“But my sister’s been sick,” Ruthie protested. “She has a fever.”
Candace glanced at Fawn. “She looks fine now. You’re well enough, aren’t you, Fawn? Don’t you want to go up into the woods and see if we can find your mom?”
The little girl gave an enthusiastic nod.
“We’re not leaving anyone behind,” Candace said, looking right at Ruthie.
Katherine knew Candace was right—the answers they were all seeking might well be out there, under those rocks. She thumbed through the last few blurry photos stored on Gary’s camera.
“So what are we waiting for?” Candace barked, raising the gun to remind them that she was in charge. “Everyone—coats and boots—let’s go! We’ll need flashlights, headlamps, whatever you’ve got. Maybe some rope. And I saw some snowshoes and skis out in the barn—the snow’s pretty deep out there. Let’s move. And remember, everyone needs to stay where I can see them. No surprises or I start shooting.”
Katherine got to the final photo. Ruthie leaned in, pointed. “There’s something there.”
The picture was dark and blurry, but definitely taken outside. It was focused right at the little hole in the shadows beneath one of the finger rocks.
But this time, there was someone else in the photo. Someone crouched in the opening in the earth beneath the rock.
“What the hell is that?” Candace asked, squinting down.
The figure was small and fuzzy around the edges.
“Why, it looks like a little girl,” Katherine said.
Visitors from the Other Side
The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea
January 27, 1908
“Where are you going?” Martin asked when he caught me putting on my coat and boots this morning.
“Out walking. I thought the fresh air would do me some good.”
He gave me a strange little half-nod. It almost seemed as though he was frightened of me.
Perhaps it is I who should be frightened of him.
Over and over, I think of the note we found on the bed:
Ask Him What He berryed in the field.
Martin has been acting very odd ever since—he doesn’t look me in the eye and seems to jump at every sound. Last night, he tossed and turned in bed, finally giving up on sleep and going down to sit in front of the fire hours before dawn. I heard him down there, getting up from time to time to throw another log on or pace around the room. At last, as the sun came up, I listened to him feed Shep and coax the old boy into going out to the barn with him to do chores.
I have been all through the house a thousand times and seen no sign of Gertie, so I thought it best to resume my search outdoors. I knew right away where I was heading—to a place I had not visited since I was a little girl. Still, I knew the way by heart.
The morning was clear and cold. The sun lit up the fields and woods, making the light snowfall glitter as if the world had been draped with diamonds overnight. I imagined Gertie out there somewhere—a sparkling gem all her own, just waiting to be found.
I pulled my old wool coat around me tighter and made my way across the field and up into the woods on snowshoes. Up and up I climbed, through the orchard with its bent and broken trees, over rocks and fallen trees, past the Devil’s Hand, and through the woods to the north on a little path that was all but grown over with brambles and saplings poking their way through the heavy layer of snow. It was the sort of path no one would notice who had not walked it before, as I used to, many times a week. The path wound through the dense woods like a snake. The day warmed. I undid the top button of my coat and stopped to rest, watching a flock of crossbills settled in a nearby hemlock, chattering away as they pulled seeds from cones with their funny little overlapping beaks.
I continued on and at last arrived in the small clearing, which seemed smaller than it did in my memory. And there, in spite of the heavy snow and the years of trees, brambles, and weeds encroaching, I could still make out the outline of the charred remains of a small building on the ground.
Auntie’s cabin.
Martin had asked me about Auntie once, shortly after we were married: “Wasn’t there a woman who lived with you when you were young? And didn’t something happen to her—did she drown?”
“Where did you hear such a thing?” I asked.
“Here and there, from people in town. My own father even mentioned her once, said she lived out in the woods behind your place. He said the women used to climb the hill to buy remedies from her.”
“You’ve been out in those woods, Martin. There’s no cabin,” I told him, smiling gently, as if at his simplemindedness. “The stories you heard, they’re just stories. People in town love their stories, you know that as well as I do. It was just Father, Constance, Jacob, and I. There was no woman in the woods.”
The lie caught in my throat and thrashed there some before I swallowed it back down.
There was no woman in the woods.
As if undoing Auntie’s existence would be such a simple act.