Chapter 15
Martin
The noise woke him sometime after midnight—a scratching, a scuttling. His eyes shot open, and he lay in the dark, listening.
Pale moonlight came in through the bedroom’s frost-covered window, giving everything a bluish glow. He stared up at the plaster ceiling, listening. The fire had died down, and the room was cold. He inhaled, then exhaled, feeling as if the room were breathing with him.
There it was again. The scratching. Nails against wood. He held his breath and listened.
Mice? No. Too big for mice. It sounded like something large trying to claw its way out of the walls. Behind the scrabbling, he heard what sounded like the rustle of flapping wings.
He thought of the chicken he’d found in the woods this morning—another one of their hens taken.
Only this time it didn’t seem like the work of a fox.
He found the carcass up near the rocks. The chicken’s neck had been broken, and its chest had been opened up, the heart removed.
He didn’t know of any animal that would do a thing like that.
He’d buried the body in rocks, tried to put it out of his mind.
His own heart thudding now, he felt the bed beside him, expecting to find Sara’s warm body, but the bed was cold. Had she gone into Gertie’s room again? Were the two of them hidden under the covers, giggling?
No. Gertie was dead. Buried in the ground.
He remembered the way she’d looked when they hauled her body out of the well. Like she was sleeping.
He recalled the feel of her hair in his pocket, coiled softly like a snake.
“Sara?” he called.
He’d been sick with worry over Sara these last days. She had stopped eating, would not leave the bed, would not feed or wash herself. She seemed to get weaker and less responsive with each passing day.
“Honestly, there’s nothing we can do but wait,” Lucius told him. They had been standing in the kitchen, speaking in hushed voices. “Keep trying to get food and water into her, give her the tonic, offer whatever comfort you can.”
“I keep thinking about when we lost Charles,” Martin said. “How sick with grief she was.” He didn’t want to say what he was thinking, not even to his own brother: This time it was worse. This time, he feared, she might not come back to him.
It was one thing to lose poor Gertie, but if he lost Sara, too, his life would be over.
“I don’t want to frighten you, Martin,” Lucius said. “But if she doesn’t come around soon, I think it might be best if we sent her to the state hospital for the insane over in Waterbury.”
Martin’s whole body went rigid.
“It’s not a terrible place,” Lucius said. “They have a farm. The patients get outside every day. They would keep her safe.”
Martin shook his head. “She’ll get better,” he vowed. “I’ll help her to get better. I’m her husband. I can keep my own wife safe.”
But as far as he could tell, Sara was growing worse with each passing hour. And now here it was the middle of the night and she was missing.
“Sara?” he called once more, listening.
And there it was again—the scratching, tapping, fluttering—louder this time, more frantic.
He sat up, scanning the room in the darkness. He could make out the edge of the bed, the dresser to his left, and there, in the right corner, a form hunched, moving slightly, pulsating.
No.
Breathing. It was breathing.
The scream stuck in his throat, coming out as only a hiss.
He looked around frantically for a weapon, something heavy, but then the thing moved, raised its head, and he saw his wife’s long auburn hair shine in the dim moonlight.
“Sara?” he gasped. “What are you doing?”
She was sitting on the floor in front of the closet, wearing her thin nightgown, her bare feet as pale as marble against the dark floor. She was shivering.
She did not move, did not seem even to hear him. Worry gnawed at his insides like an ugly rat.
“Come back to bed, darling. Aren’t you cold?”
Then he heard it again. The scratching. Claws against wood.
It was coming from inside the closet.
“Sara,” he said, standing on shaking legs, blood pounding through his head, making a roaring sound in his ears.
The room seemed to shift around him, growing longer.
The distance between himself and Sara felt impossibly far.
The moonlight hit the closet door. He could see it move slightly, the knob slowly turning.
“Move away from there!” he cried.
But his wife sat still, eyes fixed on the door.
“It’s our Gertie,” she said calmly. “She’s come back to us.”