The Invited (ARC)

by Jennifer McMahon

  “The mantel is solid maple. I’d let it go for seventy-five dollars—I’ve got another load from an estate sale coming in at the end of the week and I need to make room.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Helen said. “You’ve got a lot of lovely things.” She walked around a bit, stopping to pick up sad irons, to touch a treadle Singer sewing machine. Then she approached Aggie.

  “Looking for anything in particular?” Aggie asked.

  “I actually stopped in hoping you could help me with directions,” she said.

  “Sure. You on your way to the college? Or out to the bed and breakfast?”

  “No, actually, I’m looking for the farmhouse the Gray family used to own. I’ve got an address, 202 County Road, but couldn’t seem to find it. Maybe the address I’ve got is wrong, but—”

  “No, you’ve got the address right. The house isn’t there anymore. Stood empty for a long time, no one wanted to touch it. People said it was haunted. I imagine if any place was going to be haunted, it would be that house. I think houses hold memories, don’t you?”

  Helen nodded, said, “Absolutely.”

  “Anyway, it fell into neglect, then a doctor from out of state bought the place last year, had it all torn down—the house, the barn, everything—so he could build a fancy log house with a whole wall of windows.”

  “Oh yes, I saw that,” Helen said.

  Aggie nodded, stepped over to a table full of knickknacks. “One of those big prefab things trucked in. He put in a pond, stocked it with trout so he can fish whenever he wants. He comes up a few weekends a year. Place sits empty most of the time.” Aggie’s voice dripped disdain. She began to fiddle with a collection of old brass bells on the table, arranging them from largest to smallest.

  Helen nodded sympathetically, said, “That’s too bad. People should be fixing up the old farmhouses, not tearing them down.”

  “It’s a rotten shame, if you ask me,” Aggie continued, still moving the old bells around. “The Gray place, it had history. Some of it a bit dark, mind you, but that house, it had character.” She leaned down, gave Mulligan a pat on the head. The dog leaned into her. “Isn’t that right, Mulligan?” Then she looked up at Helen and asked, “Why were you looking for it anyway?”

  “I’m doing a history project. A family tree of sorts. I’m trying to trace any living relatives of the woman who used to live on the land my husband I bought in Hartsboro. Apparently, Ann Gray was her granddaughter.”

  Aggie shook her head. “Terrible what happened. It’s kind of local legend around here. The worst crime ever to happen in Elsbury—well, the only crime really, if you don’t count a few breaks-ins and the gas station being robbed.”

  Mulligan squeaked his toy, and Helen leaned down to give his ears a scratch.

  “Do you know any details about what happened?”

  Aggie gave a deep sigh. “Oh, sure. I guess everyone around here knows just about every gruesome detail . . . Sam was an alcoholic, for one. And the farm was going under. It was the family farm and it fell to him to keep it going, but he couldn’t manage. He’d sold off most of the cows, even subdivided the back acreage and sold some off, but he still wasn’t able to pay the bills. Not that those are excuses for what he did, but they provide the background.”

  She’d moved over to a desk and was neatening a pile of old photographs now—sepia-toned portraits of people no one could name.

  “It was a murder-suicide, right? Did it happen in the house?”

  Aggie nodded. “He shot his wife, then himself. Right in the living room. She was an odd one, his wife. Some said she was crazy. And of course, it didn’t help that she went around calling herself a witch.”

  “A witch?” Helen practically shouted. “Really?”

  Aggie nodded. “She actually made a little business out of it, you know. People would come visit her in her parlor and she’d read their tea leaves, palms, do spells to help them with love or money. She even self-published a little book about the spirit world and divination. If only she’d been able to see her own future, to know what was coming and find a way to stop it.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t work that way,” Helen mused. Maybe it’s like everything else, she thought; it’s hardest to see what’s right in front of us.

  “I guess not. A shame, though. Just terrible. He shot her right in front of their kids.”

  “Do you know what happened to them? The kids?” Helen stepped closer to Aggie. “Are they around here still?”

