The Winter People(30)

“It’s true! Ask anyone. There were some weird deaths, and people blamed Sara—or whatever it was walking around in her skin. So everyone in the village started leaving gifts out on their porches for her—food and coins, jars of honey. She’d walk through town collecting them late at night. Every full moon, the whole town would put stuff out for her. Some people, old-timers like Sally Jensen out on Bulrush Road? They’re still doing it.”

Ruthie shook her head in disbelief. “No way!”

“I’ll prove it. Next full moon, you and I will take a ride around town. I’ll show you the offerings set out here and there on porches and doorsteps.”

“So how come I’ve never heard any of this before?”

He shrugged, set down his empty beer bottle, and leaned back into the bed, hands clasped behind his head. “I guess people don’t talk about it all that much. My grandpa only mentioned it once, when he was good and drunk one Thanksgiving. He was legitimately scared.”

Ruthie shook her head, lay back in the bed beside Buzz, and closed her eyes. It had been a long, exhausting day. She just needed to rest for a minute.

Suddenly she was back in Fitzgerald’s, holding her mother’s hand. The fluorescent light was flickering above them, growing steadily dimmer.

“What do you choose, Dove?” asked her mother, who held her hand a little too tightly. The bakery seemed to be shrinking around them, the walls closing in.

Ruthie stared at the rows of cakes and cookies and pointed at the pink cupcake. The ceiling was lower now.

Then she looked up to see her mother smiling down. And it was the stranger again—a tall, thin woman with tortoiseshell-framed glasses shaped like cat’s eyes. The bakery wasn’t much bigger than a closet now, and everything had gotten very dark. The only source of light was the glass case that held the cupcakes, which seemed to sparkle and glow.

Ruthie felt that old familiar panic at being in such a small, tight place. She was breathing too fast, doing an openmouthed panting like a dog.

“Good choice, Dove,” the woman said, then reached around the back of her head and pulled on a zipper. Her whole mommy disguise came peeling off, leaving a sack of red oozing flesh with a hole for a mouth.

Ruthie tried to scream, but couldn’t. She gasped herself awake, heart hammering.

She blinked hard. She and Buzz were lying on her mom’s bed, on top of the covers. Buzz was snoring softly. The light was still on, glaring down like an eye. She caught movement off to her right side—something in the closet. She turned; a shadow moved. The cat? No, it was too big to be Roscoe. She sat up, drawing in a sharp breath; from the back corner of the closet she saw the glint of two eyes.

Buzz bolted up in bed, body rigid. “Whatisit?”

Ruthie pointed to the closet, hand shaking. “There’s something in there,” she told him, her throat almost too dry to speak. “Watching us.”

Buzz had his feet on the floor in two seconds and the crowbar in his hand. He bounded to the closet, swept back the clothes on hangers.

“Nothing here,” he said, after a second.

Ruthie shook her head, rolled out of bed, and approached the closet cautiously. There was nothing but the familiar rows of shoes, her parents’ clothing on hangers. But something was different. The air in the closet felt strange—crackling and used up. And there was an odd acrid, burning odor—something familiar to her, but she couldn’t say where she’d smelled it before.

“Maybe it was just a bad dream?” Buzz said, ruffling her hair.

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, and closed the closet door hard, wishing she could lock it.





Visitors from the Other Side

The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea



January 15, 1908


Things have become so very strange—I feel as though I am floating outside my body, watching myself and those around me with the same curiosity as if I were watching actors on a stage. Our kitchen table is piled high with food the women bring: brown bread, baked beans, smoked ham, potpies, potato soup, gingerbread, apple crisp, fruitcake soaked in rum. The smell of the food sickens me. All I can think is how much Gertie would have loved it all—fresh gingerbread topped with whipped cream! But Gertie is gone, and the food keeps coming.

I see myself nod, shake people’s hands, accept their hugs and food and kind gestures. Claudia Bemis has cleaned the house from top to bottom and kept the coffeepot full. The men have split kindling, carried in bundles of firewood, kept the dooryard shoveled.

Lucius has stayed right by Martin’s side. The two of them spent much of yesterday in the barn together, building Gertie’s coffin.

These past two days, so many people have come to pay respects, to say how sorry they are. Their words are hollow. Empty. Soundless bubbles rising to the surface of the water.

Gertie is with the angels now.

We’re praying for you.

The schoolteacher, Delilah Banks, came calling. “Gertie had the most fanciful thoughts,” she said through tears. “I can’t tell you how very much I will miss her.”

One teary-eyed face after another, a chorus of voices low and somber: So sorry. We’re so, so very sorry.

I do not wish for their sympathy—what I want is my Gertie back, and if no one can give me that, then, as far as I’m concerned, the world can just go away and take their tears and potpies and gingerbread with them.