The Winter People (12 page)

Leaving the case of brushes, Katherine stepped away from the art table with the strange little book clenched in her hand. She crossed the living room, grabbed the cigarettes and lighter from the coffee table, curled up on the couch, turned back to the very beginning of the book, and continued to read.

“It’s definitely loaded,” Buzz said, holding the gun they’d found under her mother’s floor. He kept his index finger off the trigger, resting it along the metal barrel. They were sitting side by side on her mom’s bed. Ruthie was holding a bottle of beer. Buzz had put his down on the bedside table, where it sat abandoned and sweating. Ruthie was worried it would leave a ring in the wood, a telltale sign that they’d been there. She put the bottle on the floor and wiped off the tabletop with her sleeve.

It was ten o’clock, and Fawn was sound asleep. She’d had a fever of 102. Ruthie had been giving her Tylenol every four hours to keep it down. She’d even made up a brew of some of her mother’s tea with feverfew and willow bark and had Fawn drink it. Once Fawn was asleep, she called Buzz and asked him to come over. He brought a six-pack of beer.

“See? Here,” Buzz said, and held out the gun to show her the inner workings. “The cylinder holds six cartridges. Six shots. It’s an older gun, but it’s a real beauty, and it’s in good shape. Your mom’s kept it cleaned and oiled.”

“Are you sure?” Ruthie asked, still unable to believe that her mother would even touch a gun.

“Well, someone has. And this is her bedroom, right? It’s not so unusual, really, for a woman living alone out here with her kids to want some kind of protection. My dad sells more handguns to women than men.”

Ruthie shivered, but moved in for a closer look. “So how’s it work?”

“Simple,” Buzz said, eyes all lit up. He was loving this—the chance to be an expert in something. Buzz’s dad ran Bull’s Eye Archery and Ammo out on Route 6. Buzz had grown up around guns and had been hunting since he was eight years old. “What we have here is a Colt single-action revolver. This is the safety latch. You want to push that back. Then use your thumb to pull down on the hammer until it clicks. After that, you just aim and pull the trigger. The trigger releases the hammer, and the gun fires.”

Buzz turned the gun in his hand. “If you want, we can try it out tomorrow. I can show you how to fire it.”

Ruthie shook her head. “My mom would kill me.”

He nodded and put the gun back into the box carefully, respectfully.

“I still can’t believe she just disappeared like this,” he said, taking off his baseball cap and running a hand through his close-cropped hair.

“I know,” Ruthie said. “It’s not like her. She’s a little odd, but she’s so … dependable. Stuck in her ways. She barely ever goes to town, and now she’s gone and vanished off the face of the freaking earth. It doesn’t make sense.”

“So what’s your plan? I mean, if she doesn’t show up?”

“I don’t know.” Ruthie sighed. “I had been thinking that I’d call the cops if she wasn’t back by tonight, but then we found this stuff. Now I truly don’t know what the hell to do. What if she’s caught up in something … illegal?”

Buzz nodded. “Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t call the cops. Finding the gun and wallets—it does make you wonder.”

“I know,” Ruthie said weakly. It seemed impossible—the idea that her mild-mannered, herbal-tea-loving, middle-aged mother was involved in something criminal.

What else didn’t Ruthie know? What else might be uncovered if she did call the police?

Buzz was a quiet a minute. “Maybe it’s the aliens.”

“Goddamn,” Ruthie spat. “I am
so
not in the mood for any alien theories right now.”

“No, no, really. Alien abduction. It happens all the time. They suck them up in these tractor beams and do experiments and probe them and shit, then let them go, sometimes miles from where they were taken, memories wiped clean. And you know what me and Tracer saw out in the woods, not even a mile from your place.”

Ruthie remembered the shadowy woods, the rocks jutting up like teeth that made her feel as if she were on the verge of being swallowed up.

“Come on, Buzz. I could use a little sanity here.”

“Okay. But can I just point out something kind of obvious?”

Buzz asked.

She shrugged, but didn’t protest.

“Well, do you ever think about the way you guys live? You know, you’re kind of cut off from the world out here—barely any visitors, unlisted phone number, no-trespassing signs everywhere.”

