These are the things you will need:
A shovel
A candle
The heart of any living animal (you must remove it no longer than twelve hours before the deed)
An object that belonged to the person you wish to bring back (such as clothing, jewelry, or a tool)
You must take these things to a portal. There are doorways, gates, between this world and the world of the spirits. One of thesedoorways is right here in West Hall. I have drawn a map showing its location. You must guard this map with your life.
Enter the portal.
Light the candle.
Hold the object that belonged to the person in your hands and say these words seven times: “_______ (person’s name), I call you back to me. Sleeper, awaken!”
Bury the heart and say, “So that your heart will beat once more.”
Bury the object beside it and say, “Something of yours to help you find your way.”
Then leave the portal and wait. Sometimes they will come to you right then and there. But sometimes, as I have said, it can take days.
There are two other things I must warn you of: Once a sleeper returns, it cannot be killed. It will walk for seven days, regardless of what is done to it. The last thing I must tell you is something I have heard, but have not seen with my own eyes. It is said that if a sleeper were to murder a living person and spill his blood within those seven days, then the sleeper will stay awake for all eternity.
Please use these instructions wisely, and only when the time is right.
I love you with all of my heart, Sara Harrison.
Yours eternally,
Auntie
Katherine
The snow was knee-deep, but they’d stopped at the barn and strapped snowshoes on—the old-fashioned sort made of bentwood with rawhide laces. The procession moved forward, across the yard and field and toward the wooded hillside. Candace was leading them with her headlamp, Ruthie and Fawn in the middle (Fawn shuffling along stoically, holding tight to a dirty rag doll swaddled in covers that she kept whispering to), and Katherine was the caboose.
“Katherine! Don’t fall behind.” Candace turned toward Katherine, her headlamp shining right in Katherine’s face. “You don’t want to get separated from us out in these woods.”
No. No, she did not.
Katherine looked up from the tiny screen of Gary’s camera. He had photographed all of Sara’s missing diary pages, and Katherine had been studying Auntie’s instructions for bringing back the dead. It was difficult to make out all the words exactly, even when she zoomed in, but she got the gist.
“What are you so busy looking at?” Candace asked. She looked like a Cyclops with one horribly bright eye: a third eye, a mystic all-seeing eye.
“Just trying to get a clearer sense of where this opening we’re looking for is,” she said, shutting the camera off and putting it back in Gary’s pack. Everyone but Fawn had on packs that had been quickly loaded with supplies: flashlights and batteries, candles, matches, rope, bottled water, granola bars, a few apples. Candace had put on the headlamp they’d found by the front door, which Ruthie and hermother used for bringing in firewood after dark. Katherine had the camera, some water, a flashlight, candles and matches, and Gary’s old Swiss Army knife in her pack.
“Good,” Candace said. “I’m glad you brought the camera.”
So am I, she thought.
She concentrated on walking in the snowshoes, a strange kind of duck-footed shuffle through the deep powder. The snow was still falling hard and fast around them. All Katherine could hear was the sound of their breathing, their grunts as they moved up the hill. There were no car sounds, no distant sirens or train whistles. The world was eerily silent, all the sound muffled, as if everything had been swaddled in cotton wool.
The trail ahead of her seemed impossibly steep all of a sudden. They’d left the field behind and were now climbing up into the woods. The trees were bent and twisted, the branches weighted down with snow. She felt the trees were watching her, a terrible army that stood in rows and reached for her with gnarled fingers.
You’re almost there, Gary whispered in her ear.
He felt so close. She could almost smell him, taste him. He’d walked this same path at the end of October, on his last day alive. He’d walked along, shouldering this very backpack.
