Chapter 6
Visitors from the Other Side
The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea
It was Clarence Bemis who found her, early this morning, nearly twenty-four hours since she crept out of bed to follow her papa.
When the three men—Clarence, Martin, and Lucius—came into the house, tracking in snow, at ten past eight this morning, I knew from their faces.
I wanted to send them away. Bolt the door.
Tell them there must be a mistake—they had to keep looking, they could not come back until they brought me my little girl, alive and well.
I hated all three men just then: Clarence in his overalls, his hair too long and shaggy and the stink of whiskey on him; Lucius with his earnest face, good shoes, and carefully trimmed mustache; Martin, who limped in, shoulders slumped, looking pathetic and ruined.
Go away, I longed to say. Get out of my house.
I wanted to turn back time, keep Gertie wrapped up in my arms, soft and warm under the covers.
Martin took me by the hand, asked me to sit down.
“We found her,” he said, and I covered my mouth, thinking I would scream, but no sound came.
All three men stood frozen, hats in their hands, six sad eyes all on me.
There is an old well at the far-eastern edge of the Bemises’ property, something that ran dry years ago.
I remember Auntie and I went there once, when I was a girl not much older than Gertie, to drop stones down and listen for the sound of them hitting bottom.
I leaned against the rough circle of stones and tried to see the bottom, but it was too dark.
There was a dank smell coming out of it, and I could almost imagine feeling a cool breeze.
“How far down do you think it goes?” I asked Auntie.
Auntie smiled. “Maybe all the way through to the other side of the world.”
“That’s impossible,” I told her.
“Or maybe,” she said, tossing another pebble down, “it leads to another world altogether.”
I leaned farther down, desperate to see, and Auntie grabbed the back of my dress and pulled me upright. “Be careful, Sara. Wherever it goes, I don’t think it’s anywhere you want to be.”
Clarence said Gertie was curled up at its bottom so sweetly, as if she’d just fallen asleep.
“She didn’t suffer,” Lucius said, his voice low and calm as he put his hand on top of mine.
His hand was soft and powdery, not a callus or a scar on it.
He was there when they hauled my Gertie out, and this seemed all wrong to me, that Lucius was there when they pulled her out, and not me.
They sent Jeremiah Bemis down by rope, and he tied it round her waist. I closed my eyes.
Tried not to imagine her small body swinging, banging against the curved wall of the well, as they hoisted her up out of the darkness.
“She died instantly,” Lucius said, as if it would be a comfort.
But it is no comfort. Because, over and over, I think of those stones I once dropped, and how long it took for them to reach the bottom.
I imagine what it must have been like, falling.
Surrounded by a circle of stone, falling, falling into the darkness.