The Winter People (35 page)

As supplies dwindled, I began taking midnight trips into town, where everyone believes me dead.

It is quite something, to travel through town in the night hours, a living ghost. The people who see me say a prayer and close the curtains. They lock their doors, paint hex signs over the front entry to
keep me away. And they’ve started leaving me offerings so that they will not suffer my wrath: jars of honey, coins, sacks of flour, even a small bottle of brandy once.

Oh, what power we dead have over the living!

I paid a visit to Lucius—I couldn’t help myself. I let myself into his house just before dawn, stood by the side of his bed, and gently called his name until he awoke. And when I saw how frightened he was, I told him I’d come back from the dead. “You think I was mad when I was living? You know nothing of the madness of the dead. There is no bed to bind me to now, Doctor,” I whispered harshly in his ear.

Sometimes I walk clear out to Cranberry Meadow and sit atop Martin’s grave. I talk to him for hours, until the rising sun begins to color the sky in the east, telling him all that has happened, all I have become. Mostly, I tell him how very sorry I am.

Sometimes it is my own grave I visit, right beside Martin’s. How odd it is to see my name carved into stone:
SARA HARRISON SHEA, BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER
. Even stranger to know that it is Auntie’s bones buried beneath.

Skinning Auntie’s body was my own clever idea. After Gertie was done with her, I knew we had to do something to hide what had happened—her body ravaged, her skin torn by nails and teeth, both like and unlike an animal attack. I also hoped that when the body was found people would assume it was my own. Auntie and I, though different in age, had the same slight build. Stripped of skin and hair, of all the superficial differences, she and I were in many ways the same.

It was, truly, no more difficult than skinning a large animal, something I am practiced at—something Auntie herself taught me well. It was strange how easy it was, to see a human being as just meat, a job that needed to be done.

The rumor Auntie had heard was true: Gertie has gone on walking since spilling blood. I believe she will go on for all eternity.

The truth of it is, however, that she is but a mere shadow of the little girl she used to be. Sometimes I catch glimpses of my darling child trapped there, beneath the dull eyes of this creature whose body she inhabits.

If I could set her free, I would.

But the best I can do is to keep her safe, and keep the world safe from her. Indeed, from others like her.

As far as I know, she is the only one. But occasionally, someone will climb the hill, someone who has lost a husband or a child, someone who has somehow learned the secrets of sleepers, of the presence of a portal right here in West Hall. It is almost always a woman, although there have been one or two men. Sometimes my very presence is enough to scare her off, to make her change her mind. Sometimes there is nothing I can do or say to dissuade her from entering the cave to try to bring her loved one back. In these instances, I leave it to Gertie to take care of her.

It might seem cruel, to send someone in to her death. But all it takes is one look at the hollow, hungry eyes of the thing that once was my little girl to know there are worse things than death.

Far worse.

Ruthie’s head pounded. Her body felt as if it were made of cold, gray, unyielding marble. She hurried along on heavy legs, following their mother through narrow rocky passageways, navigating twists and turns.

Fawn kept chirping out questions: “What are we running from? Who tied you up? Where are you taking us?”

“Shh, love,” Mom kept saying. “Not now.”

And Katherine had questions, too: “You met my husband, Gary. Why was his camera bag in your house?”

Mom brushed off the questions with a scowl. “Quiet,” she warned, “we all need to be very quiet.”

Ruthie had her own questions burning in her brain: Where the hell was Candace, and what had made her scream?

Something’s coming
.

The terrain grew more difficult—tiny passageways, huge boulders to crawl over and around. Fawn had shoved Mimi inside her shirt for safekeeping, and now Fawn had the absurd appearance of a pregnant six-year-old.

Their mother led the way, holding a flashlight in one hand and the gun from her bedroom in the other. But she kept hesitating, taking just a moment too long to study each turn.

Ruthie was beginning to have the sense that her mother was taking them in one gigantic circle.

“Didn’t we already pass through here, Mom?” Ruthie asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Mom said, looking around with the flashlight.

“I thought you knew the way,” Katherine said.

“I’ve only been out this way a couple of times,” she confessed.

“Mom, I—” Ruthie began, about to suggest that they double back, try to find their way back to the first room, go out the way they’d come in.

“Shh! Let me think,” her mother snapped.

Ruthie’s clothes were sweat-soaked, and she was chilled to the bone. Her teeth chattered, her body ached. Her brain felt scrubbed and fuzzy, and there was only one thing she knew for sure: she had to get the hell out of this cave.

“I think I feel a breeze,” Katherine said, suddenly looking to the left and walking a few paces in that direction.

“We’ve already been that way,” Ruthie said.

“No, I don’t think so,” Katherine called back. She was moving more quickly, almost running, jumping over rocks, bumping against the jagged rock walls like a pinball. Soon she turned a corner and was out of sight; Ruthie and Fawn followed, their mother a few steps behind.

“Katherine!” Ruthie called. “Wait!”

“Oh my God!” Katherine screamed from up ahead, voice high-pitched and frightened. “No!”

As they rounded the corner, Ruthie caught a glimpse of what Katherine’s flashlight was illuminating. She stopped running; her body stiffened. She leaned down and scooped up her sister, to hold her tight.

“Close your eyes, Fawn,” Ruthie said, and her little sister pressed her forehead against Ruthie’s shoulder. “Keep them closed until I say to open them, okay?”

“Okay,” Fawn murmured.

“Promise?”

“Swear,” Fawn said, gripping Ruthie’s shoulders tightly.

Ruthie moved forward slowly.

Katherine was standing over Candace, who was on the floor of the passage. She lay on her back, eyes open. The gun was on the ground beside her, as was the flashlight, still turned on, its beam
illuminating the floor. Her throat had been opened up. In her right hand were a jumble of yellowed pages covered with neat cursive: Sara’s missing diary pages.

