The Winter People

by Jennifer McMahon

  “There will be no more talk of messages from the dead. Or of Gertie having been murdered,” Martin says.

  I nod like a good, obedient wife. Puppet-on-a-string wife.

  “And no more writing in that diary,” Martin said. “Give it to me.” So I handed him my book and my pen. Luckily, I had foreseen this and was holding an out-of-date diary, full of the trivial details of my life before: entries about baking a pound cake, attending a church supper. Martin did not even think to look through it, and tossed it into the fire before my eyes. I made a show of being upset, and Martin, he looked quite pleased with himself for performing this heroic act to help save his mad wife. But there was something frantic about it at the same time. These last few days, there is something in Martin I’ve never seen before—this sense of desperation. Of panic. I sense that he is trying so hard, with such determination, not to save me, but to keep me from the truth.

  What is it that he does not wish me to know?

  Is this delusional thinking, as Martin and Lucius would have me believe, or am I the only one who sees things clearly?

  The papers and journals containing all my notes and diary entries since the time of Gertie’s death have been safely hidden away. I have a distinct advantage over Martin: I grew up in this house. As a child, I discovered and created dozens of hiding places by loosening bricks and floorboards, making secret compartments behind the walls. There are some hiding places that I am convinced no one could ever find. I have craftily hidden all my writing, scattering it among several hidden niches—that way, if he chances upon one, he won’t get everything. And now I only write when he is out in the fields, one eye on Martin through the window, one on my diary.

  An amazing thing has happened! Just now, this evening, I was pretending to be fast asleep when Martin popped his head in. Afterward I heard him shuffle down the stairs, get his coat, and go out the front door. It was just getting dark—the bedroom full of long shadows; the bed, dresser, and table barely discernible. I imagined he’d gone to feed the animals and shut them in for the night.

  I heard a scraping, scuttling sound from the closet. I turned, held my breath, waiting.

  Could it be true? Was my beloved girl back?

  “Gertie?” I called, sitting up in bed.

  Slowly, the closet door creaked open, and from the darkness within, I saw movement. A flash of a pale face and hands moving deeper into the shadows.

  “Don’t be frightened, darling,” I told her. “Please come out.” It took all of my will to stay where I was, not to leap from my bed and run to her.

  More scuttling, then the sound of quiet footsteps—bare feet padding along the wooden floor—as she moved out of the closet and into the room.

  She moved slowly, almost mechanically, with little stops and starts like a steam engine hiccoughing. The gold in her hair shimmered in the darkness. Her breathing was quick and raspy. And there was that smell I recalled from years ago in the woods with Hester Jameson: a greasy, burning sort of odor.

  I nearly fainted with joy when Gertie sat down beside me on the bed! There was no lamp lit and the room was dark, but I’d know her shape anywhere, though she was different somehow.

  “Am I mad?” I asked, leaning closer, trying to get a better look. I saw her in profile, and her face was slightly turned away from me. “Am I imagining you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Tell me the truth,” I begged her. “Tell me what really happened. How did you end up in that well?” My fingers ached to touch her, to get lost in her golden hair (was it shorter?). But somehow I knew I mustn’t. And perhaps (I’ll admit it now, to myself) I was a little afraid.

  She turned to me, and in the darkness I could see the flash of a toothy smile.

  She rose and went to the window, put her two pale hands against the frosty pane of glass.

  I stood up and moved to the window beside her, squinted out into the darkness. There was a crescent moon rising. Martin was coming out of the barn with a shovel in his hand. He glanced up at the house, and I ducked like a child playing hide-and-seek. He must not have seen me, because he kept walking, crossing the yard.

  I knew just where he was going.

  I turned to Gertie, to ask her what I was supposed to do next, but she was gone. I looked back to the window, and there were the ghostly imprints of her two hands, left behind in the frost.

