But the world was not simple.
She knew this.
Soon, Nate was asleep again.
“I know what I saw,” she whispered once more, to herself, to the night, to whoever (or whatever) might be listening.
JULY 13, 2015
Helen woke up on the floor of the house, body stiff and sore. She was sure she could hear the faint sound of creaking, swaying: the sound a body hanging from a noose would make.
She stared up at the beam, squinted her eyes, searching for a shadow, a sign that Hattie was there. But she wasn’t.
And neither was Nate.
His side of the sleeping bag was empty. His clothes were gone from the floor. Helen looked at her watch. Six in the morning. Too early for Nate to be up and out of bed normally. Maybe he’d gone back to the trailer to sleep. She unzipped the sleeping bag and climbed out.
“Nate?” she called.
Nothing.
The windowless house was dark. It was like being sealed in a wooden box. A coffin. Buried like Hattie.
But Hattie hadn’t been buried in a coffin, had she?
Helen thought back to what Riley had told her: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.
That’s where the smell came from. That horrible, sweet rotting smell layered with the damp earthy smell of the bog.
She’s down there and she’s still got the noose around her neck.
Then, knowing it was silly to check, but unable to stop herself, she stepped into the kitchen, passing beneath the beam, and looked in the corner. Empty.
“Hattie?” she said, voice low, unsure of itself. “Are you here somewhere?”
She waited, listening, watching, feeling a little self-conscious, a little crazy even. Was she really talking to a ghost? What would Nate say if he heard her?
Maybe he was right. Maybe she’d imagined it. She’d had too much wine, and maybe she’d had a nightmare, a nightmare come to life.
But that smell, she told herself. Could she really have imagined that smell? And the sound of the creature’s voice. Ground glass on glass. The sound of pain.
It was real and she knew it.
She pulled on her jeans and got the hell out of the house, walked down the hill to the trailer.
“Nate? You here?”
Not in the kitchen. No coffee had been made. No granola left out.
And he wasn’t in the bed.
The truck was parked in the driveway, windshield covered in dew; the keys hung on the little brass hook next to the front door. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and called him. It went straight to voice mail.
She clenched her jaw, felt the air around her grow thin, the walls moving in a little closer.
No need to panic,Helen told herself.He must have gone for a walk. Early-morning bird-watching maybe. That’s a Nate-like thing to do.
“Nate is fine,” she said to the empty trailer.
