The Winter People

by Jennifer McMahon

  “We’re in luck,” she said. “No one’s deleted them.”

  She clicked quickly through the saved photos. There were a series of her sitting on Gary’s motorcycle, ones taken on their weekend trip to the Adirondacks two weeks before he was killed. She had on jeans and a leather jacket, her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she looked so happy, smiling at Gary and his camera. She’d held on to the handlebars and pretended to be riding with the wind in her face, singing “Born to Be Wild.” Gary had laughed and said, “Be careful. You know I have a thing for biker chicks.”

  There was one of her in front of the cabin they’d stayed in, and another beside a little roadside shop they’d stopped at, where Gary had bought the box of photos and papers—and the little bone ring he’d given her—for seven dollars. ANTIQUES AND ODDITIES, said the sign.

  To new beginnings.

  Katherine arrowed through to the next pictures: shadowy photos of pages of tiny, neat cursive.

  “What’s this?” she asked out loud.

  Ruthie squinted down at the camera. “It’s a diary entry, I think. Wait, I can zoom in. Look, there’s a date: January 31, 1908.”

  Katherine scanned the first page:

  There are doorways, gates, between this world and the world of the spirits. One of these doorways is right here in West Hall.

  “Oh my God,” Ruthie said, leaning in for a closer look. “I think it’s one of the missing diary pages!”

  Katherine arrowed through to the next photo. “It’s a map of some kind,” she said. Crudely drawn, it showed a house, fields, and a path through the woods that wound up a hill and to the Devil’s Hand. All around the Devil’s Hand was tiny, illegible script. Below, taking up the bottom half of the paper, was another drawing: a network of lines and circles that could have depicted anything—a waterway or paths, perhaps? This, too, was marked with small, impossible-to-read notations.

  “Let me see,” Candace said, grabbing the camera from her. “It’s the map showing the way to the portal! It has to be. Can you make it bigger?”

  Katherine shook her head. “That’s as big as it gets on the camera. If you have a computer, we could enlarge it, even print things out.”

  “We don’t have a computer,” Fawn reported. “Mom doesn’t believe in them.”

  “Jesus Christ. Of course she doesn’t,” Candace muttered. She squinted at the display. “I can’t make out the writing,” Candace said, “but it looks like the portal is up at the Devil’s Hand. But what’s this at the bottom?”

  “Some kind of blowup or detail of where the actual portal is, maybe?” Ruthie suggested.

  “What other pictures are on here?”

  Katherine showed her the button that advanced the pictures.

  “Looks like more diary pages,” Candace said, squinting down at the screen. “Look at this! There’s even a picture of the original letter Auntie wrote Sara about the sleepers. But where’d Gary find them?”

  “May I?” Katherine asked, taking the camera back. She scanned through the photos. The little black metal box and tintypes were in the background of some of the pictures Gary had taken of the journal entries.

  “Two weeks before he was killed, Gary bought a box of old papers and photos at an antique store in the Adirondacks. He collected old photos—he was kind of obsessed with them. I guess it just so happened that pages of the diary were mixed in with the photos he bought that weekend.”

  “And you never saw them? He never mentioned it?” Ruthie asked.

  “No,” Katherine said, her mind spinning. “But he started to act odd. Like he was keeping some kind of secret. He was out of the house a lot and had lame excuses for where he’d been. I think …” Her voice broke off. “We had a son. Austin. He died two years ago. He was six.”

  Her hands shook. She held the camera, Gary’s camera, tighter.

  She remembered Gary holding her while she wept one night, saying, “I’d do anything to have him back. Sell my soul, make a deal with the Devil, but we aren’t given chances like that, Katherine. It’s not the way the world works.”

  But what if he was wrong?

  Katherine imagined it, Gary discovering these pages, probably thinking they were pure bullshit at first. But then, as he got more deeply into it and did research on Sara Harrison Shea, maybe he started to wonder, What if …?

  That’s what brought him to Vermont. The idea, the hope, that maybe, just maybe, there was a way to bring Austin back.

  Sure enough, the next photos on the camera showed the farmhouse, barn, and fields. Then the woods. Close-ups of a path, of gnarled old apple trees, of rocks jutting up into the sky.

  “He was here,” Ruthie said. “That’s the Devil’s Hand. It’s up on the hill behind our house.”

  Gary had been here. Had visited this place on the last day of his life. She flipped through the pictures of the rocks quickly.

  “Wait,” Candace said. “Go back.”

  She arrowed back through.

  “There,” Candace said, jabbing her finger at the screen on the back of the camera. “What does that look like to you?”

  Katherine stared down. It was a close-up of one of the large finger-shaped rocks that made up the hand formation. Gary had taken the photo in low light, and it was hard to make out what she was seeing.

  “There’s something there,” Ruthie said, pointing to what appeared to be a squarish hole just along the left edge of the finger.

  “It’s an opening of some kind,” Candace agreed. “A cave, maybe? That map at the bottom of the page, it could be tunnels, right?”

  “There’s no cave up there,” Ruthie said, moving closer for a better look. “Not that I ever heard of.”

  The next set of four pictures were dark and blurry.

  “Jesus, did he go down into it?” Candace said. “Is that why the pictures are so dark?”

  “I can’t tell,” Katherine said. “Like I said, with a computer I could play around and enhance them so we could get a better look.”

  “We don’t need a computer,” Candace announced. “Our next move is pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

  They all looked at her, waiting. She still held the gun, but it was down by her side.

  “We’re going into the woods. If there’s some kind of secret door or cave or something back there, we’ve got to check it out. Who knows, maybe that’s where your mother is; if not, maybe we’ll find a clue about where to find her. And if we can find her, there’s a chance she’s still got all the missing pages—not just the ones Tom and I found, but maybe the ones from Gary as well. Then we’ll all get what we want, right? I’ll get the pages, you girls just may find your mom there, and Katherine will find out what Gary did here in West Hall.”

