The Invited (ARC)

by Jennifer McMahon

  Riley had arrived earlier to attempt to start putting things in some semblance of order, and she’d pulled what little she’d found on the Breckenridge family aside, started making notes. Helen had her own little notebook out now, hoping for a chance to jot down some solid facts about Hattie and Jane, something that might tell her where to go from here, how to find out more. Seeing them together in her house last night made her more determined than ever to learn their stories, to follow the family tree and see if there might be more information, living relatives even.

  “I know, it’s crazy,” Riley said. “We have whole boxes full of stuff on some families in town: letters, diaries, photographs. But there really isn’t much on the Breckenridge family.”

  She pulled down another box and opened it up.

  “Like I said, you’ve gotta bear with me here. Things aren’t usually in such disarray.”

  “How’d you get involved with the historical society?” Helen asked.

  Riley smiled. “I’ve been a volunteer here forever. Mary Ann roped me into it years ago when I was practically living here doing research on my own family. When I was in college, I did this project on Vermont in the Civil War and I found out some of my relatives had fought, not just for the Union army, but for the Confederates, too. I don’t know, I guess it made me feel like I was part of something so much bigger, you know? I feel like studying the past helps me to frame the present. I guess I’ve always been a bit of a history geek—I love all the old stories, the way what came before shapes who we are now. Sometimes I get all caught up in my own little bullshit life dramas, like trouble with boyfriends or money, and then I think about those relatives, cousins fighting each other in the Civil War, or people who went through the Great Depression or the Holocaust, and it just puts things in perspective.” Riley’s eyes blazed and Helen recognized a kindred spirit.

  “Absolutely,” Helen said.

  “I mean, just look at Hattie’s life—everything that happened to her, the bullshit she must have had to endure. Imagine walking through town, being called a witch, the hatred hurled at her, building day after day, year after year, until they eventually killed her, then weighed her down and sank her in the bog. All because she was different. Because she was special.”

  Helen thought of the looks and sneers she got in town, the whispering behind her back. Her, the outsider, the one who’d stirred up Hattie’s spirit.

  Riley took a few seconds to compose herself, then looked back down at the boxes. “Okay, moving forward. We’ve got no death records. Let me show you what we do have.”

  Hattie’s father’s name, James Breckenridge, was on an old deed for the land around the swamp.

  “And here’s her father’s death certificate,” she said, pulling out a copy. “He died back in 1899. Struck by lightning, just days after Hattie predicted it.”

  Hattie’s name was there on the census from 1900 when she was an eight-year-old child. And there were three photographs of her that they could find: one as a girl, with her schoolmates, in 1899, their names written in careful cursive on the back. Helen didn’t need to check the names to find Hattie, though—she recognized her immediately. Seeing her—finding proof that she’d existed as an actual flesh-and-blood person, a student in the Hartsboro one-room schoolhouse, and wasn’t just a ghost in Helen’s kitchen—gave Helen a feeling of deep satisfaction. Helen looked down at the school photograph: Hattie was in the back corner, a shadow of a girl with dark hair that fell down to cover her eyes. She was frowning into the camera, scowling really. It was an I hate you all kind of look. But still, even as an angry little girl, there was something stunningly beautiful about her. Something captivating. It nearly took Helen’s breath away.

  “Folks say that Hattie couldn’t read or write very well because she left school in the third grade, got kicked out really. Strange things happened when she was at school—books jumped off shelves, desks shook. And one time, the stories go, she was writing in her primer and the teacher came over to look. There were three pages written in Latin.” Riley paused here, eyes widened for emphasis.

  “Latin?” Helen asked. “How does a girl her age in Hartsboro, Vermont, learn Latin?”

  “That’s the thing about Hattie. She knew things she shouldn’t have. Things the spirits told her. That’s what the stories people passed down say anyway,” she added.

  The other two photos of Hattie were group shots at a town picnic and were dated 1909. Hattie was a teenager then and stood at the edge, away from the others. She was tall, her dark hair pulled back in a long braid, her eyes dark and stormy.

