The Invited(91)

“Welcome,” Dicky said, smiling, eyes still closed. “Come forward. Do you have a message for us? A message for anyone here?”

There had to be another person in the room. Someone hiding behind the wall, listening. Someone playing ghost. Giving these people what they’d come for.

Disappointment flooded through Helen. It was a sham. These people couldn’t really call the spirits.

The old woman sitting next to Helen squeezed her hand tighter. “I’m getting something,” she said, her voice a dull crackle. “It’s a message for Kay.”

A middle-aged woman in a red sweater leaned forward, said, “For me? Who is it? What do they say?” Her hair was a washed-out blond; her skin looked yellow and sickly in the candlelight. She had on thick blue eye shadow all the way up to her eyebrows.

“It’s your sister, Jessa.”

“Oh!” Kay said, eyes wide open, excited. “What does she say?”

“She wants you to know she loves you. And she says…she says she’s sorry.”

“Ohh!” Kay exclaimed, tears filling her heavily made-up eyes, running down her yellow cheeks. “Oh, Jessa! You don’t need to be sorry. I forgive you! Tell her I forgive her!”

She was sobbing now.

The old woman beside Helen smiled. “You’ve made her so happy, Kay. She’s so relieved.”

Jesus, thought Helen. What a complete crock of shit. It seemed cruel, heartbreaking, really, taking advantage of people like Kay, people in grief who didn’t know any better, who clearly had unfinished business with the dead. She imagined that if she had stumbled into this group right after the death of her father, when the rawness of her pain had left her ripped right open, these people would have had a field day with her. And she probably would have bought it all, too. Because she was so desperate to talk to her father one more time, to say the good-byes she felt she’d been cheated out of.

    “There’s another presence here,” Dicky said.

“Oh yes, there is,” said the old woman beside Helen. She turned to Helen. Her face was etched with deep wrinkles. “It’s a message for you, dear.”

“For me?” Helen asked.

The old woman nodded, closing her eyes. She held tight to Helen’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “Oh! She’s a strong spirit, this one.”

This was too much. Too goddamned much. She should never have listened to Riley, should never have tried this. She wanted to stand up and walk out, but politeness kept her there, holding hands, eyes closed, thinking, This will be over soon and then I can get the hell out of here and never come back.

Her head was starting to ache. The incense and candles were too sweet and cloying, the scent filling the back of her throat, making it feel like it was closing, getting tighter and tighter.

“It’s a woman, but she won’t identify herself. She says you know who she is. She says…she says there’s someone you’ve got to find. I think it’s someone related to you? No, no, that’s not it. The person is related to her. That’s who you’ve got to find.”

Riley gave Helen’s hand a hard squeeze.

“She says you have to hurry. You’re running out of time,” the old woman said, tightening her face into a grimace.

“Is there more?” Riley asked. “Does she say how to find this person?”

“Wait! She’s got another message,” the old woman said, opening her eyes, giving Helen’s hand another squeeze. “This one’s just for you and you alone. Close your eyes, dear. Close your eyes and listen with your whole self. She’s trying to come through to you.”

Helen closed her eyes, took in a breath, tried to forget where she was, how much her head was throbbing. She felt a breeze, imagined she was outside, near the bog.

    She heard one short sentence, one command, spoken clearly in the grinding glass voice she’d come to know: Save her.

Helen nearly opened her eyes but kept them clamped shut, concentrated on breathing in and out.

The room, and everything in it—the smell of the incense, the breathing and shuffling of the people around her—seemed to retreat. Helen was in the bog. She saw a white deer—Nate’s white deer, so elegant and strange—then something shifted, and suddenly she was the white deer. And she was being chased, hunted. She ran through the woods to the bog, and where her hooves struck the ground, pink lady’s slippers sprang up. Dragonflies circled around her, the hum of their wings a song, a terrible warning song that turned into Hattie’s ground-glass voice: Danger. You are in danger.

Then she was in the center of the bog, and there was the sound of a gun going off. And she felt the bullet hit her chest, her white deer chest, and she sank into the bog, going down, down, down.

Helen’s eyes flew open, heart thumping madly, mouth dry and cottony. But she could smell the bog all around her. Hear the buzzing song of the dragonflies. Danger. You are in danger.

Her eyes locked on Dicky’s gun.

“I have to go,” Helen said, standing, letting go of the old woman’s hand, pulling away from Riley, who was giving her a worried look.

“You can’t break the circle,” Dicky warned.

Helen moved away on shaky legs. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Please,” the old woman called. “You can’t be afraid of what they show you.”