The Invited

by Jennifer McMahon

She would tell him now. Tell him everything. “I—”

  “And where have you been every damn night? Last night you didn’t get in until two in the morning. Now look at you—creeping in just before midnight, all dressed up, fancy shoes on.”

  “Dustin, there’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

  “Who is he?” Dustin demanded.

  “What? There is no he,” she said.

  “Half the town knows it,” he said. “How do you think it feels to go in to work, have the guys whispering about what a dumbass I am because my wife is sleeping around and I don’t even have a fucking clue?”

  “Dustin, I’ve never been unfaithful, how could you even—”

  “I’m not going to be the dumbass anymore,” he snarled. He stood up from the kitchen table, stumbling a bit. “You know what I keep thinking about? How back when I asked you to marry me, you took your time answering—you weren’t sure—and me, I needed you to say yes. I needed you to say yes because I didn’t want to live without you. I loved you that much.”

  “I loved you, too, Dustin. I love you still.”

  “Get out.”

  “But, Dustin, I—”

  “Get the fuck out of my house! Go on! Before your daughter wakes up and finds out the truth about her slut of a mother!”

  Then he slapped her across the face so hard she staggered backward, fell over.

  Dustin stood over her, face red, fist raised.

  In that moment, she didn’t know him at all.

  CHAPTER 46

  Helen

  SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

  Olive was Hattie’s great-great-granddaughter. Helen could hardly believe it.

  Helen called Riley, but the call went to voice mail. “I found Gloria Gray. You’re not going to believe who it is. Call me as soon as you get this!”

  “Helen, maybe we should wait,” Nate said. “Or go to the police first.”

  Helen laughed. “The police? You mean Officer Friendly, who couldn’t give a shit when someone tried to gas us to death? And what are we going to tell them? That a ghost told me to find Lori Kissner? They already have me flagged in the system as a crazy person, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t know…I—”

  “I’m going to Olive’s right now to talk to Olive. And to Dustin. Are you coming or not?”

  They got in the truck, Helen behind the wheel. She threw the truck into reverse before Nate even had his door closed.

  “Jesus, Helen, slow down,” Nate said as she hit the gas, backing up, spinning the wheel to get them turned around, headlights illuminating their decrepit trailer, the motion-activated camera at the edge of the yard near the woods.

  Helen ignored him and barreled down the driveway, barely slowing when they got to the road and she yanked the wheel to the left, the truck fishtailing a bit.

  “We’re not going to be any help to Olive or her mom if we’re pinned in a wrecked truck,” Nate reminded her.

  “I’ve got it, Nate,” she said. He was quiet.

  The headlights turned the road into a brightly lit tunnel of thick trees, the vegetation reaching for them, everything feeling very alive, very much like it wanted to overtake them.

  Three-quarters of a mile down the road, they came to the dented mailbox at the end of a long, steep drive. KISSNER was painted on the side in white paint.

  Helen turned up the drive, the truck bouncing over the washouts and ruts.

  They could see the house at the top, all the lights on.

  “Looks like they’re home,” Nate said.

  They pulled in behind a half-ton Chevy pickup. Helen cut the engine, reached for the door handle. Nate leaned over, put a hand on her arm.

  “Hey,” he said. “Let’s play it cool in there, huh? Maybe Gloria—Lori—really did run off with someone. We don’t have the whole story. Maybe no one needs saving at all.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” she said, opening the door and jumping out, but she knew he was wrong.

  Olive was in danger. She could feel it all around her. She could practically hear Hattie’s voice screaming at her through time and space: Save her!

  Helen ran for the front door. It stood open.

  “Wait,” Nate ordered, catching up to Helen, pulling her back, and going in first. “Hello?” he called. “Olive? Dustin?”

  Helen was right behind him. They were in a stripped-down front hall with plywood floors, bare stud walls. The living room was to their right, the kitchen to the left. All the lights were blazing. There was a table saw set up in the living room, sheets of drywall leaning against the wall, tools everywhere.

  “God, it looks like our house—what’s he doing?” Nate said.

  Helen shook her head. “Olive said they were doing some renovations. I had no idea…”

  Nate crossed the living room, jogged up the stairs. Helen stood in the living room, heard his footsteps up above, heard him calling out, “Hello?,” and then he was back downstairs.

  “No one’s here,” he said.

  Helen checked the bathroom and the kitchen—both rooms had half-finished walls, exposed wiring and plumbing. The kitchen door was open, and Helen stepped through it, looked around the yard. She was sure she’d heard something, a voice calling. Nate came outside and stood beside her, started to speak. She shushed him.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked, and right away, she was the crazy lady again, the woman who heard screams in the woods, saw ghosts.

  “No,” Nate said. “I didn’t, but—”

  And then a voice cut through the darkness. A man’s voice, angry and not too far off.

  “Ollie!” he yelled. “Ollie, get back here!”

  CHAPTER 47

  Olive

  SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

  “Ollie!” Daddy called behind her. “Ollie, get back here!”

  Olive ran with the shotgun held tight in both hands, kept it firm against her body, barrel pointing up to the left.

  Never run with a gun, Daddy always told her, but if there was ever a time for breaking the rules, this was it.

  She got to the edge of the yard, passed the old hollowed-out maple she and Mama used to leave gifts for each other in. The place she’d hidden the necklace she now wore.

  Mama was ahead of her, just a blur of white moving through the trees like a deer-headed ghost.

  And it was like chasing a ghost, so much so that Olive wondered if maybe this wasn’t her mother, if it really was Hattie.

  But why would Hattie be wearing her mama’s special fairy-tale shoes? Even in the dark, from a distance, she could make them out—could see the sparkling light from the flower-shaped beading on top.

  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 wet. 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, clutching the gun 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 fell to his knees, then forward, facedown, motionless. Limp as an old rag doll.

  CHAPTER 48

  Helen

  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.

  “Dammit. 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

  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?