Olive swallowed hard, forced a you’re absolutely right smile. “Do you think I could borrow some of these books?” she asked.
“Sure. They’re mostly library books. I keep checking them out, then returning them, then checking them out again. They’re due again in another week, but I’m done with them.”
“I can bring them back to the library for you,” Olive said.
“Great,” Helen said. “They’re yours. Hey, how’s the treasure hunting going?” Helen gave Olive a tired-looking smile. “Found anything yet?”
Let’s see, I found my mom’s necklace, so now I think she didn’t run off with a guy at all and that maybe something else happened, maybe something bad; I found the same image chalked on the floor of this creepy old hotel where my mom maybe used to go have séances with this totally weird dude who thinks he’s a cowboy; oh, and I found out I can communicate with a dead lady, except sometimes she messes with me and shows me a rusty old ax head instead of treasure.
“I’ve found stuff. Not the actual treasure, but other things,” Olive said. “Actually, I brought you a present.” She went and got her backpack, unzipped it, and pulled out the rusty old ax head. “I found this the night before last. It was over at the other end of the bog, near where Hattie’s house used to be. I’ve found lots of stuff over there—a few old coins, a cast-iron pot, nails and hinges, and a horse shoe. But this ax head is way cool, isn’t it?”
She got an image from one of her recent nightmares: hacking at her mother with an ax.
Please take it, she thought now, feeling queasy. I never want to see this thing again.
Helen reached out, took the rusted metal ax head. “It sure is.”
“I bet it was hers,” Olive said. “I bet it was Hattie’s.”
“You could be right,” Helen said, looking it over. “I’m no expert on ax heads, but it certainly looks very old.”
“So old the wooden handle rotted away. It’s a hewing ax. You can tell because of the wide blade on the head. I looked it up,” she said, and Helen smiled at her.
“I bet Hattie used it to shape the logs when she built her little house,” Olive said.
Helen nodded.
“I want you to have it. I thought maybe you could clean it up, sharpen it, get a new handle. You’ll have a nice ax for splitting kindling and stuff. Maybe you can even use it to help you build your house. Shape a piece of lumber or something. Like Hattie did.”
“Are you sure?” Helen said.
“Absolutely,” Olive said.
Helen leaned over and hugged her. “Thank you, sweetie,” she said. “It’s an amazing gift.”
And being there, held tight in Helen’s arms for two seconds, gave Olive a sudden jolt of happiness, of comfort.
“You okay?” Helen asked, and Olive realized she was close to crying.
“Fine. Totally.” But she wasn’t fine. Anything but. “Just thinking about Hattie.”
“What about her?”
“How happy she’d be to know that someone had her old ax and was going to fix it up and use it again. It’s almost like . . . I know it might sound weird, but it’s like bringing a little piece of her back to life in some way. Does that make sense?”
Helen nodded. “Yes. It makes perfect sense. And I agree completely.”
CHAPTER 35
Helen
S SEPTEMBER 12, 2015
Helen soaked the ax head in vinegar to loosen the rust overnight, then went to work in the morning cleaning it with a wire brush and sandpaper.
She and Nate had decided to take the weekend off from building.
“On Monday, we’ll get back on track and finish up the house,” Nate said, all businesslike, barely making eye contact with her. “We can polyurethane the floors, get the walls and trim primed. I’ll call the building supply place and order the roof shingles first thing.”
“Okay,” she’d agreed.
“Cold weather’s coming,” Nate reminded her. “We don’t want to be in that trailer when the first snow hits. And we don’t want to have to move in here when it’s still a construction zone.”
“Agreed,” Helen said.
Nate went off into the woods with his camera and field guides. She drove to the hardware store and bought a handle for the ax head, a special file, and a round hockey-puck-like stone to sharpen it.
Helen spent the day in the yard working on her ax—removing the rust, sharpening it, and rehanging it by following instructions she’d found online. It was satisfying work, and by late afternoon, she had a beautiful ax. An ax with history. Hattie’s ax.
. . .
Helen was sitting on the front steps of the house, sipping a bottle of beer and admiring her handiwork, when Nate came up the path from the bog.
As he got closer, she could see he was wet and filthy, his clothing muddy and torn in places. His hair, badly in need of a trim, stuck up at odd angles.
Who looks like the crazy one now? Helen thought, hating herself for thinking it.
“What’s that?” he asked, staring at the ax.
“It’s a hewing ax,” she said, holding it out so he could see better.
“Where’d it come from?” he asked.
“Olive found an old ax head somewhere out in the woods and gave it to me.” She was careful not to mention Hattie or her house, or the possibility that the ax had once been hers. “She knows I like old things. I spent the day fixing it up—it’s good as new!”
He nodded, then reached to take the camera off from around his neck. “Great. You need to see this,” he said.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I got it,” he said with satisfaction.
“Got what?”
