The Invited (ARC)

by Jennifer McMahon

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  THIS IS AN UNCORRECTED EBOOK FILE.

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  Please do not quote for publication until you check your copy against the finished book.

  Also by Jennifer McMahon

  Burntown

  The Night Sister

  The Winter People

  The One I Left Behind

  Don’t Breathe a Word

  Dismantled

  Island of Lost Girls

  Promise Not to Tell

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer McMahon

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.doubleday.com

  doubleday and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Book design by Maria Carella

  Jacket photograph TK

  Jacket design TK

  [CIP data]

  ISBN 978-0-385-54138-1

  ISBN 978-0-385-54139-8

  Dedication TK

  Hattie Breckenridge

  MAY 19, 1924

  It had started when Hattie was a little girl.

  She’d had a cloth-bodied doll with a porcelain head called Miss Fentwig. Miss Fentwig told her things—things Hattie had no way of knowing, things that Hattie didn’t really want to hear. She felt it deep down inside her in the way that she’d felt things all her life.

  Her gift.

  Her curse.

  One day, Miss Fentwig told her that Hattie’s father would be killed, struck by lightning, and that there was nothing Hattie could do. Hattie tried to warn her daddy and her mother. She told them just what Miss Fentwig had said. “Nonsense, child,” they said, and sent her to bed without supper for saying such terrible things.

  Two weeks later, her daddy was dead. Struck by lightning while he was putting his horse in the barn.

  Everyone started looking at Hattie funny after that. They took Miss Fentwig away from her, but Hattie, she kept hearing voices. The trees talked to her. Rocks and rivers and little shiny green beetles spoke to her. They told her what was to come.

  You have a gift, the voices told her.

  But Hattie, she didn’t see it that way. Not at first. Not until she learned to control it.

  Now, today, the voices cried out a warning.

  First, it was the whisper of the reeds and cattails that grew down at the west end of the bog—a sound others would hear only as dry stalks rubbing together in the wind, but to her they formed a chorus of voices, pleading and desperate: They’re coming for you, run!

  It wasn’t just the plants who spoke. The crows cawed out an urgent, hoarse warning. The frogs at the edge of the bog bellowed at her: Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  Off in the distance, dogs barked, howled: a pack of dogs, moving closer, coming for her.

  And then there were footsteps, a single runner coming down the path. Hattie was in front of their house, an ax in her hands, splitting wood for the fire. Hattie loved splitting wood: to feel the force of the blows, hear the crack as the ax head hit the wood, splitting it right at the heart. Now she raised the ax defensively, waiting.

  “Jane?” she called out when she saw her daughter come bursting out of the woods, hair and eyes wild. Her blue flowered dress was torn. Hattie had sewn the dress herself, as she’d made all their clothes, on her mother’s old treadle sewing machine with fabric ordered from the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Sometimes Hattie splurged and bought them dresses from the catalog, but they were never as comfortable or durable as the ones she sewed.

  Hattie lowered the ax.

  “Where have you been, girl?” she asked her daughter.

  It was a school day, but Hattie had forbidden her daughter from going to school. And last she knew, Jane was gathering kindling in the woods.

  Jane opened her mouth to speak, to say, but could not seem to make the words come.

  Instead, she burst into tears.

  Hattie set down her ax, went to her, wrapped her arms around Jane’s trembling body.

  Then she smelled the smoke on Jane’s dress, in her tangled hair.

  Even the smoke spoke to her, spun an evil tale.

  “Jane? What’s happened?”

  Jane reached into the pocket of her dress, pulled out a box of matches.

  “I’ve done something wicked,” she said.

  Hattie pushed her away, held tight to her arms, searched her face. Hattie had spent her life interpreting messages and signs, divining the future. But her own flesh and blood, her daughter—her mind was closed to Hattie. Always had been.

  “Tell me,” Hattie said, not wanting to know.

  “Mama,” Jane said, crying. “I’m sorry.”

  Hattie closed her eyes. The dogs were coming closer. Dogs and men who were shouting, crashing through the woods. It had always been funny to Hattie how men who’d spent their whole lives moving through these woods, hunting in them, could move so clumsily, without grace, without any trace of respect for the living things they trod upon.

  “What will we do?” Jane looked pale and young, much younger than her twelve years. Fear does that to a person: shrinks them down, makes them small and weak. Hattie had learned, over the years, to put her own fears in a box at the back of her mind, to stand tall and brave, to be resilient to whatever enemy presented itself.

  “You? You’ll go hide in the root cellar back where the old house used to be.”

  “But there are spiders down there, Mama! Rats, too!”

  “Spiders and rats are the least of our concerns. They’ll bring you no harm.”

  Unlike the men who are coming now, Hattie thought. The men who are close. Getting closer still. If she listened, she could hear their voices, their shouts.

  “Cut through the woods to the old place. Climb down into the cellar and bar the door. Open it for no one.”

