The Winter People (34 page)

I’ve hurt myself
, Martin tried to say. He knew he was dying. He could see it on Lucius’s face. His chest felt heavy, and his breathing had turned to wet, labored rasps. He coughed, and a light spray of blood shot from his mouth.

“Sara,” Martin gasped. He reached for his brother’s hand, gripped it tightly. “Promise you’ll take care of my Sara.”

“It’s a little late for that, brother,” Lucius said, pulling his hand
away from Martin’s, his eyes moving over Martin to something behind him.

Martin heaved himself up and turned to look. The moon was higher now, illuminating the yard with crisp blue clarity.

He saw a pile of torn, bloody clothes not ten feet from him—Sara’s dress and coat.

“No,” he whimpered.

Beside the clothes lay a woman’s body on a bed of bloody snow. It had been stripped of skin—the flesh wet and sparkling, skull gleaming in the moonlight.

Martin turned away and vomited, the spasms ripping through his open chest.

Then he saw the gun.

“How could you do this?” Lucius asked, his voice sputtering. He was crying now. Martin hadn’t seen his brother cry since they were small boys.

“It wasn’t me,” Martin said. But he picked up the gun and turned it around so that it pointed at the middle of his own chest, his thumb resting awkwardly on the trigger. “It was Gertie.”

Martin closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. He felt himself falling into bed at last, warm and safe beside his darling Sara. Gertie was down the hall, singing, her voice as high and light as a sparrow’s. Sara pressed her body against his, and whispered in his ear:

“Isn’t it good to be home?”

“Faster,” Candace barked at them. “Keep up, now. I’m not losing anyone else.”

They were moving down a narrow passage, Candace in the lead, her headlamp glowing, the gun clenched in her right hand. There was no way to know which direction Katherine had gone, so they had just picked the passageway closest to where she’d been standing when Candace had last seen her.

“Katherine?” Candace shouted. “Alice?”

The tunnel seemed to be moving down, deeper into the earth. The air felt thicker, damper. The walls were jagged rock; the ground was uneven. At least they could walk upright. Ruthie concentrated on keeping her breathing as calm and level as she could, counting, “One, two, three,” to herself with each inhalation and exhalation. Step by step, she moved forward, trying not to think about where she was, only what she had to do: keep Fawn safe and try to find Mom.

“Um, Candace, maybe we shouldn’t be calling out to them like that,” Ruthie suggested. “You know, just in case there’s someone else down here. Someone whose attention we might not want to attract?”

Candace turned back and looked at Ruthie. “Who’s in charge here?” she snapped.

Ruthie reached into her jacket pocket, wrapped her fingers around the grip of the gun.

“You doing okay?” she asked Fawn.

Her little sister nodded up at her, but her face looked flushed in the dim light. Ruthie put a hand to her forehead—Fawn was burning up again. Shit. Ruthie hadn’t brought any Tylenol. What happened to a kid if a fever got too high? Convulsions—brain damage, maybe.

She had to get Fawn out of here; she never should have brought her in the first place. She needed to get her home, give her some medicine, put her to bed, get a friend to come watch her; then she’d make Buzz come back into the cave with her to search for her mother.

“Mimi says this is a bad place,” Fawn said, her eyes glassy and dazed-looking. “She says not all of us will make it out of here.”

Ruthie leaned down and looked in her sister’s eyes. “We’re going to get out of here, Fawn. I promise. Soon.”

“Shh!” Candace hissed; she stopped suddenly, her left hand raised in the air in a hold-on-now gesture. They stopped behind her, listening.

“Did you hear that? Footsteps! Up ahead. Come on!” Candace moved quickly. Ruthie took Fawn’s hand and began to follow Candace, clicking on her own flashlight so she could see the way. She and Fawn came upon a narrow opening in the rock wall that led off to the right. Candace had followed the main tunnel and was far ahead of them now, her light bouncing off the walls. Gripping Fawn’s hot hand tightly, Ruthie pulled her sister into the side tunnel. She had to bend over to fit.

“Hurry,” she whispered as she ducked into the passageway, towing Fawn along behind her.

“Where are we going?” Fawn asked. “I thought we were all going to stay together.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Ruthie said. “That lady’s got a few loose screws.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind, just stick close, ’kay? I’m going to get us out of this place. Caves can have more than one entrance, right?”

“I guess,” Fawn said; then she whispered something Ruthie couldn’t quite make out to Mimi.

The tunnel was tall enough for Ruthie to stay upright, but the opening narrowed until she could barely squeeze through. She struggled out of her coat, abandoning it on the cave floor. Now she was wriggling along sideways, her belly and butt scraping painfully against the rock walls, the gun in her right hand, behind her, carefully pointed downward; she clutched the flashlight in her left hand, extended ahead of her, to illuminate the way. Her back was slick with sweat. She forced herself to keep moving, keep breathing.

“How are you doing back there, Little Deer?” Ruthie asked, unable to turn to look at her sister.

“Fine,” Fawn said.

“You just stay right behind me,” Ruthie said.

“Uh-huh.”

As they slowly edged forward, something seemed to change: the tunnel was widening, and the darkness—was it changing? Ruthie flipped off her flashlight. There was definitely light coming from up ahead. Had they somehow circled back to the main room they’d entered with all the lamps lit? Ruthie’s heart leapt—were they that close to freedom?

