The Invited

by Jennifer McMahon

  “Damn. I thought maybe I should start dressing in black and drawing mystical signs on the sidewalks,” Helen said, and they all laughed.

  “I hear that in addition to being the new town witch,” Riley said with a mischievous wink, “you’re building an amazing house out there.”

  “It’s really cool,” Olive said. “They’re doing all the work themselves!”

  “Impressive,” Riley said.

  “Or crazy,” Helen added. “Idiotic maybe, even?”

  They all laughed again.

  “Olive’s been a huge help,” Helen said.

  “She’s a good worker, that’s for sure,” Riley said. “She’s learned a lot from working with her dad on their house. Have you met my brother, Dustin, yet?”

  Helen shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “I’ve been talking to dad about having Helen and Nate over sometime for a cookout. You’ll have to come, too, Aunt Riley!”

  It was something they used to do all the time back when Mama was around—have cookouts and invite a bunch of people. Everyone would bring something—extra beer, potato salad, watermelon—and Daddy would shoot off fireworks in the backyard once it got good and dark.

  “Absolutely, Ollie,” Riley said. “Name the date and I’ll be there.” She turned to Helen. “So, what brought you in? Are you looking for anything in particular for the house?”

  “Yeah, actually, I am. I want that soapstone sink you’ve got over there.”

  “It’s a beauty. Let’s go mark it as sold and I’ll get a couple of the guys to load it for you.”

  “Also, I’m looking for a beam to use as a header. Something old, hand-hewn. Maybe four by four or four by six?”

  “We’ll take a look at what we’ve got,” Riley said, leading them back across the vast warehouse of a store.

  “Olive tells me you’re kind of a local history expert,” Helen said.

  Riley shrugged. “I wouldn’t say an expert. Not by any stretch. But it’s definitely a passion of mine.”

  “I told Helen you could let her into the historical society so she could do some research,” Olive explained.

  “I’d love to check it out,” Helen said. “In fact, I got the number of a woman named Mary Ann, hoping to get in and take a look around, and I left her a message, but she never called me back.”

  “Yeah, she and her husband are in North Carolina—their daughter and her family live there. She’s about to have another grandchild and Mary Ann and her husband are down there waiting for labor to kick in. But I’m afraid the historical society is temporarily closed anyway. A water pipe burst and there was some damage. They have to redo the floor. A lot of stuff got frantically packed into plastic boxes and totes. It’s kind of a mess. But I can let you know as soon as we get the all clear to open up again.”

  “That would be great!” Helen said. “I hope nothing was damaged.”

  “No,” Riley said. “Everything was up out of the way, thankfully. It was just the floor. The carpeting has to be torn out and replaced, and there’s some question about the subfloor.”

  They got to the sinks, and Riley pulled a tag from her pocket, wrote SOLD in big letters, and attached it to the sink. Olive’s eyes just about popped out when she saw the price: it was $799. It was a large, deep double sink made from smooth cut slabs of slate-gray stone.

  “The sink’s from right here in town. And my guess is that the stone itself was quarried right here in Vermont.”

  “Really?” Helen said, looking even more excited.

  “The sink came from an old farmhouse out on County Road. A couple bought it last year and are doing all kinds of upgrades, making it more modern.”

  Helen shook her head. “I can’t believe anyone would give up a sink like this.”

  “I know, right? They probably put some new, shiny stainless steel sink in to match their appliances,” Riley said. “Now let’s go find you the perfect beam.”

  Riley led them over to the other side of the store, where the large beams were piled and stacked on racks. They all had white tags and were written on with yellow chalk.

  “This place is so amazing,” Helen said. “And I can’t thank you enough for offering to open up the historical society for me.” She started looking at the tags on the beams.

  “It’s no problem. Is there anything in particular you’re hoping to find?”

  “Anything about our land, really. But mostly, what I’m hoping to find is anything about Hattie Breckenridge.”

  “I don’t think there’s all that much, sadly. There are a couple of pictures. There might be an old land deed with her name on it. There could be more I haven’t seen yet—we can look together.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?” Helen asked, turning away from the beams, looking at Riley. “I haven’t been able to get any real answers out of anyone in town.”

  “I’m sure you haven’t,” Riley said. “It’s kind of a gruesome story and not one folks in Hartsboro are all that proud of.”

  “Gruesome?” Olive said. “Awesome! Tell us!”

  Olive had never heard the true story of what happened to Hattie. She’d asked her mom, but her mom had said no one knew for sure. Olive couldn’t believe she’d never thought to ask Riley. Of course Riley would know what really happened, and more important, she could trust Riley to tell her the uncensored, no-bullshit truth.

  Riley leaned against a stack of wood, pushed her blue bangs out of her eyes, and began. “Well, people believed Hattie was a witch, right? That she had the power to see what was going to happen before it did. Her predictions often came true and it scared people. They believed that maybe she wasn’t just looking into the future but changing it somehow. That things happened because Hattie said they would.”

  Olive tried to imagine having this kind of power over people—the ability to make them believe you were capable of seeing into the future, shaping it even.

