The Winter People

by Jennifer McMahon

  They’d been together ever since that night. Staying with him one more year sounded all right—more than all right, maybe, especially in moments like this, when they were side by side in the cab of his truck, stoned, cocooned and warm, careening through the darkness like nothing could stop them.

  “You don’t think your mom’s up, do you?” Buzz asked.

  “Hope not,” Ruthie said.

  “Yeah, she’d have a bird.”

  Ruthie laughed at the expression, but she knew it was true.

  It wasn’t just her mother—the whole town was worried, uptight, keeping their kids locked in at night. Back in early December, a sixteen-year-old girl named Willa Luce had disappeared without a trace, walking the half-mile home from a friend’s house. Just before that, two sheep and a cow were found with their throats slit. And of course, before that, there had been the other disappearances: a boy who went missing in 1952 after his friends watched him crawl into a cave no one could find again, a hunter back in 1973 who’d been separated from his friends and never returned to camp, and the most famous, the college girl in 1982 who’d gone hiking with her boyfriend. The young man had come out of the woods alone, catatonic, and covered in blood. He was never able to say what had happened, and had been charged with her murder even though no body was ever found. In the end, he was deemed insane and sent to the state hospital.

  The West Hall Triangle, people called it. There was talk of satanic cults, a twisted killer, a door to another dimension, and, of course, aliens, like Buzz and his friends believed.

  Ruthie thought it was all a crock of shit. She wasn’t sure what was up with the livestock, but guessed it was just bored kids screwing around. The little boy and the hunter probably just got lost in the acres and acres of forest. You get lost, you get cold, find someplace warm to curl up, and the next thing you know, your bones are being dragged off by coyotes. The college kid obviously went wacko and killed his sweetie—tragic, but it happens.

  And Willa Luce—well, she’d probably just kept right on going that night, walked out to the highway and caught a ride with a trucker going west, going anywhere but here. Hadn’t Ruthie herself spent years fantasizing about doing the exact same thing? What kid in West Hall hadn’t? There just wasn’t anything here that begged you to stick around—the world’s smallest grocery store, grungy hardware store, cutesy bookshop, overpriced café, antique shop full of creepy moth-eaten shit, and a run-down dance hall that was mostly used for old ladies playing bingo and the occasional wedding reception. The biggest excitement of the week was the Saturday farmers’ market.

  She reached over and took Buzz’s hand, entwining her fingers with his, which were rough and callused, always stained black with grease, no matter how much he washed them. She studied him in the dim light of the dashboard—baseball hat with the alien’s face on it pulled down low, his eyes squinting out at the snowy road, battered Carhartt work jacket with its pockets stuffed full of all things Buzz: smokes, lighter, Leatherman multi-tool, bandanna, mini-binoculars, penlight, and cell phone.

  These were her favorite times with him, when they were off alone in his truck. He’d take her up into the mountains to go UFO hunting. They’d park for hours, sharing a thermos of spiked coffee or a six-pack of Long Trail, while he told her about what he and his best friend, Tracer, had seen once, out behind the Bemis farm. A strange light that winked and pulsated, starting up by the rocks, then moving down to the cornfield. Then he claimed they saw a little creature almost flying through the cornstalks: pale and quick, its movements too fast and erratic for any human.

  “I know what I saw,” Buzz swore. “It was an alien. A Gray. Tracer was right there with me—he saw it, too. It was real short, like four feet or so, and it had on this kind of dresslike robe that flowed out behind it when it ran. I bet you anything that’s what got those sheep and cows. They use livestock for experiments—drain all their blood, remove their organs with surgical precision—no animal can do anything like that.”

  Tracer was a good guy, but Ruthie didn’t understand how one individual could smoke the amount of pot he did and still function. She had no doubt they’d seen the little Gray alien after doing copious bong hits in Buzz’s truck.

  Still, even without Buzz’s story, there was plenty of creepy talk about the woods and the Devil’s Hand.

  “Uh-oh,” Buzz said when he pulled up to the bottom of Ruthie’s driveway.

