(Editor’s note: This is the final entry I discovered, though, as you shall see, she makes reference to other pages she had been working on. It is chilling to note that Sara’s body was found only hours after she wrote these words.)
January 31, 1908
The dead can return. Not just as spirits, but as living, breathing beings. I have beheld the proof with my own eyes: my beloved Gertie, awakened. And I have made a decision: ours is a story that must be told. I have spent the last hours with papers spread out on the table, oil lamp burning bright, as I wrote down the exact instructions on how to awaken a sleeper. I have copied Auntie’s notes and told every detail of my own experience. I have finished at last, and tucked the papers away safely in not one but three separate hiding places.
We are in the house, doors locked, curtains drawn. Shep is stretched out by my feet, his eyes and ears alert. I’ve got the gun by my side. I do not want to believe that it could be Martin. That this man I thought I knew—this man I cooked for, slept beside each night, told my secrets to—could be such a monster.
Martin was badly injured when the gun went off. He won’t make it long out there in the cold with a chest wound. My fear, of course, is that he’ll make it to the Bemises’ and they’ll all come pounding at the door, looking for the madwoman with the gun.
I am pleased that I have had the chance to write down everythingthat has happened while it is still fresh in my mind. Even more pleased that I have hidden the papers, should they cart me off to the lunatic asylum.
One day, my papers will be found. The world will know the truth about sleepers.
We are nearing the end of the seventh day of Gertie’s awakening. And my girl is still hiding in the shadows, here and then not.
When I catch a glimpse of her, she’s pale and shadowy. She’s dressed in the outfit she wore when she left the house on that last morning: her blue dress, wool tights, her little black coat. Her hair is in tangles now. Dirt is smudged on her cheeks. She gives off the smell of burning fat, a tallow candle just extinguished.
Shep is unsettled by her; he growls into the shadows with hackles raised, his teeth bared.
Since I finished writing down our story, I have been talking to her, singing to her, trying to coax her out into the open. “Remember,” I say, “remember?”
“Remember how you and I would stay under the covers all morning, telling each other our dreams?
“Remember Christmas mornings? The time you had the mumps and I never left your side? Your stories of the blue dog? The way you’d run straight for the kitchen when you came home from school and smelled molasses cookies?”
Remember? Remember?
But Gertie has gone again. (Was she ever really here?)
“Please, love,” I say. “We have so little time together. Won’t you show yourself to me?”
I turn and look for her across the room.
And there, over the fireplace, across the brick hearth, is a message written in black with a charred stick:
Not Papa
And just now, as I’m staring at the words, there’s a knock at the door.
A familiar, though impossible, voice calls out my name.
May 2, 1886
My Dearest Sara,
I have promised to tell you everything I know about sleepers. But before you go on, you must understand that this is powerful magic. Only do it if you are sure. Once it is done, there can be no going back.
The sleeper will awaken and return to you. The time this takes is unsure. Sometimes they return in hours, other times, days.
Once awakened, a sleeper will walk for seven days. After that, they are gone from this world forever. You cannot bring someone back more than once. It is forbidden and, indeed, impossible.
If you are ready, follow these instructions exactly.