  “I don’t think—” Ruthie started to say.

  Candace cut her off. “You don’t have a choice. We’re all going.”

  “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 definitel
y 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.

  Martin had accepted it so easily. He never asked about her again.

  I kicked at the snow that I knew covered the coals of her old home, remembering how she kept the front door painted green, explaining that only good spirits would enter through a green door. As though you could keep evil at bay so easily.

  It was not only the burnt remains of wood and nails and clothing and pots and a bed that I stood over now. Somewhere in all of this were Auntie’s remains. That is, if anything was even left of her after all these years—after the animals, the crows, the endless winters followed by summers. Was there a skull, a few teeth? And what was I hoping to find?

  The truth was, I had come up the hill hoping to find nothing at all. Because part of me worried that when Martin dug her old ring up, maybe he’d called her spirit back. And I could only imagine how angry, how vengeful, her spirit might be.

  Vengeful enough, perhaps, to lure a little girl into the woods and push her down a well.

  My mother died only hours after giving birth to me. Auntie was the midwife who helped bring me into the world. She was also there to guide my mother out of it.

  My sister, Constance, was twelve then. My brother, Jacob, eight. They told me later that our mother was not fond of Auntie but Father insisted she accept Auntie’s help.

  “I don’t trust her,” Mother had confessed to Constance and Jacob.

  Father told my older siblings that Mother’s suspicions were unfounded.

  “Your mother,” he informed them, “has a weak constitution. Auntie has helped plenty of women bring healthy babies into this world, and she will help your mother, too.” Father thought she needed all the help she could get, particularly since this pregnancy had happened so late in life—my mother was nearly forty. Auntie made her tonics and teas to help with the pregnancy and labor. My mother, Jacob once confessed, believed Auntie was trying to poison her.

  “Please,” she’d begged her children, “you’ve got to help me. The woman wants me dead.”

  “But why would she want that, Mother?” Constance had asked. Constance shared my father’s belief that the pregnancy had affected my mother in some profound way, making her distrustful, even slightly mad.

  “She has her reasons,” Mother had said.

  My mother, who spoke fluent French, had her own name for Auntie: La Sorcière—the Witch. Auntie spoke French, too, and Father thought it would be a comfort for my mother to have someone to converse with her in her native language. But Constance and Jacob reported there had not been much conversation between them, and neither they nor my father knew what words they did speak, in hushed, sometimes ominous tones.

  I used to ask Auntie about my mother—questions I could never bring myself to ask Father. What color eyes did she have? What was her voice like? (Brown ringed with gold, said Auntie. And she sang like a lark.) That was the thing about Auntie: she would tell you whatever you wanted to know. She did not believe it necessary to keep things from children. She saw me as her pupil, her protégée, even, and did everything she could to educate me—to teach me to hunt mushrooms, to plant by the moon cycles, to use flowers and bark to stop a fever.

  “How did my mother die?” I asked her once. I was seven or eight years old. We were sitting together in her cabin, and she was teaching me how to embroider. I was making a little pillow with a daisy at the center. There was a fire burning in Auntie’s potbelly stove, and a pot of venison stew was simmering on top, filling the cabin with a wonderful, homey smell.

  “She bled to death,” Auntie said without emotion. “Sometimes, after a difficult birth, there is no way to stop the blood.”

  Some nights, I would dream of my own birth: of little squalling me coming into this world in a sea of blood, of Auntie’s strong hands lifting me up and out of it.

  Constance was engaged at nineteen, saying yes to a suitor she only half cared for, because she couldn’t wait to leave our house. She never dared say it out loud, but I knew she had come to loathe Auntie. I’d see the way she glared at Auntie, the false smiles she gave when Father was around. I heard her sometimes using the name my m
other had: La Sorcière.

  Jacob, on the other hand, worshipped Auntie. He went out of his way to please her, did all he could to spend time with her. Auntie taught us both to hunt and trap, how to skin any animal and tan the hide. Jacob took to it, making his own snares and pit traps, carving a hunting bow and arrows, always eager for Auntie’s approval.

  “Like this, Auntie?” he asked, sliding a chipped stone arrowhead into a straight shaft he’d carved from a beech branch.

  “Perfect,” she said, patting his shoulder. “That arrow will fly straight into the heart of a buck.”

  Jacob all but glowed.

  She loved us both as one would love her own children.

  My mother’s sister, Prudence, was still alive then and came to visit us on a regular basis, often bringing gifts: new dresses for Constance and me, pants and a fine coat for Jacob. It was she who started the fuss about Auntie. She and Father would sit together in the kitchen, talking over coffee. I would crouch down in the hallway, eavesdropping, but could only hear snatches of what she’d say to my father: “Not dignified.” “Cannot be allowed to continue.” “Filthy heathen witch.”

  It was Prudence who sent Reverend Ayers and some of the men from town to pay my father a visit after years of her own harsh judgments and threats did little to change my father’s mind. I don’t know what finally pushed her to call in the men, or how she convinced them to come, but I remember their ominous arrival. It was in the heat of July, only months after I’d seen Hester Jameson up by the Devil’s Hand.

  “Reverend,” Father said when he answered the door, “what brings you out this way?” He looked beyond Reverend Ayers and saw the other men: Abe Cushing; Carl Gonyea, who owned the inn; Ben Dimock, who was foreman at the mill; and old Thaddeus Bemis, patriarch of the huge Bemis family.

  “We’ve come to talk with you,” Reverend Ayers said.

  My father nodded and held the door open. “Come on into the living room. Sara? Go in the kitchen and fetch the brandy and some glasses, will you?”