Chapter 43
Ruthie
Ruthie sat with her mother, Fawn, and Katherine at the kitchen table.
Mom had made coffee and warmed up banana bread from the freezer; the smell should have comforted Ruthie, but her stomach turned.
To go from the dark, airless silence of the cave to this world full of light and color, smells and sound—it was all too much.
The cups of coffee and plates of banana bread sat untouched.
Mom had given Fawn Tylenol and a cup of herbal tea and tried to put her to bed, but Fawn protested, not wanting to miss anything. She sat slumped on Mom’s lap, Mimi in her arms, doing her best to stay awake.
Katherine had been pestering Ruthie’s mother with nonstop questions about Gary, and Fawn had asked over and over how she had gotten to the caves and why they had found her tied up. “I’ll tell you the whole story from the beginning,” Mom promised. And now, at last, she had begun.
“Your father and I came here sixteen years ago. Our friends Tom and Bridget called us and said they’d come into possession of something that was going to change the world, going to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. If we helped them, they’d share the wealth with us.
It seemed so exciting—a great call to adventure. ”
The lights in the kitchen felt too bright and seemed to pulsate, to throb along with the pain in Ruthie’s head. She wanted to go up to her room, get into bed, put her head under the covers, and try to forget everything that had happened over these last three days.
Mom, sensing Ruthie’s misery in that special mom way she had, reached out to take Ruthie’s hand. Ruthie gave her mother’s hand a weak squeeze, but then she pulled her own hand away and set it on her lap, where it looked waxy and useless. A mannequin hand.
Katherine stirred her coffee restlessly, the spoon clanking against the mug like an alarm bell. “Please,” she said, interrupting the story. “Just tell me how Gary found you. How you ended up with his camera bag. What really happened that day?”
Ruthie’s mom peered at Katherine over the top of her glasses and gave her a patient nod. “I will get to all that. I promise. But in order to truly understand, you need to hear the whole thing from the beginning.”
Ruthie closed her eyes as she listened to her mother’s story, like when she was little and her mom used to tell her “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” This, too, was like a fairy tale: Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Hannah who loved to go to a bakery called Fitzgerald’s with her mother.
Her mother and father loved her very much.
They wanted only the best for her. And they felt that the key to their fortune, to their happiness, could be found in these pages that told a dreadful secret: how to bring back the dead.
And, as in all fairy tales, there was bloodshed, there was loss.
“It was a chilly spring afternoon,” Ruthie’s mother said. “And we’d all gone out into the woods to look for this portal that was mentioned in diary pages Tom and Bridget had.” She looked at Ruthie, smiling. “You were wearing a pretty little dress and coat, and carrying a teddy bear.”
“Like in that picture?” Ruthie said, remembering the photo, the happy smile on her face. “The one we have in the shoebox?”
Mom nodded. “I took that photo just before we left on our walk up the hill.” She looked down into her coffee cup, then continued her story.
“It was lovely in the woods—the trees were just leafing out, and the birds were singing. Tom and James were talking about books; you were chattering and humming little songs. When you got too tired to walk on your own, your mother carried you. When we were near the top of the hill, we saw a little girl hiding behind a tree. We called out to her, but she ran. She didn’t have a coat or shoes.
Her hair was in tangles. We chased after her all the way up to the Devil’s Hand, but she disappeared in the rocks.
Then we searched, and Tom found the cave opening, insisted we go in—we had to help this poor little girl. She was obviously lost and alone.”
“We all went into the cave?” Ruthie asked.
Her mother nodded. “We never should have. But we didn’t know. How could we? It never occurred to us that the portal might be in there, or that this young girl had anything to do with it. We just saw a child in trouble and wanted to help. I think we forgot everything else.”
Mom fell silent for a long moment. No one made a sound. At last she took a deep breath and went on.
“It was dark; Tom and Bridget were up ahead of us. When we got to the first chamber, we saw right away that someone had been living there. There were a couple of lanterns burning. Tom thought he heard footsteps down one of the tunnels. He and Bridget went down, and …”
“She killed them?” Ruthie asked.
Mom nodded. “It all happened so fast. There was nothing we could do. James scooped you up in his arms, and we ran.”
The sleeper killed her parents. But there were kind James and Alice Washburne to take her in, to raise her as their own.
“I believe we were meant to be here for that very reason,” her mother said. “To save you, to take care of you. I knew without a doubt as I held you to my chest that day that we would be your parents. That it was our destiny.”
“Destiny,” Fawn repeated to Mimi.
Ruthie shook her head. Destiny, fate, meant to be, God’s plan—all this kind of talk had always gotten on Ruthie’s nerves. To suggest that her true parents’ slaughter was somehow guided by the stars just added insult to injury.
“But why didn’t we leave?” Ruthie wanted to know. “This … thing kills my parents—and we just hang around? You actually decide we should live here? You knew what was out there!”
For she now understood what the monster in the woods was supposed to be—little sleeper Gertie, awakened for all eternity, just as Auntie had warned.
Something had killed Candace, ripped at her throat like an animal.
And the existence of Gertie would explain what had happened to Willa Luce, to the young boy in 1952, to the missing hunter, would even explain some of the stories Buzz and his friends told.
She remembered her parents’ warnings when she was little: Stay out of the woods.
Bad things happen to little girls who get lost out there.
