The Invited (ARC)

by Jennifer McMahon

  Her mother was moving surprisingly fast, considering that she was wearing her good shoes and her vision must be encumbered by the mask.

  But then again, Mama knew this path by heart. She’d been walking it for years and, like Olive, could probably do it with her eyes closed.

  Olive knew where they were going, where the path led.

  They looped through the woods, up the hill, then back down, the figure ahead moving easily over the roots and rocks, navigating the path perfectly in the moonlight.

  Daddy, on the other hand, was off behind them, struggling to catch his breath, tripping on fallen trees, stumps, roots. Olive heard him cursing each time he went down. And he was calling for her. “Ollie! For God’s sake, wait up!”

  But she did not slow. She made her way past ghostly white paper birch trees, white pine, maple, and aspen. She did not want to lose Mama (or was it Hattie? Hattie who’d found a way back and was now wearing Mama’s magic shoes as she ran through the woods toward the bog?).

  Olive saw the lights of Helen and Nate’s trailer through the trees as they skirted around the back edge of their property. Olive imagined them tucked safely inside, Nate watching his wildlife cameras, Helen reading about spirits and hauntings. Olive wondered if Nate’s camera might catch a glimpse of them running through the woods, if he might see the pale mask of her mother and think his albino doe had come back once more, taken human form now.

  “Mama!” Olive cried out again, her voice breathy, choked sounding.

  But what if it’s not Mama? a worrying voice asked.

  What if it’s really Hattie and she’s leading you out into the bog to kill you?

  But she didn’t believe that. She knew in her heart (didn’t she?) that Hattie would not hurt her.

  Olive could hear the call of frogs coming from the bog, the trill of crickets singing their early fall symphony.

  The trees thinned, were replaced by cedar and larch, and the air changed as she got closer to the bog. The rich green bog smell filled Olive’s nose; she could practically taste it on the back of her throat. At last, she broke through the trees, her feet hitting the quaking, quivering surface of the peat, sneakers soaking through. The bog was layered with a thick blanket of mist that seemed to glow green, to move and reshape itself. Olive came to a fast stop, not far from the ruined stone foundation that was once Hattie’s house.

  But where was Hattie?

  Not Hattie, she reminded herself. Mama. It was Mama she was chasing.

  But where was she?

  Olive held still, bent over, hands on her knees as she gasped to catch her breath and scanned the bog, eyes searching for movement in the mist. She saw no movement. And now, strangely, the air had gone quiet. Too quiet. The whole bog was holding its breath, waiting to see what might happen next.

  Where did she go?

  It was as if the figure had disappeared into thin air.

  Now you see her, now you don’t.

  Poof.

  True magic.

  Maybe she’d been chasing a ghost after all.

  “Mama?” Olive called. Then, drawing up the courage, she called out hesitantly, “Hattie?”

  Her father came bursting through the trees behind her, his breathing as loud as a freight train, his hair going in crazy directions, his shirt untucked, his tan work boots sinking in the ground. He staggered like a drunk man, a man unsure of the ground underneath him. But he came toward Olive at a steady clip. “There you are!” he said. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  She raised the gun in his direction.

  “Stay back,” she warned.

  But it turned out she didn’t need to warn him.

  Because the deer-headed woman appeared behind him, slipping out of the trees, something in her hands—a large rock—that she raised up just behind Daddy.

  And Olive thought, for one brief second, that she should cry out, should warn him, but he was the enemy here. So she just watched as the woman (Mama! she was being saved by Mama!) brought the rock down against the back of his skull.

  He dropped, fell to his knees, then forward, facedown, motionless. Limp as an old rag doll.

  CHAPTER 48

  Helen

  S SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

  “Helen!” Nate called behind her. “Wait! Where are you going?”

  “After them,” she said. She continued on the path she’d found in the woods, working her way along as quickly as she could, navigating by the light cast by the nearly full moon in the sky above.

  “But it’s dark and we don’t know these woods,” he said. “You’ve gotta trust me, Helen. I’ve been lost in them myself. It’s easy to get turned around, even in daylight.”

  She thought of the story of Frank Barns who’d chased the white doe into the woods and was never seen again. Of George Decrow pulling his wife, Edie, out of the bog.

  “But Olive’s out here. And that man yelling—someone’s after her, maybe her father. We’ve gotta help her.”

  She’d never been so sure of anything before.

  There was only one thought flooding her mind: Olive. You’ve got to save Olive.

  She scrambled over fallen trees, around rocks. The trees were thick here, shading out the light of the moon, making it harder to see. She caught her toe under a thick root and went tumbling, her fall broken by the thick leaf litter. Her mind raced. Panic built, pulsating, making her heart race faster.

  No. She was not going to let this happen, to let herself be paralyzed by her own emotions.

  “Helen, slow down,” Nate said. “You don’t want to break an ankle out here.”

  She pushed up on her knees, took Nate’s hand when he reached for her.

  “Do you see anything?” she asked, voice low, taking a deep breath, trying to center herself. “Or hear anything?”

  He shook his head. They stood in the dark, holding hands, keeping very still, listening.

