“What are you so busy looking at?” Candace asked. She looked like a Cyclops with one horribly bright eye: a third eye, a mystic all-seeing eye.
“Just trying to get a clearer sense of where this opening we’re looking for is,” she said, shutting the camera off and putting it back in Gary’s pack. Everyone but Fawn had on packs that had been quickly loaded with supplies: flashlights and batteries, candles, matches, rope, bottled water, granola bars, a few apples. Candace had put on the headlamp they’d found by the front door, which Ruthie and her mother used for bringing in firewood after dark. Katherine had the camera, some water, a flashlight, candles and matches, and Gary’s old Swiss Army knife in her pack.
“Good,” Candace said. “I’m glad you brought the camera.”
So am I, she thought.
She concentrated on walking in the snowshoes, a strange kind of duck-footed shuffle through the deep powder. The snow was still falling hard and fast around them. All Katherine could hear was the sound of their breathing, their grunts as they moved up the hill. There were no car sounds, no distant sirens or train whistles. The world was eerily silent, all the sound muffled, as if everything had been swaddled in cotton wool.
The trail ahead of her seemed impossibly steep all of a sudden. They’d left the field behind and were now climbing up into the woods. The trees were bent and twisted, the branches weighted down with snow. She felt the trees were watching her, a terrible army that stood in rows and reached for her with gnarled fingers.
You’re almost there, Gary whispered in her ear.
He felt so close. She could almost smell him, taste him. He’d walked this same path at the end of October, on his last day alive. He’d walked along, shouldering this very backpack.
Is it really possible, Gary? Can we bring back the dead?
He responded with soft laughter. Isn’t that why you’ve come? he asked.
And then, then she understood. She knew why she’d come, why she’d been led here. She felt his hand take hers. He was beside her now.
Shh, he whispered. Do you hear it?
She closed her eyes, heard the music play in some far-off part of her mind, an old jazz song they’d once danced to. She felt Gary’s lips brush her cheek. She and Gary moved together, doing a few awkward, shuffling dance steps in the snow.
We can be together again, he told her. We can bring Austin back.
The idea of it hit her like a cannonball in the chest, so heavy and unexpected that she lost her balance and fell over in the snow. She looked desperately around for Gary, but he was gone.
She lay on her back, looked up at the dark sky, the swirling snow that fell down on her like a million falling stars. She let herself imagine it: having Gary and Austin back with her, even if it was only for seven days. The three of them snuggled together under the covers. “Did you dream while you were gone?” she’d ask Austin. “Oh yes, I dreamed,” he would say. “It was all one big dream.”
“All right back there?” Candace called.
“Fine!” she said, struggling to get up again, but it was absurdly difficult with the huge snowshoes hitting her legs and refusing to let her right herself. Ruthie turned around, came back, and offered her mittened hand to help pull Katherine up.
“Thanks,” Katherine said, slapping the snow off her jeans. It was no good—they were soaked through.
“The snowshoes take a little getting used to,” Ruthie said.
“I don’t think I’ll be running a marathon in them anytime soon,” Katherine said. Ruthie gave her a tense smile, then moved back beside her sister. She leaned in and whispered something to Fawn. Fawn shook her head and pulled her doll tighter against her chest.
They moved through the grove of bent and twisted trees, and the climb got steeper, the trees larger, more looming. She had the directions. They were going to the portal. She had a candle, Gary’s camera. All she needed was …
“Jesus!” Candace yelped up ahead. There, just off the path, her headlamp illuminated a gruesome sight. A fox had just captured a snowshoe hare, and had the hare by its throat. The animal struggled for a few short seconds before going still and limp in the fox’s mouth.
Candace pulled out her gun, pointed it at the fox.
“Don’t!” Katherine shouted. The animal was beautiful—the way its rusty fur shimmered and glistened, its eyes seeming to look right at her, to say, We know each other, you and I. We understand hunger, desperation.
The gun went off, and Katherine jumped. Startled, the fox dropped the rabbit and hurried off into the trees—Candace had missed. The fox ran with such grace, such quick sureness, that it took Katherine’s breath away. And she was sure that, just for one brief second, it turned its sleek head back and looked at her.
See what I left you.
It all felt so impossibly meant to be.
“Can we save the bunny?” Fawn asked, going over to the small white animal, which lay unmoving in the snow.