Her mother nodded. “Oh yes, I knew what was out there, living in the cave. By the time we got back to the house that day, your father and I understood who she was, though we could scarcely believe it.”
“Who was it, Mama? Who was in the cave?” Fawn asked.
“A little girl named Gertie. Only she wasn’t an ordinary little girl. She was a sleeper.”
“Ruthie said sleepers aren’t real.” Fawn looked suspiciously up at Ruthie.
“Oh, they’re real, all right,” their mother said. She was quiet again for a moment, then continued.
“Anyway, we made it back to the house. Your father—he thought we should go, he thought we should get as far away as we could, as quick as we could. But I felt we needed to try to do something—to find a way to protect people from her, to keep what had happened to Tom and Bridget from ever happening again. I convinced him. For better or for worse.” She paused again, broke apart her banana bread, pushed the pieces around on her plate.
“She came back that evening.”
“Who?” Ruthie asked.
“Gertie. I heard a scrabbling in the closet upstairs and opened the door, and there she was. I thought I would die of fright, but Gertie looked so … so sorry almost, so sad and alone. She couldn’t help what she was.
So I talked to her. I made a deal with her.
If we stayed, your father and I would visit her in the cave.
We would keep her company, bring her gifts, help her find a way to get food, but she needed to promise that she would never hurt us.
She can’t speak—I don’t think any of them can. But she nodded, even smiled at me.”
Ruthie nodded numbly, still not quite able to believe the fantastical story her mother was telling. “So you’re basically saying you adopted two little girls that day?”
“Yes,” her mother said. “Only one was a much bigger burden and responsibility. I believed that it was up to us to help her, and to keep the world safe from her. I also believed that it was our responsibility—your father’s and mine—to make sure no one else could make another sleeper.
We had to keep the knowledge safely guarded. ”
“So the journal pages weren’t destroyed?” Katherine asked. “You had them the whole time?”
Candace had been right about this part. She’d gotten her proof in the end, but had died for it.
Ruthie’s mother shook her head. “The pages weren’t ours to destroy.
It didn’t seem right. So we hid them in the caves, with Gertie to guard them, and told Candace they were gone—she only wanted to sell them, to make money.
We knew there were more pages out there, the final instructions and map, and that one day they would surface. ”
“Gary found them,” Katherine said. She looked very tired and horribly pale—her whole face, even her lips, washed of color. “And he showed up here with them. He had Auntie’s original letter to Sara, and the map she’d drawn showing the location of the portal in the cave.”
Ruthie’s mother nodded. “He came to the house after he’d found the cave—the map had led him right to it.
He’d seen Gertie out there. Taken her picture.
He knew everything. And he was absolutely determined that he was going to go home and pick up something of your son’s, then return and do the spell to bring him back.
He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I tried to explain to him what would happen—what a nightmare it would be.
But he was determined. I begged him to talk it over with me some more.
We went to lunch in town. I tried everything I could think of to dissuade him.
I told him everything about Gertie. Hell, I even offered him money—not that I had any to give. But he’d made up his mind.”
Katherine turned the ring on her finger, the one she wore above her gold wedding band. Auntie’s ring.
Ruthie’s mother rubbed her eyes. “I followed him out of town that afternoon. I didn’t know what else to do.
I thought maybe I could get him to pull over, that I’d find some way to get him to change his mind.
I couldn’t let him go back to Boston with those photographs. If he told anyone, if word got out …”
Mom hung her head, her whole body slumping forward, broken. Fawn looked from her mother to Ruthie, then over to Katherine, perplexed.
“He was driving so fast. Maybe if I hadn’t been following so close …”
“You … you saw him crash?” Katherine said, swaying a little in her chair as the weight of the words hit her. She put a hand on the table to steady herself.
Ruthie’s mother nodded and looked down at her hands, lying flat on the table. “He was just ahead of me, going around a bend. He took the corner too fast and just lost control. It all happened so quickly; there was no stopping it.
“I pulled over and ran to his car, but as soon as I got there, I knew there was nothing I could do. He was gone.”
Katherine made a quiet sobbing sound and put her face in her hands.
“His backpack was there, on the passenger seat, beside him. Before I could think about it too much, I reached in and took it.”
Her mother lifted her head, looked right at Ruthie.
Her blue eyes were full of tears, but behind them was a look of resolute determination.
“I just couldn’t let anyone find the papers he had with him or see the pictures on his camera.
I knew I had to hide the papers with the other things up in the cave, where no one would ever find them.
You don’t understand what a sleeper is capable of.
If word got out, if more were made …” Her mother shook her head. “Can you imagine what would happen?”
Everyone turned and looked to Katherine, waiting. She sat stone-faced, staring straight ahead, into nothing, with dark, hollow eyes.
“I guess,” Katherine said then, standing up, swaying a little, still terribly pale, “we all do what we think is best. Sometimes we make terrible mistakes, sometimes we do the right thing. Sometimes we never know. We just have to hope.” With this, she turned to leave the kitchen, but stopped instantly.
“Can you tell me one more thing?” she asked.
“Anything,” Ruthie’s mom said.
“What did he order?”
“I’m sorry?”
“At Lou Lou’s, when you had lunch. What did Gary have?”
Ruthie’s mother looked puzzled, then answered. “A turkey club sandwich and a cup of coffee.”
Katherine smiled. “Good,” she said. “That was always his favorite.”