  She thought she heard something way off to the left. Sticks snapping, a low grunt. “Is that them?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, practically whispering. “It could have just been an animal.”

  She broke away from Nate and pushed off in the direction of the sound she’d heard.

  She walked blindly now, hands in front of her, no longer on any clear path, the trees and shrubs thickening around them. Branches reached out to claw at her face; her legs got tangled, feet caught up on roots and rocks.

  “Helen,” Nate said. “I think we should turn around. Try to find our way back. We’re not any good to Olive lost in the woods.”

  But which way was back? She could no longer see the lights from the house.

  And Olive was out there somewhere.

  “Let’s go back,” Nate said. “Call the police. Report the empty house with doors open, the yelling in the woods.”

  Helen began patting her pockets for her phone but knew it was no good. It was still in her purse in the cab of the truck.

  “Do you have your phone?” she asked.

  “Damn it. No. We flew out of there in such a hurry that I left it on the kitchen table.”

  If they wanted help—professionals with flashlights and dogs and guns—to find Olive, they had to go back.

  “Okay,” she said. “So which way is back?”

  “This way, I think,” Nate said, starting to walk.

  “But didn’t we come from the other direction? Didn’t we pass that huge leaning tree on the way here?”

  “No, it’s this way,” he told her.

  So Helen followed, knowing that they were getting more and more lost with each step.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, Helen following Nate, her eyes on his back, his pale T-shirt leading the way.

  But she was letting the wrong person guide her. She understood this. She dropped back a bit from Nate.
/>   “Hattie,” she whispered. “Help me. Help us. Help us find Olive.”

  She took in a deep breath, tried to clear her mind, to listen for a voice, a signal.

  Come on, Hattie, don’t fail me now.

  But the only voice that came was Nate’s from up ahead.

  “Helen,” Nate said, voice low. “Look!”

  He pointed out ahead of them into a stand of trees growing close together, looking darker than the rest of the woods.

  And there, standing just in front of it, watching them, looking almost as if she’d been waiting, was Nate’s white doe.

  She was full-sized and her fur was bright white, her eyes dark and glittering as she watched them, her ears perked, listening. She held perfectly still and seemed to give a silvery shimmer in the moonlight. She was like a creature from a dream.

  “Oh, Nate,” Helen said in a trembling whisper. “She’s beautiful.” She said it as if the deer were something Nate himself had created: a work of art he was sharing with her.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “She wants us to follow her.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Olive

  S SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

  “Mama?” Olive said, lowering her gun, taking a step toward the woman in the mask and her crumpled, motionless father.

  “Oh, Olive,” the woman in the deer mask cried, pulling the mask away from her face, letting it fall to the ground.

  “Riley?” Olive said, blinking at her aunt in disbelief.

  “You’re okay now, Ollie,” Riley said, coming forward, gently taking the gun from Olive’s hands, laying it on the ground beside the white deer mask before encircling her in a tight, almost crushing hug. “Thank God you’re all right!”

  Olive pressed her face against her aunt’s shoulder, her nose mashed against the stiff fabric of her white dress. She smelled like the incense that had been burning at Dicky’s hotel.

  “It was you?” Olive asked. “Back at the hotel.”

  “Yes,” Riley said.

  “But I don’t understand,” Olive said, the disappointment hitting her like a wall, knocking all the air out of her. “Where is Mama?”

  The hug got tighter. “Oh, Olive, I think I know. Maybe I’ve known all along but haven’t wanted to believe.”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Riley broke away from the hug but still held Olive’s arms tight. She looked into her eyes. “I think so, Ollie.”

  “And Daddy . . .” She could hardly bring herself to say the words. “He . . . he killed her?”

  Riley nodded slowly.

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know, Ollie,” she said, studying Olive’s face in the moonlight. “Maybe because he found out she was having an affair?” She paused. “Or maybe she told him she was going to leave him?” Riley said. She brushed the hair away from Olive’s face. “I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.”

  “She found the treasure,” Olive said.

  Riley seemed to hold her breath. “She did. And I think he knew it. But she wouldn’t tell him where it was. Maybe that was the last straw.”

  Olive said nothing, just tried to imagine the scene as it might have unfolded: Mama and Daddy arguing, him accusing her of being unfaithful, her saying she was leaving, that she could afford to now. And he’d want to know how and maybe she’d told him, told him just to piss him off, to prove that she’d been right all along—the treasure had existed and she’d found it. So where is it? Daddy would have asked. Where is this treasure you’re going to use to start a new life with your new boyfriend? And she wouldn’t tell him. And then . . . then what? Had he struck her? Shot her? Strangled her? Had it been an accident somehow, a shove that he hadn’t meant to be so rough with? Or had it been cold, premeditated murder?

  Olive thought of the fight she’d heard early that morning. How it had ended with a crash. Had she heard her mother’s voice again after that?

  Olive looked at her father’s crumpled body on the ground behind them. He looked like a small and ruined thing. Hard to believe he’d been capable of such a horrific act.

  “Do you know, Ollie?” Riley asked. “Did your mama tell you where she hid it?”