“She got what she came for,” Ruthie said, without meaning to say it out loud.

“Jesus,” Katherine said, pale and shaky. She took a step back.

“What is it?” Fawn whispered, her little fingers kneading Ruthie’s shoulders, pinching and twisting the skin through layers of clothing.

“Don’t worry, Little Deer,” Ruthie said. “Just keep your eyes closed.”

Ruthie’s mother caught up with them.

“It looks like an animal chewed on her neck,” Katherine whispered, leaning in closer and aiming the beam of her flashlight at Candace’s ravaged throat.

“Not an animal,” Ruthie’s mom said quietly. She knelt down and grabbed the diary pages, which were splattered with blood. “We have to keep moving.”

“Do you feel that?” Katherine asked. “There’s
definitely
a breeze coming from down there.” She stepped around Candace’s body and hurried down the passageway, without looking back.

Ruthie followed, Fawn clinging to her front like a baby monkey. Yes, there
was
a breeze, a change in the air. She didn’t look back, either, but was sure she felt eyes watching them from the shadows.

Ruthie sat with her mother, Fawn, and Katherine at the kitchen table. Mom had made coffee and warmed up banana bread from the freezer; the smell should have comforted Ruthie, but her stomach turned. To go from the dark, airless silence of the cave to this world full of light and color, smells and sound—it was all too much. The cups of coffee and plates of banana bread sat untouched.

Mom had given Fawn Tylenol and a cup of herbal tea and tried to put her to bed, but Fawn protested, not wanting to miss anything. She sat slumped on Mom’s lap, Mimi in her arms, doing her best to stay awake.

Katherine had been pestering Ruthie’s mother with nonstop questions about Gary, and Fawn had asked over and over how she had gotten to the caves and why they had found her tied up. “I’ll tell you the whole story from the beginning,” Mom promised. And now, at last, she had begun.

“Your father and I came here sixteen years ago. Our friends Tom and Bridget called us and said they’d come into possession of something that was going to change the world, going to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. If we helped them, they’d share the wealth with us. It seemed so exciting—a great call to adventure.”

The lights in the kitchen felt too bright and seemed to pulsate, to throb along with the pain in Ruthie’s head. She wanted to go up to her room, get into bed, put her head under the covers, and try to forget everything that had happened over these last three days.

Mom, sensing Ruthie’s misery in that special mom way she had,
reached out to take Ruthie’s hand. Ruthie gave her mother’s hand a weak squeeze, but then she pulled her own hand away and set it on her lap, where it looked waxy and useless. A mannequin hand.

Katherine stirred her coffee restlessly, the spoon clanking against the mug like an alarm bell. “Please,” she said, interrupting the story. “Just tell me how Gary found you. How you ended up with his camera bag. What really happened that day?”

Ruthie’s mom peered at Katherine over the top of her glasses and gave her a patient nod. “I will get to all that. I promise. But in order to truly understand, you need to hear the whole thing from the beginning.”

Ruthie closed her eyes as she listened to her mother’s story, like when she was little and her mom used to tell her “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” This, too, was like a fairy tale: Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Hannah who loved to go to a bakery called Fitzgerald’s with her mother. Her mother and father loved her very much. They wanted only the best for her. And they felt that the key to their fortune, to their happiness, could be found in these pages that told a dreadful secret: how to bring back the dead.

And, as in all fairy tales, there was bloodshed, there was loss.

“It was a chilly spring afternoon,” Ruthie’s mother said. “And we’d all gone out into the woods to look for this portal that was mentioned in diary pages Tom and Bridget had.” She looked at Ruthie, smiling. “You were wearing a pretty little dress and coat, and carrying a teddy bear.”

“Like in that picture?” Ruthie said, remembering the photo, the happy smile on her face. “The one we have in the shoebox?”

Mom nodded. “I took that photo just before we left on our walk up the hill.” She looked down into her coffee cup, then continued her story.

“It was lovely in the woods—the trees were just leafing out, and the birds were singing. Tom and James were talking about books; you were chattering and humming little songs. When you got too tired to walk on your own, your mother carried you. When we were near the top of the hill, we saw a little girl hiding behind a tree. We called out to her, but she ran. She didn’t have a coat or shoes.
Her hair was in tangles. We chased after her all the way up to the Devil’s Hand, but she disappeared in the rocks. Then we searched, and Tom found the cave opening, insisted we go in—we had to help this poor little girl. She was obviously lost and alone.”

“We all went into the cave?” Ruthie asked.

Her mother nodded. “We never should have. But we didn’t know. How could we? It never occurred to us that the portal might be in there, or that this young girl had anything to do with it. We just saw a child in trouble and wanted to help. I think we forgot everything else.”

Mom fell silent for a long moment. No one made a sound. At last she took a deep breath and went on.

“It was dark; Tom and Bridget were up ahead of us. When we got to the first chamber, we saw right away that someone had been living there. There were a couple of lanterns burning. Tom thought he heard footsteps down one of the tunnels. He and Bridget went down, and …”

“She killed them?” Ruthie asked.

Mom nodded. “It all happened so fast. There was nothing we could do. James scooped you up in his arms, and we ran.”

The sleeper killed her parents. But there were kind James and Alice Washburne to take her in, to raise her as their own.

“I believe we were meant to be here for that very reason,” her mother said. “To save you, to take care of you. I knew without a doubt as I held you to my chest that day that we would be your parents. That it was our destiny.”

“Destiny,” Fawn repeated to Mimi.

Ruthie shook her head. Destiny, fate, meant to be, God’s plan—all this kind of talk had always gotten on Ruthie’s nerves. To suggest that her true parents’ slaughter was somehow guided by the stars just added insult to injury.