The Winter People(72)

“Oh yes. Poor, ill Sara, with her cracked mind, needs her rest, doesn’t she? If not, we’ll tie her to the bedposts again.” She grimaced.

“I …” He hesitated, unable to say the words. I’m sorry. So sorry for all of this.

“What is it you’re looking for, Martin? What do you think is in Gertie’s pocket?”

He looked down at the rough wood. “I have no idea.”

She grinned, kept the rifle pointed at his chest. “Well, then, let’s find out, shall we? Keep digging, Martin. Let us open the coffin and see what we find.”

He carefully cleared away the rest of the dirt, brought the lantern close to the edge of the hole, and jumped down into it. Feet straddling the small coffin, he took out his hammer to pry the lid off. But the nails slipped easily out of their holes. His hands trembled so hard that he dropped the hammer before grasping the wooden edges of the top and pulling.

What he saw made him cry out like a little boy. He went cold from the inside out.

Empty. The coffin was empty.

What had Sara done?

Sara smiled down at him, moving her head from side to side like a snake. Her skin glowed in the moonlight, as if she were made of alabaster.

“You see, that’s the problem, Martin. If you want to look in Gertie’s pocket, you’re looking in the wrong place.” Holding the rifle in her right hand, she displayed her left, fingers spread. There, above her wedding ring, was the little bone ring. She used her thumb to turn it around her finger, the strange ring she’d once seemed so afraid of.

“Where did you get that?” Martin asked.

“It was in Gertie’s pocket.”

“Impossible,” Martin stammered. He moved toward her, began to climb out of the hole.

“You stay where you are,” she warned, keeping the gun aimed at his chest. “I was so sure Auntie’s spirit had done this evil thing, but perhaps the truth is simpler; perhaps it’s been right in front of my face the whole time, and I just couldn’t bring myself to see it.”

Sara rocked back on her heels, holding the gun in both hands now, bringing it up high, and sighting down the barrel.

“Was it you, Martin?” she asked quietly. “Did you hurt our Gertie?”

Martin staggered backward and fell against the dirt wall. It was as if she’d already pulled the trigger.

He remembered holding Gertie in his arms when she was a tiny infant, their miracle baby; walking with her, hand in hand, into the woods last month to choose a tree to cut down for Christmas. How she’d found a spruce with a bird’s nest in it and insisted they cut that one down. “Aren’t we the luckiest people ever, Papa?” she’d asked. “To have a Christmas tree with a bird’s nest in it?”

“I …” he stuttered, looking at Sara. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. With God as my witness, I swear I would never hurt our little girl.”

Sara stared, finger twitching on the trigger. “But the ring was in your pocket when you left the house that morning, was it not?”

“Sara, please. You’re not thinking clearly.”

She was silent a moment, as though turning the matter over in her mind.

“But it wasn’t your ring, was it? It was hers. Which means she still could have been the one to do it.”

“You’re not making sense, Sara. You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

“Am I, now?” Sara said. She lowered the gun, turned, and looked back into the shadows around the house. “Gertie?” Sara called out. “Your father thinks I’m not right in the head. Come show him, darling. Show him the truth.”

Martin stood on the empty coffin, peering over the edge of the hole into the darkness. Somewhere in the darkness, a shadow moved toward them, shuffling through the snow.

Oh dear beloved Jesus, no. Please, no. Martin closed his eyes tight, counted to ten, trying to make it all go away.

He opened his eyes and scrambled at the dirt, clawing his way out of the hole, not looking at whatever was moving toward them from the shadows.

“Sara,” he said, reaching for the gun, wrapping his fingers around the barrel. The movement startled Sara, and the gun fired.

He heard the sound, saw the flash of light, felt the bullet hit his chest just below his rib cage on the left. He started to run in spite of the searing pain. He clapped a hand over the bloody hole.

“Martin?” Sara called. “Come back! You’re hurt!” But he did not turn back.

On he ran, across the yard and toward the woods, hand on his leaking chest, not daring to look back.





Visitors from the Other Side

The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea



(Editor’s note: This is the final entry I discovered, though, as you shall see, she makes reference to other pages she had been working on. It is chilling to note that Sara’s body was found only hours after she wrote these words.)


January 31, 1908


The dead can return. Not just as spirits, but as living, breathing beings. I have beheld the proof with my own eyes: my beloved Gertie, awakened. And I have made a decision: ours is a story that must be told. I have spent the last hours with papers spread out on the table, oil lamp burning bright, as I wrote down the exact instructions on how to awaken a sleeper. I have copied Auntie’s notes and told every detail of my own experience. I have finished at last, and tucked the papers away safely in not one but three separate hiding places.