  “Those pictures were taken around the time her family home burned,” Riley said.

  “And her mother was killed?”

  “Yeah, listen to this. It’s from 1909.” She pulled out an old article clipped from the local paper and read it out loud: “ ‘A fire of undetermined origin took the life of Mrs. Lila Breckenridge of Hartsboro on Tuesday, October 12. The Breckenridge family home was destroyed. Hattie Breckenridge, Mrs. Breckenridge’s daughter, escaped unharmed.’ ”

  “ ‘A fire of undetermined origin’?” Helen asked.

  Riley looked up from the clipping. “I’ve heard that a group of men from town went out and set that fire. They’d been drinking at the pub and got it into their heads that it was up to them to save the town from Hattie Breckenridge.”

  “Jesus. She was the one who needed saving, not the other way around.”

  Riley nodded.

  “Okay, so Hattie’s mother is killed and Hattie’s left homeless. Those are two facts we know for sure.”

  “Right. So she builds her little crooked house down by the bog. And let’s not forget the money,” Riley added. “Her parents were very well-off—her dad had owned a stake in the local railroad—and she was their only child. There aren’t any surviving pictures of the family home, but they say it was deluxe. The Breckenridges were probably the richest family in town.”

  “So what happened to the money?”

  Riley shrugged. “That’s the great mystery. Supposedly, Hattie took it all out of the bank and brought it home with her, buried it out near the bog. Not far from the little house she built herself. People have looked for it over the years but never found a thing.”

  Helen smiled. “Olive thinks she’ll be the one to find it.”

  “Does she? I thought she’d given up on the treasure.”

  “No. She’s still been looking. Going out to the bog with her new metal detector. Working the grid. She’s very methodical.”

  Riley nodded. “That she is,” she said.

  “What I don’t understand,” Helen said, “is that if Hattie had all that money, why didn’t she leave? Get on the first train out of here and start over someplace where no one knew her name? It doesn’t make sense that she would stay here and build a tiny little cabin on the bog.”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because she was connected to this place: it was a part of her, for better or worse. And maybe there were other reasons. Maybe there was a man.”

  “Jane’s father? What do we know about him?”

  “Nothing at all. Hattie never married. She lived alone in that little house by the bog. Then, not long after the fire, she was pregnant. Like she wasn’t enough of a pariah before. Imagine being a single mother back then. Holy shit. The woman had guts, that’s for sure. Staying here. Raising that girl on her own.”

  “Do we have anything on Jane?” Helen asked.

  “Not a lot,” Riley said. She reached into a box on the table, grabbed a photo there and handed it to Helen.

  It was another school photo, showing about fifteen children ranging from tiny to almost adult in front of a one-room schoolhouse. Hartsboro School, 1924, said a neatly penned note in the corner. Helen flipped it over, and someone had written the children’s names in now-faint penciled letters. Jane Breckenridge was the third girl fr
om the left in the back row. She looked to be about twelve in the photo and was a near exact replica of Hattie at that age. Same dark hair and eyes, same haunted look. As with Hattie, Helen recognized her immediately—after all, a grown-up ghost version of Jane in a singed dress had visited her about twelve hours before. She could almost still smell the smoke.

  “That’s the last photo of the schoolhouse before it burned down,” Riley said.

  Burned down. She’d forgotten that’s what happened. First, Hattie’s family home burns, killing her mother. Then a fire at the schoolhouse. Another at the mill years later. A coincidence? Or something more?

  “And Hattie was blamed for the fire?” Helen asked.

  “She’d predicted it, kept Jane out of school that day. Three children were killed. Let’s see.” She looked through some notes on the table. “Lucy Bishkoff, Lawrence Kline, and Benjamin Fulton.”

  Helen turned the photo over again, searched for the names of the dead children. Benjamin and Lawrence were two little boys in the first row. They sat side by side with mischievous smiles. Lucy Bishkoff stood in the back row, right beside Jane. She had blond hair, pale eyes, and a warm smile.