  “But, Mama—”

  “Go now. Run! I’ll come for you. I’ll lead them away, then I’ll come back. I’ll be back for you, Jane Breckenridge, I swear. Don’t you open that cellar door for anyone but me. And, Jane?”

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “Don’t you be afraid.”

  As if it could be that easy. As if you could banish fear just like that. As if words could have such power.

  By the time Jane ran down the path, the dogs were coming from the east, from the road that led into the center of town. Old hound dogs, trained to tree bears and coons, but now it was her scent they were after.

  Don’t be afraid, Hattie told herself now. She concentrated on pushing the fear to the back of her mind. She picked up her ax and stood tall.

  “Witch!” the men who ran after the dogs cried. “Get the witch!”

  “Murderer!” some cried.

  “The devil’s bride,” others said.

  Ax clenched in her hands, Hattie started off across the bog, knowing the safest path. There were parts that dropped down, went deep; places where springs bubbled up, bringing icy cold water from deep underground. Healing water. Water that knew things; water that could change you if you’d let it.

  The peat was spongy beneath her feet, but she moved quickly, surely, leaping like a yearling deer.

  “There she is!” a man
shouted from up ahead of her. And this was not good. She hadn’t expected them to come from that direction. In fact, they were coming from all directions. And there were so many more of them than she’d expected. She froze, panicked, as she looked at the circle forming around her, searching for an opening, a way out.

  She was surrounded by men from the sawmill, men who stood around the potbelly stove at the general store, men who worked for the railroad, men who farmed. And there were women, too. This, she should have expected, should have seen coming, but somehow didn’t.

  When a child’s life is lost, it’s the mother who bears the most grief, the most fury. The women, Hattie knew, might be more dangerous than the men.

  These were people she’d known all her life. Many of them had come to her in times of need, had asked for guidance, had asked her to look into the future; paid her to give a reading or to give a message from a loved one who had passed. She knew things about the people of this town; she knew their deepest secrets and fears; she knew the questions they were afraid to ask anyone else.

  Her eye caught on Candace Bishkoff, who was walking into the bog with her husband’s rifle trained on Hattie.

  “Stay right there, Hattie!” Candace ordered. “Drop the ax!” Candace’s wild eyes bulged, the cords of her neck stood out.

  Hattie dropped the ax, felt it slip out of her fingers and land softly on the peat below.

  Candace and Hattie had played together as children. They were neighbors and friends. They made dolls from twigs, bark, and wildflowers: stick figure bodies and bright daisies for heads. They played in this very bog, climbed the trees at the edge of it, had parties with bullfrogs and salamanders, sang songs about their own bright futures.

  And Jane had played with Candace’s daughter, Lucy, for a time. Then that ended, as well it should have. Some things are for the best.

  “In God’s name, you better tell me the truth, Hattie Breckenridge,” Candace called to her. “Where is Jane?”

  Hattie followed the barrel of the rifle to Candace’s eyes and looked right at her. “Gone,” Hattie said. “I sent her away last night. She’s miles and miles from town now.”

  Others were moving in on her, forming a tight circle around the edge of the bog and stepping closer, feet sinking and squishing, good dress shoes being ruined.

  “If she were here, I would kill her,” Candace said.

  The words twisted into Hattie’s chest, drove out the breath there.

  “I would kill her right in front of you,” Candace snarled. “Take your daughter away from you as you took mine from me.”

  “I did no such thing,” Hattie said.

  “Lucy was in the schoolhouse!” Candace wailed, her body swaying, being pushed down by the weight of the words she spoke. “They just pulled her body out not an hour ago!” Her voice cracked. “Her and Ben and Lawrence. All dead!” She began to sob.

  A part of Hattie, the little-girl part who looked over and saw her once upon a time best friend in such pain, longed to go to her, to put her arms around her, to sing a soothing song, weave flowers into her hair, bathe her in the healing waters of the bog.

  “Candace, I am truly sorry for this tragedy and for your pain, but it was not my doing. I told you—I told everyone in town—that I foresaw this disaster. That the schoolhouse would burn. That lives would be lost. But no one would listen. I only see glimpses of what will happen. I can’t control it. Can’t stop it.”

  She never got used to it—the shock of something she’d seen in a vision actually happening; a tragedy unfolding that she had no way to stop.

  “I need you to stop speaking,” Candace said, gripping the gun so tightly her hands turned white. “Stop speaking and put your hands up above your head.”

  Gun trained on her, Hattie did as she was told.

  Men came from behind, bound her wrists with rope.

  “Bring her to the tree,” Candace said.

  What should I do? Hattie asked the voices, the trees, the bog itself. How will you help me out of this?

  And for once in her life, for the one time she could recall in her thirty-two years here on earth, the voices were silent.

  And Hattie was afraid. Deeply, truly afraid.

  She knew in that moment that it was over. Her time had come. But Jane, Jane would be all right. They would not find her. She was sure.