“Shh,” Ruthie said, reaching around to slide the flashlight into her back pocket. They crept forward slowly, on tiptoes, the walls getting brighter, the tunnel widening further as they moved. The tunnel ended up ahead, opening into a cavern that was most definitely not the room they’d been in before. Ruthie pressed her back against the wall of the tunnel and pulled Fawn beside her, putting a finger to her lips. Fawn nodded. Ruthie put up her hand to indicate,
You stay here
. Fawn nodded again, eyes huge and lemurlike. With the gun clasped firmly in her right hand, Ruthie edged forward to peek into the room.

The chamber was triangle-shaped, smaller than the one they’d first entered, with a lower ceiling. There was a table, with an oil lamp burning. At the table, a single chair. In the chair, a woman sat with her back to them. Ruthie recognized her shape, her hair, the well-worn gray sweater. She wanted to call out, but she sensed danger close by. Something about the scene in front of her didn’t feel right—it felt like a trap. “Stay here,” she whispered to Fawn,
pressing her sister against the wall. “If anything goes wrong, you run like hell.”

Fawn gave a panicked nod.

Ruthie crept into the room, eyes darting around, looking for anything hiding in the shadows. There was nothing. No other furniture, no signs of life. One other passageway led out of the chamber, like a dark mouth on the other side. It was possible that there could be someone,
something
, hiding in the shadows there, watching.

“Mom?” Ruthie called, moving forward, gun raised as she kept one eye on the dark passageway.

Her mother didn’t turn around. Didn’t speak. Ruthie held her breath as she approached. Her mother appeared to be twitching, wriggling, having some sort of seizure there in the chair. She reminded Ruthie of a woman being tugged at by invisible strings.

Ruthie froze, suddenly afraid that maybe this wasn’t her mother at all—that she would turn her head at any moment and have the gray face of an alien or some hideous, pale underground monster.

“Mom?” she said again, her voice shaky and hesitant now. She forced herself to keep walking, on rubbery legs, first one step, then another.

It was only when she got close that Ruthie understood: her mother was tied to the chair and had a scarf gagging her mouth. Her hair was disheveled, her clothes were rumpled and filthy, but her eyes were alert, and she looked uninjured.

“Mom!” Ruthie exclaimed. “Hang on, I’ll get you out of this.” She set the gun down on the table and went to work untying the scarf.

“Who did this to you?” she asked once the scarf was off. “How’d you get here?” Ruthie began to work on the rough hemp rope that bound her mother to the chair.

“Shh,” her mother hissed in a warning voice. “We’ve got to be quiet. And we’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

“Mommy,” Fawn cried, leaping out of the shadows and throwing her small arms around her mother, burying her face in her chest.

Mom’s face was tight with worry. She looked at Ruthie and said, “You shouldn’t have brought her here.”

“I know—it’s complicated,” Ruthie said.

“Never mind,” Mom said. “Just untie me. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Ruthie was getting nowhere trying to untie the complicated knots in the thick rope. She grabbed the small Boy Scout knife she’d shoved into her pack and began sawing at the rope with the dull blade.

“Hurry,” her mother whispered urgently. “I think she’s coming back.”

“Who?” Ruthie asked.

Ruthie listened. Yes, there were footsteps coming down the tunnel they’d just passed through. Someone was moving in their direction.

“Ruthie,” Mom said, her face twisted in panic, “never mind me. You’ve got to take your sister and go. Follow the other passage, and run. Now!”

“No,” Ruthie said flatly, “we’re not leaving you. I wriggled into this pit of hell to find you; I’m not leaving you behind now.”

Through the fear, she saw something else in her mother’s face—something softer.
Pride
, Ruthie realized.

Ruthie stopped working on the rope and grabbed the gun, holding it in both hands like she’d seen in movies, pointing it at the passageway behind her mother’s back, even though her arms shook. The footsteps were now louder, closer, and they could hear someone breathing hard and heavy.

“The gun won’t help,” her mom said quietly, sounding almost resigned to whatever fate they faced. Fawn was at her feet now; she’d picked up the little knife and was cutting desperately at the rope.

Ruthie didn’t have time to ask why the gun wouldn’t help.

A figure burst into the room—a blur of movement with a clatter of footsteps and heavy breathing. Ruthie took a deep breath and was about to squeeze the trigger when she recognized the runner.

“Katherine!” Ruthie said, lowering the gun. Katherine’s hands were bloody; her face was sweaty and panicked. “What happened?”

“Something’s coming,” Katherine panted, terrified.

Something
, Ruthie thought. She said,
Something
.

Fawn sawed through the last fibers of the rope.

“Come on,” Ruthie’s mother said, as she shook off the ropes and stood up. “I know a way out.”

From somewhere close by—it was impossible to tell from which direction—they heard a scream.

Candace, Ruthie thought. Something’s got Candace.

September 23, 1910

The winter people
, Gertie calls us, though I myself am still living. But we exist outside the known world, on the fringe. And, truth be told, I feel I am little more than a phantom.

Gertie is still not able to speak, but will, on occasion, spell out words in my hand. If I close my eyes, she’ll come out of the shadows, sit by my side, and take my hand. Her fingers are as cold as icicles, and I cannot help cringing a little each time she touches me.

“H-U-N-G-R-Y,” she spells, and I tell her she needs to wait. “When it gets dark, I’ll go see what I can find.”

Sometimes her touch is so light I’m not sure she’s there at all.

We have made ourselves a home in the cave, the same network of caverns and tunnels I went to over two years ago now, when I first decided to bring Gertie back.

At first, we kept to the cave, only venturing out into the woods to hunt and gather water from the stream. Gertie does not ever show herself in the day. Only at night, when she moves in the shadows, a flash of pale skin, here and then gone. It’s as though I have an imaginary friend who is with me all the time but seldom glimpsed.