The Winter People

Martin rides into town to see his brother, Lucius. On the way, he sees someone he doesn’t recognize wrapped up in a hat and scarf ride past toward the house. While in town, Martin runs into Amelia. She says she will come by the house tomorrow and take Sara to a luncheon with some other women. Martin goes into Lucius’s medical office. He tells Lucius that Sara thinks Gertie is in their closet. Lucius gives Martin pills for Sara to help her sleep.

When Martin returns home, Sara asks him what Gertie’s body had looked like when he found it at the bottom of the well. She tells him she thinks Gertie was murdered, because Gertie has told her so. Martin is shocked.

January 26, 1908

The next day, Sara opens the closet and Gertie is gone. While Sara searches for her, Amelia arrives. Amelia takes Sara to meet four women at her home. One of the women, Mrs. Willard, says she is a medium. Mrs. Willard tells Sara that she has a message from Gertie. She says that Gertie says “the blue dog says hello” and that Gertie doesn’t like “this thing that you are doing” (197). Sara feels dizzy.

When Sara gets home, she goes to look for Gertie near the Devil’s Hand. She hears branches break behind her and calls Gertie’s name. When she turns around, she sees Martin instead. He tells her he is worried about her.

When they get back to the bedroom, all of Martin’s clothes have been taken out of the closet and shredded. He blames Sara. She denies having done it. They find a note in the mess that says, “Ask Him What He berryed in the field” (200). Martin says he buried the ring in the field, but Sara thinks he is lying.

Katherine goes to the farmer’s market to find the “egg lady,” but she isn’t there. One of the other vendors tells Katherine the woman’s name is Alice. Katherine returns home and pages through the West Hall historical book she purchased. She sees a picture of the Shea house today. Alice, Ruthie, and Fawn are in the picture. Katherine decides to go to the Shea house.

Ruthie takes care of Fawn, who has a fever again. Then, she reads Visitors from the Other Side and learns that the hidey-holes in the house they had found were made by Sara. She and Fawn play hide-and-seek. After the round, Ruthie makes Fawn show her where she had been hiding. Fawn shows her a secret compartment in the hall closet. Inside, they find a backpack with a camera in it. Fawn tells Ruthie she sees someone coming toward the house.

Ruthie recalls how her mother always warned them to never open the door to strangers. The person knocks. It is Candace O’Rourke. Candace says she has an idea of what happened to their mother, and she is there to help. They let her in.

Candace tells them that she wants to get a lawyer to get custody of her son, Luke. Candance asks if they found any papers with her brother and sister-in-law’s wallets. Ruthie and Fawn say they did not. Candace takes out a gun and holds them at gunpoint. She demands to see everything Ruthie and Fawn found.

Katherine parks outside the Shea house. She decides to go and knock on the door and say she is having car trouble and that she needs to use the phone. As part of her ruse, she decides to leave her cell phone in her car. Katherine walks up the drive and peeks in the window of the house. She sees Candace holding Fawn and Ruthie at gunpoint. She resolves to save the girls.

Ruthie tells Candace that their mother disappeared on New Year’s Day. Candance tells them she has an idea of what happened to her, but she wants to hear what they know about Tom and Bridget O’Rourke. Ruthie says they don’t know anything. She shows Candance the hall closet hidey-hole. While she is doing that, Fawn sneaks off, grabs the gun from their mother’s bedroom, and wraps it in her doll’s blanket. She surreptitiously shows it to Ruthie so that Candance doesn’t see.

Candace tells them that Bridget and Tom O’Rourke are Ruthie’s parents. Candace and Tom lived in the Shea house when they were kids. They are Amelia’s great-great-grandchildren. When they were kids, they found the missing pages from Sara’s journal that included the instructions for how to make a “sleeper,” but the map of where to perform the ceremony was still missing. As adults, Tom contacted James Washburne, Fawn’s father, who dealt in antique books to arrange a sale of the documents. Alice and James came to the house to discuss the sale. That weekend, Tom and Bridget had been killed by “something” in the woods. Candace believes Alice and James had been lying and that they killed Tom and Bridget for the money. Candace agreed to let Alice and James raise her niece, Ruthie. Alice and James stayed in the house to keep an eye on the creature so it wouldn’t harm others.

Candace wants to find and sell the missing pages so she can pay for a lawyer to get custody of her son. They hear a crash. They go into the living room and see Katherine looking at the camera they had found.

Katherine tells them that the camera belonged to her husband, Gary, who died in a car crash. Candace hopes to find clues about what happened to Alice and the missing pages on it. On the camera, they find pictures Gary took of the missing pages, including the map. He found them in the box of pictures he purchased at the store in the Adirondacks.

Katherine tells them she thinks Gary came there to find a way to revive their recently deceased son, Austin. They also see pictures of a cave at the base of the Devil’s Hand and a girl crouching at the entrance. They decide to go to the cave to look for Alice.