The Invited(84)

Now she blinked in the dark. Her head felt heavy, her thoughts slow. She’d gone to bed in the trailer next to Nate. It had been raining out, absolutely pouring, and the roof was leaking again. They’d put cooking pots and bowls around to catch the drips, and Helen had tossed and turned while listening to the percussion of water hitting metal pots, empty tin cans, plastic bowls. That, combined with the rain pounding down on the metal roof, created a taunting, angry symphony of rain, with the occasional rumble of thunder thrown in. She hadn’t been able to sleep, so she’d gotten up, gone into the kitchen, and read Communicating with the Spirit World again. She’d been through it several times but kept going back to it.

At one a.m., Helen had given up on the idea of going back to bed, slipped on her sneakers and a sweatshirt, and headed down to the bog. Back at the beginning of the summer, she wouldn’t have dared go out walking through the woods at night and would have jumped at every noise. But she’d grown more comfortable with her surroundings, with the nighttime noises. She was nervous still, yes, but the feeling of being drawn to Hattie overpowered that fear. And she had this sense, irrational as it may have been, that Hattie wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her. Hattie would protect her.

    The rain had let up from the downpour to fine sprinkles. She’d made her way across the yard, feet squishing in puddles as she left the shadowy house and trailer behind. She’d descended the path through the little stretch of woods, listening to the noises around her: raindrops on leaves, frogs calling, a splash from the bog. The path had opened up and the bog had come into view. There had been a pale mist over the water that seemed to waver and shift as if it were trying to take form.

“Hattie?” she’d called quietly. The only answer she’d received was the dull croaking of a lone frog. She’d stood watching the water, thinking about what might be underneath. The rain had picked up, soaking through her sweatshirt. She’d gone back up to the unfinished house. She’d sat on the floor, beside the mantel, waiting, hoping. But nothing had happened. And she’d fallen asleep.

She sat up now, stretched. It was still raining. Helen could hear it upstairs, hitting the roof of the new house, the roof that had been covered in tar paper roofing material but had not yet been shingled.

(Because you haven’t found roofing materials. You’ve been going off to get haunted bricks and a mantel, to learn about Hattie and her family, instead of bringing home something you actually need to finish your house.)

She heard Nate’s voice in her head: I’m worried about you, Helen.

She looked at the mantel—her latest victory. They’d placed it inside on the floor, wrapped up in a tarp to keep it protected until the walls were done and they could hang it. She peeled back the tarp now and looked at it.

She had been right—it was perfect. It was the missing piece their living room needed, another way to give their new house a sense of history.

“But we don’t need a mantel,” Nate had said when he’d first seen it. He walked away from the mantel in the back of the truck and looked in the cab. “Where’s the deer food?”

“Shit, I’m sorry. I forgot it.”

He sighed, rubbed his face. “What are we going to do with a mantel? We don’t have a fireplace.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Helen said. “Maybe we should have one built—put a big brick chimney right in the center of the house. That would make it more of an authentic saltbox design and add thermal mass—”

    “Helen, that’s not part of the plans! That is not a do-it-yourself project—do you have any idea how much a skilled mason costs? As it is, we’re over budget!”

“Okay, okay,” Helen said. “So we go with the woodstove and metal chimney for now. Maybe later, we can talk about a real brick chimney? For now, we put the mantel on the wall behind the woodstove.”

Nate squinted, trying to visualize it, and shook his head.

“But the stovepipe will run in front of it. It’ll look weird.”

“Maybe we can run the pipe out the back of the stove, through the wall, then run the metal chimney up behind the living room wall,” Helen suggested. “That would look better anyway, right? Instead of a shiny metal chimney running straight up to the ceiling?”

Nate blinked at her. “I don’t know, Helen. I’d have to look at the plans, see what might work. It might involve rethinking the pantry behind that wall. I don’t think we want warm stovepipe running through the pantry, do we? We’d lose storage space, and that heat would be wasted. It wasn’t part of the original design.” He gave a frustrated sigh.

“The mantel’s over a hundred years old, Nate. And it’s solid maple,” she said. “I got a great deal on it. Once I clean it up, you’ll see just how beautiful it is.”

“I just wish you’d checked with me,” he said. “A mantel isn’t in the plans. Or in the budget.”

“It was seventy-five bucks, Nate.” Her voice came out a little sharper than she’d meant.

“But now that’s seventy-five dollars we don’t have for other materials, things we really need, like roofing materials.” His voice was slightly raised. “I thought that’s what you were doing today. Going to check out a lead on old metal roofing.”