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 had come 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
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. She and Nate finished the insulation this afternoon and had even gotten started with the drywall. Hanging the drywall had been a slow, cumbersome project—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.
Now she blinked in the dark. Her head felt heavy, her thoughts slow. She’d gone to bed in the trailer next to Nate. It had been raining out, absolutely pouring, and the roof was leaking again. They’d put cooking pots and bowls around to catch the drips, and Helen had tossed and turned while listening to the percussion of water hitting metal pots, empty tin cans, plastic bowls. That, combined with the rain pounding down on the metal roof, created a taunting, angry symphony of rain, with the occasional rumble of thunder thrown in. She hadn’t been able to sleep, so she’d gotten up, gone into the kitchen, and read Communicating with the Spirit World again. She’d been through it several times but kept going back to it.
At one a.m., Helen had given up on the idea of going back to bed, slipped on her sneakers and a sweatshirt, and headed down to the bog. Back at the beginning of the summer, she wouldn’t have dared go out walking through the woods at night and would have jumped at every noise. But she’d grown more comfortable with her surroundings, with the nighttime noises. She was nervous still, yes, but the feeling of being drawn to Hattie overpowered that fear. And she had this sense, irrational as it may have been, that Hattie wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her. Hattie would protect her.
The rain had let up from the downpour to fine sprinkles. She’d made her way across the yard, feet squishing in puddles as she left the shadowy house and trailer behind. She’d descended the path through the little stretch of woods, listening to the noises around her: raindrops on leaves, frogs calling, a splash from the bog. The path had opened up and the bog had come into view. There had been a pale mist over the water that seemed to waver and shift as if it were trying to take form.
“Hattie?” she’d called quietly. The only answe
r she’d received was the dull croaking of a lone frog. She’d stood watching the water, thinking about what might be underneath. The rain had picked up, soaking through her sweatshirt. She’d gone back up to the unfinished house. She’d sat on the floor, beside the mantel, waiting, hoping. But nothing had happened. And she’d fallen asleep.
She sat up now, stretched. It was still raining. Helen could hear it upstairs, hitting the roof of the new house, the roof that had been covered in tar paper roofing material but had not yet been shingled.
(Because you haven’t found roofing materials. You’ve been going off to get haunted bricks and a mantel, to learn about Hattie and her family, instead of bringing home something you actually need to finish your house.)
She heard Nate’s voice in her head: I’m worried about you, Helen.
She looked at the mantel—her latest victory. They’d placed it inside on the floor, wrapped up in a tarp to keep it protected until the walls were done and they could hang it. She peeled back the tarp now and looked at it.
She had been right—it was perfect. It was the missing piece their living room needed, another way to give their new house a sense of history.
“But we don’t need a mantel,” Nate had said when he’d first seen it. He walked away from the mantel in the back of the truck and looked in the cab. “Where’s the deer food?”
“Shit, I’m sorry. I forgot it.”
He sighed, rubbed his face. “What are we going to do with a mantel? We don’t have a fireplace.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Helen said. “Maybe we should have one built—put a big brick chimney right in the center of the house. That would make it more of an authentic saltbox design and add thermal mass—”
“Helen, that’s not part of the plans! That is not a do-it-yourself project—do you have any idea how much a skilled mason costs? As it is, we’re over budget!”
“Okay, okay,” Helen said. “So we go with the woodstove and metal chimney for now. Maybe later, we can talk about a real brick chimney? For now, we put the mantel on the wall behind the woodstove.”
Nate squinted, trying to visualize it, and shook his head.
“But the stovepipe will run in front of it. It’ll look weird.”
“Maybe we can run the pipe out the back of the stove, through the wall, then run the metal chimney up behind the living room wall,” Helen suggested. “That would look better anyway, right? Instead of a shiny metal chimney running straight up to the ceiling?”
Nate blinked at her. “I don’t know, Helen. I’d have to look at the plans, see what might work. It might involve rethinking the pantry behind that wall. I don’t think we want warm stovepipe running through the pantry, do we? We’d lose storage space, and that heat would be wasted. It wasn’t part of the original design.” He gave a frustrated sigh.
“The mantel’s over a hundred years old, Nate. And it’s solid maple,” she said. “I got a great deal on it. Once I clean it up, you’ll see just how beautiful it is.”
“I just wish you’d checked with me,” he said. “A mantel isn’t in the plans. Or in the budget.”
“It was seventy-five bucks, Nate.” Her voice came out a little sharper than she’d meant.
“But now that’s seventy-five dollars we don’t have for other materials, things we really need, like roofing materials.” His voice was slightly raised. “I thought that’s what you were doing today. Going to check out a lead on old metal roofing.”
She looked away, took in a breath, told herself to be calm. Just one more little white lie. “It didn’t work out. It was in rougher shape than the ad described.”
He looked at her quizzically. Could he tell she was lying?
When had it gotten so easy, lying to her husband? She would have never considered lying to him back in Connecticut. Back then, they’d told each other everything. It was only a few months ago, but it felt like lifetimes.
She looked at him then, his full beard, his tired eyes, and thought how different this man was from the man she’d been married to back in Connecticut—how different everything was.
