And she wasn’t alone in here. She felt that instantly.
She could hear something.
Not creaking this time, and not Nate snoring in the other room, but the quiet breathing of someone trying not to be heard.
She turned to her right and looked in her blind spot, and her bladder nearly let go.
There was a woman there.
She was standing just to the right of the wide doorway, her back against the wall, her body right where a set of kitchen shelves would go. She wore a dirty white dress, black lace-up shoes. Helen saw the woman’s wild inky-black hair, the dark circles like bruises under her eyes, and knew exactly who she was. She knew, just looking into her eyes. She would have known her even without seeing the heavy hemp rope looped around her neck: a coarse noose like a macabre necklace, the frayed end of the rope hanging to the woman’s waist.
Hattie was here for real this time. Not some little girl playing dress up.
Helen froze. Hattie’s eyes—for this must be Hattie—were black and shimmered like the dark water at the center of the bog.
Helen wanted to speak, to say something—Hattie’s name maybe, or just a simple hello—but there was no air in her chest, and when she opened her mouth, no sound came. She felt like a cartoon fish letting out little bubbles of air, bubbles that rose to the surface and popped without making a sound.
The air felt heavy and cold, as if Helen were wrapped in a blanket of fog. And the smell! The peaty, primordial smell of the bog with something sweet and rotten behind it.
Hattie looked up at the beam above them, the beam from the tree she’d died beneath; the tree whose branch had borne her full weight, the tree that remembered her as she must remember it.
Hattie touched the noose around her neck, ran her pale fingers over each knob of the braid like a woman praying the rosary. And, like a woman praying, Hattie moved her lips—she was speaking, whispering softly, silently almost, and Helen couldn’t make out what she was saying. She looked more and more distressed as she whispered to herself, her fingers moving along the rope, her eyes still locked on the beam.
Then she looked right at Helen and said one clear word:Jaaane.
Her voice sounded like breaking glass—no, that wasn’t quite right; it was the sound of glass being ground up, being tumbled and smashed. It was a broken, screaming, hissing sort of sound that made Helen’s bowels go icy. The sweet, rotting stench intensified.
“Jane?” Helen croaked back, her throat dry. She wanted to turn and run. To not be here with this…this creature who looked human but was clearly not of this world. Not anymore.
“Babe?”
Helen whirled around.
Nate was sitting up, looking at her. He could see Helen, but his view of the corner where Hattie stood was blocked by the wall.
“Whatcha doing?” he asked, voice thick with sleep and wine.
Helen drew a jagged breath. “Nate,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Come here.”
“What is it?” He unzipped the sleeping bag and staggered forward, naked, his body pale and glowing in the dark. “Don’t tell me that porcupine found its way in here.”
“Look,” Helen said, pointing to the corner. But when her own eyes followed her finger, she saw that Hattie was gone.
“Look at what?”
“She was here!” Helen said. “She was right here, standing in the corner.”
“Who?”
“Hattie.”
“Oh man.” He smiled. “Is our little ghost girl playing tricks on us again?”
“No! This wasn’t Olive. This was therealHattie. She had black hair. An old dress. A noose around her neck.”
“Sweetie,” Nate said, taking her hand. “You imagined it.”
“She was here! I know what I saw. Don’t you smell that?”
