The Winter People (31 page)

“Good,” Candace said. “I’m glad you brought the camera.”

So am I
, she thought.

She concentrated on walking in the snowshoes, a strange kind of duck-footed shuffle through the deep powder. The snow was still falling hard and fast around them. All Katherine could hear was the sound of their breathing, their grunts as they moved up the hill. There were no car sounds, no distant sirens or train whistles. The world was eerily silent, all the sound muffled, as if everything had been swaddled in cotton wool.

The trail ahead of her seemed impossibly steep all of a sudden. They’d left the field behind and were now climbing up into the woods. The trees were bent and twisted, the branches weighted down with snow. She felt the trees were watching her, a terrible army that stood in rows and reached for her with gnarled fingers.

You’re almost there
, Gary whispered in her ear.

He felt so close. She could almost smell him, taste him. He’d walked this same path at the end of October, on his last day alive. He’d walked along, shouldering this very backpack.

Is it really possible, Gary? Can we bring back the dead?

He responded with soft laughter.
Isn’t that why you’ve come?
he asked.

And then, then she understood. She knew why she’d come, why she’d been led here. She felt his hand take hers. He was beside her now.

Shh
, he whispered.
Do you hear it?

She closed her eyes, heard the music play in some far-off part of her mind, an old jazz song they’d once danced to. She felt Gary’s lips brush her cheek. She and Gary moved together, doing a few awkward, shuffling dance steps in the snow.

We can be together again
, he told her.
We can bring Austin back
.

The idea of it hit her like a cannonball in the chest, so heavy and unexpected that she lost her balance and fell over in the snow. She looked desperately around for Gary, but he was gone.

She lay on her back, looked up at the dark sky, the swirling snow
that fell down on her like a million falling stars. She let herself imagine it: having Gary and Austin back with her, even if it was only for seven days. The three of them snuggled together under the covers. “Did you dream while you were gone?” she’d ask Austin. “Oh yes, I dreamed,” he would say. “It was all one big dream.”

“All right back there?” Candace called.

“Fine!” she said, struggling to get up again, but it was absurdly difficult with the huge snowshoes hitting her legs and refusing to let her right herself. Ruthie turned around, came back, and offered her mittened hand to help pull Katherine up.

“Thanks,” Katherine said, slapping the snow off her jeans. It was no good—they were soaked through.

“The snowshoes take a little getting used to,” Ruthie said.

“I don’t think I’ll be running a marathon in them anytime soon,” Katherine said. Ruthie gave her a tense smile, then moved back beside her sister. She leaned in and whispered something to Fawn. Fawn shook her head and pulled her doll tighter against her chest.

They moved through the grove of bent and twisted trees, and the climb got steeper, the trees larger, more looming. She had the directions. They were going to the portal. She had a candle, Gary’s camera. All she needed was …

“Jesus!” Candace yelped up ahead. There, just off the path, her headlamp illuminated a gruesome sight. A fox had just captured a snowshoe hare, and had the hare by its throat. The animal struggled for a few short seconds before going still and limp in the fox’s mouth.

Candace pulled out her gun, pointed it at the fox.

“Don’t!” Katherine shouted. The animal was beautiful—the way its rusty fur shimmered and glistened, its eyes seeming to look right at her, to say,
We know each other, you and I. We understand hunger, desperation
.

The gun went off, and Katherine jumped. Startled, the fox dropped the rabbit and hurried off into the trees—Candace had missed. The fox ran with such grace, such quick sureness, that it took Katherine’s breath away. And she was sure that, just for one brief second, it turned its sleek head back and looked at her.

See what I left you
.

It all felt so impossibly meant to be.

“Can we save the bunny?” Fawn asked, going over to the small white animal, which lay unmoving in the snow.

“No,” Ruthie told her. “It’s past saving. Don’t touch it, okay?”