  “One day, she warned everyone that the old schoolhouse would burn down. When it did, three children were killed. Hattie’s daughter was fine—she’d kept her out of school that day, which made Hattie look even more suspicious, right? So Hattie was blamed for the fire, as she’d been blamed for every bad event she’d predicted. See, people then, like now, I guess, are afraid of the things they don’t understand. They want something, someone, to blame.”

  “Isn’t it interesting,” Helen said, “how little some things change?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Olive said impatiently. “So what happened to Hattie?”

  “They hanged her.”

  Helen made a little gasping sound. “Really?”

  Riley nodded. “Half the town showed up after the fire at the schoolhouse. Kids had died and they were really pissed. They declared Hattie a witch and they hanged her from an old white pine that stood near the edge of the bog.”

  “What year was this?” Helen asked.

  “Nineteen twenty-four,” Riley said.

  “Wow!” Helen said. “I’ve never heard of anyone being hanged for witchcraft that late. Most of the trials and executions were back in Puritan times.”

  “I think it was pretty well covered up. People in Hartsboro weren’t exactly proud of what they’d done.”

  “Where’s she buried?” Helen asked.

  “No one knows for sure,” Riley said. “Though folks say she was dragged into the center of the bog and weighted down. That she lies there still and that’s what makes it a haunted place.”

  “So, she’s in the bog?” Olive asked.

  “Maybe,” Riley said.

  “And the hanging tree? What happened to that?” Olive asked, trying to think of which tree it could be. There weren’t any big pines along the edge of the bog.

  “They cut it down soon after,” Riley said. “Milled it into lumber. They actually used the beams to rebuild the school
house.”

  “The one they tore down last year?” Olive said.

  “Yeah. Actually, I think I’ve still got a couple of the beams from it right here for sale.” She turned back toward the wood stacked on heavy steel racks.

  “No way!” Olive said. “Like, from the actual hanging tree?”

  “That’s what people say,” Riley told them as she started looking at the tags stapled to the beams. “This one,” she said, pointing.

  Helen came up, reached out to touch the beam, hesitated a second, then placed her hand on it, gave it a soft caress.

  “This came from a tree from our land? From Hattie’s time?” she asked.

  “I can’t prove it or give you a certificate of authenticity or anything, but I’m reasonably sure it did, yes. Then it helped frame the old one-room Hartsboro schoolhouse.”

  The beam looked like all the others to Olive—old, a rich brown color, full of ax marks.

  “It’s perfect,” Helen said. “It’s just what we need to be the header between the living room and kitchen.”

  “No way!” Olive said. “You’re going to put the hanging tree beam in your house? What if it’s, like, haunted or something?”

  Helen laughed. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she said. “But this beam…remember what I was telling you about, how they used to make lumber with just an ax? That’s what all these marks are from.” She ran her fingers over the face of the beam. “You can practically feel the history in it, can’t you?”

  Olive put her hand on the beam, too, trying hard to imagine the tree it had once come from, standing at the edge of the bog; trying to imagine Hattie with a noose around her neck, how that tree was one of the last things she ever saw. And that tree had seen Hattie, too. Had held her weight, felt her last movements. Olive imagined there was some piece of Hattie in that tree, like a stain somewhere deep down inside it.

  CHAPTER 13

  Helen

  JULY 12, 2015

  “It’s perfect,” Helen said.

  She and Nate had just installed the beam as the header framing the opening between the living room and the kitchen.

  It was a rough-hewn beam about four by eight inches, and it spanned the top of the six-foot opening between the two rooms perfectly. It tied the rooms together and added a wonderful old-wood warmth.

  It was amazing how the rooms were beginning to feel like rooms, like an actual space they might soon live in. The framing for the walls was up, the plywood subfloor nailed down, and all the outer sheathing in place; they’d put marks on the floor and stud walls to show where the counters, cabinets, and big soapstone sink would be installed. The sink was being stored under one of the pop-up canopies in the yard. Nate had balked a bit at the price but agreed that it would go perfectly in their kitchen.

  Helen was already starting to look at the inside of the house and think about where their couch and favorite reading lamp would go; what it would be like to make coffee in their kitchen. She felt like a little kid playing house with imaginary furniture as she moved from room to room.

  “Let’s just tell people the beam came from the old Hartsboro schoolhouse and leave out the hanging tree bit, okay?” Nate said, blinking up at it like it was something he was still trying to understand.

  Nate had found the beam’s history a bit disturbing, unsettling even, but had agreed it was a beautiful piece of wood.

  “You can’t buy wood like this these days,” he’d said, running his fingers over its surface, feeling the rough edges left by the hewing ax. “Sturdy old heartwood from the center of an old-growth tree like this.”

  The beam seemed to give a warm glow compared with the new, pale spruce two-by-fours underneath it.

  “I love the way it makes the house feel,” Helen said now, as she took Nate’s hand, led him around the downstairs. “The way it brings in this real sense of history.”

  Nate laughed. “Kind of a morbid history, but yeah, I get what you’re saying.”