  Helen studied the photo, looked at their smiles, and thought, None of you have any idea what’s coming. She felt like the Grim Reaper now, pointing a finger at the photo, at the little faces.

  “Did they determine what caused the fire?” Helen asked.

  Riley shook her head. “No, but they say the fire spread very quickly. And apparently the kids and teacher had trouble getting out of the building.”

  “Oh?”

  “The door was stuck. Not just stuck, but people said someone had wedged it closed with a tree branch. It took some time, and a great deal of force, to get it open.”

  Another strange coincidence.

  “That’s so terrible,” Helen said, studying the black-and-white photo of those schoolchildren, wishing she could go back in time and warn them, warn them all, like Hattie had tried to warn them. Tell them the danger was real.

  That was the cruelest part about history, whether your own or a stranger’s from a hundred years ago—there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to change it.

  Helen reached into her bag, pulled out the picture she’d printed from her computer of the workers at the Donovan and Sons Mill, taken just months before the fire.

  “Meet Jane Whitcomb,” she said, pointing to the woman in the back row with dark hair and eyes.

  “My god,” Riley said. “It’s her. It’s got to be. She looks just like Hattie, right?”

  Helen looked down at the mill worker version of Jane, then the photo of young Jane outside the schoolhouse, then Hattie as a girl and Hattie as a teenager. They could have been sisters.

  “Too bad we don’t have anything of Hattie as an adult,” Helen said.

  “Just wait,” Riley said with a sly smile. “I’ve saved the best for last.” She stood up and went to a large wooden cabinet with long, narrow drawers. She pulled one open and lifted out a painting, keeping it facing toward her. Helen guessed it to be about two feet by four feet.

  “What is it?”

  “May I present: Miss Hattie Breckenridge,” Riley said, slowly turning the painting so that Helen was face-to-face with the subject.

  Helen’s eyes locked on the framed portrait. Hattie stood in a bloodred dress and had her long raven-black hair held back with combs. Her lips were painted the color of the dress. Her eyes sparkled, teased, taunted, and seemed to glisten, to move, watching Helen.

  Helen felt the air pulled out of her lungs, as if Hattie were sucking it in, inhaling the very life out of her.

  I know you, the eyes said. And you think you know me.

  Helen studied the neat signature in the bottom right corner; it was only two initials: W.T.

  “Who’s the artist?” Helen asked.

  “If only we knew,” Riley said. “We’ve researched, asked folks who are experts on artists in the area during that time period, but no one can tell us anything.”

  “Lost to history,” Helen said.

  She thought about all that was lost, all that she would not and could not ever know about Hattie Breckenridge. But she knew there were still some things to find. Like living relatives. The idea of finding an actual descendant of Hattie’s sent an electric charge through Helen. Would they look like Hattie? Would they know any of her story, passed down through generations? Maybe they’d have something more: photos, letters, things that might have belonged to Hattie herself. What might happen if Helen found a relative, invited them to her house? Wouldn’t Hattie be pleased? So pleased she’d show herself? Was this where Hattie had been leading her—to learn her whole story, not just the bits and pieces she could glean from her life, but the story of Hattie’s legacy, of what came after?

  She thought of the ways her father had shaped her, the things he’d taught her and stories he’d told her that she carried still: her house building, the tales he told about his own boyhood, about relatives long gone. What might Hattie have passed on to her descendants? What stories might they still be able to tell?

  “Okay,” Helen said, looking down at her notebook. “Let’s see if we can figure out what happened to Jane’s children, Ann and Mark.”

  “I’ll see what I can dig up,” Riley said, carefully setting the painting down on the table, leaned against the wall. Then she sat at the computer on a desk in the corner, fingers flying over the keyboard.

  “You and Nate get the plumbing done?” Riley asked.

  “Yeah. We started on the wiring today actually. Got a lot of the boxes in place. Drilled holes in the framing and started running cable.”