  “Great,” Ruthie slurred, looking up to see that the kitchen and living room were illuminated, the light streaming through the uncurtained windows. Her mother was awake. Ruthie reached into her pocket again for the roll of breath mints and chewed up three of them. She pushed up her sleeve, held down the button on her big digital watch, and blinked at the tiny screen: 1:12 A.M. JAN 2. She was screwed.

  Ruthie leaned over and gave Buzz a sloppy kiss. He tasted like weed and schnapps. “Wish me luck,” she said.

  “Luck,” he told her, winking. “Call me tomorrow and let me know how bad the fallout is.”

  Ruthie opened the door and jumped down out of the cab, her boots sinking into the fresh four inches of snow. She did a slow walk toward the house, stepping with the great care of a drunk trying not to stagger, taking great gulps of cold, woodsmoke-scented air. She shouldn’t have had all the schnapps on top of the beer. Emily’s killer weed hadn’t helped, either. She slapped at her face with her mittened hands. Sober up. Sober up. Sober up.

  Her mother was going to eat her alive. She’d be grounded. Not allowed to see Buzz for a month.

  Ruthie made her way to the front door, keeping her eyes on the windows. She saw no movement inside. No way would her mother go up to bed without turning off the lights—wasting electricity was a serious offense in their house.

  She took in one last deep breath and opened the front door slowly, stepped into the entryway, and eased the door shut behind her, bracing herself for attack. But there was no mother waiting to pounce.

  She froze, listening.

  No footsteps. No Do you have any idea what time it is, young lady? Just the sleeping house. So far, so good.

  Ruthie shrugged off her parka and kicked off her boots. She shuffled into the kitchen, got herself a glass of water, and chugged it, leaning heavily on the counter, blinking in the harsh overhead light.

  The dinner dishes were washed and put away, but there was a full cup of tea on the table. She touched it. Stone cold. Beside the tea was a slice of apple pie with one bite missing, the fork left resting on the plate. Never one to pass up a piece of her mother’s pie, Ruthie gobbled it down and set the dish in the sink.

  She switched off the lights and went into the living room to turn off that light, too. The woodstove had burned down to coals. She threw on a couple of logs, banked it down for the night, and headed for bed.

  As she crept up the steps, as quietly as she could, using the banister to keep her balance, head swimming from booze, one happy thought rose up above everything else: she was home free. She almost laughed aloud in triumph.

  Halfway up, she stepped in a small puddle and stopped. There were several dirty puddles on the wooden stairs. It looked like someone had come up without taking their boots off. Annoyed about her wet socks, Ruthie climbed the rest of the stairs to the carpeted hall.

  The door to her mother’s room was closed, no light underneath. Fawn’s door was open, and she could hear her little sister sigh in her sleep. Roscoe came out of Fawn’s room and trotted over to Ruthie, purring, his big fluffy tail waving in the air like a please-love-me flag.

  Ruthie smiled down at the ash-gray cat, whispered, “Come on, old man,” and slipped into her room, the cat right behind her. The bed was unmade, her desk a messy pile of textbooks and papers from the semester that had just ended: English Composition, Intro to Sociology, Calculus I, Microcomputer Applications I. Though they hadn’t posted grades yet, she knew she’d aced all the classes, even if they had been as boring as shit.

  “It’s so easy a trained rat could get a 4.0 GPA. I
t’s a subpar education,” she’d complained to her mother. “Is that what you want for me?”

  “It’s just for one year,” her mother had said, a now familiar mantra.

  Right.

  Ruthie closed the door, pulled off her jeans and damp socks, and crawled into bed. Roscoe settled in beside her, kneading the blankets, circling once, twice, three times, before lying down and closing his eyes.

  She dreamed of Fitzgerald’s again. A small bakery with steamy windows that smelled of fresh-baked bread and coffee. There was a long counter with a glass front that she stood in front of for what felt like hours, staring at rows of cupcakes, apple turnovers, cookies dusted with colored sugar that sparkled like jewels.

  “What do you choose, Dove?” asked her mother. She held Ruthie’s small hand firmly in her own. Her mother wore smooth calfskin gloves. Ruthie pointed her other hand, chubby little-girl fingers smearing the glass.

  A cupcake with pink sculpted icing.

