Chapter 28 #2
“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 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.