The Winter People(77)

The glow in the chamber hadn’t just come from flashlights; there were oil lamps lit all around the room. And a room it was—there were shelves, a table, a wood-burning cookstove with a pipe leading up into a crevice in the rocky ceiling. A fire was lit in it, crackling and popping and almost making Ruthie forget she was in a cave beneath the Devil’s Hand. There was even a bed, piled high with old quilts, in a jagged alcove to the left.

The place felt strangely familiar.

Ruthie walked over to one of the sets of wooden shelves. There were jugs of water, sacks of flour and sugar, boxes of tea and coffee, tins of sardines and tuna, canned vegetables and soups, a bushel basket of apples.

Ruthie picked up one of the apples. It had no rotten spots.

“The lamps were all lit when I got down here,” Candace said. She held the gun out in front of her, scanning the room with her headlamp. There were three tunnels in addition to the one they had just come down, each leading off in a different direction, each dark.

“Ruthie, look!” Fawn squealed. She was over at the bed, holding a garish purple-and-yellow crocheted poncho.

“It’s Mom’s!” Ruthie said.

Fawn nodded excitedly. “She was wearing it the other night! When she disappeared!”

Ruthie stepped forward to get a better look at the poncho, then froze when she saw what was sitting up at the head of the bed, beside the pillow.

Her old green stuffed bear—Piney Boy. Ruthie scooped up the bear and held him to her chest; a memory flashed back to her, cloudy and dreamlike. It felt familiar because she’d been down here before, in this room. She’d followed someone here.

She closed her eyes and let the memory take her further.

There was a little girl who lived here. But she wasn’t nice. She’d shown Ruthie something dark and terrible.

Later, her father told her she’d imagined the whole thing.

She looked around the room. It wasn’t possible, was it? How could a little girl be living in a cave under the Devil’s Hand?

“It’s yours, isn’t it?” Fawn asked. “From when you were little? It’s the bear you’re holding in that old picture.”

Ruthie nodded, still holding the bear tight, struggling to remember more from that long-ago day. What had the girl shown her?

“There’s something else,” Fawn said. “Under the bed.” She pointed. Clutching the bear in one hand, her flashlight in the other, Ruthie peered under the bed.

A purple-and-white ski jacket lay on the stone floor. It was torn and covered with brown stains—old blood.

“That’s like the one that missing girl was wearing, isn’t it?” Fawn asked. “Willa Luce?”

Ruthie nodded, turning away.

She thought of what Candace had said earlier, about her parents’ claiming there was a monster in the woods. A monster that killed Tom and Bridget O’Rourke—her birth parents. Where had Ruthie been when they were killed? Had she been witness to whatever happened to them? The very idea of this made her feel sick to her stomach. The cave walls seemed to be moving in closer; the air felt thinner.

“Alice Washburne!” Candace called, her voice echoing, hurting Ruthie’s ears. “I’ve got your children! Show yourself or I’ll hurt them!”

Ruthie set down the green bear, reached into her pocket to find the gun. She flipped the safety lever off and held her breath, waiting.

They listened for a minute. All they heard was the crackling of the fire and a dripping sound from someplace far off.

“I don’t like this,” Fawn said, stepping closer to Ruthie. “I don’t like it down here.”

“Me, neither,” Ruthie said, hand on the gun in her pocket.

Silence.

“Damn it,” Candace barked. She circled the chamber, peering down each passageway with her headlamp. She stuck her head down one and sputtered something Ruthie didn’t catch.

“What’ll we do now?” Ruthie asked, her eye on the gun in Candace’s hand. Surely she was bluffing. She wouldn’t hurt them. She’d keep them alive and unharmed to use as leverage when the time came.

“We’ll have to explore each tunnel, one at a time.”

Please, God, no more narrow tunnels, Ruthie thought.

“We could split up,” Ruthie suggested. “Or maybe Fawn and I should stay here. In case my mom shows up.”

“No!” Candace spat. “We all go together.” She glanced around the cave, eyes beady and glinting. “Wait a minute. Where’s Katherine?”

Ruthie scanned the room, shone her light down the dark openings of the three tunnels.

“Damn it!” Candace bellowed.

Katherine was gone.





Sara


January 31, 1908


Auntie.

I blinked once, twice, three times, yet she still stood in my doorway, an actual flesh-and-blood being. Surely this was no spirit: she had form, substance; snow dripped from her clothes, and her body cast a long shadow behind her.

Gertie had run off as soon as she heard Auntie’s voice outside, probably gone back to the closet to hide.

Shep was by my side, growling low in his throat. Auntie gave him a look, and he slinked off, tail between his legs.

“Are you …” I stammered. “Are you one of them? Have you come back from the dead?”