  Hattie went willingly to the tree, the largest in the woods around the bog. When they were young, she and Candace had called it the “Great Grandmother Tree” and marveled at its thick limbs that stuck out like arms in every direction, some straight, some curved.

  Tree of life.

  Tree of death.

  Tree of my own ending, she thought as she saw the hangman’s noose. There was a stool directly under it. A simple, three-legged kitchen stool. She wondered whom it belonged to. If they would take it home later, put it back at the table. If someone would eat dinner sitting on it tonight.

  The men shoved her over to the stool; one of them put the noose around her neck, the rough rope draped like a heavy necklace. The rope had been thrown over a branch about fifteen feet up, and beneath it, three men stood holding the other end. She recognized them as the fathers of the dead children: Candace’s husband, Huck Bishkoff; Walter Kline; and James Fulton.

  “You should cover her head,” Peter Gray from the lumber mill suggested. “Blindfold her.”

  Peter had visited her for herbs and healing charms when his wife and children were so sick with the flu a few years back. They recovered well, and Peter had returned to Hattie with two of his wife’s chicken pot pies to thank her.

  “No,” said Candace. “I want to see her face as she dies. I want to watch her and know there is justice for Lucy and Ben and Lawrence. Justice for everyone she’s ever harmed.”

  “I’ve harmed no one,” Hattie told them. “And if all of you had listened to me, those children might still be alive.”

  If it weren’t for my daughter, they would still be alive, she thought.

  If only she’d been able to see that part. If only she’d known what was coming, she might have been able to stop it. But if there was one thing she’d learned, it was that you can’t change the future. You can catch a glimpse of it, but it’s not in your power to change it.

  “Shut her up!” Barbara Kline snarled. She was Lawrence’s mother. Lawrence had been very ill with chicken pox last year, and his mother brought him to see Hattie, who’d sent them home with a healing salve and an infusion to drink. Lawrence recovered without so much as a single pox scar. “The witch lies,” Barbara hissed now.

  “Send her back to the devil where she belongs!” a man in the crowd bellowed.

  “Get her up there,” another voice called, and a group of men grabbed hold of her, and then somehow her feet were on the stool. She had no choice but to stand up straight. The three men holding the end of the rope pulled back the slack, kept it taut.

  The stool wobbled beneath her. Her arms were bound behind her back; the rope was already tight around her neck. She looked out across the bog, out at her cabin, saw that it was in flames. She had built it herself when she was all alone, just after the family house burned. After her mother was killed. Jane was born in that cabin, had had twelve birthdays there with cake and candles.

  She thought of Jane, over where the old family house once stood, tucked quietly into the root cellar, like a forgotten jar of string beans. She’d be safe there. No one knew about the root cellar. No one knew there was anything left out there in the wreckage and ashes of the old family home.

  What people don’t understand, they destroy.

  “Wait,” someone called. It was Robert Crayson from the general store. He came forward, looked up at her. For a split second, she wondered if he would stop this madness, bring them to their senses. “Before justice is done—any last words? Do you want to beg forgiveness of these people?
Of God?”

  Hattie said nothing, just gazed out at the bog, her beautiful bog. Dragonflies soared over the surface, wings and bodies shimmering in the sunlight.

  “Maybe you’d like to tell us where the money is?” Crayson went on. “Financial restitution for your crimes? We could give it to the families of the children you killed. Never bring ’em back, but might go a little way.”

  “I killed no one,” she repeated.

  “Where’d you hide it, witch?” someone yelled. “What happened to all your father’s money?”

  “Richest family in town,” another man spat. “And look where it led them.”

  “Please,” Crayson asked, his voice pleading now. “Put your family’s wealth to good use. Don’t let it die with you. Let your one last act be charitable. Tell us where you’ve hid the money.”

  She smiled down at him, at all of them gathered below her, faces bright with hope. She smiled the smile of someone who has a secret she knows she’ll never tell.

  The rope tightened around her neck as the men behind her pulled. Up above, the branch it was looped over creaked. A squirrel chattered. A nuthatch flew by.

  “You can kill me, but you can’t be rid of me,” she told them. “I’ll always be here. Don’t you see—me and this place, we’re one.”

  Hattie took in a breath and waited.

  She had climbed this tree as a child. Climbed it with Candace. They had dropped their flower-head dolls down, watching them flutter softly to the ground.

  They called it the angel game.

  Life is a circle, Hattie thought, tilting her head back to look up at the branches, where she could almost see the little girl that she was once climbing up, higher and higher, out of sight.

  Someone shoved the stool out from under her.

  Her body bucked, her feet kicked, searching frantically for something to rest on, to get the pressure off her neck.

  She couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe.

  Could only swing and twist, and for just a second, before she lost consciousness, she was sure she could see one of her old flower-head dolls drift down, its daisy face bright as the summer sun.