The Winter People (36 page)

“But why didn’t we leave?” Ruthie wanted to know. “This … 
thing
kills my parents—and we just hang around? You actually decide we should
live
here? You knew what was out there!”

For she now understood what the monster in the woods was supposed to be—little sleeper Gertie, awakened for all eternity, just as Auntie had warned.

Something
had killed Candace, ripped at her throat like an animal. And the existence of Gertie would explain what had happened to Willa Luce, to the young boy in 1952, to the missing hunter, would even explain some of the stories Buzz and his friends told. She remembered her parents’ warnings when she was little:
Stay out of the woods. Bad things happen to little girls who get lost out there
.

Her mother nodded. “Oh yes, I knew what was out there, living in the cave. By the time we got back to the house that day, your father and I understood who she was, though we could scarcely believe it.”

“Who was it, Mama? Who was in the cave?” Fawn asked.

“A little girl named Gertie. Only she wasn’t an ordinary little girl. She was a sleeper.”

“Ruthie said sleepers aren’t real.” Fawn looked suspiciously up at Ruthie.

“Oh, they’re real, all right,” their mother said. She was quiet again for a moment, then continued.

“Anyway, we made it back to the house. Your father—he thought we should go, he thought we should get as far away as we could, as quick as we could. But I felt we needed to try to do something—to find a way to protect people from her, to keep what had happened to Tom and Bridget from ever happening again. I convinced him. For better or for worse.” She paused again, broke apart her banana bread, pushed the pieces around on her plate.

“She came back that evening.”

“Who?” Ruthie asked.

“Gertie. I heard a scrabbling in the closet upstairs and opened the door, and there she was. I thought I would die of fright, but Gertie looked so … so sorry almost, so sad and alone. She couldn’t help what she was. So I talked to her. I made a deal with her. If we stayed, your father and I would visit her in the cave. We would keep her company, bring her gifts, help her find a way to get food, but she needed to promise that she would never hurt us. She can’t speak—I don’t think any of them can. But she nodded, even smiled at me.”

Ruthie nodded numbly, still not quite able to believe the fantastical story her mother was telling. “So you’re basically saying you adopted two little girls that day?”

“Yes,” her mother said. “Only one was a much bigger burden and responsibility. I believed that it was up to us to help her, and to keep the world safe from her. I also believed that it was our responsibility—your father’s and mine—to make sure no one else could make another sleeper. We had to keep the knowledge safely guarded.”

“So the journal pages weren’t destroyed?” Katherine asked. “You had them the whole time?”

Candace had been right about this part. She’d gotten her proof in the end, but had died for it.

Ruthie’s mother shook her head. “The pages weren’t ours to destroy. It didn’t seem right. So we hid them in the caves, with Gertie to guard them, and told Candace they were gone—she only wanted to sell them, to make money. We knew there were more pages out there, the final instructions and map, and that one day they would surface.”

“Gary found them,” Katherine said. She looked very tired and horribly pale—her whole face, even her lips, washed of color. “And he showed up here with them. He had Auntie’s original letter to Sara, and the map she’d drawn showing the location of the portal in the cave.”

Ruthie’s mother nodded. “He came to the house after he’d found the cave—the map had led him right to it. He’d seen Gertie out there. Taken her picture. He knew everything. And he was absolutely determined that he was going to go home and pick up something of your son’s, then return and do the spell to bring him back. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I tried to explain to him what would happen—what a nightmare it would be. But he was determined. I begged him to talk it over with me some more. We went to lunch in town. I tried everything I could think of to dissuade him. I told him everything about Gertie. Hell, I even offered him money—not that I had any to give. But he’d made up his mind.”

Katherine turned the ring on her finger, the one she wore above her gold wedding band. Auntie’s ring.

Ruthie’s mother rubbed her eyes. “I followed him out of town that afternoon. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought maybe I could get him to pull over, that I’d find some way to get him to
change his mind. I couldn’t let him go back to Boston with those photographs. If he told anyone, if word got out …”

Mom hung her head, her whole body slumping forward, broken. Fawn looked from her mother to Ruthie, then over to Katherine, perplexed.

“He was driving so fast. Maybe if I hadn’t been following so close …”

“You … you saw him crash?” Katherine said, swaying a little in her chair as the weight of the words hit her. She put a hand on the table to steady herself.

Ruthie’s mother nodded and looked down at her hands, lying flat on the table. “He was just ahead of me, going around a bend. He took the corner too fast and just lost control. It all happened so quickly; there was no stopping it.

“I pulled over and ran to his car, but as soon as I got there, I knew there was nothing I could do. He was gone.”

Katherine made a quiet sobbing sound and put her face in her hands.

“His backpack was there, on the passenger seat, beside him. Before I could think about it too much, I reached in and took it.”

Her mother lifted her head, looked right at Ruthie. Her blue eyes were full of tears, but behind them was a look of resolute determination. “I just couldn’t let anyone find the papers he had with him or see the pictures on his camera. I knew I had to hide the papers with the other things up in the cave, where no one would ever find them. You don’t understand what a sleeper is capable of. If word got out, if more were made …” Her mother shook her head. “Can you imagine what would happen?”

Everyone turned and looked to Katherine, waiting. She sat stone-faced, staring straight ahead, into nothing, with dark, hollow eyes.

“I guess,” Katherine said then, standing up, swaying a little, still terribly pale, “we all do what we think is best. Sometimes we make terrible mistakes, sometimes we do the right thing. Sometimes we never know. We just have to hope.” With this, she turned to leave the kitchen, but stopped instantly. “Can you tell me one more thing?” she asked.

“Anything,” Ruthie’s mom said.

“What did he order?”

“I’m sorry?”

“At Lou Lou’s, when you had lunch. What did Gary have?”

