The Invited

by Jennifer McMahon

  Olive thought of the fight she’d heard early that morning. How it had ended with a crash. Had she heard her mother’s voice again after that?

  Olive looked at her father’s crumpled body on the ground behind them. He looked like a small and ruined thing. Hard to believe he’d been capable of such a horrific act.

  “Do you know, Ollie?” Riley asked. “Did your mama tell you where she hid it?”

  She put a hand on Olive’s shoulder, squeezing gently at first, but then a little too tight.

  “You two were always so close,” Riley said, putting her second hand on Olive’s other shoulder. “She must have said something. Or left you a note? A sign.”

  Olive shook her head. “No,” she said, her throat growing dry.

  “Have you been getting messages, too?” Riley asked.

  “From Mama?” Olive was confused.

  “No! From Hattie. Your mother found the treasure because of Hattie. Hattie would send her messages. Sometimes in dreams. You said you’d been dreaming about Hattie. What has she shown you?”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “Think!” Riley demanded.

  Olive tried to squirm away, but Riley held her tight, pulling her closer, her arms now wrapped around Olive.

  “Don’t you get it? How special you are?” Riley said, tightening her grip even more. “Your mother didn’t understand, either. Not at first. But she was chosen. Chosen by Hattie. Hattie gave her powers, gave her the ability to see things beyond what any normal person can see. I didn’t understand at first. I kept asking myself why. Why Lori of all people? She didn’t even want the gifts Hattie gave her. I thought it was so unfair, infuriating. But now I finally understand. It was right there under my nose the whole time, but I never put it together.”

  “Put what together?”

  “They’re related! Lori was Hattie’s great-granddaughter.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true. You and your mother have Hattie’s blood running in your veins. Do you understand how special that makes you? That’s why you’ve been dreaming about her—you’re connected by blood. Tell me what you’ve dreamed, Ollie.”

  “I…I don’t remember,” Olive said.

  “Think, dammit!”

  And as Olive tried to squirm out of her aunt’s grasp, she did think.

  She thought of how her mother had pulled away from Riley in the last days before she left, had refused to go out with her and how they’d fought.

  She thought of her mother’s diary, of the final entry, how the writing was messier, more hurried. Was it possible that her mother hadn’t written it? That someone else had?

  She thought of looking through her mother’s closet and how the only pair of shoes missing was the beaded ivory slippers. Of how that meant she’d been wearing them when she left the house for the final time.

  “How did you get my mother’s shoes?” Olive asked.

  Riley looked at her a second, her face tense. Then she smiled, but it was a sickening I’m about to tell you a big lie and you’d better believe it sort of smile. “She gave them to me.”

  Olive kicked at her aunt, dug her fingernails into Riley’s arms.

  “Help!” she screamed, thinking if she screamed loud enough, Helen and Nate would hear, would come running.

  Riley pulled Olive closer, spinning her, wrapping one arm around her neck, holding her other hand over her mouth.

  “Shh, Ollie. Calm down. You’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  But as she spoke, her arm tightened around Olive’s neck.

  “Please, Aunt Riley.” Olive wheezed out the words with what little air could get through.

  “Shh, my special, special girl,” Riley cooed, pulling her arm even tighter.

  CHAPTER 50

  Helen

  SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

  Hattie Breckenridge was choking Olive.

  Not the faint ghost of Hattie, but an actual, physical Hattie.

  They were standing not twelve feet away from Helen, by the wrecked foundation of Hattie’s house, and Hattie was behind Olive, holding her, the crook of her elbow against Olive’s throat.

  The moon cast a bright light, fully illuminating the scene in the bog.

  They’d been following the doe, jogging along behind it through the woods. It would get far ahead of them, nearly out of sight, then stop and wait for them to catch up before moving on. When Olive’s scream pierced the silence, the deer broke into a run, Helen and Nate right behind her. She’d heard Nate stumble, fall to the ground with a “Shit!,” but hadn’t turned back. Helen followed the deer to the bog, and as she stood at the tree line, she saw Olive and Hattie about four yards away. A man was crumpled on the ground beside them.

  Helen sprinted up behind the figure in the white dress with the long dark hair. She got to her, grabbed her hair, screamed, “Let her go!”

  But the dark hair came off in her hands.

  A wig.

  And under it, a bare neck with a circular snake tattoo.

  “Riley! What the hell are you doing?”

  Helen grabbed Riley’s shoulders, pulling her back. Olive dropped to the ground, gasping. Olive looked up and Helen saw she was wearing the necklace: Hattie’s necklace, the circle, triangle, and square glinting in the moonlight.

  “You!” Riley screamed at Helen. “Why couldn’t you have just gone away? Left before it was too late?”

  Riley swung at Helen, catching her right in the bridge of the nose, sending her reeling backward, the pain bright and blinding. She sank down to her knees on the bed of wet, spongy moss.

  “Helen!” Nate yelled. He sounded far away.

  Riley stood over Helen. “Why couldn’t you have just given up? Gone back where you came from!” She kicked Helen hard in the side, sending her toppling over from the pain and force of it.

