The Invited(94)

“Why’d we stop?” Olive asked. “Is there something here?”

The silver circle moved clockwise again.

Olive slipped the necklace back over her head, shone her flashlight down at the ground. She didn’t dare hope, did she? Could it be the treasure? Could Hattie have decided to show her where it was?

Then she got down on her knees and began to dig. She didn’t have a shovel or trowel, so she used her fingers to rip away the grass and peat. She kept the flashlight on the ground beside her, the beam flooding the area where she was digging.

Maybe it wasn’t the treasure but a small piece of the treasure. A little taste. Proof that it was real.

She hadn’t gone down far when her fingers touched something hard. Something flat. Something metal.

The top of a box maybe?

A treasure chest?

Heart pounding, Olive scraped at the mud faster, more frantically. Her fingers were getting torn up, but she dug and scraped until she was able to find the edge of the metal object and pull it out into the light.

An old ax head, pitted with rust.

“Nice,” she said sarcastically. Then she turned, looked out at the bog, and shouted, “Thanks a lot, Hattie. Just what I always wanted!”

She threw it into her backpack and went back home, exhausted and discouraged, her jeans and sneakers soaked through, angry with Hattie for getting her hopes up and giving her nothing but a rusty old ax head.

She changed out of her wet things into a dry T-shirt and pair of sweatpants and lay back down on the couch.

She dreamed of the ax.

    That it was cleaned up, sharpened, and she was using it to chop wood.

But then it wasn’t wood she was chopping.

She was hacking her mother up into chunks and throwing them into the bog.

She woke up screaming.

Daddy came flying into the living room, flipping on lights.

He reached out and took her hand, looking at the filthy, bloody fingertips.

“Jesus, girl,” he said. “What’s going on with you?”

She started to cry. He took her in his arms and rocked her like she was a little girl again. “Shh,” he said. “It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t all right.

Maybe her father had been right. Maybe she was sick. Sick in the head. Or maybe it was something worse than that.

Maybe, somehow, Hattie had gotten inside her.





CHAPTER 31



Helen





SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

Helen opened her eyes. She’d been dreaming of Nate’s white deer. It had been speaking to her in Hattie’s ground-glass voice.

Wake up, Helen, the deer told her. Wake up!

Helen blinked at the open doorway to the bedroom, half expecting to see Nate’s deer there—that the creature might have somehow followed her out of her dream. But there was nothing.

Helen’s head ached. Her thoughts felt slow. Foggy.

She wanted to lay her head back down and sleep, but something was wrong.

Very wrong.

“Nate.” She shoved at him hard. “Get up!”

“What?” he mumbled sleepily.

“Gas,” she said, the panic starting to rouse her. “Propane! I smell propane.”

He sat up. “Jesus,” he said, coughing. “Come on.” He grabbed Helen’s hand, pulled her out of bed and into the hall.

The smell was overpowering, the air thick with propane.

“Don’t turn on any lights,” he warned; “the spark…” His hand was wrapped firmly around hers as they hurried through the trailer in the dark and out the front door, into the cool night air.

Nate ran to the side of the trailer where the big white tank was and switched the gas off.

“Should we call the fire department?” Helen asked.

“I think it’ll be okay,” Nate said. “The front door’s open. Let’s let it dissipate a bit, then we can open all the windows.” He looked at Helen. “How do you feel?”

“I have a headache and I’m a little dizzy, but okay,” she said.

“Me, too. We got lucky. Good thing you woke up when you did.”

    Good thing Hattie woke me, she thought.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Must be a leak somewhere,” he said.

They sat outside, holding hands, taking deep breaths.

In a few minutes, they went in and started cranking open all the louvered windows.

“Nate,” she said, “when I went to bed, all these were open.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Positive. I could hear the frogs.”

Soon, Nate deemed it safe enough to turn on a light. “Helen?” he called. He was standing in front of the stove.

“Yeah?”

“Come take a look at this.” He was pointing at the stove. “The gas is wide open, every burner turned on but not lit.”

“It wasn’t a leak,” Helen said, her whole body tensing.

“You didn’t leave the stove on, did you?” Nate asked.

She shook her head. “I didn’t use the stove at all tonight. And why the hell would I turn on all four burners? When I got home, I hung out here on the computer for a while.”