  Then Ruthie looked up to see her mother smiling down—only this was where the dream always went funny, because the woman standing over her wasn’t her mother at all. She was a tall, thin woman with heavy tortoiseshell glasses shaped like cat’s eyes.

  “Good choice, Dove,” the woman said, ruffling her hair.

  Then the dream changed, as it often did, and she was in a tiny dark room with a flickering light. There was someone else there with her—a little girl with blond hair and a dirty face. The room seemed to get smaller and smaller and there wasn’t enough air; Ruthie was gasping for breath, sobbing.

  Ruthie opened her eyes. Roscoe was smothering her, his warm, heavy body draped over her nose and mouth.

  “Get off me, you big lug,” Ruthie mumbled peevishly, shoving at him.

  But it wasn’t the cat. It was her sister’s arm, clad in fleecy pajamas. Ruthie’s head pounded, and her mouth tasted like cat shit. She was in no mood for a visitor this early.

  “What are you doing in here?” Ruthie snapped. Her twin bed was crowded enough without her little sister, who did acrobatics in her sleep, often waking up with her head down at the foot of her bed. Fawn sometimes crawled in with her mother in the night, but hadn’t gotten into Ruthie’s bed in ages.

  Fawn didn’t answer. Ruthie rolled over to find that the mattress was warm and damp.

  “Oh my God!” she yelped. “Did you pee in my bed?” She reached down. The mattress was soaked. So were her little sister’s fleece pajamas. Fawn kept her eyes closed tight, pretending to be asleep. Ruthie shoved at her, trying to roll her out of the bed.

  “Go wake up Mom,” she said.

  Fawn rolled over onto her belly, her face buried in the pillow. “Aacaaat,” she mumbled.

  “What?” Ruthie asked, rolling her sister over to face her.

  “I said, I can’t.” Fawn’s face was flushed and sweaty. The urine smell hit Ruthie hard, making her stomach flip.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s not here. She’s gone.”

  Ruthie glanced over Fawn to the alarm clock. It was six-thirty in the morning. Her mother was rarely up before seven, much less out of the house. She needed a good three cups of coffee before she’d even speak most mornings.

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  Fawn was quiet for a minute, then looked up at Ruthie with huge, saucer eyes. “Sometimes it just happens,” she said.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” Ruthie said, rolling out of the damp bed. Her bare feet hit the floor, which was freezing cold. The fire had gone out. She threw a sweater over her shoulders, pulled on some sweatpants.

  Ruthie marched down the hall to her mother’s room. She felt queasy, and when she burped, she still tasted schnapps. She half wondered if she was still a little drunk and stoned, which contributed to the this-can’t-really-be-happening sort of feeling that was washing over her. She put her hand on the knob and opened it slowly, not wanting the squeak of hinges to wake her mother. But when the door swung open, she saw only the bed, neatly made.

  “I told you,” Fawn whispered. She’d come up behind Ruthie in the hall.

  “Go get cleaned up and changed,” Ruthie said, her eyes locked on her mother’s empty bed. She stood a minute, swaying slightly, while her sister crept off down the hall.

  “What the hell?” she said. It was six-thirty in the morning. Where was Mom?

  She went down the steep, narrow wooden stairs, counting them, like she’d done when she was little, for luck. There were thirteen, but she never counted the bottom one, jumping over it like it didn’t exist, so that she’d have a nice even twelve.

  “Mom?” she called. The full cup of tea was still on the table. Ruthie went into the living room to discover that the logs she’d put on the stove last night had never caught. It was a big soapstone stove set up against the brick hearth of the old, original farmhouse fireplace. The stove was their only source of heat—her parents refused to buy fossil fuels.

  She bent over, head pounding, and hauled the unburnt logs out of the stove so she could scoop the ashes into the can next to it. Then she started a fire from scratch: wadded-up newspaper, cardboard, kindling.

  Fawn padded down the steps, dressed in red corduroy overalls and a red turtleneck, her mother’s hand-knit thick wool socks on her feet. Red, of course.

  “You’re looking very monochromatic,” Ruthie said, closing the glass door of the woodstove, the fire inside already crackling and popping.

