“Sounds great, hon,” she said, only half paying attention because her mind was on other things. She was working out the best way to get the bricks into the house as soon as possible, to test out the theory and see who, or what, they might call back.
AUGUST 5, 2015
She was dreaming about the fire. She was in the factory beside other women who had to shout to be heard over the deafening thrum of the looms, the machines making the walls and floor vibrate, turning the mill into a living thing.
“Fire!” someone shrieked. “Run!”
And then she smelled the smoke, turned and saw the flames, how they licked up the far wall like the tongue of a great demon, gobbling the dry wooden beams, the painted floor and ceiling. She ran to the front doors, her and a throng of women and girls in their plain dresses with work aprons over the top, hair pulled back. They pushed, they pounded and clawed and screamed, but the heavy wooden door did not budge.
Trapped. They were trapped.
She thought of the windows. Thought that if they were calm, if they could all get to the windows and break through them, they could escape. But the women, in full panic now, screaming, choking on the smoke, which had grown black and thick, kept pushing at the doors, at the women between themselves and the door. She was pinned there, pressed tight by the bodies around her. She could not move.
Helen opened her eyes, took a gasping breath of cool air.
She was not in the factory being crushed against the locked door while flames overtook the building.
But where was she?
Whowas she?
I am Helen,she told herself, taking a deep breath, trying to slow her racing heart.I’m married to Nate. We used to live in Connecticut, where we were both middle school teachers. Now we live in Vermont and are building our own house.
She reached for Nate beside her, but he was not there.
She rolled over, realized she was not in her bed but on the plywood subfloor of the unfinished house.
Her head ached and felt foggy.
It was the smoke. The smoke from the mill.
But that was only a dream.
There was a little pile of half a dozen bricks from the mill beside her, one side of each stained black. There was a flashlight beside them, turned off.
She’d snuck back up to the house after Nate had gone to bed and brought the bricks into the house, hoping that they might trigger something, that they might pull someone back. But after sitting in the dark with the bricks for a while, she had realized her mistake. Hattie had come back not just because of the beam but because she had a connection to this place. What reason would one of the mill workers have to show herself to Helen? To come back to a little half-built house at the edge of a bog in Hartsboro, forty miles from where the mill once stood. She’d been debating going back down to the trailer but decided that she’d stay a little while in case Hattie decided to show up again. Maybe Hattie would give her a sign about what she was supposed to do next. She must’ve dozed off on the floor, waiting in vain.
She sat up, pushed the button on her watch: 3:33a.m.
She was in the opening between the kitchen and the living room, under the hanging tree beam, facing into the kitchen. She studied the corner where she’d seen Hattie three weeks ago. She looked up at the beam, at the dark shape in the dim moonlight that filtered through the windows.
There were voices behind her. Whispering. Talking so low, it sounded more like radio static than human voices, but she knew that was what they were. She could recognize the ebb and flow of conversation, of two people trying not to be heard.
Was Nate here?
She had an absurd thought then: that she would turn and he’d be there, talking with his white doe; that the deer was actually Hattie, just like Riley said. They’d be sitting together, and the deer would be whispering to him, speaking perfect English, singing him a little song maybe…Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.Or maybe something else. Something strangely romantic—Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me—as she looked up at him with her big, glossy doe eyes.
She heard a giggle, but it was all wrong—low and crackly, like it was coming through a far-off AM radio station. She didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know what was there.
Slowly, she forced herself to turn her head and look, to see who, or what, was behind her.
There, sitting in the living room in the place the new brick hearth would go, was Hattie. She was on a stool.Where does a ghost get a stool?Helen wondered. Hattie was wearing the same white dress she’d had on the last time Helen had seen her, but there was no rope around her neck. She was smiling, laughing. And at her feet, a young woman sat, having her hair braided by Hattie. The woman shared Hattie’s dark hair and eyes. Helen saw the young woman wore a plain blue dress, but it was tattered and burned, stained brown and yellow from smoke. And she carried the smell of smoke on her; Helen caught a whiff of it in the air.
This must be Hattie’s daughter, Jane. The one no one knew what had happened to.
But Helen knew.
The pieces clicked into place. She didn’t know the details yet, but she was sure of one thing: Hattie’s daughter, Jane, had died in the fire at the mill.
