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.”
Ruthie
The heater in Buzz’s truck was set to full blast, but they still shivered as they navigated the Connecticut suburbs. The floor of the truck was littered with McDonald’s bags, coffee cups, and empty bottles of Mountain Dew, Buzz’s drink of choice when beer wasn’t an option. Fawn sat between them; though her fever was broken, she was still weak and pale. They’d stuffed her into her down parka, then wrapped her up in a wool blanket before leaving home four hours ago.
“Are you sure you’re up for a road trip, Little Deer?” Ruthie had asked.
Fawn had nodded eagerly, and so Ruthie said okay, even though she was pretty sure that taking Fawn out in the bitter cold when she was sick was not something Mom would approve of.
