The Invited(13)

“Your mama will be back,” he promised Olive when they were alone one night, eating their crappy microwaved Salisbury steak dinners with fake mashed potatoes and little square apple pies. “And you know what I think?” Suddenly his eyes were bright again for the first time in what seemed like forever. He looked around the kitchen, as if he had never seen it before—the dingy walls with patches of missing wallpaper, the peeling Formica on the counter. “I think we should surprise her. Fix the house up real nice for her, what do you say?”

Of course Olive said yes. And this was how the renovations started.



* * *



. . .

The spare bedroom wall got knocked down first, her father letting Olive take the first swing with the sledgehammer. She stood looking at the wall through fogged safety glasses. “Are you sure?” she asked, testing the weight of the heavy hammer.

    “Hell yes, I’m sure,” Daddy said. “Knock it down, baby. Knock it all down.”

She gave a few tentative swings, hating the destruction. Then Daddy took over, smashing away with a frenzy that frightened her. They were tearing down the wall to make a larger bedroom for her parents.

“Your mama always wanted a master bedroom,” Daddy said between swings, plaster dust covering his arms and face. “A closet all her own.” He hit the wall with renewed vigor, smashing right through to the other side.

They put in two side-by-side closets: his and hers. Olive helped her father hang all of her mother’s abandoned clothing up in the closet on the left. As she handled her mother’s best dress, her favorite leather coat, she believed her father, believed that her mother would actually come back. Because there was no way she would have left all this behind. Not her favorite dress and coat. Not every pair of shoes. Not the treasure. Not Olive.

Renovations aside, Olive was more determined than ever to find the treasure, sure that once she found it, her mother would return. Wherever she was, she’d see Olive on TV, hear about it on the news: about the girl who’d found the buried treasure, the girl who was now rich.

If that didn’t bring her back, then Olive would have all the money she needed to find her. She’d hire an army of private detectives, do whatever it took to bring Mama home again. And Mama would see the new master bedroom, her own huge closet, and she’d never want to leave.

In the meantime, Olive kept searching.



* * *



. . .

Now Olive listened to Mike’s footsteps as he made his way clumsily down the path. She pressed the binoculars to her face, watching the outsiders. They stood, their arms around each other, stupid smiles plastered on their faces that said all their dreams were coming true. Olive hated them. She couldn’t help herself.

She bit her lip, watching the flatlanders. They were kissing now. Totally gross.

    I banish you, she thought again, concentrating as hard as she could.

The woman pulled back from the man, looked right in Olive’s direction.

Olive didn’t flinch. Just held tight to the tree, concentrated on blending in, on being part of the landscape. Because she was a part of the landscape. And this place, it was a part of her. All of it: the trees, the animals, the bog, the wind in the trees.





CHAPTER 3



Helen





MAY 19, 2015

Something was being eviscerated.

That’s the only way she knew to describe the sound she was hearing: a horrible, keening screech. A creature being tortured, split open, and gutted. It was a desperate, high-pitched scream. At first, it sounded like it was right outside the trailer; then it seemed to move—or was it being dragged off?—farther back into the woods. Out in the direction of the bog.

She’d been awake for hours, unable to sleep in the cramped bed, listening to every strange sound—breaking branches, howling dogs, hooting owls—so unlike the hushed buzz of highway traffic that she’d heard at night back at the condo.

Now there was this terrible scream that made her chest tighten, heart pushed all the way up into her throat.

And Nate was sleeping through it. Typical.

She gave him a hard shove.

“Nate!” she whisper-yelled, trying to control her breathing, to not sound totally panic-stricken. “Nate, did you hear that?”

She sat up, bumping her head on the ridiculous shelf on the wall above the bed in the tiny bedroom of the trailer. The bedroom was wide enough only for a double bed. No closet, so there were shelves everywhere. Making the bed was a nearly impossible feat involving acts of contortion Helen hadn’t imagined herself capable of.

“Hear what?” Nate asked, rolling from his side to his back.

“It was a scream. An awful scream.”

He sat up, bumped his own head on the shelf, mumbled, “Shit!”

They were going to have to do something about the shelves before one of them concussed themselves or split open their head and needed stitches. The nearest hospital was forty-five minutes away. She tried not to think too hard about that when imagining all the work they were about to do: how easy it would be to slip with a saw blade, to topple off the top of a ladder set up on unlevel ground.

    Nate reached up now, fumbled around on the shelf until he found the lamp, and turned it on. The little room came to life in a lightning-like explosion of brightness. Helen blinked, turned away.