  “The poor things—neither of them could have been much older than ten when it happened. Jason. That was the son’s name. And the daughter, let’s see, I can’t say I recall her name. They didn’t stick around. Went off to live with relatives.”

  “Do you know where?”

  She shook her head. “Afraid not. Out of state, I think, but I’m not sure.” There was a pause. “You know, it’s a funny coincidence, but that mantel you noticed when you first came in? It came from the Gray farmhouse.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “My husband and I managed to salvage a few things out of it before the contractors tore it down—some shelves, all the doors, and the mantel. We’ve got a set of shelves and a couple of doors left, too.”

  Helen went back to the mantel, touched the wood.

  Right in the living room, Aggie had said.

  Shot right in front of the mantel, Helen imagined.

  “My husband, Phil, always said that whole family was cursed. I’m not sure I believe in curses, but you have to admit the poor Gray family had more than its fair share of horrible things happen.”

  Runs in the family, Helen thought.

  Closing her eyes, Helen could almost see it: the mantel covered in knickknacks and family photos of Samuel, Ann, and their two children smiling into the camera. Then everything splattered in blood. The screaming of the children.

  “I’ll take the mantel,” Helen said, before she could think it through. “It’ll be perfect for my living room.”

  Aggie smiled. “One second,” she said, and went back into the room the classical music was coming from. When she came out, she was carrying a thin paperback book. “I’ll throw this in with it,” she said.

  Helen looked at the title: Communicating with the Spirit World, by Ann Whitcomb Gray.

  “Wait . . . this is Ann’s book?”

  Aggie nodded.

  It was one of the library books she’d been holding on to all summer. Her head spun at the thought of it—that a book written by a direct descendant of Hattie had been sitting on her kitchen table for weeks, a book she’d turned to to help her understand what was happening between she and Hattie.

  Aggie smiled. “I’ve collected a few copies and I pull them out for the right customer. This copy goes with you.”

  “Thank you so much,” Helen said as she flipped to a chapter toward the end, read:

  Spirits, like living people, can come with an agenda. Some come in peace, just seeking to make contact with the living, especially those they have a connection to. For others, it may be more complicated than that.

  A spirit may come to pass along a message you may not wish to hear or even to warn you of something.

  Sometimes they return to enact revenge.

  INSULATION AND DRYWALL

  S

  CHAPTER 25

  Olive

  S AUGUST 18, 2015

  “I still can’t believe you actually went into Dicky’s,” Mike said, shaking his head. Olive hadn’t seen him since then—his mom had been keeping him busy, and between that and Olive still being pretty pissed at him for abandoning her, they hadn’t managed to find time to hang out. As soon as he met up with her he asked her to tell him the whole story, every detail of what happened once she went up those old stairs at the hotel. So she’d told it, but in a vague, rough-outline kind of way.

  �
�And I can’t believe you ditched me. You are such a wimp,” she said. “You could have at least waited for me. I actually looked around for you when I came out. I thought maybe you’d at least stand guard or something?”

  He said nothing, just looked down at his dirty sneakers.

  They were out in the bog, near Hattie’s old house. Bullfrogs sang in a strange angry-sounding chorus, voices raised, like they were shouting over each other.

  It was quiet up at Helen and Nate’s. She’d spent the morning helping them fill the walls with rolls of pink fiberglass insulation. Even with gloves, long sleeves, and her jeans tucked into her boots, bits of fiberglass found their way to her skin and made her itchy, just like when she’d helped her dad with insulation. She’d kinda hoped Nate would use hay bales or milkweed fluff or recycled Patagonia fleece to insulate—no such luck. Probably too expensive. She went home, took a shower, and met up with Mike. Helen and Nate were hoping to finish the insulation today and start hanging drywall.

  “What if someone had seen you going in?” Mike asked, reaching down, picking a handful of sedge grass. “What if your dad found out you went there? He’d be pissed.”

