The Winter People

In 1908, after getting shot, Martin makes his way back to the house. He knows he is dying from the gunshot wound. He wants to tell Sara he did not kill Gertie before he dies.

As he approaches the house, he thinks he sees someone move, but when he looks again, there is no one there. Sara comes out of the house followed by Auntie with a gun. Sara tells Martin that Auntie killed Gertie. Martin lunges for the gun but misses. Auntie hits him with the butt of the gun and he collapses. He sees a blond girl holding an axe behind Auntie. Auntie points the gun at Sara but, before she can shoot, Gertie hits Auntie in the back of the skull with the axe, killing her. Martin loses consciousness.

Later, Martin’s brother Lucius finds him. Martin asks Lucius to take care of Sara. Lucius tells him it is too late, and Martin sees the skinned corpse of a woman beside them in the snow. Martin denies having killed Sara, saying Gertie did it. Then, Martin dies by suicide.

In the present day, Candace, Ruthie, and Fawn walk through the caves looking for Katherine and Alice. When they get some distance from Candace, Ruthie and Fawn turn down a side passage to look for a different way out.

Ruthie and Fawn come to a cavern where they find their mother tied to a chair. They work to cut through her bonds. Katherine bursts in and warns them that “something” is coming. They get Alice free. Then, they hear Candace scream.

Two years after Martin’s death, Gertie and Sara are living in the cave complex. Gertie cannot speak but she communicates with Sara by spelling with her finger onto Sara’s palm. Sara goes out at night to get supplies for them. Once, she went to Lucius’s house and pretended to be a ghost to scare him. Sara had skinned Auntie’s body so people would think it was her own. Since Gertie murdered someone while a “sleeper,” she will live forever. When people come to the Devil’s Hand to try and do the ceremony to bring back a loved one, Sara lets Gertie kill and eat them.

In the present day, Ruthie, Fawn, Katherine, and Alice make their way out of the cave. However, Alice gets lost and turns around. Katherine feels a breeze and follows it. When they round a corner, Katherine stops when she sees Candace’s mutilated dead body. Candace has the missing pages of the journal in her hand. Alice picks up the pages and they keep moving toward the exit.

Back at the house, Alice explains everything. She tells them about coming to visit Tom and Bridget O’Rourke at the Shea house, where they were living, to discuss the sale of the missing journal entries. They went on a hike to Devil’s Hand. On the way, they saw a blond girl, Gertie, running in the woods. Tom and Bridget followed her into the cave to try and help her. Gertie killed them, but Alice, James, and Ruthie escaped. Alice and James decided to stay in the farmhouse to keep Gertie company in the hopes that it would prevent her from killing more people. They hid the instructions for reviving the dead in the caves so that the public could not access them.

Katherine explains Gary had found another copy of the instructions and had gone to the Devil’s Hand in an attempt to bring back their son, Austin. Alice tells her she did everything she could to dissuade Gary. She had followed Gary out of town and saw him crash. She stole the camera from the wreckage so that the photographs of the instructions wouldn’t be published.

The next morning at breakfast, Alice apologizes for not telling Ruthie sooner that she was adopted. Alice explains that Gertie often appears in the bedroom closet. On New Year’s Day, Gertie had come to the house angry and desperate. Alice had gone with her to the cave, but Gertie hadn’t wanted Alice to leave, so Gertie tied Alice to the chair.

Alice tells Ruthie that someone will need to stay at the house forever to look after Gertie so that Gertie doesn’t get lonely. After breakfast, Ruthie and Fawn drop the gun, the O’Rourkes’ wallets, and the diary pages into the well. They turn around and see Gertie behind a tree. She smiles and runs away.

Katherine looks at the pictures of the instructions for making a sleeper that she had kept from the memory card of Gary’s camera. She is working on a diorama of Gary’s last meal at Lou Lou’s Café and includes a miniature print-out of the instructions in the diorama. While she works, she hears a scratch at the front door of her apartment. She goes to open the door. She thinks it is Gary.

Sara is getting old and is worried about who will take care of Gertie when she dies. Every few months, Gertie needs to eat. Sara brings her animals, but also “human blood.” Sara feels ashamed about what she has done for her daughter, but she is responsible for Gertie, her “creation.”