“Riley thinks that maybe if we call to Hattie, she’ll show herself again,” Helen explained to Nate now.
“Yeah, and maybe Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny will show up, too,” Nate scoffed. “Bigfoot, too. Hell, maybe Elvis.” He shook his head, looked at Helen the way she’d seen him look at his students when they’d disappointed him in some way. “I think all that weed you’ve been smoking with Riley is messing with your common sense, Helen.” He took a breath, reached for her hand. “Don’t you get how totally fucking nuts this is?”
“I think—” she started, wanting to finish her true thought: that you’re being an asshole, but instead, she took a breath and said, “—that we need to be open to the possibility that there’s more to this world than meets the eye. I know you think I imagined it, but I know what I saw, Nate. I trust the evidence of my senses. It was Hattie. And if she showed herself once, she might do it again.”
He looked at her. “I’m getting a little worried here, Helen. I don’t want you to lose your shit completely out here in the woods and turn into this total I see dead people and read auras, and let me tell you about my past lives kind of person.”
Helen took a deep breath. “No losing my shit completely,” she said. “Just keeping an open mind. I promise.”
“I know this hasn’t been a cakewalk,” he said, voice softening. “The move here, the house-building, living in this crappy trailer—it’s been way harder than we’d both imagined.”
Harder than you’d imagined, she thought. I fucking tried to tell you, but you knew better.
“Few things in life ever go the way you imagine they will, Nate,” she said, then left him to go up to the house to wait for Riley.
* * *
. . .
Riley pulled into the driveway twenty minutes later with the Ouija board and more pot. Nate was down in the trailer, thinking about his white deer, no doubt. It occurred to Helen that she had never questioned the existence of the deer, even though she’d never seen it, and Nate had failed to get a photo of it. She filed that away for their next argument about whether she’d really seen Hattie in the kitchen. Helen led Riley into the new house and showed her the strange bundle with the tooth and nail. She’d been meaning to show it to her for days but wanted to wait until Nate wasn’t around. “What do you make of it? Is it a curse or something? A binding spell, maybe?”
Riley raised her eyebrows.
“I checked some books on witchcraft out of the library,” Helen explained. “Remember? I thought everyone knew about my reading habits…”
Riley picked up the bundle. “I don’t think it’s a binding spell. It looks more like an amulet of protection. Both the tooth and the nail, they’re used in spells to protect and ward off evil. Where did you say it came from?”
“It was left for us on our front steps our first night here. I don’t know what to think.”
Riley looked at Helen like Helen herself was a puzzle Riley was trying to solve.
They sat on the floor across from each other, directly underneath the old beam. Their legs were crossed, the Ouija board resting on their knees, fingers of all four hands resting lightly on the plastic planchette. The candles they’d lit in a circle around them flickered.
Helen hadn’t used a Ouija board since she was a young girl at slumber parties asking about crushes, whom she would marry, when she was going to die. But back then, the spirits were vague, just giving teasing answers, never really telling her just what she wanted to know.
“We call to the spirit of Hattie Breckenridge,” Riley said. “Are you here with us, Hattie? We wish to speak with you.”
Helen closed her eyes and listened to the wind blow out across the bog and up the hill, push in through the windows at the front of the house that they’d left open. All she could think of was Hattie Breckenridge and how much she wanted her to appear.
She wanted Riley to see her, too, to have some other human being know she wasn’t nuts, she wasn’t losing her shit completely, as Nate had said.
She just didn’t want to hear her voice. No, she didn’t ever want to hear that sound again.
“Please, Hattie,” Helen said. “Let us know you’re here.”
Prove I’m not crazy.
Prove I didn’t imagine you.
Come back.
The planchette twitched to life under her fingers.
Helen had found a section in one of the library books—Communicating with the Spirit World—about Ouija boards. The book warned to be very careful—that using a board was like opening a door and you could never be sure what might come through.
“Be clear of your intentions,” the book had said.
But what were her intentions?
To make contact. To learn about Hattie. About this place. It was more than intentions: it was a need, a compulsion that she felt pulling her along, begging her to work harder, to find out all she could by whatever means necessary, even if it meant talking to ghosts with a Ouija board.
“Is that you?” Helen asked Riley as the plastic zigzagged around the board. “Are you moving it?”
“No,” Riley whispered. She was studying the little clear window on the planchette, noting which letters it rested on for a moment before swooping off to the next.
“B-C-A-W…,” Riley read out. The planchette slid almost off the corner of the board closest to Riley, Helen having to stretch to keep her right hand on it. The temperature in the room seemed to drop. The planchette looped back to the alphabet and continued to spell. Now Riley and Helen read in unison.
