The Invited(37)

Now she reached up on the shelf for the flashlight, fingers groping, spider-crawling along the dusty wood.

It wasn’t there. She swept back and forth with her hand but found nothing. Nate’s glasses were missing, too.

Helen slid her way off the bottom of the bed, her feet hitting the cold linoleum of the floor. It was spongy in places, giving just a little under her bare feet.

    Like walking on the bog, she thought. And at any moment, I’ll fall through, down into a deep dark spring, into the place Hattie came from.

She thought of turning on the light but was too frightened. She didn’t want whatever might be out there to know she was up, to see her through the tiny trailer windows.

Nothing’s out there, she told herself.

She tried to steady her breathing, but it still came out in jagged puffs.

She crept quietly down the hall, through the living room to the front door. There was a window just to the left of it. She looked through the dusty glass, past her own dim, frightened reflection. The night seemed impossibly dark. A sliver of a moon. A cloudy sky. Not even the pinprick lights of the stars overhead.

As her eyes adjusted, she could make out shapes in the darkness: the sharp angles of the two pop-up canopies they stored their tools and wood under. And there, beyond them, the strange skeletal walls of what would one day be their home. There was something inside it, within the cage of walls, moving across the floor. A pale figure, writhing, dancing. This wasn’t Nate with his sure gait, his broad shoulders.

This was a woman.

A woman in a white dress.

This, Helen knew at once, was Hattie Breckenridge.

And there was a reason Helen could see her figure so well—there was a flickering orange glow behind her.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Helen gasped.

A ghost! An actual for real ghost. And she was dancing around flames.

Their house was burning.

This was not some imagined horror born from panic or a bout of paranoid thinking.

This was actually happening.

Helen wanted to drop down on her knees, to hide and stay hidden. But Nate was out there, maybe in danger. And their house, the house of their dreams that they’d only just begun, was burning.

She felt Hattie beckoning her, saying, Come closer, please. Saying, I dare you.

Helen held her breath, turned the knob, pushed the front door open as quietly as she could, not wanting to draw attention to herself. The cool air hit her, her skin turning to gooseflesh.

    Then, once she reached the steps, she ran.

Her bare feet pounded across the grass, past the truck, up the newly graded driveway.

She ran toward the acrid, stinking smoke. Toward the figure in white, twisting and contorting, giving off a low, droning moan.

Helen thought about history, about how places held memories, and how maybe ghosts were just a magnification of that force. Maybe ghosts were like an echo.

“Hattie?” she called as she came upon the building.

“Like hell,” a voice roared, and a blindingly bright light hit her face, illuminated the floor of the house, the girl who was trapped there, her foot encircled with rope. She hadn’t been dancing. She’d been trying to get away.

And this was no ghost, Helen understood now, but an actual flesh-and-blood girl. A girl with white makeup caked on her face, wearing camouflage pants and a matching shirt with a lacy white nightgown on top of them.

Helen guessed the girl was only thirteen or fourteen years old, all elbows and knees with a thin, pointed elfish face and dark, tangled hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a while.

“Nate?” Helen called, shading her eyes, trying to look past the girl and the beam of light at her husband. “What’s going on?”

“This is our ghost,” Nate said. He stood at the other end of the house, aiming the spotlight at them. He was holding the other end of the heavy rope that was looped around the girl’s foot. The ground was strewn with tools, more rope, and the nylon netting they used to cover loads in the back of the truck.

“What’s all this rope and netting?” Helen asked.

“I knew someone was coming and messing with our stuff,” Nate explained, “and that it sure as hell wasn’t any ghost. So I set a trap. I laid some snares out. And the netting. Put a pile of tools right in the center of the floor. Then I hid and waited. This girl shows up, all dressed in white, and starts a freaking fire in the middle of our house. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!”

Helen leaned down and untied her. The girl was shaking like a frightened animal.

Nate came forward, standing next to the pile of smoldering rags that lay in a metal pot on the floor. “She was trying to burn our house down!”

    “I wasn’t,” the girl said, her chin shaking as she struggled not to cry. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m calling the cops,” Nate said, voice crackling as he tried to contain his fury. “Arson is a crime.” He turned to Helen. “Do you have your phone on you?”

“No,” Helen said. “I didn’t…I thought…” She gestured lamely at the scene before her.

“Go get it,” Nate said. “Get it and call the state police. Tell them we caught a kid vandalizing our new house. I’ll keep her here.”

“Wait,” the girl said. “Please, you don’t understand. Let me explain.” She looked so young, so genuinely scared.