Page 1 of The Souls of Lost Lake
1
Ava Coons
JULY 1930
If someone had asked what her earliest memory was—and if she had been truthful—Ava Coons would have described the metallic scent lingering in the air, a blackbird eyeing the grisly scene from its perch on a crooked fence post, and her bare toes curling into a pool of blood on the front porch of her family’s cabin.
That was most of what she could remember. Odd, how a small memory could wipe all others from a person’s mind. She’d been thirteen when they found her wandering the outskirts of the small logging town in northern Wisconsin. The “Wood Nymph,” they’d called her—she supposed it was because she’d come from the woods. Deep in the woods. In the places where, hundreds of years ago, only the Indians knew how to maneuver through them, and now few white men bothered to inhabit. The forest was good for logging, and that was about it. There were even rumors that it was in danger of limitation because of a new government movement to turn the woods into national forestry. Habitation this far north was for the hardy, not the cultured—especially during these troubled times when the economy had gone bust and work in these parts was scarcer than a tick on the back of a coon dog.
Ava dangled her legs as she perched on a wood barrel, toppedand sealed with its tin binding. Inside, the contents boasted a sort of liquid prohibitionists would be appalled to see out in the open. But again, this was up north. No one here cared about laws and rights, or anything American other than the freedom to exist. To remember. But she didn’t even have that. It had been six years since they’d found her, covered head to toe in dried blood that wasn’t her own. They said she’d kept muttering something about “they’re all dead, they’re all dead.” Yet they never found anyone. No bodies. No family. Nothing. Except for blood, and an ax.
Even now, blades intrigued Ava, and she couldn’t rightly explain why. But that ax had been heavy. A logger’s ax. Too heavy for a slip of a girl to wield over her head and incite that much inferred carnage. Still, she was the only survivor. Assuming anyone was actually dead. Without bodies, there was no case, no broken laws, no ghastly crime scene. There was just Ava Coons, the Wood Nymph, and her empty memories. Her parents—her brothers? They were shadow people in her memory, or who she saw from time to time out of the corner of her eye. When she looked directly at them, they vanished. It was their thing, she supposed, the vanishing. Vanishing left the questions, and the questions, if Ava thought too long about them, made her think she was going crazy.
“Here.” Ned Hampton jabbed a peppermint stick in her direction. When she took it, he left a dirty fingerprint on its sticky side.
Ava stuck it in the corner of her mouth anyway. Like a cigar. She’d admired men who smoked cigars. It made them look like one of them Chicago gangsters minus the Tommy gun.
“I’m not a kid, Ned. Don’t need candy.” She mouthed the peppermint stick. It was delicious, but she wasn’t going to admit that to Ned.
The older man, who had to have twenty or so years on her, assessed her for a moment. It had been six years, after all. She was nineteen now—and she wasn’t married or nothin’. She was still living with the Widower Frisk and his wife by common-law marriage, Jipsy. Funny how most girls her age had at least married witha kid on the way, but she was stuck. Stuck at age thirteen when time began and yet never progressed.
Ned spit on the ground, a long stream of yellow tobacco. “I know that. But your teeth need brushed.”
“Don’t got me a toothbrush.” Ava slurped around the peppermint. She hiked a foot up on top of the barrel, her boot busting at the side seam, and her overalls leg lifting to reveal a sockless ankle.
“I can see that.” Ned rolled his eyes, and his eyebrows, connected in the middle to make one long caterpillar, lifted. “What’s with Jipsy anyway? She ain’t never been no mama to you, that’s for sure.”
Ava gave Ned a crooked smile and a wave of her hand. “Frisk borrows me his from time to time. I’m fine.”
Ned eyed her for a long second. “You sure?”
There was something gentlemanly about the logger. Ava knew if she gave him half a nod, he’d hoist her over his shoulder and haul her off to be his own common-law bride. And there was a preacher in town now! So there was no excuse for “loose livin’,” as Jipsy called it—even though she was faithfully committed to Frisk with no intention of being anything but his wife, even if the state said it wasn’t legal.
“Just goin’ to sit there all day?” Ned asked. He seemed reluctant to take his leave, even though he’d finished his purchases in the small general store.
“On this delightful thing?” Ava patted the side of the barrel. “Someone’s got to guard the moonshine, Ned, you know that.”
He snickered so intensely it should have cleared out his sinuses altogether. “Ava Coons, you’d best figger out your life. It ain’t pausin’ for you.”
She didn’t allow Ned to see his comment spear into her soul and draw blood. Instead, she waved him off. “One of these days.”
“Sure. Sure.” He finally started off toward the camp, a burlap sack filled with goods slung over his shoulder. “One of these days,” he repeated.
Ava watched him go, lanky, familiar, yet so superficial. He didn’treally know her. She didn’t really know him. But they’d known each other since the day she’d first wandered into Tempter’s Creek. Still. Knowin’ andknowin’weren’t the same thing. And if she didn’t know herself, well, how could anyone else figure out who she was? She had a name. She had a vague memory. A bloody one at that.
A blackbird cawed from across the dirt road, and Ava looked up to meet its beady black eye and caress its brilliant feathery coat of black.
Bloody memories weren’t worth dredging up.
So here she sat. On a barrel of whiskey. Not even known to herself.
Arwen Blythe
PRESENT DAY
Even in sleep, the missing haunted her. Trailed behind her as if she’d somehow run out ahead of them and forgotten to wait up. It was these uninvited dreams—visions maybe?—that kept Arwen with questions lingering in the recesses of her mind. Why her? Why the missing? Why did they visit her, dead or alive, real or imagined, in her sleep? Sleep was meant to be peaceful. Restful. Renewing. Instead, since she was a child, sleep had played Russian roulette with her dreams. And like tonight, her dreams became real enough to be memories of something that never happened—or had it?
Even in her slumber, Arwen knew she was seeing something not tangible and yet it was remarkably real. The depths of the forest were like an unending grave, stretching for miles in shades of green that taunted the shadows with the hope of life, only to suffocate because of the heavy drapery of foliage. Her hiking boots crunched on the undergrowth. Undergrowth that didn’t really exist, although in her vision she still heard the sticks snap. Leaves argued againstthe weight of her. A headlamp’s ray bobbed in the far distance to her left, and an echo undulated through the night, laced with desperation.