“O…F…U.” The planchette sketched out a final large circle and then settled on the image of the moon in the upper right corner and was still. There was a damp, rotten smell in the air that clung to the back of Helen’s throat.
“That doesn’t spell anything,” Helen whispered.
Riley repeated the letters again, trying to pick words out. “B caws…of u,” she said. “Holy shit, Helen, she means ‘because of you’!”
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be real, could it?
The damp rotten smell intensified.
“Be wary when using a spirit board,” the library book had warned. “Remember that spirits, like the living, can easily lead you astray.”
Riley spoke again.
“Because of who, Hattie? Because of Helen?”
The planchette slid swiftly left, stopping at the word Yes.
“What’s because of Helen?” Riley asked.
The planchette moved quickly now and they read the letters together: C-O-M-B-A-K.
“ ‘Come back,’ ” Helen said quietly. Her mouth was bone-dry and her voice sounded creaky to herself. “You came back because of me?”
Yes.
The thrill of it hit Helen like a jolt, making all the hairs on her arms stand on end. And it wasn’t just that Hattie was speaking directly to her; it was the change in the air—the coldness, the crackling hum like the whole room was full of strange electricity.
She was talking to a ghost. The spirit of a woman who had lived and died here, on these lands.
“The spirit board is one of the most effective methods for communicating with the spirit world,” the book had told her, but she hadn’t dared to believe it would actually work. Not like this.
“Was it because we put up the beam?” Helen asked. “The wood from the hanging tree?”
Yes.
The planchette moved again, making Helen’s fingertips tingle. P-L-E-E-Z.
“Please?” Helen said. “Please what? Is there something you need? Something you want me to do?”
What would Hattie ask? More important, what was Helen willing to do for her? Anything, she thought right now. I’d do anything she asked me to.
Riley was watching her with a mix of awe and worry. “Helen, I’m not sure…,” she started to say,
then the planchette moved beneath their fingers, gliding smoothly around the board. Helen watched as it stopped with the little window over letters, Riley reading each one out loud.
“G-O-T-O-D-O-N-O-V-O-N-A-N-D-S-U-N-S.”
Then the planchette moved to GOODBYE.
“Does that mean anything to you?” Helen asked Riley.
“Not sure,” Riley said.
“ ‘Got odono von and suns…,’ ” Helen said.
“ ‘Go to,’ ” Riley said. “It could be ‘go to.’ ”
“ ‘Go to donovon and suns’?”
“Oh my god! Donovan and Sons!” Riley said. “Maybe it’s the old mill. Is that what you mean, Hattie? The old mill in Lewisburg?”
The planchette did not move.
“I don’t think she’s here anymore,” Helen said.
“Hattie?” Riley said again. “Are you with us?”
No. The planchette held still, no longer full of the thrum of energy Helen had felt, just a piece of lifeless plastic. The damp rotten smell had dissipated. The air felt warm and thick. Used up.
Hattie was gone.
CHAPTER 18
Olive
AUGUST 3, 2015
“Mr. Barns,” Olive said.
“That’s me,” he said, squaring his broad shoulders. “But who the hell are you and what are you doing up here?”
“I was looking for you,” she said.
But now that she’d found him, she wasn’t sure what to say, what to do. Seeing him there with his gun, the strange symbol chalked on the floor, the covered mirror, she felt her nerve slipping away.
Maybe she should tell him she was looking for something, an “antique” of some kind? She looked around for inspiration but nothing seemed plausible—a chair? But what if he tried to sell her one of those chairs in the circle…?
“You’re not supposed to be up here,” he said. His teeth were straight and perfect, like movie-star teeth. He looked like he could have walked straight off the set of some old Western. Like those Clint Eastwood movies her dad sometimes watched.
“I’m sorry. I thought this was a store,” she said.
“Downstairs only. Didn’t you see the sign?”
There hadn’t been any sign telling her to stay downstairs, no roped-off area or curtain.
“No. I’m sorry—I guess I missed it? I came in and called out, but I guess you didn’t hear me.”
“I’m closed anyway,” he said, scowling at her.
She remembered the OPEN sign on the front door. But she didn’t want to argue. Not with a man who had a gun strapped to his waist.
“I’m not here to shop,” she admitted.
“Well, what is it you want, then? If you’re doing some school fund-raiser, selling cookies or raffle tickets or some shit like that, I’m not interested.”
“No. Nothing like that. I’m Lori Kissner’s daughter.” She watched him, hoping these would be the magic words, the key that unlocked the door; that he might even smile, say, Oh, of course, you’re Lori’s girl, what can I do for you?
He stared at her, poker-faced and silent.
