The Winter People(85)

“Promise?”

“Swear,” Fawn said, gripping Ruthie’s shoulders tightly.

Ruthie moved forward slowly.

Katherine was standing over Candace, who was on the floor of the passage. She lay on her back, eyes open. The gun was on the ground beside her, as was the flashlight, still turned on, its beam illuminating the floor. Her throat had been opened up. In her right hand were a jumble of yellowed pages covered with neat cursive: Sara’s missing diary pages.

“She got what she came for,” Ruthie said, without meaning to say it out loud.

“Jesus,” Katherine said, pale and shaky. She took a step back.

“What is it?” Fawn whispered, her little fingers kneading Ruthie’s shoulders, pinching and twisting the skin through layers of clothing.

“Don’t worry, Little Deer,” Ruthie said. “Just keep your eyes closed.”

Ruthie’s mother caught up with them.

“It looks like an animal chewed on her neck,” Katherine whispered, leaning in closer and aiming the beam of her flashlight at Candace’s ravaged throat.

“Not an animal,” Ruthie’s mom said quietly. She knelt down and grabbed the diary pages, which were splattered with blood. “We have to keep moving.”

“Do you feel that?” Katherine asked. “There’s definitely a breeze coming from down there.” She stepped around Candace’s body and hurried down the passageway, without looking back.

Ruthie followed, Fawn clinging to her front like a baby monkey. Yes, there was a breeze, a change in the air. She didn’t look back, either, but was sure she felt eyes watching them from the shadows.





Ruthie


Ruthie sat with her mother, Fawn, and Katherine at the kitchen table. Mom had made coffee and warmed up banana bread from the freezer; the smell should have comforted Ruthie, but her stomach turned. To go from the dark, airless silence of the cave to this world full of light and color, smells and sound—it was all too much. The cups of coffee and plates of banana bread sat untouched.

Mom had given Fawn Tylenol and a cup of herbal tea and tried to put her to bed, but Fawn protested, not wanting to miss anything. She sat slumped on Mom’s lap, Mimi in her arms, doing her best to stay awake.

Katherine had been pestering Ruthie’s mother with nonstop questions about Gary, and Fawn had asked over and over how she had gotten to the caves and why they had found her tied up. “I’ll tell you the whole story from the beginning,” Mom promised. And now, at last, she had begun.

“Your father and I came here sixteen years ago. Our friends Tom and Bridget called us and said they’d come into possession of something that was going to change the world, going to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. If we helped them, they’d share the wealth with us. It seemed so exciting—a great call to adventure.”

The lights in the kitchen felt too bright and seemed to pulsate, to throb along with the pain in Ruthie’s head. She wanted to go up to her room, get into bed, put her head under the covers, and try to forget everything that had happened over these last three days.

Mom, sensing Ruthie’s misery in that special mom way she had, reached out to take Ruthie’s hand. Ruthie gave her mother’s hand a weak squeeze, but then she pulled her own hand away and set it on her lap, where it looked waxy and useless. A mannequin hand.

Katherine stirred her coffee restlessly, the spoon clanking against the mug like an alarm bell. “Please,” she said, interrupting the story. “Just tell me how Gary found you. How you ended up with his camera bag. What really happened that day?”

Ruthie’s mom peered at Katherine over the top of her glasses and gave her a patient nod. “I will get to all that. I promise. But in order to truly understand, you need to hear the whole thing from the beginning.”

Ruthie closed her eyes as she listened to her mother’s story, like when she was little and her mom used to tell her “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” This, too, was like a fairy tale: Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Hannah who loved to go to a bakery called Fitzgerald’s with her mother. Her mother and father loved her very much. They wanted only the best for her. And they felt that the key to their fortune, to their happiness, could be found in these pages that told a dreadful secret: how to bring back the dead.

And, as in all fairy tales, there was bloodshed, there was loss.

“It was a chilly spring afternoon,” Ruthie’s mother said. “And we’d all gone out into the woods to look for this portal that was mentioned in diary pages Tom and Bridget had.” She looked at Ruthie, smiling. “You were wearing a pretty little dress and coat, and carrying a teddy bear.”

“Like in that picture?” Ruthie said, remembering the photo, the happy smile on her face. “The one we have in the shoebox?”

Mom nodded. “I took that photo just before we left on our walk up the hill.” She looked down into her coffee cup, then continued her story.

“It was lovely in the woods—the trees were just leafing out, and the birds were singing. Tom and James were talking about books; you were chattering and humming little songs. When you got too tired to walk on your own, your mother carried you. When we were near the top of the hill, we saw a little girl hiding behind a tree. We called out to her, but she ran. She didn’t have a coat or shoes. Her hair was in tangles. We chased after her all the way up to the Devil’s Hand, but she disappeared in the rocks. Then we searched, and Tom found the cave opening, insisted we go in—we had to help this poor little girl. She was obviously lost and alone.”