“You know my mom. She’s a total hippie freak,” Ruthie said. “My dad was the same way, too. That’s why they moved out here from Chicago when I was three. They didn’t want to be a part of the machine. They wanted to go back to the land, live this happy hippie utopian dream with chickens and an herb garden and fresh whole-grain bread.”

“What if it’s more than that?” Buzz asked.

“What are you saying?”

“That sometimes, if people don’t want to be found, there’s a damn good reason for it.”

They were quiet a minute.

“I’m gonna go check on Fawn,” she said. “When I get back, we can try to get the closet open.”

She padded down the hall to Fawn’s room. In the soft glow of Fawn’s night-light, she found her little sister curled up under a quilt, Roscoe purring contentedly on top of her. Mimi had fallen onto the floor.

“Hey, old man. You looking after Fawn?” Ruthie asked, stroking the cat. “Good boy.” She reached down to feel Fawn’s forehead. Still warm, but the fever was down. She picked up Mimi, tucked her in right next to Fawn, and pulled the quilt up to cover them both.

“I think her fever’s down,” she reported to Buzz back in her mom’s room.

“That’s good news.”

“Yeah. Poor kid. It sucks that she’s sick now, when Mom’s not here.”

Buzz smiled. “Fawn has you.”

“Yeah, well, Mom better show up soon. I can’t take care of a kid. You should have seen me trying to figure out how much Tylenol to give her. I didn’t even know what she weighed—I had to ask her.”

Buzz took her hands in his. “You’re doing just fine,” he told her. “Quit being so hard on yourself.”

“If you say so,” Ruthie said. “Now let’s see about that closet.”

Buzz grabbed the crowbar Ruthie had found in the barn and went to work. Ruthie stood back and watched, suddenly nervous about what they might find inside. In less than five minutes, Buzz had both the top and bottom boards off.

“You want to do the honors?” he asked, stepping away from the closet door.

Ruthie shook her head. “You go ahead.”

“All righty, then,” Buzz said. Keeping the heavy metal crowbar in his right hand, just in case, Buzz turned the knob and slowly pulled open the door.

“Nothing.” He stuck his head in for a better look. “Just a bunch of clothes.” He stepped back and went to sit on the bed with his beer, clearly disappointed.

Ruthie came forward to peer in.

Buzz was right—there was nothing unusual inside. Ruthie flipped through the clothing on hangers: her dad’s familiar flannel shirts, her mom’s turtlenecks and fleece. There was a stack of sweaters on the shelf above. Clogs and running shoes in neat rows on the floor below.

Her mother had kept most of her dad’s clothes after he died, almost as if she was expecting him back. Checking that Buzz wasn’t looking, Ruthie buried her face in one of her dad’s old plaid shirts hanging in the closet, trying to catch a scent of him. She smelled only cedar and dust.

She didn’t like being in the closet, even with the door open. Small, tight places had always freaked her out. In her worst nightmares, she was trapped in tiny rooms, or having to wriggle through narrow passageways she could barely fit through. And she always got stuck and woke up screaming, breathless.

Keeping as much of her body as possible outside the closet now, Ruthie searched through the clothes, thinking how odd it was that her mother had sealed away this stuff. Hadn’t she just been wearing this green cardigan last week? Ruthie peered inside all the pockets, even reached into the shoes. All she came up with were a couple of matchbooks and half a roll of Life Savers covered with pocket lint. She pulled out all the shoes, clearing off the floor, and felt around the edges of the floorboards, checking for another secret compartment.

“I still say it’s pretty freaking weird,” Buzz said, squinting at the closet.

“Yeah, why try to keep people out like that? All she’s got in there is a bunch of old shoes and stretched-out turtlenecks.”

Buzz shook his head. “That’s not what bugs me. What it looks like to me is, she was trying to keep something
in
.”

Ruthie forced out a wheezy-sounding laugh, watched Buzz tearing at the label of his beer bottle.

It felt strange and kind of thrilling to have Buzz here, in the house—in her mom’s room, even. Mom didn’t think much of her relationship with Buzz, and made it clear that she believed Ruthie could do better than the stoner kid who worked at his uncle’s scrap-metal yard.

“I mean,” her mother told her once, “I see that the boy is handsome, but he’s just not who I would picture you with.”

“And who
would
you picture me with?” Ruthie had asked, temper flaring.