  “Well, he didn’t, right? My dad isn’t exactly paying a whole lot of attention to where I go and what I do these days.”

  Mike scowled, picked apart the grass in his hand, ripping it into tiny pieces. “Maybe he should. I mean, that guy Dicky is a legit weirdo. The dude lives with ghosts and carries a loaded gun everywhere! And don’t tell me you didn’t think that old hotel was creepy as hell.”

  Olive had told Mike only what Dicky had told her: that her mom hadn’t been there. She decided to keep the phone call she’d heard to herself. And right now, she was realizing what a smart move that had been. No way was she going to tell him that she planned to go back next month, that there was some connection between her mom and Dicky and his ghost club.

  “Did he have his gun when you saw him?”

  “Sure,” Olive said.

  “Oh man, oh man!” He dropped the grass, looked at her in wide-eyed amazement that soon morphed into this stupid, furrowed-brow reprimanding-parent kind of look. “Olive, do you get how dangerous that was?” There was spittle on his lower lip.

  “Like he was going to shoot me for coming to his store in the middle of the day. Quit trying to act like you’re my dad,” Olive said.

  “That’s not what I’m doing,” Mike shot back.

  “Oh really? ’Cause that’s what it seems like.”

  “I don’t want to be your dad,” he said.

  “Well, what is it you’re trying to be? A boyfriend, maybe? Because I so do not need a boyfriend.”

  His cheeks turned lobster red and he stood up, glaring at her. “I am trying to be your friend, Olive.” He was wheezing a little, giving his words a whistling sound, like a freaking talking prairie dog with big sad eyes. “I’m, like, your only friend. If you’re too dense to get that, then maybe we shouldn’t be friends at all.”

  He looked at her, waiting. Blood rushed in her ears. “Maybe not,” she said, glaring at him.

  He turned his back and walked away.

  She sat on the edge of the old stone foundation, her metal detector beside her, eyes on Mike’s back as he made his way along the edge of the bog to the path up through the woods.

  “Scaredy-cat asshole!” she yelled after him when he was almost out of sight. “Think you’re so smart, but you don’t know shit!”

  She got up and started working the grid in a half-hearted, half-assed way.

  She didn’t need Mike. She didn’t need anyone.

  She rubbed away tears with a balled fist, let the metal detector fall to the ground.

  She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for anymore.

  The treasure, sure.

  But more than that, she wanted answers.

  What had her mother been up to? What had she found in Lewisburg? Something about Jane? Something that led Mama to find the treasure? Something that got her in trouble? And what had she been up to with Dicky and his friends at the old hotel? What did the chalked drawing of Mama’s necklace mean?

  She felt like the pieces were all there in front of her like loose beads waiting to be strung in a pattern that made sense. Maybe if she’d told Mike everything, he could have helped her figure it out.

  Too late now. He would’ve just gone running to her dad anyway, blabbed everything.

  Her head ached. Her eyes stung. She sat heavily back down on the short wall of stones that had once been a part of Hattie’s foundation.

  Olive took Mama’s necklace off, pulling it out from its hiding place under her shirt. The necklace hung, the thin leather cord pinched between her index finger and thumb. She stared at the eye at the center, which seemed to wink at her as it caught the light. She imagined it hanging from her mother’s neck. She pictured her mother’s shoes, the fairy-tale slippers, and imagined her mother dancing in them slowly, languidly, across the bog, floating out over the water, leaving pale pink lady’s slippers in the places where the magic shoes had touched down.

  The pendant hung at the end of the cord, swaying slightly on its own, as if remembering what moving with her mother had been like.

  Spin, Olive thought as she watched it start to spin.

  Faster, she told the necklace, and it picked up speed, twirled in the air at the end of the line.

  I’m doing this, Olive thought as she sat perfectly still. I’m doing this with my mind.

  She stared at the necklace, concentrated.

  Move clockwise, she told it. And it stopped spinning and began to loop in a circle clockwise, slowly at first, then faster, faster.