Ruthie’s mother looked puzzled, then answered. “A turkey club sandwich and a cup of coffee.”

Katherine smiled. “Good,” she said. “That was always his favorite.”

Ruthie woke up to the familiar and comforting sounds of her mother making breakfast downstairs. There was the smell of coffee, bacon, and cinnamon rolls. She dragged herself out of bed and went down to the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Mom said, voice chipper. Ruthie looked at her mother and around at the kitchen, and just then, for that one moment, she let herself imagine that everything that had happened these last few days had been a bad dream.

Then her mother broke the spell.

“Ruthie,” she said, “I know you’ve had a lot to take in, and I just want you to know that if you have any questions, if there’s anything you’d like me to explain further, I’m here.”

“Thanks,” Ruthie said, helping herself to coffee.

“You know, your father and I saw you as our greatest gift. We couldn’t have loved you more, and it never mattered that you weren’t our biological child.”

Ruthie nodded, felt her face grow pink.

“I’m sorry for keeping the truth from you. And even sorrier that you had to find out everything the way you did.”

Ruthie wasn’t sure what to say.

“And now that you know the whole story, there’s something I need you to think about. I know how much going away to college means to you, and if your mind is set, we’ll find a way to make it happen. But I’m not getting any younger. And someone needs to
look after Gertie when I’m not able to anymore. Honestly, I could even use some help with it now—it’s a big responsibility for just one person, and with your father gone, I’m afraid I haven’t been able to give her the attention she needs. She really likes to have someone with her. She gets … lonely.”

Her mother turned back to the stove, flipped the bacon, opened the oven door to check the cinnamon rolls, then wiped her hands on her apron and went on.

“Gertie has always had some kind of … affinity for that closet in my bedroom. When I didn’t come to the cave often enough for her liking, I would find her in the closet. I was so afraid that one of these days she was bound to encounter one of you girls. I finally sealed it shut. Just to discourage her. But that only made her angry.

“When she came for me the other night, there was a rage, a desperation in her eyes that I had not seen before; she thought I had turned my back on her. I had to go with her—I had no choice. I was afraid of what she might do if I refused, afraid she might hurt you or your sister.”

Alice took the coffeepot and moved to top up Ruthie’s coffee, but Ruthie hadn’t yet taken a sip. She refilled her own mug instead, stirred in plenty of milk and sugar.

“But this time Gertie didn’t want to let me go. She kept me tied up to the chair, wanted me to tell her stories. She’s very … strong. And when she heard all of you enter the cave, she reinforced my bonds, and even gagged me so I couldn’t call out to warn you.” Her mother took a long, slow sip of coffee and looked out the window toward the hill.

“So you do understand, don’t you? We’ve got to work hard, do our best to keep things like what happened with Willa Luce from happening again. What happened to Willa—it was because I failed to do my job. But if I had your help, things could be different.”

Ruthie looked up at her mother, who gave her face a gentle, loving stroke.

“Someone needs to keep the secrets of our hill safe; to keep everyone in town safe. I just want you to think about it, that’s all.”

Fawn stumbled into the kitchen, wearing pink footed pajamas and carrying Mimi.

“Now, who’s ready for cinnamon buns?” Mom asked cheerfully, opening the oven.

After breakfast, the girls sneaked into their mom’s bedroom while she was downstairs doing the dishes.

“Is it true?” Fawn asked once they were alone, crouching over the secret hole in the floor. “That we’re not really even sisters?” She looked down into the hiding place.

Ruthie reached for Fawn, turned her face up so that their eyes were locked. “You
are
my sister, Fawn. You’ll always be my sister. Nothing can change that.”

Fawn smiled, and Ruthie leaned over and kissed her forehead.

They gathered all of the diary pages, Tom’s and Bridget’s wallets, and the gun. All of it went into Fawn’s backpack, to be carried out to the well.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Fawn asked again. “Mom is going to be really mad when she finds out we took all this.”

Ruthie nodded. “It’ll be okay. It’s what we need to do. Mom wasn’t ever able to get rid of any of this—she felt too guilty or whatever, and I do understand that, but look at all the trouble it caused. As long as these papers are still around, then people will be willing to do crazy things to get them. And as long as the instructions exist, sleepers can still be made.”

Fawn gave Ruthie a puzzled look. “So the monsters are real.”

Ruthie took in a breath. “Yeah,” she said. “But they can’t help what they are. The truth is, I feel bad for Gertie. She didn’t ask for any of this.”

The woods were still as the girls walked up the hill to search for the old well. They made their way through the orchard, past the place where Ruthie had found their father clutching his ax. Up they climbed, the trail growing steeper as they approached the Devil’s Hand. Rocks poked out from under the fresh carpet of snow—some tall and jagged, some as smooth and round as giant eggs. Once they got to the top, they stopped beneath the five giant finger rocks. Ruthie looked for the opening to the cave, but the stone had been pulled back into place and was buried in a fresh drift of snow. There was no birdsong, no sign of life. Only the occasional sound of clumps of snow sliding off branches and hitting the ground.

When they finally discovered the old well, to the north of the Devil’s Hand, they were both out of breath, but pleased to have found it at last.

“This is where Gertie died?” Fawn asked, her breath coming out in cloudy puffs. Mimi the doll was clutched tight in her arms.

Ruthie nodded and looked down into the well—a circle of field-stone surrounding a big dark hole that seemed to go down forever.

She tried to imagine falling down it, looking up at the bright circle of daylight, seeing it get farther and farther away, until it was like some distant moon.

The girls stood, bundled in winter coats, snowshoes strapped to their feet. The sun had just come up over the hill, and they could see its hazy glow through the trees. The forest around them was blanketed in white, absolutely still. Not even the wind stirred. It felt as if the whole world were sleeping and they were the only two awake.