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…thingkills my parents—and we just hang around? You actually decide we shouldlivehere? 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.
Somethinghad 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.
