Helen nodded, taking another step back, knowing she must be close to the door. She held one hand in front of her, palm out in anit’s okay, let’s calm downgesture. With her other hand, she reached back, feeling for the doorway.
“I saw her,” Nate said. “Jesus, I must be going crazy, because I swear to you, I actually saw her.”
He collapsed back down in the kitchen chair, let the ax slip from his hand, slumped forward, put his arms up on the table, and buried his face in them.
Helen went to him. She put a hand on his arm. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
Tell me what she did to you.
He lifted his head. “I was out in the woods, tracking the deer. I know you think I’m crazy, but she’s real, Helen. But now I think…oh god, I don’t know what I think.”
“So you were in the woods. Is that where you saw Hattie?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I was walking in circles for what felt like hours. She knew I was following her. It’s something she does. A game she plays? Then the circles got wider, and soon, I was following her along the edge of the bog. Only…it was different.”
“Different how?”
“Maybe I somehow stumbled onto another bog? Or another part of the bog. An area we haven’t explored yet.”
Helen nodded but knew there was no other bog. No other part of the bog.
“What did you see there, Nate?”
“There was a house. A little cabin. A ramshackle thing. Crooked, leaning to the left.” He looked at her and she nodded again, encouraging him to continue. “There was a chimney with smoke coming out of it. And the door was open. My doe…I mean, the doe, the white doe I’d been following, she walked right in. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing, but I knew I had her then. She was trapped. I got my camera ready and ran, ran toward the cabin. But when I got there…”
“What?” Helen asked. “What, Nate? What happened?”
Nate pushed his chair back, stood up, rubbing his face.
“There was no deer inside. But there was a woman just inside the front door. A woman with dark hair and eyes. She was wearing a white dress. And the way she looked at me, Helen…” He paused, his eyes locked on Helen’s. In them, she saw pure terror. His voice shook. “It was like she knew me, Helen. Like she’d been waiting for me.”
CHAPTER 40
Olive
SEPTEMBER 13, 2015
Mama! It was Mama there, dancing in the center of the circle.
But how? Why?
Olive’s mind scrambled for explanations and for an idea of what she was supposed to do next.
If only she had a cell phone, like every other fourteen-year-old kid on the planet, then she could sneak back behind the bar, call or text her dad and Aunt Riley, tell them she’d found her mom, to hurry up and come quick.
But she didn’t have a phone and she was stuck here, in this old bar and lounge at Dicky’s hotel.
Think,she told herself.
Olive thought about tracking a skittish deer when hunting, how you had to keep it in your sights and follow carefully until you had the perfect shot, until just the right moment.
Her one and only shot with Mama was trying to get her alone, to talk to her one-on-one.
“She speaks!” one of the men said, as if reading Olive’s mind.
“Hattie, speak to us!” a woman said. “Tell us your secrets. Tell us what it is we must know. Tell us what it is we must do.”
These people sounded ridiculous, hokey, but even though it sounded like something from a cartoon, they seemed serious, and it scared the hell out of Olive.
