The stained and worn maroon carpeting had been pulled up, cut out in this part of the room. The bare wooden floor was exposed: old wide pine boards held down with rusty nails. But there, on the floor in front of the fireplace, someone had done a drawing in yellow chalk. Olive saw the piece of thick chalk resting on the mantel with the candles—it was like what kids used on the elementary school playground to draw courts for hopscotch or foursquare.

But this hadn’t been done by a kid playing hopscotch.

The design on the floor was a large circle. Inside the circle, an equilateral triangle. In the center of the triangle, a square with another circle inside it. And in the center of the final circle, an eye.

The same design as Mama’s necklace!

I see all.

This was proof! Proof that Mama had been here. Had she done the drawing?

Olive stepped toward it, then back again. She had a really bad feeling that if she stepped into the circle, something terrible would happen.

It was a door, maybe.

A door to the mirror world.

Jeez, she told herself. Enough with the crazy thoughts.

“What are you doing up here?” a voice barked behind her. She jumped like an idiot, like a girl in a movie who is easily frightened. She nearly stumbled into the chalk drawing (doorway) but stopped herself.

She turned.

It was a man with a little potbelly that hung over his too-tight jeans, which had been tucked into shiny black cowboy boots with toes so pointy they looked dangerous. His salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back in a greasy-looking ponytail. He wore a denim shirt with silver snaps that was tight over the bulge of his belly. He had an angular, chiseled face with a big cowboy-style handlebar mustache. And strapped to his waist was a fancy tooled-leather holster holding a single-action revolver. He put his fingers on it now, just resting there, just making sure the gun was there, and making sure Olive knew it.

The infamous Dicky Barns.

CHAPTER 17

Helen

AUGUST 3, 2015

“You’re going to do what?” Nate said.

“Riley’s bringing her Ouija board over. We’re going to bring it up to the house and try to contact Hattie.”

Nate was crouched over his laptop, reading about deer and albinism. He’d had a couple more sightings of his white deer in the last two and a half weeks but still hadn’t managed to get a picture of her. His nature journal was open to the spread where he’d drawn the deer and taken notes. The shiny, heavily penciled-in eyes of the doe gazed up at Helen.

Nate stared at her. “This is a joke, right?”

Helen laughed. “I know, it’s a little crazy, isn’t it? Riley suggested it. You know she’s into all that occult stuff.”