Page 19 of The Souls of Lost Lake
“Is she dangerous or something?” Troy snapped back.
“Guys!” Wren offered Troy an exasperated glare. “This isn’t a competition as to who’s right. I had a dream, okay? It’s probably nothing but—”
“Don’t discredit yourself,” Eddie said.
“I’m not.” Wren leveled a similar glare on her buddy, then pushed between them and into the clearing.
A crow, its glossy-black feathers outlining its shape, swept overhead from an aspen to the top of a cedar. Itscaw-cawechoed through the clearing, and then a frog leaped from the rocky lakeshore, landing with a splash. Wren moved swiftly toward Lost Lake, noting its greenish water that looked almost navy blue in the quickening evening. A felled oak with the circumference of a beer barrel stretched out along the shore, and on the end a wood duck perched. Sighting Wren and the dueling males behind her, it too took flight, quacking its warning and swooping into the sky. A female wood duck then emerged from behind the log, following her mate in their wild flight escape.
Wren steadied her breath, scanning the shoreline. There was no body. No child. Relief infiltrated every pore in her body. She’d withheld that awful element of her dream—the fact that in it, Jasmine was dead. She wasn’t certain what she’d have done had it been proven true.
“Over here!” Troy’s voice had an entirely different tone to it than it had a few minutes prior. Wren spun to find him bent over a pile of dead branches and brush that had naturally collected over years of silent habitation. He was kicking at the brush, hooking his hand around what he had repositioned, and pulling it back.
“What is it?” Eddie jogged to his side, Wren close behind him.
Troy dragged more tangled brush away. “Looks like an old foundation is here.”
Wren’s heart sank. Disappointment merged with her determinationto find Jasmine. A foundation wasn’t a sign of a lost little girl. It was merely a ghost sighting of sorts. The ruins of a long-ago dwelling.
“Ever hear of an old house out by Lost Lake?” Troy tossed a small piece of broken-off tree trunk into the woods.
Eddie helped with clearing the section of foundation that was barely visible. Fieldstone, it appeared, covered in years of moss and lichen. “Yeah. The old Coons place.”
“That old ghost tale?” Troy laughed.
“All ghost stories come with an element of truth,” Eddie corrected, tugging at a mass of tangled vines.
Wren nosed her way in between them, dropping to all fours and trying to see under the branches and brambles. “Ava Coons isnotthe story I want to hear right now.” It gave her the willies. A raving madwoman, ax-murdering her family. “Not when a little kid is missing in the very woods she roams.”
Troy cleared more branches. “She roams? So, we’re going to make it present tense, huh?” There was teasing in his voice. He knew the story and knew the shivers it caused campers.
“Thus is the tale of Ava Coons.” Eddie picked up his hat from the ground where a resisting sapling had knocked it from his head. His voice had an overdramatic quaver to it. “She’s never left Lost Lake or these woods. She’s always searching for her next kill. The next bloodletting.”
“Soul-stealer.” Troy grinned and winked at Wren, who glanced in his direction.
“Body snatcher,” Eddie jousted back.
“I heard one version that she threw her family’s bodies into Lost Lake and that’s why they vanished,” Troy supplied.
“Ahhh,” Eddie nodded, swiping at another branch. “Cement shoes, eh? All gangster style.”
“Would you both knock it off?” She’d already had enough with Pippin’s actual belief in the story earlier, and now with these two clowns hamming it up...
Wren squeezed through the opening the guys had cleared, crouching low and avoiding getting her hair stuck in the growth. “You’re creeping me out.” She paused at the corner of the foundation, only to feel Eddie squeeze in beside her.
“No one knows for sure, but this probablywasthe Coons homestead.”
Wren pointed. “Is that part of a wall?” Through the web of branches and vines she could see the outline of what appeared to be boards, broken and sheared off yet still in a vertical position at the far wall.
“I think so,” Eddie answered.
“You two going to make room?” Troy broke in behind them. Wren felt his hand on her back as he attempted to squeeze in.
“Hold on.” Eddie moved forward, dropping to an army crawl. He twisted his cap around so the brim lay against the back of his neck and scooted forward on his belly. Leaning over the edge of the fieldstone, he peered down. “There’s a basement. Or cellar maybe? It’s a good seven feet or so down.”
“I’ll check it out.” Troy eased past Wren.
“I got it.” Eddie started shoving at vines.