  “Huh?” Fawn said. Her eyes looked funny—all glassy and far away, like they looked when she was sick.

  “Forget it,” Ruthie said, staring at her odd little sister.

  Fawn had been born at home and delivered by a midwife, just like Ruthie.

  Ruthie had been homeschooled until third grade, when her parents finally gave in and agreed to send her to West Hall Union School after she wore them down with her pleading. As much as she wanted to be there, the transition was difficult and painful—she was behind academically, and the kids teased her for the garish hand-knit clothing she wore, for not knowing any multiplication. Ruthie had worked hard to catch up and blend in, and soon excelled at school, getting top marks in the class year after year.

  When Fawn turned five, Ruthie insisted on having her enrolled in kindergarten.

  “There’s no way Fawn’s going to be a complete social misfit, Mom. She’s going to school. It’s the normal thing to do.”

  Her mom had looked at her for a long time, then asked, “And what’s so great about normal?”

  In the end, Mom had given in and enrolled Fawn in school. Ruthie watched Fawn worriedly last year, peeking out through the senior-class windows to the kindergarten playground, where Fawn always sat alone, drawing in the dirt, talking animatedly to herself. She didn’t seem to have any friends. When Ruthie gently brought this up with Fawn, her little sister said other kids asked her to play all the time.

  “So why don’t you ever join them?” Ruthie had asked.

  “Because I’m busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Playing with the friends I already have,” Fawn had said, running off before Ruthie could ask what friends she meant—ants? pebbles?

  Fawn stuck her hands deep into the pockets of her red overalls, and stared vacantly into the fire.

  “So when’s the last time you saw Mom?” Ruthie asked, collapsing onto the couch and rubbing at her temples in a pathetic attempt to stop the pounding headache.

  “We ate supper together. Lentil soup. Then Mom came up and tucked me in. She read me a story.” Fawn sounded like a robot running low on batteries. “ ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ ”

  Ruthie nodded. Maybe that explained Fawn’s choice of clothing. She took stories very seriously. She got on these kicks where only one story would do, and you’d have to read it to her over and over until she had every word memorized. And then, when she wasn’t being read to, it was like a part of her stayed stuck inside the story. She’d leave trails of breadcrumbs around the house; build little houses out of mud, stic
ks, and bricks; and she would constantly be whispering to herself and her old rag doll, Mimi, about which way the wolf had gone, or if the frog really could be a handsome prince.

  “What are we going to do?” Fawn’s voice was faint.

  “I’ll go check outside. See if the truck’s there. Then I’ll check the barn.”

  “Mimi says we won’t find her.”

  Ruthie took in a deep breath, then let the air come hissing out. “I don’t really care what your doll thinks right now, okay, Fawn?”

  Fawn’s head slumped down, and Ruthie realized now wasn’t the time to be a complete shit, killer hangover and missing mother or not. Fawn was only six. She deserved better.

  “Hey,” Ruthie said, crouching down and lifting Fawn’s chin. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m just really tired and a wee bit overwhelmed. Why don’t you go upstairs and get Mimi. Bring her down, and when I come back inside I’ll make us a big breakfast. Bacon and eggs and hot chocolate. How does that sound?”

  Fawn didn’t answer. She looked small and pale. Her skin felt feverish.

  “Hey, Little Deer,” Ruthie said, using Mom’s pet name for Fawn. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll find her. I promise.”

  Fawn nodded and backed away, heading up the stairs.

  Then, absurdly, Ruthie thought of Willa Luce. Of how search teams had scoured the entire town—the whole state of Vermont, even—and not found a single trace.

  How was it possible to disappear so completely, to be here one minute, gone the next?

  Sometimes it just happens, Fawn had said.

  Ruthie shook her head. She didn’t buy it. People didn’t just disappear without a trace. Not Willa Luce, and most certainly not boring old Alice Washburne, who had two girls at home, chickens to feed, and only ventured to town two days each week: to sell eggs and knitting at the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings, and to go grocery shopping each Wednesday, when the Shop and Save had double-coupon day.

  This was all, obviously, a big mistake. Their mother would turn up at any moment, and they’d all have a good belly laugh about the idea that she, of all people, would go missing.