Olive saw the lights of Helen and Nate’s trailer through the trees as they skirted around the back edge of their property. Olive imagined them tucked safely inside, Nate watching his wildlife cameras, Helen reading about spirits and hauntings. Olive wondered if Nate’s camera might catch a glimpse of them running through the woods, if he might see the pale mask of her mother and think his albino doe had come back once more, taken human form now.

“Mama!” Olive cried out again, her voice breathy, choked sounding.

But what if it’s not Mama? a worrying voice asked.

What if it’s really Hattie and she’s leading you out into the bog to kill you?

But she didn’t believe that. She knew in her heart (didn’t she?) that Hattie would not hurt her.

Olive could hear the call of frogs coming from the bog, the trill of crickets singing their early fall symphony.

The trees thinned, were replaced by cedar and larch, and the air changed as she got closer to the bog. The rich green bog smell filled Olive’s nose; she could practically taste it on the back of her throat. At last, she broke through the trees, her feet hitting the quaking, quivering surface of the peat, sneakers soaking wet. The bog was layered with a thick blanket of mist that seemed to glow green, to move and reshape itself. Olive came to a fast stop, not far from the ruined stone foundation that was once Hattie’s house.

But where was Hattie?

Not Hattie, she reminded herself. Mama. It was Mama she was chasing.

But where was she?

Olive held still, clutching the gun as she gasped to catch her breath and scanned the bog, eyes searching for movement in the mist. She saw no movement. And now, strangely, the air had gone quiet. Too quiet. The whole bog was holding its breath, waiting to see what might happen next.

Where did she go?

It was as if the figure had disappeared into thin air.

Now you see her, now you don’t.

Poof.

True magic.

Maybe she’d been chasing a ghost after all.

“Mama?” Olive called. Then, drawing up the courage, she called out hesitantly, “Hattie?”

Her father came bursting through the trees behind her, his breathing as loud as a freight train, his hair going in crazy directions, his shirt untucked, his tan work boots sinking in the ground. He staggered like a drunk man, a man unsure of the ground underneath him. But he came toward Olive at a steady clip. “There you are!” he said. “I thought I’d lost you.”

She raised the gun in his direction.

“Stay back,” she warned.

But it turned out she didn’t need to warn him.

Because the deer-headed woman appeared behind him, slipping out of the trees, something in her hands—a large rock—that she raised up just behind Daddy.