“I know, right? They probably put some new, shiny stainless steel sink in to match their appliances,” Riley said. “Now let’s go find you the perfect beam.”
Riley led them over to the other side of the store, where the large beams were piled and stacked on racks. They all had white tags and were written on with yellow chalk.
“This place is so amazing,” Helen said. “And I can’t thank you enough for offering to open up the historical society for me.” She started looking at the tags on the beams.
“It’s no problem. Is there anything in particular you’re hoping tofind?”
“Anything about our land, really. But mostly, what I’m hoping to find is anything about Hattie Breckenridge.”
“I don’t think there’s all that much, sadly. There are a couple of pictures. There might be an old land deed with her name on it. There could be more I haven’t seen yet—we can look together.”
“Do you know what happened to her?” Helen asked, turning away from the beams, looking at Riley. “I haven’t been able to get any real answers out of anyone in town.”
“I’m sure you haven’t,” Riley said. “It’s kind of a gruesome story and not one folks in Hartsboro are all that proud of.”
“Gruesome?” Olive said. “Awesome! Tell us!”
Olive had never heard the true story of what happened to Hattie. She’d asked her mom, but her mom had said no one knew for sure. Olive couldn’t believe she’d never thought to ask Riley. Of course Riley would know what really happened, and more important, she could trust Riley to tell her the uncensored, no-bullshit truth.
Riley leaned against a stack of wood, pushed her blue bangs out of her eyes, and began. “Well, people believed Hattie was a witch, right? That she had the power to see what was going to happen before it did. Her predictions often came true and it scared people. They believed that maybe she wasn’t just looking into the future but changing it somehow. That things happened because Hattie said they would.”
Olive tried to imagine having this kind of power over people—the ability to make them believe you were capable of seeing into the future, shaping it even.
“One day, she warned everyone that the old schoolhouse would burn down. When it did, three children were killed. Hattie’s daughter was fine—she’d kept her out of school that day, which made Hattie look even more suspicious, right? So Hattie was blamed for the fire, as she’d been blamed for every bad event she’d predicted. See, people then, like now, I guess, are afraid of the things they don’t understand. They want something,someone,to blame.”
“Isn’t it interesting,” Helen said, “how little some things change?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Olive said impatiently. “So what happened to Hattie?”
“They hanged her.”
Helen made a little gasping sound. “Really?”
Riley nodded. “Half the town showed up after the fire at the schoolhouse. Kids had died and they were really pissed. They declared Hattie a witch and they hanged her from an old white pine that stood near the edge of the bog.”
“What year was this?” Helen asked.
“Nineteen twenty-four,” Riley said.
“Wow!” Helen said. “I’ve never heard of anyone being hanged for witchcraft that late. Most of the trials and executions were back in Puritan times.”
“I think it was pretty well covered up. People in Hartsboro weren’t exactly proud of what they’d done.”
“Where’s she buried?” Helen asked.
“No one knows for sure,” Riley said. “Though folks say she was dragged into the center of the bog and weighted down. That she lies there still and that’s what makes it a haunted place.”
“So, she’s in the bog?” Olive asked.
“Maybe,” Riley said.
“And the hanging tree? What happened to that?” Olive asked, trying to think of which tree it could be. There weren’t any big pines along the edge of the bog.
“They cut it down soon after,” Riley said. “Milled it into lumber. They actually used the beams to rebuild the schoolhouse.”
“The one they tore down last year?” Olive said.
“Yeah. Actually, I think I’ve still got a couple of the beams from it right here for sale.” She turned back toward the wood stacked on heavy steel racks.