“I heard,” she said, “uh, I heard you two were friends. That she came here sometimes?” She hated how small and unsure her own voice sounded. And it seemed absurd, really. The idea that her mother actually came here, spent time with this man she and Daddy had always made fun of.
Her eyes went to his gun again.
She thought of what Mike had said earlier: It’s the crazy man with the gun.
“A gun is a tool,” her daddy always told her. “But it’s also a deadly weapon. Guns deserve our respect. They demand our focus. When there’s a gun in the room with you, you give it your full attention, Ollie.”
So this is what she did now. She gave that gun her full attention while trying real hard to pretend that’s exactly what she wasn’t doing. She kept it in sight at all times without looking right at it.
“I know Lori, sure. Everyone knows Lori,” he said with a sly smile that made Olive’s skin crawl. “But I wouldn’t say we were friends.”
“But she came here sometimes, right?” Olive persisted.
Was it her imagination, or did he flinch a little here?
He looked from her to the covered mirror, like maybe the answer was there. Maybe the mirror would speak, voice strange and muffled from the heavy drapery-like cloth that covered it. The mirror would tell her the truth.
This man, she knew, was going to lie. She felt it in the way her skin tingled, like she had her very own built-in lie detector. And what was she supposed to do, tell a grown-up who carried a loaded gun everywhere he went that she knew he was full of shit?
“Lots of people come here looking for lots of different things,” he said.
“To talk to dead people?” Olive asked. “Isn’t that what you do here?”
He narrowed his eyes, squinting at her like he was trying to make her smaller and smaller, like if he closed them enough, she might just go away completely.
“Sometimes people come looking for the perfect armoire,” he said. “And sometimes because they have unfinished business with those who have passed.” He started walking, gesturing with his arms, moving in a slow circle. “They have questions they want answered. One final thing they want to say. We offer that opportunity.”
“Is that why my mother came?”
“Your mother,” he said, voice soft at first, then hardening, “she didn’t come here. The only time I ever saw Lori Kissner was when she bagged my groceries over at the market.”
She looked around the room and smiled. “Sorry I bothered you,” she said. “I can see you’re real busy.” She turned to go.
“I’ll walk you out,” he said, following her out of the lounge, down the hall and the curved stairs with their broken banister, through the crowded mess of the lobby, and all the way to the front door, making damn sure she was leaving. She didn’t turn back to look, but she heard him behind her, his footsteps heavy, his breathing raspy. He smelled like stale cigarette smoke and spicy-sweet cologne. When they were out on the porch, he pulled a pack of Marlboro Reds from his shirt pocket and shook one out. Then he pulled his phone from his pocket, started to look at it, the three mannequins behind him seeming to peer over his shoulder.
“Mr. Barns?” She stopped on the rickety front steps and turned back to him.
“What is it?” He took his eyes off his phone and looked down at her, clearly irritated.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but my mom isn’t around anymore. She left me and my dad.”
He nodded. Of course he knew. Everyone knew.
“People in town, they say all kinds of terrible things about my mother. But I just…I just wanted you to know that most of that stuff, I don’t think it’s true.”
He looked at his unlit cigarette, seeming more interested in it than in Olive.
“You said before that the reason people come here, the reason they want to make contact with dead people, is that they have questions they want answered. That’s why I came here today. Not to ask any ghosts or spirits or whatever, but to ask you, an actual living person, if you can help me figure out the truth about my mother.”
He lit his cigarette, took a drag, and watched the smoke that drifted out of his mouth. “Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry in the least. “I can’t help you.”
“Okay,” Olive said. “Sorry to bother you.” She hopped down the steps and headed for Main Street, back toward the village, half thinking she’d see Mike hiding and waiting for her. But he was long gone. “Coward,” she muttered.
When she got to School Street, she turned and doubled back to the old inn, sneaking across people’s backyards. She came up behind the building and walked along the side until she was almost to the porch. She could hear Dicky pacing across the rotten floorboards. She
peeked around the corner and saw he was on his phone.
“Well, her daughter was just here!”
Olive’s heart thumped hard in her chest.
“I don’t know,” Dicky said, agitated, practically shouting. “But she was asking questions. She knows something. I don’t know who she’s been talking to, but she knows Lori used to come here.”
Olive continued to watch, crouched down, peering around the corner. Dicky’s boot heels banged against the worn floorboards as he paced back and forth.
“I don’t think so. No. We need to meet again and figure out what we should do. All of us.”
He waited, listening.
“I know what we agreed to! I’m not a fucking idiot! Don’t give me this unsafe shit. Don’t you think we’re already unsafe?”
He listened again.
“Well, how much time do you need for that?”
He paced faster, boot heels clicking.
“Jesus! That’s too long. I’m telling you, this kid is suspicious and who knows who she’s been talking to.”
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