  Stop, she commanded, and all at once, as if an invisible hand came down and closed around the charm, it held perfectly still.

  “Jump up and down,” she told it, saying the words aloud this time, because all of a sudden, it felt like it was alive, this silver symbol, and it didn’t seem strange at all to be talking to a necklace.

  The charm moved, dancing, leaping up and down like a puppet on a string.

  A dark, doubtful part of herself said, You idiot. You’re moving it. Of course you’re moving it and you’re not even aware of it.

  She thought of her science teacher Mr. Pomprey, who’d taught the class about natural selection. Earlier in the year, they’d covered the scientific method. Make observations, propose questions, come up with a hypothesis, test your hypothesis.

  Olive looked at the necklace.

  The silver charm at the end is bouncing up and down, she observed, as if the cord is being jerked repeatedly, like a yo-yo. There is no breeze. I’m holding my hand perfectly still. Something else must be moving it. What hypothesis would explain this phenomenon? I hypothesize that I legitimately have telekinesis, like a character in a movie or comic book.

  Was she going crazy?

  This wasn’t possible. People couldn’t do things like that. It didn’t happen in real life, only in made-up stories.

  Her head felt foggy and the pain in her temples was coming on strong. She was tired and thirsty.

  Hattie had been able to make things move, make objects around her fly through the air. That’s what Aunt Riley had said. So maybe it was being here that did it. Maybe it was the place, the bog, that was responsible somehow.

  Or maybe Hattie was helping her.

  Her head hurt more.

  “Am I making this move?” she asked aloud, looking at the necklace. All at once, the bouncing stopped. The cord hung straight and still, the pendant motionless.

  No, dummy, it seemed to say. It’s not you at all. How could you have thought such a thing?

  You’re just Odd Oliver. What powers could you possibly have?

  “Hattie?” Olive said, her throat tightening a little around the name. “Are you here? Are you the one making it move?”

/>   The necklace began to swing in big clockwise loops.

  Olive’s hands felt prickly, her whole body humming with a strange electricity. Her body was a conduit. A conduit for Hattie to come through.

  “Okay,” Olive said. “So, does clockwise mean yes?”

  The charm moved in clockwise circles again.

  Yes! Yes, yes, Hattie was speaking with her. Actually communicating.

  “What’s no?”

  The necklace stopped, then began to revolve in the opposite direction, counterclockwise.

  “Right, got it,” she said as her heart hammered and her palms grew sticky with sweat.

  So she could ask yes or no questions.

  Her mind was going so fast, she had trouble coming up with her first question.

  “Is this really Hattie Breckenridge?”

  Yes, the necklace said, swinging clockwise.

  Of course, she thought. Of course it is. Who else would it be?

  She tried to calm her thoughts, to stay focused. What was it she most wanted to know?

  “Is the treasure real?”

  Yes.

  Olive laughed out loud. “I knew it!” she said.

  “Can you show me where it is?”

  Counterclockwise this time: No.

  “Did my mother find it?”

  Yes.

  “Did she take it with her when she left?”

  No.

  “Did my mother leave? Did she run off with a man?”

  No.

  Olive held her breath, eyes on the necklace, which was now slowing to a stop.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  Yes.

  “Can you help me find her?”

  The silver charm hesitated, then swung clockwise.

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  CHAPTER 26

  Helen

  S AUGUST 19, 2015

  Helen was in the new house, curled up on the floor in the living room. The framed walls were stuffed full of fluffy pink insulation. With the windows and doors closed and insulation in, it was much quieter. They’d finished the insulation this afternoon and had even gotten started with the drywall. Hanging the drywall had been a slow, cumbersome project—she and Nate maneuvering the heavy four-by-eight sheets into the house, making the necessary cuts, and then Nate holding the pieces in place while Helen screwed them to the walls with the cordless drill. The downstairs bathroom was covered in grayish drywall screwed to the studs and was ready to tape, compound, and prime. It felt good to have one room with solid walls instead of the cage of two-by-fours.