The Burning Girl by Lisa Unger Page A

barely able to care for herself. Eloise understood these things because she was inside the girl, without being inside her. She was beside her, without being beside. She was there, and she wasn’t. It was an imprecise experience, amorphous and changeable.
    Eloise felt the steady pulse of the girl’s anxiety, but also an enormous swelling anger. The girl was young to be so filled with rage. Eloise wasn’t used to it. Her own capacity for ire was low; it didn’t fit in her body, made her sick when it came to call. But some people embraced it, gave it a home inside their hearts. They let it grow and get stronger. This girl was one of those.
    Eloise looked around the room. Agatha had taught her how to do this, to be lucid in her visions and gather clues. The faster you can figure out what they want, the faster you can be rid of them. The floors were bare, unfinished wood. The light on the table between the two beds was a gas lamp. There were two desks, some books. Two handmade dolls rested on a simple shelf. There was a rocking chair with a knitted blanket hanging over the top. There were no outlets, no vents. This girl had clearly lived a long time ago. This was a first. Eloise had never gone back in time before, not this far.
    She heard it then, the sound of footsteps in the hall. A little whimper escaped from the girl, a sound so helpless and afraid that Eloise turned to fend off whoever was coming. But, of course, that wasn’t possible. Eloise was as helpless as a shadow.
    The girl sat up in her bed, her face pale and slack, her sky-blue eyes shining in the moonlight. How old was she? Maybe nine or ten, on the cusp of adolescence. A beauty with delicate features, a fine, thin nose, and rose-petal lips. Eloise thought of Amanda and how when she was flowering into her prettiness, the sight of her swelling hips and blossoming breasts used to fill Eloise with fear. How do I protect her? Eloise used to worry. The sad answer was that you don’t. You can’t protect them, not really, though you’d die trying. You try to teach them how to protect themselves and hope that is enough. It often isn’t.
    The footsteps grew louder and then came to a stop. Eloise and the girl both stared at the door. The smaller child turned in her bed, issuing a soft groan. Outside, the moon moved behind the clouds, extinguishing the scant light.
    “Goawaygoawaygoawaygoaway,” the girl whispered, soft and low like a chant. “Goaway.”
    But the knob turned softly, and the door drifted open. Eloise watched as long, thick fingers snaked into view. Terror filled the room with its vibrations, and Eloise felt it in her bones like a dentist’s drill. She couldn’t just stand there.
    She ran to the door and pushed it closed hard, used her body to hold it closed against whoever was trying to push his way in. There was a loud knocking that grew louder, more insistent, urgent. She wasn’t going to let him in. She wouldn’t let him hurt The Burning Girl, who wept silently on her bed.
    “Eloise!”
    She came back to herself on the foyer floor, her body resting against her own front door. Someone was knocking, actually trying to push the door open.
    “Eloise,” said Ray Muldune. “What’s blocking the door?”
    “Hold on a minute,” she said, pulling herself to her feet. She was confronted by the sight of a haggard and disoriented-looking old woman. Someone too thin, someone haunted and wasting. It took her a millisecond to realize with dismay that she was looking in the mirror that hung on the wall over the long table covered with photographs.
    “Christ,” she said to herself. She’d never been beautiful, but she was really starting to look like hell. She was turning into a crone like Agatha, who was eighty years old if she was a day.
    She opened the door for Ray, and he stepped inside. She ran her hands self-consciously through her hair. But he wasn’t looking too great himself. He’d been drinking too much, eating nothing but garbage. We are