Her mother thought a minute. “Someone who didn’t spend all his time searching the sky for flying saucers. He calls so much attention to himself that way. I saw a flyer at the farmers’ market—he’s started a UFO-hunting group of some sort. It said on the flyer that he thinks the Devil’s Hand is some kind of alien hotspot.”

Ruthie shrugged.

“That’s all we need,” her mother said. “Buzz and his merry band of wackos out roaming our woods.”

“They’re not
our
woods,” Ruthie said.

“Still,” her mother said, pursing her lips. “The boy needs to have some sense talked into him.”

“You don’t know him
at all
,” Ruthie had said, stalking out of the room.

Buzz was the most sensible, stable person she knew. Yeah, he had a few weird ideas, but so what? The guy was rock solid. She understood that her mother was distrustful of people she didn’t know, but, still, it pissed Ruthie off that her mother didn’t trust her judgment.

But now, with her mom gone, all of this felt silly and little-girlish. If her mother got back, Ruthie would do things differently. She’d insist on inviting Buzz to dinner, let her mother see how wonderful and unique he was once you got to know him. She’d even take her mom over to see his sculptures. Who knows, maybe, with all her mom’s craft-fair connections, she might have some ideas for ways Buzz could market his art, someday even make a living from it.

She joined Buzz on the bed, picked up
Visitors from the Other Side
, and flipped it over to look at the photo of her house with Sara Harrison Shea.

“It’s really bizarre that she lived here,” Buzz said. “I mean, I knew she was from West Hall, but—”

“Wait, you’ve, like, heard of her?”

Buzz sat up straighter. “Sure. Sara Harrison Shea is
kind
of the most famous person who ever lived in West Hall. I even read the book, but that was way before I met you. I guess that’s why I never recognized your house. Crazy.”

Buzz hadn’t done well in school—he was a learn-by-doing kind of guy and, back in high school, always had trouble memorizing things and then spitting them back out for tests. He did great with all the hands-on automotive-technology stuff, but give him a pop quiz and he was screwed. He was a very slow reader, and Ruthie suspected he had some degree of dyslexia, but never brought it up because he was so insecure about people thinking he was stupid.

“So she was famous because of this book?”

“Well, yeah. In certain circles, she’s a big name.”

Ruthie nodded. Despite his slow reading, Buzz was well read when it came to the supernatural and conspiracy theories.
Of course
he’d know all about the freaky lady who saw dead people.

“You mean, with people who believe in ghosts and stuff? What was she, like, a medium or something?”

“She wasn’t just a spiritualist—not in the traditional sense anyway. She claimed that the dead could really come back. Not like ghosts, but with actual flesh-and-blood bodies.”

Ruthie got a chill; she looked down at the photo of Sara on the back of the book.

“But I think she’s most famous for how she died,” Buzz continued. “And the journals her niece published, they read like a goddamn real-life murder mystery.”

“All it says in the introduction is something about her having been brutally murdered,” Ruthie said.

“I’ll say!”

“So what happened?” she asked.

Buzz scowled at her. “Are you sure you want to know?”

Ruthie nodded, seeing that he was clearly bursting to tell her. Besides, how bad could it be?

He took in a breath. “Okay. She was found in the field behind her house—I guess I should say, behind
your
house.” He paused for a second here, watching her, knowing he was creeping her out, and enjoying every second.

“She’d been skinned,” he said, making his voice as eerily Vincent Price–like as he could. “Peeled like a freaking grape. And you know the most messed-up part? They say her skin was never found.”

Ruthie squirmed, fought the instinct to give him a girlish
Ewww!
“I don’t believe it,” she said, sitting up straight to finish the last swallow of beer. “That’s totally made up!”

“No,” Buzz said, holding up two fingers, “Scout’s honor. They said it was her husband, Martin, who did it. The town doctor, who was also Martin’s brother, found him right beside her body, holding a gun, covered in blood and half crazy. He shot himself right in front of his brother.”

Buzz’s eyes were big and glistening. He was just as excited as when he was telling one of his alien stories.

“There’s more, too. My grandpa, he said his dad told him that after she died people would sometimes see Sara walking through town late at night.”

“What, like, her ghost?” Ruthie felt the same way about ghosts as she did about UFOs.

“No. Like some actual person all dressed up in her skin!”

“Okay, you’ve officially crossed the line. That’s beyond gross. Not to mention obviously bullshit!”