  Martin

  January 31, 1908

  Sweat gathered between his shoulder blades as the shovel bit into the crusty snow. He had to dig through eighteen inches before even hitting dirt. He worked as quickly as he could, scooping and dumping.

  His bad foot ached in the cold. His breath came out in great pale clouds. The snowy yard looked blue in the dim moonlight.

  Faster, Martin. You’ve got to do this quickly. You mustn’t hesitate. You mustn’t be a coward.

  “I know,” he said out loud.

  Behind him, the house watched. Sara slept, dreaming her mad dreams. Over to the left, past the barn, he could see the outline of the hill, the tips of the rocks of the Devil’s Hand, dark specks against the snow.

  He looked back down at the wooden cross he himself had built, her name carefully carved across the top:

  GERTRUDE SHEA

  1900–1908

  BELOVED DAUGHTER

  His hands shook. They were greasy with fear-sweat, the shovel slipping.

  Faster.

  The slanted shadows of the slate gravestones beside hers watched, seemed to shift impatiently in the moonlight: her infant brother, grandfather, grandmother (for whom Gertie was named), and uncle, watching, wondering, What are you doing to our little Gertie? She’s one of us now. She doesn’t belong to you.

  For days now, Martin had stared out at little Gertie’s grave, knowing what he must do.

  He had to find out what was in her pocket.

  Sara had been babbling to Lucius, insisting that Gertie was murdered and that there was proof in the pocket of the dress she’d been buried in, talking nonsense about ghosts and spirits. Who else might she tell, given the chance? How long until someone listened to her and realized that, behind the madness, there might be a horrible, hidden truth? Until Sara was accused of murder? He needed to see what, if anything, was in little Gertie’s pocket.

  Martin gripped the shovel tighter. The soil was strangely loose and soft under the blanket of snow. The shovel moved through it like a warm knife through butter. It shouldn’t be this easy, but it was.

  Two weeks ago, he’d lit a fire to thaw the ground enough to dig a hole. He’d stood all day—a father in mourning—feeding it scraps of wood, cut-up deadfalls from the orchard. Shapes had leapt out of the flames at him, taunting: the well, the fox, Gertie’s hair hanging from a nail. He threw in one branch after another, trying to feed the hungry flames, trying to burn away the pictures he saw there.

  The soil over the grave was still dark with ashes and lumps of charcoal.

  How deep down was she? Six feet? Seven?

  A foot for each year of her life.

  He thought of the warning he’d given Sara days ago: Have you thought about the … condition her body will be in?

  Oh yes. Martin had thought about it. Dreamed about it. Gertie looking up at him, flesh falling away from bones, little teeth still pearly white, mouth open as she breathed the words Why? Why, Daddy? Why?

  “No choice,” Martin said out loud. He redoubled his efforts, digging faster, harder. The pile beside the grave began to grow.

  And what was it he hoped to accomplish? If he dug her up, found something of Sara’s in her pocket, what would he do?

  Hide it? Protect his wife?

  Or would he show it to the sheriff, have Sara locked away for good?

  Mad or not, Sara was all he had left.

  For weeks now, he’d been going over that day in his mind, trying to remember every detail: the fox, the trail of blood through the snow. Had he heard Gertie call him? Had he heard anything at all? Had there been someone else out th
ere in the woods? There was the old woman, but no—that had only been a tree.

  Part of him refused to believe that Sara was capable of hurting Gertie, not even in a spell of madness. Gertie was everything to Sara.

  His shovel made a clunking sound as it hit wood: the top of Gertie’s coffin. The coffin that he and Lucius had made from pine boards he’d been saving to build a new chicken coop in the spring.

  “What are you doing, Martin?”

  Martin spun. Sara was behind him, shouldering his Winchester rifle, aiming for his chest.

  She shook her head, clicked her tongue. She was wearing her nightgown, but had pulled on her overcoat and boots.

  He froze, shovel in hand. “Sara,” he stammered. “I thought … you’re supposed to be resting.”

