The Invited(111)

“Hattie, speak to us!” a woman said. “Tell us your secrets. Tell us what it is we must know. Tell us what it is we must do.”

These people sounded ridiculous, hokey, but even though it sounded like something from a cartoon, they seemed serious, and it scared the hell out of Olive.

The group moved closer to the deer-headed woman (Mama!), encircling her, listening.

But Olive didn’t hear a thing, only the hum of the group, the sound of her mother’s feet shuffling across the floor in the fairy-tale slippers.

And a whisper. Just the faintest hint of a whisper.

She had to get closer.

    The possibility of hearing her mother’s voice pulled on her like a superpowered magnet, luring her out of her hiding place.

Olive spotted a small, tattered red love seat just ahead of her and started to crawl for it, sure that the group was fixated on Mama in the mask. And the room was dark. She could move through the shadows.

“Guide us, Hattie,” a man said. “Show us the way.”

Olive scuttled forward on all fours, moving fast—too fast. Her right foot struck a ladder-back chair she hadn’t even seen in the dim space. It tipped backward, balanced for a second, and then crashed to the floor just behind her.

The humming stopped, the circle opened, everyone turned to look her way.

And there was Olive.

Caught on her hands and knees, like a large and foul bug in the center of the room. And she felt as vulnerable as an insect, something that could easily be squashed and put out of its misery.

“Who the hell is that?” asked the man with the mouse voice.

Her mother leaned forward, the eyes on the deer mask gleaming, flickering in the candlelight. The group circled her more tightly, protectively.

Dicky put his hand on the gun in his holster. Olive didn’t wait to see what might happen next: she sprang to her feet and bolted for the door.

“Come back here!” Dicky shouted, and there was the sound of footsteps behind her, like hoofbeats, but she didn’t slow, didn’t dare to turn around, just yanked the heavy wooden door open and ran through it, flying down the carpeted hallway, past the closed doors of long-abandoned guest rooms, taking the stairs three at a time, landing in the front hall, speeding by the front desk and out the door into the night.

She jumped off the porch, the dressed-up mannequins watching like frozen sentries, unable to stop her. The front door banged open again behind her, Dicky shouting, “Stop right there!” There were other voices behind him, shouting, desperate.

“Don’t let her get away!”

“Lori’s kid! I can’t believe it!”

“Stop her!”

Heart jackhammering inside her chest, she tore off around the corner of the building, searching for the shadows, for darkness, running up the hill, staying off the road, cutting through backyards and toward the woods. They were following her still—she could hear their footsteps, their gasping breaths. But she was faster, younger, nimbler; she moved like a jackrabbit through the night, her eyes on the woods in front of her at the top of the hill.

    Was her mother behind her, part of the group chasing her now? She wanted to look, to turn around and see if she could catch a glimpse of the white deer mask, but didn’t dare.

She sprinted the last of the way up the hill, pushing herself harder than ever before, leg muscles screaming, lungs gasping. Finally she reached the safety of the trees, smelled the rich, loamy forest scent. She zigzagged expertly through the trees, jumping over rocks and roots, her eyes fully adjusted to the dark.

She ran on, heard Dicky somewhere behind her, far off now. “Goddamn it, we lost her!”

A female voice (her mother’s maybe?) said something faint, but Olive was sure she could make out the words: “For the best.”





CHAPTER 41



Helen





SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

Helen stood in the kitchen, stunned. Nate had seen Hattie. She’d brought him to her house. Helen had a worried, sick feeling in her stomach: What had Hattie done to him there? Was this going to be like those stories in old folktales about a woman so mesmerizing, the poor man couldn’t resist and went to her, kissed her, had some kind of supernatural sex with her?

“Did she speak?” Helen asked. “Did you? What happened?”

What did she do to you?

She held her breath, waiting.

“I took her picture,” he said.

“You…photographed her?”

He nodded. “And as soon as I did, it was all gone—the house, the woman, the deer. I was standing alone at the other end of the bog. It was like I’d imagined the whole thing. But it seemed so goddamned real.”

“What does the picture look like?” Helen asked, though she knew how he would answer.

“Like nothing. Like pure light was shining through the lens. Just one overexposed blur.” He looked down at Helen’s notebook again. He had it open to the passage where she talked about seeing Hattie for the first time in the kitchen. “Do you think it was her?” Nate asked.

“I do.”

“And these other women you’ve written about, Hattie’s daughter, her granddaughter—you’ve really seen them, too?”

Helen nodded.

Nate looked down at Helen’s notebook, touched it. “It’s because of the objects in the house? That’s why they come?”