The Invited(38)

“You have about twenty seconds and then my wife goes down to call 911,” Nate barked.

Helen stepped between them. “Let’s all just slow down,” she said. “Nate, let’s hear what she has to say.”

“I just wanted to scare you,” the girl said. “See, I built the fire in a pot so it wouldn’t burn anything else. I thought if you saw the flames, if you saw me dressed like this, you’d think I was Hattie. And you’d be freaked out and…leave.”

Helen saw the girl was right. The fire, nearly out now, had been burning in a cast-iron Dutch oven, like a mini-cauldron. The fire wasn’t actually very big at all, just bright in the dark night.

“Are you the one who’s been taking our things?” Helen said, understanding slowly dawning.

“Of course she is,” Nate answered.

At first, the girl said nothing.

“Yes,” the girl admitted. “Okay, you’re right. It was me. It was all me.”

“Our tools? Our money?” Helen said.

“My cell phone?” Nate asked.

“Yes,” the girl said, looking down at the ground. “All of it. But I’ll give it back!”

“You went in and took things from the trailer?” Nate asked. “Jesus. That’s breaking and entering!”

“I didn’t break in or anything—the door was always unlocked.”

“You opened the door, entered our home without our knowledge, and took shit,” Nate said. “I’m pretty sure that still counts. People go to jail for what you did.”

    “Please!” the girl said. She was crying now.

“What is it? Drugs?” Nate asked. “You took our stuff to sell and get cash for what…OxyContin, fentanyl, some meth? What is it you guys up here are all into?”

“No!” The girl was shaking her head. “I don’t do drugs. It’s nothing like that. I have all your stuff still. I didn’t sell it. I just wanted to scare you. I swear that was all. I wanted you to think it was her.”

“Her?” Nate asked. “The ghost? Who’s going to believe in a ghost that steals money and cell phones?” He laughed harshly.

Helen winced. She didn’t think Nate saw, but she thought the girl might have.

Helen had wanted to believe in Hattie, to believe it was possible for someone from the past to somehow open a door and reach into the present and make contact—one misunderstood outsider to the other.

“I’ll give it all back,” the girl said. “I promise. I’ll make it up to you, just please don’t call the police. My father, he…he’s been through so much. This would kill him.”

“Guess you should have thought of that before pulling these stunts,” Nate said.

Helen put a hand on the girl’s arm. “Okay, you’re not a ghost. We’ve got that straight. So, who are you?”

“My name’s Olive. Olive Kissner. I live about half a mile down the road with my dad. We’re in the old blue house at the top of the hill.”

Helen nodded. She’d walked by the house. Waved to a man in blue work clothes who drove a banged-up half-ton pickup.

“How old are you, Olive?” Helen asked.

“Fourteen.”

“So what, are you a freshman?” Helen asked.

Olive nodded. “Yeah. I go to Hartsboro High.”

“And it’s just you and your father?”

The girl nodded. “Just us now.” Helen almost asked more, but the pained look on Olive’s face stopped her.

Nate spotted a camouflage backpack, set down his spotlight on the floor, and grabbed the bag. He unzipped it and peeked inside. He pulled out a can of lighter fluid, some matches, then his hammer, a measuring tape. “These are our tools,” he said. He reached in again. “My phone!” He tried turning it on, but the battery was dead.

Olive nodded. “I’ve got the rest of them at home. I’ll bring them all back. I promise.”

    Nate slipped his dead phone into his pocket and reached back into the bag, pulling out a graph-paper notebook this time and flipping through it, holding it in the spotlight beam. There were maps on the pages, maps of the bog with all the trees and large rocks marked. The maps were outlined in red grids with Xs over some of them.

“What’s this?” Nate asked.

“A map,” the girl said.

“Oh, really? You are so not in a position to be sarcastic, okay?” Nate said.

“I know! It’s just…it’s hard to explain,” the girl said.

Nate was studying the notebook, frowning hard at the map with the tiny Xs. Helen could see that the drawing was a good one, the bog accurately rendered, right down to the path leading to her and Nate’s house.

“You said you were trying to scare us?” Helen asked. “Why? Why did you want us to leave?”

Olive chewed her lip, looked down at the plywood floor.

Nate set the notebook aside. “Better start talking, Little Ghost Girl, or I’m calling the police and driving down the road to knock on your father’s door.”

“Okay, okay,” the girl said, sounding frantic. “See, this land, it all used to belong to Hattie Breckenridge.”

Helen nodded. “We know. She lived in a house on the other side of the bog. But the house isn’t there anymore. Only the old stone foundation.”