“I’m sorry, Nate. If I don’t find anything that’ll work soon, we’ll just go ahead and order the shingles you want from the home center.”
Nate nodded, still frowning at the mantel.
“Nate, can’t we just bring the mantel in, put it against the wall, and see how it looks?” she asked. “Please?”
“Fine,” he said, and she got that little ping of satisfaction she got when she’d won a round.
Nate had agreed it did look great in the house, done some figuring, and decided they could put the stovepipe behind the stove, go straight into the wall, and then run the chimney up through the pantry so the mantel would not be obscured. They’d laid the mantel out on a tarp and Helen had cleaned it up, used some lemon polish on it, rubbed at the scuffed and scratched places, trying to imagine all the mantel must have seen: the years of Christmases, birthdays, celebrations; the coming of television; the decline of the farm; the fights; the murder and suicide.
* * *
. . .
Now, tonight, the mantel seemed to shine, to almost glow, in the dark of the empty house.
But the house was not empty. Helen understood that.
She held perfectly still and waited, listening. She heard footsteps on the plywood subfloor, felt the air grow colder around her. Her skin prickled. Keeping her eyes fixed on the mantel, she stared without blinking until her eyes teared, until a figure moved into view, came to stand beside her. Helen raised her eyes slowly.
The woman was wearing jeans; her dark hair was cut in a bouncy bob, the front of her pink sweater soaked with dark red bloodstains. Helen could smell gunpowder and the rich iron scent of fresh blood.
This isn’t real, Helen thought. I’m dreaming it.
She closed her eyes tight, then opened them wide, and the woman was still there. Helen could see the box of nails Nate had left on the floor beside the mantel. And there was his hammer. There was an unused roll of fiberglass insulation.
This was no dream.
“Where are the children?” the woman asked, looking around, eyes frantic. She seemed to be speaking loudly, shouting even, yet Helen could barely hear her; her words came out like a cicada buzz. Then she looked down at her front, reached a hand up to touch the bullet hole, and started to scream. It was the most anguished, high-pitched keening sound Helen had ever heard.
“Please,” Helen said, trying to raise her head but finding it too heavy. “It’s all right.”
But as soon as she spoke, the woman faded like a gust of smoke being blown by a sharp wind.
She was gone.
But the sound remained.
Outside, the screaming went on and on.
It was the same sound Helen had heard that first night. The sound Nate had insisted was a fisher or a fox.
Helen curled herself tight into a ball, put her hands over her ears, tried to silence the screams.
CHAPTER 27
Ann Whitcomb Gray
MAY 23, 1980
Miss Vera with her blue hair in a tight perm comes every Friday at three, asks me to read the tea leaves, the cards, to gaze into my scrying bowl and see what the future holds for her, to see if she has any messages from the beyond.
“What do you see, Ann?” she asks. “What do the spirits show you?”
I gaze into the black water of the bowl, concentrate, furrow my brow and let my eyes go glassy by not blinking.
“Is my darling Alan trying to reach us?” she asks.
“Oh yes,” I say, peering into the bowl as if Alan were a goldfish circling in the murky water. “He’s calling from the Great Beyond. He wants you to know how much he loves you and that he’s okay.”
I don’t really see any of this, of course, but I’ve learned to tell the ladies of Elsbury what they most
want to hear. Especially the old, the lonely. Poor Miss Vera with her humped back, her swollen arthritic fingers. The diamond engagement ring and white gold wedding band that rattle around, loose now, clearly fitted for a plumper, younger finger. And though I don’t see any spirits of the present, I can clearly picture the past: Vera as a young woman on the altar, beautiful and happy with Alan by her side. He slips the ring on her finger, takes her in his arms and kisses her, and that kiss transcends time and space, fills the air in this room now, nearly sixty years later. The kiss that came before everything else: before four children, the oldest of whom would die in a car wreck; before Vera’s breast cancer, which she survived; and before Alan’s lung cancer, which he did not. Two packs a day for sixty years will get you in the end.
“He’s here now,” I say, gazing into the cut crystal bowl filled with water and black dye—a few drops of RIT poured from a bottle.
“What does he say?” the old woman asks. “Does he have a message for me?”
I squint down into the bowl and am startled by what I see. It’s not Alan’s face looking back at me (real or imagined), nor is it my own reflection.
It’s her again. The woman. She’s come back to me, this woman from my dreams, from my nightmares. Sometimes I think she’s just a part of me: my dark side, the place all my powers come from. She’s the one who gives me my visions, whatever knowledge I may have, I understand that. My spirit guide. She’s so familiar to me, with a face that isn’t my mother’s but has certain similarities. She has the same eyes as my mother but a longer face; same dark curly hair but kept long, not cut short like my mother’s. And this woman wears a necklace, a strange design with a circle, triangle, square, and circle, with an eye in the center. I’ve been dreaming of her since I was a little girl. Since before my mother was killed in the fire, before my father remarried and carted my brother, Mark, and me off to Springfield to start another life with his new wife, Margaret, whom we were made to call “Mother,” and soon our new flock of half siblings, all blond and blue-eyed and freckled like their mother. They pretended to love us for Father’s sake but were always slightly suspicious of our dark hair and eyes, of the tragedy we wore on our sleeves.
The Invited Page 26
