. “You know that.”

  Eloise said nothing. She rose and picked up her bag. Some people you could talk to, some you couldn’t. There was no point in arguing. Stubborn was the worst thing you could encounter in her line of business.

  “My wife,” he said, “is not well. Surely you can see that.”

  He moved toward the door and held it open for Eloise. How often had that happened to her, that she’d been politely asked to leave? Quite a bit. She didn’t take it personally. She had a job to do, and she tried to do it to the best of her ability. But she had come to realize that you can only help people who want to be helped.

  “If you see her again, Nick—” And he had seen her. The fear coming off of him was electric. He’d probably been seeing her and denying her all his life. “You need to tell her to leave. Tell her that no one here can help her.”

  He sighed. “This is toxic,” he said. “Stay away from my family, Ms. Montgomery. I’m telling you to leave. No one here can help you.”

  She didn’t generally let people get to her—but she rankled a little at his words. She mostly just felt sorry for people—so fragile, so afraid, so desperate. She had an endless well of compassion for the suffering of others, having suffered so herself. She searched for something to say but finally just stayed silent.

  “We don’t have any money,” he said. “If that’s your angle.”

  But she was human, after all. Sometimes she got mad. She stopped at the threshold and looked at him. She tried her best to be withering. And she was gratified to see him bow his head in shame.

  “You think I want your money?” she said. “I came here to help you.”

  “I don’t want your help,” he said softly. “Miriam’s too fragile for this. I’m just barely hanging on to her.”

  She wanted to tell him that that’s precisely why she was so vulnerable to The Burning Girl. But he was a closed door. The girl in the woods had never been able to get to him. And Eloise wouldn’t get to him either.

  “Stay away from us,” he said when she crossed onto the porch. He closed the door softly.

  Eloise walked to her car. She looked up to see Miriam and Ella in the upstairs window. Miriam waved a hand, offered a wry smile. The Burning Girl smoldered beside them.

  • • •

  Eloise went home and called Agatha. Agatha’s personal assistant, Amber, told Eloise that Agatha had “her meetings” this week. Meaning that Agatha was seeing the people who were waiting to speak to their departed loved ones—looking for closure, forgiveness, to finish what was unfinished, all the things of which sudden death had robbed them. Some people were looking for lost things, answers to questions, to unbury secrets. Once a man was looking for money he knew his father had hidden in the forest. According to Agatha, he’d found it and given her a 10 percent finder’s fee, as per their arrangement.

  Agatha had encouraged Eloise to get into this area of the business, as it was very lucrative. But Eloise had zero interest in money. She’d made enough to meet her needs, leave money for her family when she passed on.

  Furthermore, Eloise couldn’t imagine constantly sitting across from so much suffering. It was hard enough working with Ray, who handled most of the client interface. She was still unsettled even from her brief visit with Tim Schaffer. And it was hard enough dealing with visions, which were getting more and more draining every day. She didn’t want to look into the face of grief over and over again. She saw it enough when she looked in the mirror.

  “Is it an emergency?” Amber asked now. “I can have Agatha call you between sessions.”

  “No, no,” said Eloise. “It can wait.”

  “Okay,” said Amber. Agatha said that the girl was an empath, someone very attuned to other people’s feelings. And Amber sounded unsure that Eloise was being truthful. “Call me if you change your mind.”

  Eloise promised that she would. Eloise didn’t think it was an emergency. Or was it?

  She went upstairs to her bedroom to lie down. Her encounter with Nick had drained her. She was tapped into the family in some weird way, and this experience was different than any other she’d had. She didn’t like it. For some reason, as she lay on her bed, it made her think of her first conversation with Agatha.

  • • •

  Agatha had just turned up at her doorstep one day. Eloise had watched as the chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car pulled into her driveway. She’d thought, “Oh, God. Now what?”

  Eloise had had a hard couple of weeks as she approached the second anniversary of Alfie’s and Emily’s passings. She’d been inundated with requests after she led The Hollows PD to Tommy Delano in her first high-profile case. She had no idea how to manage any of it. Amanda had been acting out, doing poorly in school. And Eloise’s visions were coming hard and furious, but she had no way to make sense of them. She was frazzled, confused, not dealing with things very well at all. She would get Amanda off to school in the mornings, come home, and then get into bed with the blinds drawn, the phone unplugged. She had stopped answering the door altogether. It was Eloise’s first bout with depression. She had no energy reserves to fight off the darkness. Would it swallow her whole?

  Eloise hadn’t answered right away when Agatha rang her doorbell, hoping the woman would just leave. But then she began to knock, gently but insistent.

  “Ms. Montgomery,” Agatha called through the door finally. “I know you’re in there. I can feel your despair. I’m here to help you, dear.”

  Eloise had leaned against the other side of the door and was overcome by a powerful wave of relief, that same blessed feeling that comes when a migraine disappears. She’d opened the door a crack, and the older woman smiled at her.