  “Oh yes. Poor, ill Sara, with her cracked mind, needs her rest, doesn’t she? If not, we’ll tie her to the bedposts again.” She grimaced.

  “I …” He hesitated, unable to say the words. I’m sorry. So sorry for all of this.

  “What is it you’re looking for, Martin? What do you think is in Gertie’s pocket?”

  He looked down at the rough wood. “I have no idea.”

  She grinned, kept the rifle pointed at his chest. “Well, then, let’s find out, shall we? Keep digging, Martin. Let us open the coffin and see what we find.”

  He carefully cleared away the rest of the dirt, brought the lantern close to the edge of the hole, and jumped down into it. Feet straddling the small coffin, he took out his hammer to pry the lid off. But the nails slipped easily out of their holes. His hands trembled so hard that he dropped the hammer before grasping the wooden edges of the top and pulling.

  What he saw made him cry out like a little boy. He went cold from the inside out.

  Empty. The coffin was empty.

  What had Sara done?

  Sara smiled down at him, moving her head from side to side like a snake. Her skin glowed in the moonlight, as if she were made of alabaster.

  “You see, that’s the problem, Martin. If you want to look in Gertie’s pocket, you’re looking in the wrong place.” Holding the rifle in her right hand, she displayed her left, fingers spread. There, above her wedding ring, was the little bone ring. She used her thumb to turn it around her finger, the strange ring she’d once seemed so afraid of.

  “Where did you get that?” Martin asked.

  “It was in Gertie’s pocket.”

  “Impossible,” Martin stammered. He moved toward her, began to climb out of the hole.

  “You stay where you are,” she warned, keeping the gun aimed at his chest. “I was so sure Auntie’s spirit had done this evil thing, but perhaps the truth is simpler; perhaps it’s been right in front of my face the whole time, and I just couldn’t bring myself to see it.”

  Sara rocked back on her heels, holding the gun in both hands now, bringing it up high, and sighting down the barrel.

  “Was it you, Martin?” she asked quietly. “Did you hurt our Gertie?”

  Martin staggered backward and fell against the dirt wall. It was as if she’d already pulled the trigger.

  He remembered holding Gertie in his arms when she was a tiny infant, their miracle baby; walking with her, hand in hand, into the woods last month to choose a tree to cut down for Christmas. How she’d found a spruce with a bird’s nest in it and insisted they cut that one down. “Aren’t we the luckiest people ever, Papa?” she’d asked. “To have a Christmas tree with a bird’s nest in it?”

  “I …” he stuttered, looking at Sara. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. With God as my witness, I swear I would never hurt our little girl.”

  Sara stared, finger twitching on the trigger. “But the ring was in your pocket when you left the house that morning, was it not?”

  “Sara, please. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  She was silent a moment, as though turning the matter over in her mind.

  “But it wasn’t your ring, was it? It was hers. Which means she still could have been the one to do it.”

  “You’re not making sense, Sara. You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

  “Am I, now?” Sara said. She lowered the gun, turned, and looked back into the shadows around the house. “Gertie?” Sara called out. “Your father thinks I’m not right in the head. Come show him, darling. Show him the truth.”

  Martin stood on the empty coffin, peering over the edge of the hole into the darkness. Somewhere in the darkness, a shadow moved toward them, shuffling through the snow.

  Oh dear beloved Jesus, no. Please, no. Martin closed his eyes tight, counted to ten, trying to make it all go away.

  He opened his eyes and scrambled at the dirt, clawing his way out of the hole, not looking at whatever was moving toward them from the shadows.

  “Sara,” he said, reaching for the gun, wrapping his fingers around the barrel. The movement startled Sara, and the gun fired.

  He heard the sound, saw the flash of light, felt the bullet hit his chest just below his rib cage on the left. He started to run in spite of the searing pain. He clapped a hand over the bloody hole.

  “Martin?” Sara called. “Come back! You’re hurt!” But he did not turn back.