  She put a hand on Olive’s shoulder, squeezing gently at first, but then a little too tight.

  “You two were always so close,” Riley said, putting her second hand on Olive’s other shoulder. “She must have said something. Or left you a note? A sign.”

  Olive shook her head. “No,” she said, her throat growing dry.

  “Have you been getting messages, too?” Riley asked.

  “From Mama?” Olive was confused.

  “No! From Hattie. Your mother found the treasure because of Hattie. Hattie would send her messages. Sometimes in dreams. You said you’d been dreaming about Hattie. What has she shown you?”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “Think!” Riley demanded.

  Olive tried to squirm away but Riley held her tight, pulling her closer, her arms now wrapped around Olive.

  “Don’t you get it? How special you are?” Riley said, tightening her grip even more. “Your mother didn’t understand, either. Not at first. But she was chosen. Chosen by Hattie. Hattie gave her powers, gave her the ability to see things beyond any normal person can see. I didn’t understand at first. I kept asking myself why. Why Lori of all people? She didn’t even want the gifts Hattie gave her. I thought it was so unfair, infuriating. But now I finally understand. It was right there under my nose the whole time but I never put it together.”

  “Put what together?”

  “They’re related! Lori was Hattie’s great-granddaughter.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true. You and your mother have Hattie’s blood running in your veins. Do you understand how special that makes you? That’s why you’ve been dreaming about her—you’re connected by blood. Tell me what you’ve dreamed, Ollie.”

  “I . . . I don’t remember,” Olive said.

  “Think, dammit!”

  And as Olive tried to squirm out of her aunt’s grasp, she did think.

  She thought of how her mother had pulled away from Riley in the last days before she left, had refused to go out with her and how they’d fought.

  She thought of her mother’s diary, of the final entry, how the writing was messier, more hurried. Was it possible that her mother hadn’t written it? That someone else had?

  She thought of looking through her mother’s closet and how the only pair of shoes missing was the beaded ivory slippers. Of how that meant she’d been wearing them when she left the house for the final time.

  “How did you get my mother’s shoes?” Olive asked.

  Riley looked at her a second, her face tense. Then she smiled, but it was a sickening I’m about to tell you a big lie and you’d better believe it sort of smile. “She gave them to me.”

  Olive kicked at her aunt, dug her fingernails into Riley’s arms.

  “Help!” she screamed, thinking if she screamed loud enough, Helen and Nate would hear, would come running.

  Riley pulled Olive closer, spinning her, wrapping one arm around her neck, holding her other hand over her mouth.

  “Shh, Ollie. Calm down. You’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  But as she spoke, her arm tightened around Olive’s neck.

  “Please, Aunt Riley.” Olive wheezed out the words with what little air could get through.

  “Shh, my special, special girl,” Riley cooed, pulling her arm even tighter.

  CHAPTER 50

  Helen

  S SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

  Hattie Breckenridge was choking Olive.

  Not the faint ghost of Hattie, but an actual, physical Hattie.

  They were standing not twelve feet away from Helen, by the wrecked foun
dation of Hattie’s house, and Hattie was behind Olive, holding her, the crook of her elbow against Olive’s throat.

  The moon cast a bright light, fully illuminating the scene in the bog.

  They’d been following the doe, jogging along behind it through the woods. It would get far ahead of them, nearly out of sight, then stop and wait for them to catch up before moving on. When Olive’s scream pierced the silence, the deer broke into a run, Helen and Nate right behind her. She’d heard Nate stumble, fall to the ground with a “Shit!,” but hadn’t turned back. Helen followed the deer to the bog, and as she stood at the tree line, she saw Olive and Hattie about four yards away. A man was crumpled on the ground beside them.

  Helen sprinted up behind the figure in the white dress with the long dark hair. She got to her, grabbed her hair, screamed, “Let her go!”

  But the dark hair came off in her hands.

  A wig.

  And under it, a bare neck with a circular snake tattoo.

  “Riley! What the hell are you doing?”

  Helen grabbed Riley’s shoulders, pulling her back. Olive dropped to the ground, gasping. Olive looked up and Helen saw she was wearing the necklace: Hattie’s necklace, the circle, triangle, and square glinting in the moonlight.

  “You!” Riley screamed at Helen. “Why couldn’t you have just gone away? Left before it was too late?”

  Riley swung at Helen, catching her right in the bridge of the nose, sending her reeling backward, the pain bright and blinding. She sunk down to her knees on the bed of wet, spongy moss.

  “Helen!” Nate yelled. He sounded far away.

  Riley stood over Helen. “Why couldn’t you have just given up? Gone back where you came from!” She kicked Helen hard in the side, sending her toppling over from the pain and force of it.

  “Hattie,” Helen said, half in answer to Riley’s question, half calling to her, hoping she would come and save them.

  “Hattie! It’s all about Hattie. She comes to you people and you don’t even want her to! You don’t even try. And why you, Helen? You’re not even related. You’re nothing. No one. Just a former history teacher who happened to put up a haunted beam. A beam I gave you. She would never have come to you if it wasn’t for me!”