  “Hattie,” Helen said, half in answer to Riley’s question, half calling to her, hoping she would come and save them.

  “Hattie! It’s all about Hattie. She comes to you people and you don’t even want her to! You don’t even try. And why you, Helen? You’re not even related. You’re nothing. No one. Just a former history teacher who happened to put up a haunted beam. A beam I gave you. She would never have come to you if it wasn’t for me!”

  Riley stepped back, positioning herself to kick Helen again, but stood frozen, a strange statue in a white dress, eyes focused out on something in the middle of the bog.

  The white doe. The animal stood, seeming to hover over the surface of the bog, her white fur as pale and glimmering as the stars above, her eyes an iridescent silver.

  The doe was moving toward them, slowly at first, then full-on charging right at Riley, head down.

  “Hattie?” Riley said, putting her hands up in front of her, in what Helen thought at first was a stop now protective gesture, but she was wrong—Riley was opening her arms to the deer, calling her closer, waiting to embrace her.

  Olive struck Riley on the back of the head with the butt of a shotgun. Riley sank to her knees beside Helen on the boggy ground, dazed but conscious. Olive quickly turned the gun around, training it on her aunt.

  “Hattie?” Riley said plaintively.

  But the deer was gone.

  CHAPTER 51

  Lori

  JUNE 29, 2014

  Dustin stood over her, swaying like a snake.

  “Get out before I do something we’d both really regret,” he spat.

  Lori scrambled to her feet, left, got in her car, and drove aimlessly for an hour or more. She was moving on autopilot, numb and frightened. Not sure what to do or where to go.

  She circled back through town, saw the lights at Rosy’s still on, and looked through the window to see Sylvia cleaning up. She knocked on the window, and Sylvia let her in, gave her a full glass of whiskey.<
br />
  “Can I stay with you tonight?” Lori asked.

  Sylvia kept pouring whiskey and Lori kept drinking, saying too much to her old friend.

  She spent the night with Sylvia and made a plan. She got up at dawn, head pounding and stomach heaving from all the whiskey she’d had. She snuck out of Sylvia’s and drove home.

  She wrote Dustin a note and stuck it under the windshield wiper of his truck:

  D—

  I love you with all of my heart. I would never be unfaithful. Soon, you’ll understand everything. I have a surprise. Something that’s going to change everything. Meet me in the bog at midnight, by the foundation of Hattie’s house. I’ll show you what I’ve been up to every night.

  All my love,

  Lori

  She went to the mall, walking around like a zombie, then wandered into the movie theater, where she paid ten bucks for a matinee she barely paid attention to and a box of popcorn that tasted greasy and stale. After the movie, she drove to a truck stop out on the highway—a place she and Dustin used to come when they first moved back here. Exhausted, she pulled in between two semis and slept in her car awhile, then woke up and had a big steak and eggs meal.

  JUNE 30, 2014

  Just after midnight, she was in the bog, waiting. She’d left her car in the driveway of the Decrows’ old place, right next to their abandoned trailer.

  She paced around the edge of the bog, waiting.

  A figure appeared at the other end, tromping through the bush, shining a flashlight here and there.

  “Dustin!” she called. “Over here!”

  But it wasn’t Dustin.

  It was Riley.

  Had Dustin sent her instead?

  “What are you doing here?” Lori asked.

  “Dustin doesn’t want to talk to you,” Riley said.

  “Didn’t he get my note?” Lori asked.

  “My poor little brother. He’s a mess, you know. He called me this morning, sobbing, drunk, asked me to come over. When I got there, I saw the note under his wiper. I thought it was best not to upset him any more by showing it to him.”

  “Riley, why would you—”

  “He says you’ve been cheating on him for a long time. Everyone knows it. You know how it is in this town—how easily rumors spread. I tell a few people I’ve seen you go home with a stranger at the bar, that Dustin told me you’re cheating—and suddenly the whole town knows.”

  “But…that’s bullshit,” Lori said softly. She shifted her weight, the peaty ground beneath her feet far from solid. Perfect, really, when nothing else felt solid anymore, either. “Why would you tell people that?” Her voice was high, tears pricking her eyes.

  “Perfect Lori’s not so perfect, is she? Isn’t it time everyone saw it?”

  “I never…I never claimed to be perfect.”

  “Maybe not. But Dustin always saw you that way.”

  Riley reached into her shirt, pulled out a gun. Not just any gun. It was Dicky’s six-shooter.

  “I borrowed this,” Riley said with a grim smile. “Tell me, Lori, what’s the big surprise? What were you going to show Dustin?”

  “Nothing,” Lori said, taking a step back. “I just wanted to see him, to tell him we could work things out.”

  Riley laughed. “You can’t bullshit me. How dare you even try? After everything I did for you. Bringing you to Dicky’s? Helping you develop your gift, your connection to Hattie?”

  “I…”

  “You found it, didn’t you? You found Hattie’s treasure. She led you to it, right? Where is it?”

  “There is no treasure. Not that I’ve found, anyway.”

  “If you tell me, I’ll let you live.”

  Now it was Lori who laughed. “Really? So now you’re going to kill me? Over some fantasy, some legend? Come on, Riley. I know you better than that.”

  “Do you? Maybe you just think you do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Riley brushed her blue bangs away from her eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun. “I never did get what Dustin saw in you.”

  “We…we love each other.”

  “You don’t even know him! Not like I know him! You don’t even know half the shit we went through when we were kids, everything I did for him, everything I fucking sacrificed for him.” She waved Dicky’s gun around, keeping it pointed at Lori, who stood frozen.

  Lori thought of the years she’d spent with Riley, going out drinking, listening to bands, going to yard sales and flea markets. The Lori and Riley Show, that’s what Dustin called them. They told each other everything.

  But now, now Lori realized she hadn’t known her sister-in-law at all. It had all been an act. A ruse.

  “I tried to tell Dustin you were no good for him,” Riley went on. “But it just pushed him away, pissed him off. So I did what I had to do. A full-on about-face. I made you my new best friend. And suddenly Dustin and I were close again.”

  Lori shook her head in disbelief.

  “Where is it?” Riley asked. “Where’s the treasure?”

  “For God’s sake, Riley, I’m telling you—there isn’t any.”

  “It’s not just for me. I’m doing this for Dustin. And for Olive. You, you’ll leave town quietly and swear to never come back. I’ll take the money and use it to take care of Dustin and Ollie. Take care of them like you never could. You were never good enough for them, you know that, right?”

  “Please, Riley.”

  Riley rocked back on her heels; the tattoos on her bare arms seemed to writhe each time she moved, lit up by the moon.

  “It was never fair, that she came to you.” She glared at Lori with such hatred that Lori felt she’d already been shot. “I was the one who called to her first! The one who tried hardest. Promised to be her faithful servant, to dedicate myself to her in exchange for the treasure.” She began moving closer to Lori, waving the gun, gesturing with it. “I’ve practiced witchcraft and divination for years and she chose you, a complete novice! Can you explain that? Why people are always choosing you? Dustin chose you, even Hattie Breckenridge chose you over me. Why would that be?”

  She was so close now that the gun was nearly touching Lori’s chest.

  “I…” Lori thought of telling the truth. That she was related by blood, that that’s why Hattie had come to her. “I’m—”

  “Where’s the fucking treasure?”

  The barrel of the gun was pressed against her chest now. She was sure that Riley wouldn’t pull the trigger. Hell, it probably wasn’t even loaded. Dicky never kept it loaded. That’s what he’d told her, anyway. Lori put her hand on the barrel of the gun, tried to pull it down, aim it away from her, from either of them, before someone got hurt.

  The gun went off with a deafening explosion, so much louder than Lori would have ever believed possible. And Riley, the look on her face just then wasn’t one of jealousy or rage, but only genuine surprise.

  And the flash was so bright that it seemed to light up the whole bog, and there, over Riley’s shoulder, stood a tree Lori had never seen before: a massive old tree with many thick branches, and from one hung the body of a woman—a woman who was reaching for her now, who had floated away from the tree and was taking Lori’s hand, saying, “Shh. It’s all right. Come with me now.”

  CHAPTER 52

  Helen

  SEPTEMBER 14, 2015

  The police in their dive suits, with rubbery skin as slick as seals’, moved through the bog, carrying the body wrapped in black plastic, wound round and round with silver duct tape. They’d just pulled it out of the deepest part, the pool at the heart of the bog where water lilies floated like tiny yellow stars on the water. The police trudged their way clumsily through the peat, crushing delicate pitcher plants, sedge, low blueberry bushes, their feet sinking with each spong
y step. It was like walking on the surface of another planet.

  Helen watched from solid ground, holding her breath.

  Other searchers continued to move around and through the bog in wet suits, chest waders, or fluorescent vests, radios squawking. A terrible invasion.

  One of the cops slipped, nearly dropping the body. He cursed quietly, righted himself, adjusted his grip, but the plastic was slippery, his footing unsure.

  Dragonflies darted through the air, shimmering, jewel colored. Frogs sang. A red-winged blackbird flew low, landing on a small cedar tree on the other side of the bog, watching the invaders with curiosity.

  The trees, and all the creatures in them—the chattering squirrels gathering food, the black-capped chickadees, and the angry blue jays—watched, too. Behind Helen, on the east side of the bog, was the clearing where she and Nate lived. In the clearing stood their nearly finished house: their dream house, their haunted house, a home for the dead and the living. A place where Hattie and her family could gather.

  An in-between place.

  Nate had gone out to do errands: get the oil in the truck changed, pick up bar and chain oil for the saw.

  “Come with me,” he’d said. “You don’t need to stay and watch.”

  But he was wrong.

  She did need to stay.

  She needed to watch Lori’s body be pulled out.

  Olive and Dustin weren’t watching, either. They were back at the hospital, waiting for news. Dustin had regained consciousness on the way to the hospital and had been diagnosed with a concussion, but no fracture, and admitted for observation. Olive hadn’t left his side.