  “It’s pretty amazing that it came from a tree right here on our land. Imagine the stories it would tell if it could,” Helen said. “I really want to incorporate more old building materials—more stuff with local history. You should see that salvage yard, Nate! So many beautiful things just waiting to be given new life. My dad would have loved the place!” She remembered going to barn sales and flea markets with him, picking up old windows, doors, sinks, and hardware for him to use in his renovations. “They had stained-glass windows, claw-foot bathtubs, old farmhouse sinks, and so much lumber. And all of it had stories to tell!”

  Nate nodded, rubbing his beard, which had filled in substantially and was now looking more beard-like and less I forgot to shave–like. Helen wasn’t sure whether she liked the new beard yet. She thought it made him look more like a serial killer than a woodsman.

  “I think that’s an excellent idea,” Nate said. “We wanted to build green, right? And you can’t get much more green than reusing and recycling. And it’s a definite bonus when the materials are of higher quality than what you can buy new. Plus, I imagine it’s cheaper in a lot of cases. Maybe with the exception of that massive stone sink you brought home. Overall, it’s a win-win.”

  “I’m going to go back to the salvage yard, check online sites, just be on the lookout for other things we can use.”

  “Okay,” he said with smile. “You’re officially in charge of acquiring salvaged materials.”

  “Artifact hunting!” she declared.

  “I love it,” he said, giving her a kiss. “And I love that you’re so excited about this!”

  “Riley will be a big help. She’s so great, Nate. I can’t wait for you to meet her. She looks like this Goth girl with crazy hair, tattoos, and piercings, all dressed in black, but she’s a total history nerd! And in the summer, she builds houses for Habitat for Humanity. I told you she offered to come give us a hand, right?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I think we should take her up on it. Maybe I’ll schedule a work day and have her and Olive come; maybe we can invite Olive’s dad, too. We can get pizza and beer for after. What do you think?”

  “Sounds great, hon.”

  “Nate? I just had an idea.”

  He smiled. “You’re on a roll today.”

  He was right, her mind was whirring. She felt so good. Keyed up.

  “What do you think about sleeping in here tonight?”

  He laughed. “What, on the floor between the sawhorses? Make a bed from bundles of insulation and sawdust?”

  His you’ve gotta be kidding smile turned to a frown. “You’re serious?”

  She put her hands on his shoulders, gave them a little convincing massage. “Come on! It’ll be fun! We can clear a spot in the living room. Bring our sleeping bags. Light some candles. It’ll be like camping, only better. The first night in our new house!”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “First sex in the new house,” she whispered.

  “Okay, I’m in,” he said, stepping toward her, giving her a scratchy kiss.

  * * *

  . . .

  They’d had two bottles of wine, which would explain Helen’s pounding headache and terrible thirst. She woke up naked, disoriented. She turned her head. They were in the bare bones of the unfinished new house. On the living room floor. In the spot where their old braided rug would one day go.

  One of the candles in the glass votive jar was still flickering dimly. Nate snored softly beside her. They’d zipped their two sleeping bags together, making one large bag, which now felt suffocatingly hot and damp with sweat. The plywood floor beneath them was hard, too hard to sleep on comfortably. Her back and neck ached. And she had to pee.

  She unzipped her side of the sleeping bag and crawled out, searching around on the floor until she found her T-shirt and panties. The air felt startlingly frigid. She rubb
ed her arms, trying to brush the goose bumps away.

  Something creaked behind her. The house settling, maybe?

  Did brand-new, totally unfinished houses settle?

  There it was again, a loud creaking sound.

  Jesus. What was that?

  Her damp skin turned even more cold and clammy.

  Turn around, she told herself. Just turn around.

  She took in a breath, then slowly turned so that she was facing the kitchen, looking at it through the framed opening with the new beam up above. The beam from the hanging tree.

  It’s the beam making the sound, she thought. The beam remembering the weight of Hattie hanging from one of the tree’s sturdiest branches.

  She recalled something she read once about hangings: how unless the victim’s neck was broken with the initial drop, she would hang and slowly suffocate. A terrible way to die.

  Helen felt her own throat tightening as she reached down to grab the candle and forced herself to shuffle forward, passing under the beam, moving into the kitchen, which was all shadows. The windows in the house had all been framed, but she and Nate hadn’t cut through the plywood that covered them yet, so they were dark. No views. No moonlight coming through.

  It was like being in a tomb with only a dimly flickering candle.

  And she wasn’t alone in here. She felt that instantly.

  She could hear something.

  Not creaking this time, and not Nate snoring in the other room, but the quiet breathing of someone trying not to be heard.

  She turned to her right and looked in her blind spot, and her bladder nearly let go.

  There was a woman there.

  She was standing just to the right of the wide doorway, her back against the wall, her body right where a set of kitchen shelves would go. She wore a dirty white dress, black lace-up shoes. Helen saw the woman’s wild inky-black hair, the dark circles like bruises under her eyes, and knew exactly who she was. She knew, just looking into her eyes. She would have known her even without seeing the heavy hemp rope looped around her neck: a coarse noose like a macabre necklace, the frayed end of the rope hanging to the woman’s waist.