  On he ran, across the yard and toward the woods, hand on his leaking chest, not daring to look back.

  Visitors from the Other Side

  The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea

  (Editor’s note: This is the final entry I discovered, though, as you shall see, she makes reference to other pages she had been working on. It is chilling to note that Sara’s body was found only hours after she wrote these words.)

  January 31, 1908

  The dead can return. Not just as spirits, but as living, breathing beings. I have beheld the proof with my own eyes: my beloved Gertie, awakened. And I have made a decision: ours is a story that must be told. I have spent the last hours with papers spread out on the table, oil lamp burning bright, as I wrote down the exact instructions on how to awaken a sleeper. I have copied Auntie’s notes and told every detail of my own experience. I have finished at last, and tucked the papers away safely in not one but three separate hiding places.

  We are in the house, doors locked, curtains drawn. Shep is stretched out by my feet, his eyes and ears alert. I’ve got the gun by my side. I do not want to believe that it could be Martin. That this man I thought I knew—this man I cooked for, slept beside each night, told my secrets to—could be such a monster.

  Martin was badly injured when the gun went off. He won’t make it long out there in the cold with a chest wound. My fear, of course, is that he’ll make it to the Bemises’ and they’ll all come pounding at the door, looking for the madwoman with the gun.

  I am pleased that I have had the chance to write down everything that has happened while it is still fresh in my mind. Even more pleased that I have hidden the papers, should they cart me off to the lunatic asylum.

  One day, my papers will be found. The world will know the truth about sleepers.

  We are nearing the end of the seventh day of Gertie’s awakening. And my girl is still hiding in the shadows, here and then not.

  When I catch a glimpse of her, she’s pale and shadowy. She’s dressed in the outfit she wore when she left the house on that last morning: her blue dress, wool tights, her little black coat. Her hair is in tangles now. Dirt is smudged on her cheeks. She gives off the smell of burning fat, a tallow candle just extinguished.

  Shep is unsettled by her; he growls into the shadows with hackles raised, his teeth bared.

  Since I finished writing down our story, I have been talking to her, singing to her, trying to coax her out into the open. “Remember,” I say, “remember?”

  “Remember how you and I would stay under the covers all morning, telling each other our dreams?

  “Remember Christmas mornings? The time you had the mumps and I never left your side? Your stories of the blue dog? The way you’d run straight for the kitchen when you came home from school and smelled m
olasses cookies?”

  Remember? Remember?

  But Gertie has gone again. (Was she ever really here?)

  “Please, love,” I say. “We have so little time together. Won’t you show yourself to me?”

  I turn and look for her across the room.

  And there, over the fireplace, across the brick hearth, is a message written in black with a charred stick:

  Not Papa

  And just now, as I’m staring at the words, there’s a knock at the door.

  A familiar, though impossible, voice calls out my name.

  May 2, 1886

  My Dearest Sara,

  I have promised to tell you everything I know about sleepers. But before you go on, you must understand that this is powerful magic. Only do it if you are sure. Once it is done, there can be no going back.

  The sleeper will awaken and return to you. The time this takes is unsure. Sometimes they return in hours, other times, days.

  Once awakened, a sleeper will walk for seven days. After that, they are gone from this world forever. You cannot bring someone back more than once. It is forbidden and, indeed, impossible.

  If you are ready, follow these instructions exactly.

  These are the things you will need:

  A shovel

  A candle

  The heart of any living animal (you must remove it no longer than twelve hours before the deed)

  An object that belonged to the person you wish to bring back (such as clothing, jewelry, or a tool)

  You must take these things to a portal. There are doorways, gates, between this world and the world of the spirits. One of these doorways is right here in West Hall. I have drawn a map showing its location. You must guard this map with your life.

  Enter the portal.

  Light the candle.

  Hold the object that belonged to the person in your hands and say these words seven times: “_______ (person’s name), I call you back to me. Sleeper, awaken!”