The Winter People(86)

“We all went into the cave?” Ruthie asked.

Her mother nodded. “We never should have. But we didn’t know. How could we? It never occurred to us that the portal might be in there, or that this young girl had anything to do with it. We just saw a child in trouble and wanted to help. I think we forgot everything else.”

Mom fell silent for a long moment. No one made a sound. At last she took a deep breath and went on.

“It was dark; Tom and Bridget were up ahead of us. When we got to the first chamber, we saw right away that someone had been living there. There were a couple of lanterns burning. Tom thought he heard footsteps down one of the tunnels. He and Bridget went down, and …”

“She killed them?” Ruthie asked.

Mom nodded. “It all happened so fast. There was nothing we could do. James scooped you up in his arms, and we ran.”

The sleeper killed her parents. But there were kind James and Alice Washburne to take her in, to raise her as their own.

“I believe we were meant to be here for that very reason,” her mother said. “To save you, to take care of you. I knew without a doubt as I held you to my chest that day that we would be your parents. That it was our destiny.”

“Destiny,” Fawn repeated to Mimi.

Ruthie shook her head. Destiny, fate, meant to be, God’s plan—all this kind of talk had always gotten on Ruthie’s nerves. To suggest that her true parents’ slaughter was somehow guided by the stars just added insult to injury.

“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.”