  “I don’t want anything from you,” said Agatha. “I promise I just want to help you find your way.”

  “Why?” asked Eloise. She was suspicious now of everyone. She’d never been that way before. “Why do you want to help me?”

  “Why do you do the things you do?” Agatha had asked. “This is our calling, to help the people who need us. For better or worse, this is our thing. You know that, I think. You can feel me, can’t you?”

  Eloise could feel her. Agatha’s power was enormous. It swept in with her as she entered and filled the house. She jingled, smelled of flowers. Her clothes flowed around her when she walked. Eloise showed her into the living room and offered her a drink, which Agatha declined.

  “So where does it come from?” Agatha had asked that day. “Your mother’s side or your father’s side?”

  The question took Eloise aback.

  “Neither,” she said. “This happened to me in the accident.”

  “No,” said Agatha with a smile and a gentle shake of her head. “That’s not how it works. These abilities are not acquired. They are inborn.”

  Eloise had objected. But Agatha was immovable.


  “You may not have had access to your gifts before the accident,” she said. “But trust me, they were there, lying dormant. If you went back into your genealogy, I’ll bet that one of your female ancestors was burned at the stake as a witch. Or she was some weird recluse, or a palm reader, or whatever.”

  Eloise had experienced her usual desire to shut down when she talked about her origins. Her upbringing had been harsh and joyless. Her mother had died shortly after Eloise’s birth, and the truth was that Eloise knew almost nothing about her. Eloise had one photo, her wedding dress (which Eloise had worn at her own wedding), and an old stuffed bear that Eloise had carried around until it became embarrassing and slept with it long after that. She still had it; Bear sat on a shelf in Emily’s old room.

  And her father had been a silent, unaffectionate man. He’d provided for Eloise, never abused her. On the other hand, he never even seemed to notice her. It was her aunt Beth, her father’s sister, who cared for her mostly.

  But Eloise learned early, as all motherless children must, to take care of herself—she learned to cook and do the laundry, clean the house. Once she learned to read, she spent her life in books—reading of places better and lives more interesting than her own.

  She was lonely in a deep and total way. But it wasn’t the kind of loneliness one noticed. She simply had never known anything else. But it was probably why she married so young and started a family as soon as she could. Her father died while she was in college, just a year before she and Alfie married. He left her some money, but few memories of any kind of love at all. After that, Alfie’s parents became her parents. They loved her, and for the first time in her life she knew what it was like to be part of a family. She didn’t tell this to many people, but she told it all to Agatha.

  “What about your aunt Beth?” asked Agatha. “Didn’t she ever tell you anything about your mother? Anything about either family?”

  Beth, too, was gone. She’d moved to Santa Fe while Eloise was in college. Their contact dwindled, and then she’d disappeared altogether. One day, Eloise tried to call and the phone had been disconnected. A birthday card Eloise sent was returned with no forwarding address. Eloise had tried to find her, had even managed to track down an old roommate. But the girl hadn’t been kind, told Eloise that some people just didn’t want to be found. Which Eloise knew now was true.

  “She was young,” Eloise said to Agatha. “Just a teenager, really. A teenager in the sixties. I don’t know how much she knew about anyone, or if she cared. She left The Hollows as soon as she could, never came back.”

  Agatha cocked her head toward Eloise. “Where did she go?”

  “Last I heard, she had joined some commune in Pecos, New Mexico.”

  Agatha raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “When was that?”

  “Twenty years ago?” said Eloise. “Maybe more?”

  Agatha wore a sad smile, held her head at an inquisitive tilt. “Aren’t you curious, Eloise? Don’t you want to know more about your family?”

  Eloise felt ashamed in that moment for what seemed suddenly like an odd disconnection from her roots. All of her family, and Alfie’s, had lived in The Hollows for generations. Why didn’t she know more? Had she purposely tried to distance herself? Had she instinctively avoided asking questions of her father and her young aunt, even of herself?

  “You need to go see Joy Martin at The Hollows Historical Society and do some research. I guarantee you that you are going to find some answers there.”

  “What if I don’t want answers?” asked Eloise. “What if I just want all this to go away?”

  She had started to cry then. Not just a little. It was a humiliating volcanic outburst of sobbing. Agatha moved over and wrapped her soft but strong arms around Eloise’s thin shoulders and pulled her in. This was before anything had happened with Ray and no one had held Eloise like that since Alfie passed. Eloise didn’t usually enjoy physical contact with anyone but her children and her husband. But she found herself resting her head on Agatha and letting it all go. A deep warmth had washed through her that day, and after that, Agatha became Eloise’s mentor and close friend. It was an unbalanced relationship, with Agatha doing all the giving and Eloise all the taking. One day, Eloise was going to make it up. One day, she was going to be there for Agatha in a way that no one else could—she didn’t know how or when, but she was certain of it.