“Come on, I think we’re about halfway there,” Candace said, tucking the gun away, turning her headlamp back to the path before them. If they looked carefully, they could make out the barely discernible impressions of tracks from Candace’s trip down the hill, hours ago. The hillside was much steeper now, and the walk was more of a climb. Katherine thought of photos she’d seen of climbers on Mount Everest, all strung together with rope so that they would not lose one another, so that no one would fall and be left behind. They began to trudge on, Candace picking up the pace, the girls struggling to keep up. But Katherine slowed down, stopping at the place where the fox had been. Fortunately, there was no rope binding her to the others, and they did not seem to notice she was no longer right behind them. She bent down, took off her glove, and touched the white snowshoe hare. It was still warm, its fur soft.

Quickly she scooped the rabbit up, surprised by how very light it was. Then she slid Gary’s backpack off her shoulders, carefully laid the animal inside, and zipped it up tight.

She ran to catch up with the others, heart pounding, ears buzzing.

The rabbit was small. It couldn’t be too hard, she imagined, to feel for its ribs, open it up, and remove its heart.

“It’s got to be here somewhere,” Candace said as she scrabbled around at the base of the Devil’s Hand.

“I can’t believe how big the rocks are,” Katherine said, looking up at them. “The tallest one’s got to be twenty feet at least. They don’t look that big in the pictures.”

“The Devil must be a giant,” Fawn said, clinging tight to Mimi. Mimi was still swaddled in the blanket that held the gun.

It had taken them nearly forty-five minutes to climb the hill. Since they’d arrived at the top, Candace had spent at least ten minutes digging randomly with almost spasmodic movements. “The hole could be beneath any of the five rocks,” she said. “They all look the same. What are you all waiting for? Start digging!”

The snow was falling steadily, and the rocks were blanketed in a thick white glove. Candace was pawing through the snow with her mittened hands, pushing and pulling any smaller rocks aside.

“Let me see that,” Ruthie said, tucking the flashlight into her coat pocket and reaching to take the camera from Katherine, who was staring down at the back display. Ruthie saw that Katherine had been studying one of those close-up photos of the instructions for creating sleepers.

Ruthie fast-forwarded to the photo of the opening at the base of the rock. The picture was taken back in October, in daylight, and now it was pitch-dark, and everything was covered with snow. Ruthie studied the grain, shape, and shadows of the rock in the photo, then shone her flashlight on the rocks before her.

Candace was wrong. They weren’t all the same.

“I think it’s the biggest one,” Ruthie said. “The middle finger. See here, the way it seems like it’s kind of leaning to the left compared to the one beside it in the picture? And look at the angle he took it from. He must have been standing right over there, on the left side. There’s the big maple in the background.” She pointed at the tree, now shrouded in snow.

She handed the camera back to Katherine and took off her snowshoes. She used one as a shovel to pull snow back from the base of the middle-finger rock. Soon she’d uncovered a rock about two feet in diameter, and many smaller ones that rested against the bottom of the finger. She gave the big rock a hard shove, but it held tight, cemented to the ground by ice and snow.

“Give me a hand,” she said to Candace. Together, they pried and pushed the rock. At last, it budged, then rolled away, as if they were pushing the bottom ball of a snowman.

Katherine shone her light down on a small hole leading into the ground at the base of the large finger stone. “This is it! The entrance!”

The opening looked narrow, barely big enough for an adult to squeeze through. If Ruthie had come across it out hiking, she would have thought it was the den of a small animal—a fox or a skunk maybe—and passed it by.

Ruthie clicked on her flashlight and shone it into the narrow hole. The darkness seemed to eat up the beam of her light, and she couldn’t see how far back the tunnel went. “Are we sure this goes anywhere?” she asked, doubtful. What she was really thinking was,
There’s no way in hell I’m climbing in there
.

She suddenly had the feeling that this was all one big trick being played on her, that at any second everyone would start laughing, patting Ruthie on the back, saying,
We sure fooled you!
Her mother would even come out of hiding, in on the joke. Maybe it had all been her brainchild—a way to teach Ruthie some lesson about responsibility.

“One way to find out,” Candace said. “I’ll go first, but if you all don’t follow right behind, you can bet I’ll be back out in a jiffy. And
I’m not going to be happy.” She patted the holster under her coat in case anyone missed the point.

“I don’t know about this,” Ruthie said.
What kind of person actually uses the word “jiffy”? Particularly when threatening people with a gun?

“She doesn’t like small spaces,” Fawn explained to the others.

Understatement of the year
, thought Ruthie.