  “I’m booked up tomorrow, but I can come out and give you guys a hand for a bit the day after,” Riley offered.

  “That would be great,” Helen said.

  Helen turned back toward the painting.

  Hattie was wearing an unusual necklace: a silver circle with a triangle inside it. At the center of the triangle was a square, then another circle with an eye in the middle.

  Third eye, Helen thought.

  “Okay if I get some photos of the painting?” she asked Riley.

  “Sure,” Riley said, still tapping at the keyboard.

  Helen took pictures from different angles. Wherever she went, Hattie’s eyes followed her.

  “Hey, listen to this,” Riley said. “Jane and Silas’s son, Mark Whitcomb, died in 2000. He was married. Can’t tell if there were kids.” More rapid clicking on the keyboard, then, “Oh! This is interesting!”

  “What is it?” Helen asked, moving closer, coming up behind Riley.

  “Looks like I found Jane’s daughter, Ann.”

  Helen moved closer to the computer and glanced down at a photo of a couple. The woman had dark hair pinned back and dark, haunting eyes. Hattie’s eyes. The man was shorter than the woman and had receding hair and a mustache. They stood with their arms around each other in front of a Christmas tree. Above it was the headline: “Murder-Suicide Shakes the Town of Elsbury.”

  Helen squinted down at the article, dated May 24, 1980.

  Police are calling the deaths of Samuel Gray and his wife, Ann Gray, a murder-suicide.

  Vermont State Police Colonel Gregory Atkinson gave this statement: “At approximately 5 p.m. on Friday, Samuel Gray shot and killed his wife, Ann, and then himself with a handgun registered in his name. This happened in their home on County Road, where Gray ran a dairy farm. Their two minor children were witness to the crime but were not harmed. The children are currently in the care of relatives.”

  It is the worst crime on record in this small town of 754 residents. “It’s just a horrible shock,” said Town Clerk Tara Gonyea. “It’s shaken the community to the core.”

  Friends and neighbors expressed sorrow at the horrific events that transpired at the old Gray farmhouse, bu
t neighbor William Marsh said he was not surprised. “Sam had a temper and he was a drinker,” Marsh explained. “He’s had trouble with the farm, making ends meet. I think his wife and kids bore the brunt of it. I’ve seen bruises and black eyes on ’em. I’ve heard the yelling and screaming.”

  Police declined to comment on whether there was a known history of domestic violence in the home.

  “Ann was just an angel,” neighbor Penny Stromberg said. “Full of life, always smiling. Such a good friend and neighbor. And those poor children. Can you imagine? It’s heartbreaking, what they’ve had to endure.”

  Family members could not be reached for comment.

  Helen stepped back, skin prickling, feeling suddenly cold all over.

  Gone. Ann was gone.

  “It’s so fucking awful,” Riley said out loud. “Terrible things happened to all of those women: Hattie, Jane, Ann. It’s like the women in that family were all cursed. Doomed to have their lives end in violence.”

  Helen nodded, eyes still on the picture in the article—the smiling faces of Ann and Samuel in front of their Christmas tree. “Where’s Elsbury?” she asked.

  “Southeast of here. Probably a little over an hour away.”

  “I think I’ll take a ride down there. Take a look around.”

  Riley looked up at her, squinting a little. “You want to bring something back, don’t you? For the house? For Hattie?”

  Helen nodded. “I feel like it’s the least I can do. A way to pay tribute.”

  And maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to bring Ann back. Helen let herself imagine it—three generations of Breckenridge women in her kitchen.

  Riley looked at her a minute. “It’s like you’re creating a sort of family tree with objects,” she said. “It’s such a beautiful idea. A real way to honor those poor Breckenridge women.”

  Riley turned back to the computer, typed again, scanned the screen, then found what she was looking for. “202 County Road, Elsbury,” she said, writing it down on a scrap of paper. “That’s where the old Gray farmhouse is. Where the murder took place.”