  “It doesn’t go away,” Agatha had said that day. “Not in my experience. You are going to have to embrace it and do your duty to it. Don’t worry, dear, I am going to show you how.”

  “How did you find me?” Eloise had asked.

  “Your Alfie asked me to help,” Agatha said softly. “He loves you so very, very much.”

  Eloise wept for she didn’t know how long. And when she was done, Agatha told her to be strong and to start listening. And Eloise did listen to Agatha. She was smart enough to know when she needed help, and she was not always too stubborn to take it.

  That visit seemed a long time ago now. Eloise drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

  • • •

  The Burning Girl didn’t come back. Eloise hoped that perhaps she had accomplished what was needed by visiting Miriam, even though she had a nagging feeling that she hadn’t. She waited a day, two days, three. But no Burning Girl. Eloise should have been happy, but she wasn’t. She thought about reaching out to Miriam again, but she didn’t. Nick had tossed her from the house. And the Burning Girl was gone. Wasn’t it W. C. Fields who said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”

  • • •

  Meanwhile, Ray was hassling her about Tim Schaffer’s wife. Talk about someone who didn’t know when to quit. Eloise had been wearing the missing woman’s scarf around—at Ray’s behest—even though this didn’t always work (and he knew it).

  It was a pretty scarf, anyway—white with china-blue blossoms, a kind of gauzy material. It was a gift from Schaffer to his wife, and he claimed that she’d worn it all the time.

  It was only after having it on for a couple of days that Eloise was aware of the slight, almost imperceptible feeling of not being able to get enough air. Once she took it off and put it in a drawer in her dresser, she felt a tremendous sense of relief. She filled her lungs gratefully.

  He was smothering her, Eloise thought. She couldn’t breathe.

  Not that he had actually smothered her. He was caring and he loved her, but he never let her be. She started hearing the same sentence over and over. “I’m just trying to help you, sweetie.”

  Stephanie Schaffer had been pregnant, Eloise knew with a sudden clarity. Eloise called Ray and told him.

  “That tracks,” Ray said. “She visited her doctor a few weeks before she went missing.”

  “What for?” asked Eloise.

  “A routine well visit,” said Ray. “But the doctor won’t release her file. Stephanie Schaffer specifically indicated that she wanted her records kept private, even from her husband. Since there’s no active investigation or even the smallest evidence of foul play, there’s no way for the cops to even get a warrant.”

  “Hmm,” said Eloise.

  “What?”

  “I can’t imagine requesting that my medical information be kept from Alfie,” said Eloise. “When you’re really with someone, you don’t do that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  What was she saying? She reached for it.

  Then, “A child links you to someone forever. That’s a blessing when you’re in love. Not so much if you’re not.”

  She could hear him breathing on the line and a kind of rhythmic tapping. He tapped his fingers on surfaces when he was thinking. It was slightly annoying.

  “Is this your instinct talking?” he asked finally. “Or is it, you know, the other thing?”

  Over the years
, her ability had morphed into a union of what she knew to be true and what she saw. When Eloise allowed for the mingling, she almost felt infallible. Almost. But she had on occasion made mistakes, misread signs. She’d failed more than once to do what was set out before her. “Maybe a little of both.”

  More tapping.

  “If she didn’t want to be with him, why not just divorce him?” asked Ray. “They hadn’t been married that long. They didn’t even have a joint bank account, only the house as a shared asset.”

  “He doesn’t seem like the kind of man who would allow himself to be left,” said Eloise. “Five years later, he’s still looking for her.”

  “It’s his wife,” said Ray. There was a slight edge to his tone. He did this, got weirdly defensive for his clients. Another annoying habit, though Eloise was sure she had a few of her own. “Wouldn’t you still be looking for Alfie?”

  The question stung a little. It was apples and oranges. She didn’t answer.

  “Jeez,” he said. “What an asshole I am. Sorry, El. I didn’t mean that.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Ray was a good man, but there was too much boy in him. He was impulsive, acted out, was intractable, hard to manage. She wondered how his wife had put up with him for as long as she had. Eloise loved Ray, but she saw him clearly.

  “Find someone who knew her, who really knew her,” Eloise suggested, not really even knowing why. “Not Tim Schaffer. Ask the right questions.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “I might know someone,” he said. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

  “Do that.”

  “Thanks, Eloise.”

  She hung up feeling tired, like she always did after talking to Ray. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far off the mark to say that she just felt tired all the time. She sank down onto her couch, stared at the picture of her daughter Amanda and her grandchildren. It was late afternoon. She had nowhere else to go that day.

  She found herself thinking of Agatha’s pool, that sparkling blue water. She remembered going swimming with Alfie and the girls at the lake, how refreshing the water had been, how the sun had been warm and so bright. The wind in the leaves—just the wind, no Whispers. She’d been light and happy, free from any real strain other than living and mothering and all of those normal things.