“You see, that’s the problem, Martin. If you want to look in Gertie’s pocket, you’re looking in the wrong place.” Holding the rifle in her right hand, she displayed her left, fingers spread. There, above her wedding ring, was the little bone ring. She used her thumb to turn it around her finger, the strange ring she’d once seemed so afraid of.
“Where did you get that?” Martin asked.
“It was in Gertie’s pocket.”
“Impossible,” Martin stammered. He moved toward her, began to climb out of the hole.
“You stay where you are,” she warned, keeping the gun aimed at his chest. “I was so sure Auntie’s spirit had done this evil thing, but perhaps the truth is simpler; perhaps it’s been right in front of my face the whole time, and I just couldn’t bring myself to see it.”
Sara rocked back on her heels, holding the gun in both hands now, bringing it up high, and sighting down the barrel.
“Was it you, Martin?” she asked quietly. “Did you hurt our Gertie?”
Martin staggered backward and fell against the dirt wall. It was as if she’d already pulled the trigger.
He remembered holding Gertie in his arms when she was a tiny infant, their miracle baby; walking with her, hand in hand, into the woods last month to choose a tree to cut down for Christmas. How she’d found a spruce with a bird’s nest in it and insisted they cut thatone down. “Aren’t we the luckiest people ever, Papa?” she’d asked. “To have a Christmas tree with a bird’s nest in it?”
“I…” he stuttered, looking at Sara. “I didn’t. Icouldn’t. With God as my witness, I swear I would never hurt our little girl.”
Sara stared, finger twitching on the trigger. “But the ring was in your pocket when you left the house that morning, was it not?”
“Sara, please. You’re not thinking clearly.”
She was silent a moment, as though turning the matter over in her mind.
“But it wasn’tyourring, was it? It was hers. Which meansshestill could have been the one to do it.”
“You’re not making sense, Sara. You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Am I, now?” Sara said. She lowered the gun, turned, and looked back into the shadows around the house. “Gertie?” Sara called out. “Your father thinks I’m not right in the head. Come show him, darling. Show him the truth.”
Martin stood on the empty coffin, peering over the edge of the hole into the darkness. Somewhere in the darkness, a shadow moved toward them, shuffling through the snow.
Oh dear beloved Jesus, no. Please, no. Martin closed his eyes tight, counted to ten, trying to make it all go away.
He opened his eyes and scrambled at the dirt, clawing his way out of the hole, not looking at whatever was moving toward them from the shadows.
“Sara,” he said, reaching for the gun, wrapping his fingers around the barrel. The movement startled Sara, and the gun fired.
He heard the sound, saw the flash of light, felt the bullet hit his chest just below his rib cage on the left. He started to run in spite of the searing pain. He clapped a hand over the bloody hole.
“Martin?” Sara called. “Come back! You’re hurt!” But he did not turn back.
On he ran, across the yard and toward the woods, hand on his leaking chest, not daring to look back.
Visitors from the Other Side
The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea
