The Invited(109)

“We need more than guidance!” a man argued. “We need to stop that girl and those people building on Hattie’s land!”

“Plans are in place,” Dicky said. “But now we need help from the other side.”

There was a murmur of agreement.

“Well, then, let’s begin,” a man with a deep, gravelly voice said.

More footsteps, the rustle of fabric. The sound of chairs being pulled back and rearranged. There were a few soft murmurs from the group gathered. Olive could make out Dicky and thought a couple of the other voices might be familiar, but she couldn’t place them.

These are people you’ve probably been seeing in town your whole life, she told herself.

The murmurs built to a hum. A hum that filled the room and sounded, to Olive, almost insect-like, as if she were suddenly in a hive of bees, a nest of some sort of strange winged creatures droning. Above the buzz, a single voice rose: Dicky’s voice, loud and sure, speaking with his fake Texas twang: a rodeo cowboy turned preacher.

“Spirits of the east, of the north, of the west and south; creatures of water, air, earth, and fire, we call upon you. We compel you to open the door.”

Then the hum changed, morphed into a chant:

    As above, so below

The door is opened

Let the worlds unite

Let the spirits walk among us



Olive’s skin prickled.

“Hattie Breckenridge, come forward,” called a man.

“We give ourselves to you,” said another.

“We offer ourselves to you,” said a woman.

“We are your faithful servants.”

And then the voices rose up together—“Hattie, Hattie, Hattie, Hattie”—until a single voice called out, Dicky saying, “Come to us, Hattie. We ask you to join us, your faithful servants. Come and guide us. Show us the way.”

The room got brighter, the smoke more intense.

    Olive pictured the chalk marks on the floor, imagined them opening up like a magic portal and Hattie Breckenridge crawling through.

This she had to see.

Slowly, as quietly as she could, Olive crawled out from her hiding spot behind the bar, peering around, keeping her body hidden.

The group was standing in a circle in front of the fireplace, around the chalk circle drawn on the floor. The symbol that matched her necklace.

The door to the spirit world.

Olive counted nine people. There were candles lit all around the room—on the mantel, the floor—and incense burned in little brass bowls (the things she’d taken to be ashtrays the other day), filling the air with thick, sweet smoke.

Above the mantel, the black cloth had been removed to reveal not a mirror at all, but a painting. It was a portrait of a woman with long dark hair and dark eyes. She wore a red dress and had a necklace on—and it wasn’t just any necklace: it was the very same one Olive herself was now wearing.

The necklace seemed to thrum beneath Olive’s shirt, buzzing like a tuning fork.

Even from Olive’s hiding place, the woman’s gaze was mesmerizing, enchanting. Olive felt the woman was looking right at her, seeing inside her, and that she was trying to tell Olive something, something important.

Maybe just Give me my necklace back, or else!

And she knew this was Hattie, though she’d never seen a picture, never heard what Hattie had looked like, never heard people say she’d been beautiful. The way people talked about her, Olive had imagined a cruel, twisted face, fangs, a few warts maybe.

But this, this was the true Hattie: radiant, glowing like cool moonlight.

This was Hattie who’d once lived in a little crooked house at the end of the bog. Hattie who was hanged for witchcraft. Hattie, whose necklace Olive now wore.

Olive shifted her gaze from the painting down to the circle of people standing below it. They had drifted apart, made an opening, and a woman came out of the shadowy back corner to the left of the mantel and made her way into the center of the circle. She was moving slowly, dancing through the thick smoke. She had long dark hair, a white dress. And on her face, a white deer mask. It was strangely realistic, with real fur, a black nose, shiny black eyes.

    The white doe.

Olive held her breath.

Hattie?

Had they really conjured the actual spirit of Hattie Breckenridge, who was now moving among them, in the center of their circle?

As Olive watched this spirit woman move, there was something spookily familiar about the dance she did: step, step, shimmy; step, step, shimmy. Then Olive looked down, peeked through the legs of the people who stood in a circle, chanting, “Hattie, Hattie, Hattie,” and saw the woman’s feet.

She wore ivory-colored shoes with silver beads embroidered across the toes in a flower shape and straps that fastened with tiny silver buckles.

Olive clasped her hand over her mouth to keep from making a sound, from crying out, “Mama!”





CHAPTER 39



Helen





SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

Helen was trying to put the pieces together: Olive’s mother paying $300 for Hattie’s necklace, then running off, never to be heard from again. And what the girl had said about Olive: Odd Oliver. Helen’s heart nearly broke. She needed to talk to Olive, to ask if she knew anything about the necklace her mother had bought, find out if she’d ever mentioned it. It wasn’t too late—she’d call Olive tonight, invite her over for hot cocoa to talk.