“I’m not thrilled about it, either,” Candace said. “But, like it or not, that’s where we’ve got to go.”

Candace shoved her pack down into the hole, then took off her coat and pushed it in, too. The snowshoes she left leaning against the rock. Headlamp shining, she wiggled herself into the hole headfirst and seemed to get stuck midway.

“Maybe it’s not big enough. Maybe we can’t get through, or it’s just a dead end,” Ruthie said, beginning to sweat as she watched Candace struggle. Candace kicked her feet, writhed, and squirmed like a swimmer stuck on land. They heard muffled curse words from inside. Eventually, Candace’s feet disappeared. A few moments later, there was an echoing shout: “I’m in! Come on! Hurry! You’re not going to believe this!”

Katherine turned to the girls and began talking quickly and quietly. “I’ll go next,” she said. “I’ll take as long as I can getting in. But here’s what I want you girls to do.” She rummaged in her coat pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “Take the path that leads right down to the road. My car is parked about a quarter-mile past your driveway. It’s a black Jeep Cherokee. My cell phone’s in the glove compartment. Call for help. If there’s no signal, get in the car and go to the nearest house. Just get out of here. This Candace woman is clearly nuts, and I’m afraid she’s going to hurt someone with that gun she keeps waving around. I can hold her off for a while, give you a good head start.”

“Where the hell are you?” Candace yelled from the hole. “Who’s coming next?”

“I am!” Katherine shouted into the hole. “I’m on my way!”

Ruthie let herself imagine it for a minute: escaping down the hill with Fawn, calling 911 on Katherine’s phone, orchestrating a rescue. But Candace believed her mother was in the cave. What if
she was right? What if her mother was hurt, or what if Candace got to her first, with her insane conspiracy theories—and her gun?

Ruthie shook her head, lowered her voice. “I’m not leaving.”

She took the doll from her sister’s arms, unwrapped the gun, and showed it to Katherine, holding it in her outstretched palm. “I really think my mother might be in there. And I know that, whatever’s going on, she’d never leave me and my sister on purpose. So, if she is down there, chances are she’s in trouble. And with Candace heading in, things just got worse.”

Katherine looked at the gun, sighed, and nodded.

Ruthie turned to Fawn. “You take the keys and follow the path down to the road. Find the Jeep and call for help. You’re a big girl. You can do this.”

Fawn shook her head determinedly. “No way. Mimi and I are staying with you. We’re going to help you find Mom.”

“Okay,” Ruthie agreed, wishing she knew if she was doing the right thing. But she could stand out here all night debating plans or visualizing scenarios, and in the meantime, her mother might be down there in trouble.

“Both of you just be careful, okay?” Katherine said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“You, either,” Ruthie said, thinking of the way Katherine had been studying the photo of Auntie’s instructions, how eager she’d seemed to send the girls away.

“What’s taking so long out there, ladies?” Candace shouted.

“Sorry,” Katherine called down into the hole, “couldn’t get the damn snowshoes off. I’m coming!” She shoved her pack in, then scrambled in herself, disappearing quickly.

“Mimi and me next,” Fawn said. Ruthie handed the flashlight to her little sister.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Ruthie promised, making sure the gun’s safety was on, just like Buzz had shown her, before tucking it into her coat pocket.

Fawn’s size definitely put her at an advantage. She slipped through the narrow passageway with ease, the flashlight beam illuminating craggy walls of dark, damp stone.

Ruthie took a deep breath and followed. The tunnel smelled
like wet rocks, dirt, and … woodsmoke? No mistaking it—there was a fire burning somewhere close by. The opening was tight, and she squeezed through on her belly like a cork in a bottle, head low, eyes on her sister’s feet ahead of her. Ruthie’s heart raced, and she was breathing so fast she was afraid she might pass out.

“You okay, Ruthie?” Fawn called back.

“Fine,” Ruthie said, her voice small and squeaky. Was the tunnel getting even smaller? She imagined the stones pushing down, squeezing her until her ribs began to crack and her eyeballs popped out. If her instinct was right and her mother turned out to be in here somewhere, Ruthie might just have to kill her for putting them through this. She was more frightened than she could ever remember being.