“A picture! Of the deer. I followed her into the woods, trailed her all morning, and at last, I caught up, got close enough to get some good shots.”
He turned the camera, pushed some buttons, looked down at the screen on the back. “Look,” he said.
His hands were trembling, just slightly. His nails, she noticed, needed trimming. There was dirt underneath them.
Helen peered at the tiny screen on Nate’s Nikon, trying to make out what she saw, which was little more than a white blur in front of trees—but a blur that didn’t seem deerlike at all. It was tall, narrow. As if he’d shot it from the front and the deer was coming right at him, charging him.
“It looks more like a person than a deer,” Helen said, squinting at the image, trying to make sense of the blurry white form. Were those ears? Or was that hair?
Nate jerked the camera away, looked at the image himself, puzzling over it.
“No,” he said, thrusting the camera at her again. “Look, it’s obviously a deer.” He forwarded to the next picture, this one even blurrier. In it, a white figure (or maybe just a flash of reflected light?) seemed to be darting behind a tree. Again, it was tall and narrow—not a deerlike shape at all.
“I believe you,” Helen said. “I believe you saw it.”
“I’m not asking you to take me at my word, Helen! I’m asking you to acknowledge the fucking proof right in front of your eyes!”
His voice had an edge she wasn’t used to. The sound of a man at the end of his rope. Was this how Ann’s husband had sounded that last day?
Helen took a long swig of her beer and said nothing.
Nate let out a slow breath and said quietly, “Do you or do you not see a deer in this picture?”
She thought of lying, of saying, Yes, of course I see it. But that’s not what she said. “I see something. But really, Nate, it doesn’t look much like a deer to me.”
He hung the camera back around his neck and stomped down to the trailer, went in, and slammed the door hard behind him.
Riley stopped by not long after and Helen showed her the ax. Nate hadn’t come out of the trailer and Helen wasn’t about to
go down.
“It was a gift from Olive. She found it with her metal detector out in the bog. We think it might have been Hattie’s.”
“Wow,” Riley said, picking up the ax, touching it almost reverently. “Hattie’s ax! What an amazing find!”
“Took me all day and a dozen YouTube videos to get it cleaned up and in working order, but it didn’t turn out half bad.”
“It’s beautiful,” Riley said, handing the ax back to Helen.
Helen nodded, asked, “Want to walk down to the bog?”
“Sure.”
Helen left the refurbished ax in the house, leaned against the wall under the beam between the living room and kitchen: her latest gift for Hattie.
It was dusk and the late-season crickets were chirping away as they made their way down the path, Helen in the lead. She loved going to the bog at twilight and how sometimes, now that it was getting cooler, like this evening, there was a layer of mist hovering over the water, and Helen was sure she could see it move as if it were taking shape, pulling itself into the form of a woman in a dress. They walked over to the stones of the old foundation and each took a seat. Riley pulled out a joint and lit it, inhaling.
“Is something up with Olive?” Helen asked. “She seemed a little . . . off when I saw her yesterday. She okay?”
“She’s real worried about her mom,” Riley said. “Has she talked to you about it at all?”
“No. Not a peep.”
“She has this idea that maybe her mom didn’t run off with some guy like everyone says. That maybe something else happened.”
“Do you think that’s a possibility?”
“No . . . I mean, I don’t know.” She was quiet a second, eyes on the mist over the bog. “Maybe something scared her off.”
“What do you mean?” Helen asked.
“Olive said that just before her mom took off, she heard her parents having a really bad fight down in the kitchen. There was a big crash. Like it got physical.”
“What . . . you think your brother might have hurt her?”
“I can’t imagine it. He loves her so much. But years ago, when Dustin was drinking all the time, he was a mess. Sometimes he’d get kind of crazy. Never hurt anyone else, just himself, but . . .”
“Riley, if you think—”
“No,” Riley interrupted. “What I really think is that Lori took off with one of her boyfriends. Maybe Dustin found out she was cheating on him and they fought and that was the last straw for her. She got the hell out and didn’t look back.”
“Poor Olive,” Helen said. “It’s awful that she’s going through this.”
Riley passed her the joint, and they were silent for a minute, smoking, looking out at the bog.
“I still can’t believe she gave me that ax,” Helen mused. “What an amazing gift.”
“I love the ax,” Riley said at last. “But I’m not sure keeping it is such a good idea.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s just starting to worry me. You collecting all these things with such morbid histories.”
“You sound just like Nate,” Helen snorted.
“It’s like . . . you’re opening a door,” Riley said.
“Yes!” Helen said. “That’s exactly the point.”
“But when you open a door, who knows who or what you might be letting in,” Riley said. “Not to mention the fact that you’re really pissing your husband off. And worrying him.”
“Huh?”
“He called me at the shop this morning.”
“Really? What did he say?”
