“Oh my god, not at all,” Riley said, reaching over, giving Helen’s arm a squeeze. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a big believer in this kind of stuff! Please tell me.”

“Well, ever since we got here, I’ve had this feeling, this sense.” She stopped.

Riley watched her. Not like she was crazy, but openly. She was genuinely curious.

“This feeling,” Helen continued, “that someone was watching me. I’ve almost caught sight of her a few times, just a hint of movement out of the corner of my eye, you know?”

Riley nodded excitedly.

“And I think…I think maybe she left something for me. A sort of gift.”

“What kind of gift?”

“A cloth bundle with an old rusty nail and an animal tooth sitting in a little nest of straw. Nate thinks the tooth came from a deer or a sheep maybe.”

Riley frowned. “Do you have it still?”

“Yeah, it’s in the trailer.”

“So when you say you saw her, it was just a shadow, a little hint of movement?”

“No. I mean, at first, yes. But then last night—I actually saw her. She looked like a real person. As solid as you look now sitting here beside me.”

“Did you see her out in the bog?”

“No.” Helen shook her head. “Here in the house.”

“No way! Here?” Riley turned and looked back at the house right behind them. “Wait, is this what Nate was talking about before? About the haunted beam?”

Helen nodded. “We installed that beam yesterday and spent the night in the new house last night. I talked Nate into it. I thought it would be fun—like camping out. I got up in the middle of the night and walked into the kitchen and she was there, standing in the corner. A dark-haired woman with dark eyes, a rope around her neck.”

“Shii-it!” Riley said, drawing the word out slowly. “What’d she do?”

“She…spoke to me.”

“No.”

“Yes!” Helen said. She looked around to make sure that Nate was still out of earshot.

“No way!” Riley looked both shocked and excited. “She actually spoke? And you heard her?”

“It was kind of a horrible sound. It made me feel cold all over.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said one word: Jane.”

“Jane?” Riley was leaning close now, her face flushed. “That’s her daughter.”

“Her daughter.” Helen repeated.

If Hattie’s daughter’s name was Jane, this was proof that Helen hadn’t imagined the whole thing. It wasn’t any wine or nightmare that had given Helen that piece of information. She had seen Hattie’s ghost, and the ghost had really spoken to her, told her something she had no way of knowing.

Jane.

“Jane was about twelve years old when Hattie was killed,” Riley said. “She disappeared right after.”

“Oh my god. What happened to her?”