Page 101 of The Souls of Lost Lake
Wren faced the doll again and forced herself to approach.
It’s just a doll. It’s just a doll.
But the doll had a moving part. Someone behind it, someone who had placed it at Wren’s back door. Something was pinned to the doll’s dress. Wren squatted in front of it, not breaking her gaze on Harriet’s glass eyes. She quickly unpinned it, and the movement made Harriet slide over and fall on her side. Her eyes rolled into her head.
Wren scooted away from it. The paper in her hand was small, crinkled, and thin. It felt like a napkin. She wrenched her gaze from the doll and squinted in the dim light. Handwriting scrawled across it. She already knew what the first two words would be.
Arwen.
Ava.
The same as the print on the back steps of the Markhams’. The violation made Wren shudder. She brought the napkin closer to her face. There were more words this time.
October 9, 1996
Find her in the paper.
She is not dead.
41
Ava
Ava wrenched her arm away from Noah’s attempt to grab on to her.
“Donottouch me!” she seethed between clenched teeth. Recently she had wondered what it would be like to cope with the embers that brewed inside Noah Pritchard, but today her own had flared to life. By fear. By an instinctual and primal knowledge that death was nipping at her heels. She had witnessed it before. Seen it, felt it, breathed it. The ax-head in the doorway was evidence that Ava had merely been surviving these past years, and now death had returned.
Noah sprinted after her. Ava could hear his feet pounding on the ground. She could also make out the shouts and clamor of the gathering for Jipsy’s funeral. Tempter’s Creek was awakened to her presence in the parsonage the moment she’d hurled the ax-head through the kitchen window.
Ava ducked around the corner of the pharmacy, glancing in the windows at the soda bar. It was mostly empty.
“Ava!”
She ignored Noah’s call. Ax-heads were everywhere in Tempter’s Creek. A logging community had no shortage of them. But the stark memory of dragging a logger’s ax behind her as a girl verging on womanhood had come rushing back. The weight of the ax.The injustice of anyone thinking she was strong enough to swing it multiple times and overpower her entire family. The cruelty that rumors and falsities would land on her shoulders for Hubbard’s death—for Jipsy’s.
Ava hurtled into an alley, intent on reaching the back of the blacksmith’s shop. From there, she had an inkling of how to make it through the woods toward her homeplace. They didn’t want her in Tempter’s Creek? Someone wanted to threaten her. Hunt her? Then she would take them back to where it all began. There was no avoiding it. No running from it. No hiding from it. Noah had been right. She needed to go back—and now she’d lead the entire town back there too. Where it all began.
She collided with something solid. Knocking the breath from her, Ava stumbled back, but Noah grappled for her arms to save her from connecting with the earth. He hauled her up and against him, spinning around the corner of the blacksmith’s shop and pressing his back against the wall. Ava smelled cedar and cinnamon on his shirt, her cheek pressed into his chest as he palmed her head against him. She could hear the pounding of his heartbeat and feel the warmth of his skin through his saturated shirt. His necktie scratched her cheek.
“Don’t say anything,” Noah hissed.
Ava heard the voices of various town members. Following them. Looking for her. They weren’t a mob—yet—but there were numerous intent inhabitants of the small population who believed it their civic duty to find Ava now that she had made her presence clear. And find...
Her head shot up to investigate Noah’s face. “They’re looking for you too?”
“Of course. You were in the parsonage—living there with me, alone.” His eyes widened in resigned acceptance. “It’s twice the scandal. Now shush.” Releasing her, Noah’s hand slid down her arm and gripped hers. There was no emotion in it, no feelings to tingle her heart. It was a necessity.
“Come on.” He tugged her toward the woods, and they scurried across a small clearing as fast as they could. Thornbushes scraped at Ava’s bare legs. Curse this dress. God knew she craved her overalls. Noah didn’t stop pulling her into the brush and the shelter of the trees. For several minutes they pushed and dodged their way through the brambles and growth of the forest, until finally they reached what must have made Noah feel was shelter for the moment.
Oak trees rose above them, mixed with pine and a few poplars. Saplings tried to reach for the sky, scattered across the forest floor, but their demise was inevitable with the thick overgrowth from the mature trees that shut out the sunlight.
“What’n heck were you thinking?” Noah paced the area, agitated. He kicked his foot at a rotten log on the ground. A few bones from a deer carcass were scattered near it. The spine, a few ribs ... it was gruesome, but it was reality. Life met with death. Always.
Noah’s glare was a mixture of frustration, worry, and something else Ava couldn’t place. But he was upset, that much was clear, and she didn’t think any amount of waterlogged words would douse the fire that emoted from his expression.
“You threw an ax-head through my window?” Noah was incredulous. His shoes crunched on the forest floor as he paced again. His suit coattails were pushed out behind him, as his hands never wavered from their place at his waist. His tie was crooked.
“I did.” Ava stood still, staring down her nose at him. He didn’t understand. Wouldn’t understand. He hadn’t even asked why she’d made such a ruckus. “I’m done with it all. Don’t rightly care if they take me—put me in jail. I can’t do this no more!”
