The Invited(117)

    Three-quarters of a mile down the road, they came to the dented mailbox at the end of a long, steep drive. KISSNER was painted on the side in white paint.

Helen turned up the drive, the truck bouncing over the washouts and ruts.

They could see the house at the top, all the lights on.

“Looks like they’re home,” Nate said.

They pulled in behind a half-ton Chevy pickup. Helen cut the engine, reached for the door handle. Nate leaned over, put a hand on her arm.

“Hey,” he said. “Let’s play it cool in there, huh? Maybe Gloria—Lori—really did run off with someone. We don’t have the whole story. Maybe no one needs saving at all.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, opening the door and jumping out, but she knew he was wrong.

Olive was in danger. She could feel it all around her. She could practically hear Hattie’s voice screaming at her through time and space: Save her!

Helen ran for the front door. It stood open.

“Wait,” Nate ordered, catching up to Helen, pulling her back, and going in first. “Hello?” he called. “Olive? Dustin?”

Helen was right behind him. They were in a stripped-down front hall with plywood floors, bare stud walls. The living room was to their right, the kitchen to the left. All the lights were blazing. There was a table saw set up in the living room, sheets of drywall leaning against the wall, tools everywhere.

“God, it looks like our house—what’s he doing?” Nate said.

Helen shook her head. “Olive said they were doing some renovations. I had no idea…”

Nate crossed the living room, jogged up the stairs. Helen stood in the living room, heard his footsteps up above, heard him calling out, “Hello?,” and then he was back downstairs.

“No one’s here,” he said.

Helen checked the bathroom and the kitchen—both rooms had half-finished walls, exposed wiring and plumbing. The kitchen door was open, and Helen stepped through it, looked around the yard. She was sure she’d heard something, a voice calling. Nate came outside and stood beside her, started to speak. She shushed him.

    “Did you hear that?” she asked, and right away, she was the crazy lady again, the woman who heard screams in the woods, saw ghosts.

“No,” Nate said. “I didn’t, but—”

And then a voice cut through the darkness. A man’s voice, angry and not too far off.

“Ollie!” he yelled. “Ollie, get back here!”





CHAPTER 47



Olive





SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

“Ollie!” Daddy called behind her. “Ollie, get back here!”

Olive ran with the shotgun held tight in both hands, kept it firm against her body, barrel pointing up to the left.

Never run with a gun, Daddy always told her, but if there was ever a time for breaking the rules, this was it.

She got to the edge of the yard, passed the old hollowed-out maple she and Mama used to leave gifts for each other in. The place she’d hidden the necklace she now wore.

Mama was ahead of her, just a blur of white moving through the trees like a deer-headed ghost.

And it was like chasing a ghost, so much so that Olive wondered if maybe this wasn’t her mother, if it really was Hattie.

But why would Hattie be wearing her mama’s special fairy-tale shoes? Even in the dark, from a distance, she could make them out—could see the sparkling light from the flower-shaped beading on top.

Her mother was moving surprisingly fast, considering that she was wearing her good shoes and her vision must be encumbered by the mask.

But then again, Mama knew this path by heart. She’d been walking it for years and, like Olive, could probably do it with her eyes closed.

Olive knew where they were going, where the path led.

They looped through the woods, up the hill, then back down, the figure ahead moving easily over the roots and rocks, navigating the path perfectly in the moonlight.

Daddy, on the other hand, was off behind them, struggling to catch his breath, tripping on fallen trees, stumps, roots. Olive heard him cursing each time he went down. And he was calling for her. “Ollie! For God’s sake, wait up!”

    But she did not slow. She made her way past ghostly white paper birch trees, white pine, maple, and aspen. She did not want to lose Mama (or was it Hattie? Hattie who’d found a way back and was now wearing Mama’s magic shoes as she ran through the woods toward the bog?).

Olive saw the lights of Helen and Nate’s trailer through the trees as they skirted around the back edge of their property. Olive imagined them tucked safely inside, Nate watching his wildlife cameras, Helen reading about spirits and hauntings. Olive wondered if Nate’s camera might catch a glimpse of them running through the woods, if he might see the pale mask of her mother and think his albino doe had come back once more, taken human form now.

“Mama!” Olive cried out again, her voice breathy, choked sounding.

But what if it’s not Mama? a worrying voice asked.

What if it’s really Hattie and she’s leading you out into the bog to kill you?

But she didn’t believe that. She knew in her heart (didn’t she?) that Hattie would not hurt her.

Olive could hear the call of frogs coming from the bog, the trill of crickets singing their early fall symphony.