“He thinks your interest in Hattie and her family and all these objects is a bit . . . unhealthy. He asked me to please stop helping you with it—and he definitely doesn’t want me to take you back to Dicky’s any time soon. I heard all about how Dicky came by with your phone and told Nate about our visit there.”
“Yeah. Nate was pretty pissed,” Helen said.
Riley nodded. “But it’s not just that he’s mad, Helen. He’s worried you’re losing your grasp on reality.”
“And do you agree with him? Do you think I’ve gone round the bend?”
“I think . . .” Riley paused. “. . . that it’s a dangerous game you’re playing. Blurring the lines between the past and present, the dead and the living.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but all I can say is that I’ve never felt so strongly compelled to do something. And I can’t do it without you. Will you help me?”
There was a long pause.
“Of course,” Riley said at last. “What is it you need?”
“There’s only so much I can find myself online, especially with Nate looking over my shoulder all the time. Maybe if we both go back to the historical society and search through all the databases you guys have access to there, use the microfiche reader to go through old newspapers, search through all the birth, death, and marriage records, you can help me put together a solid family tree for Hattie. Try to track down who Gloria and Jason went to live with and what happened to them.”
“Okay,” Riley said. “I know Mary Ann’s been reorganizing things in there since she got back from North Carolina. I think she’s pretty much got the place put back together—and there’s even a new computer. I’m working tomorrow, but I’m free the day after. Monday. We’ll get in there and see what we can find.”
CHAPTER 36
Olive
S SEPTEMBER 12, 2015
Olive studied the books Helen had let her borrow—the library books she’d been reading up at the new house and a couple more Helen had down in the trailer.
“Just don’t take anything in the books too seriously,” Helen had warned.
“I totally get it,” Olive assured her. “And don’t worry, I’m not going to start trying to do spells or conjure demons or anything. I just find all of it interesting, you know? Reading what other people believe.”
In one of the library books, Olive found a whole chapter on communicating with the dead by using a pendulum. It said a spirit could help you find lost objects using a pendulum. Also answer divination questions. The book suggested making a chart with possible answers to questions you have and then asking the spirit to point the pendulum to the correct answer.
Olive was flipping through one of the books on witchcraft when she came across a section on magic symbols.
She actually gasped, like some stupid girl in a horror movie.
There, on the page, was a design that was nearly identical to Mama’s necklace: a circle with a triangle inside it, and inside that, a square with another circle in it. Olive read the words below it:
Squaring the circle is an important symbol used in ancient alchemy. To square a circle was thought to be an impossible task, uniting shapes that are not meant to come together. The circle represents the spirit world; the square, the physical world with its four elements. Some believe the triangle represents a door in which the dead, or possibly even demons, can walk through.
“Holy shit,” Olive said.
A door the dead (or demons) can walk through.
She thought of the symbol chalked on the floor of Dicky’s hotel. Was that what they’d been doing there? Trying to open an actual door to the spirit world?
And what if they’d succeeded?
Who, or what, might have come through?
“Ollie?” Daddy came into the living room in his work clothes.
Olive jumped.
“I’ve gotta go to work. Break in the water main over by the high school. Getting time and a half, though,” he said with a wink.
“Okay,” she said.
“What’re you reading?” he asked, looking down at the books. “Something for school?”
“Not exactly,” she said.
He scowled when he saw the titles.
“Where did these
come from?” he asked, weirdly angry all of a sudden. His jaw was clenched and he was breathing through his nose like an angry bull. “Did Riley give them to you?”
“Aunt Riley? No,” she said. Olive thought. She didn’t want to get Helen in trouble. “I borrowed them. From the library. See?” She turned the book on its side so he could see the sticker on the spine with the call number on it.
“I don’t want them in this house. I don’t want to see another witchcraft book in this house again. I won’t have it.”
“Again?” she asked. Then, “Did . . . Mama have books like these?”
His face hardened even more, like he was turning to stone. Becoming a statue man. “I want them gone, Olive.” He forced the words out through his clenched jaw. “In fact, here, I’ll take them and drop them off at the library myself on my way to the school.” He grabbed them, held them tightly in his dirty hands.
“But, Daddy, you—”
Library books clutched to his chest, he turned and went out of the living room, his body rigid, his boots stomping too loudly on the unfinished plywood floor.
FINISH WORK
S
CHAPTER 37
Helen
S SEPTEMBER 13, 2015
LAST CHANCE.
The words were written on the front door of the new house. Fortunately, they’d been written in charcoal, so they were easy to clean off. There was a piece of burned wood on the front step that had been used to write the message.
Helen worked to scrub the words away before Nate could see. She scrubbed hard and fast, heart pounding, sweat beading on her forehead.
She was running out of time. She could feel it, could feel Hattie whispering to her.
Hurry. You are in danger.
Was the burned wood a warning, too? A reminder of what had happened to Hattie’s mother, to Hattie’s crooked house, to the schoolhouse, to Jane at the mill?
Whoever was leaving the messages wanted her gone.
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