Page 3 of The Souls of Lost Lake
Her head snapped up at the voice by her shoulder. A branch from the tree snagged the stocking cap that covered her hair. She scrambled to free herself.
There was no one.
Arwen squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again.
There she was.
The little girl.
Jasmine.
She lay on the cold shoreline of the lake. Lost Lake. White. Cold. Unmoving.
Arwen’s scream sucked the last breath from her already horrified body, and then more than the forest went dark.
2
Ava
The town hall consisted of one room, with wood floors that resounded with the hollow claps of footsteps. Agitated voices bounced off the walls, which also were bare except for the fact that Mrs. Sanderson had whitewashed them last year and insisted on installing electric lights that didn’t work—wouldn’t work—not until electricity was run to the town hall. Which would probably be decades from now.
Mrs. Sanderson stood next to her husband, the highfalutin woman in her prissy dress with lace collar and pearl buttons, and her brand-new saddle shoes that made Ava’s shoes with the split seams laughable. Mrs. Sanderson was only five years Ava’s senior, but she comported herself as though she were in her thirties with a passel of children and years of wisdom and earthly culture. Her eyes narrowed when they landed on Ava. She placed a gloved hand on her handsome husband’s arm. He was the man who ran the lumber office. Son of the lumber baron Sanderson and heir to Sanderson Lumber Mill. Now he exchanged looks with his wife and then eyed Ava. The thinning of his lips that reminded Ava of flattened worms surrounded by a beard told her all she needed to know. She would somehow be tied to the events of last night—at least with suspicion. It was inevitable.
As the Wood Nymph, Ava was also the town’s pariah of sorts.An enigma. For six years they’d been both enamored with and horrified by her. Her most pivotal years as she grew into womanhood, Ava could barely comprehend how to maneuver through the raw fascination and rude curiosity of the folks of Tempter’s Creek. Their opinion of her had twisted her own opinion of herself, until Ava knew she couldn’t stay in Tempter’s Creek, but she couldn’t leave either. The people here were her family, in a tangled way, and in another they were enemies waiting to pounce. Stalking her. Expecting that one day the bloodied girl would emerge into womanhood a violent, torturous mess of a soul. Ava wished she had mustered the courage to leave Tempter’s Creek years ago, when she was of the mind enough to manage on her own. But she was tied to this place. In her soul. A depth of a bond she both hated and cherished simultaneously.
Ned edged his way toward her, amid the throng of townsfolk who had come out of their houses for the spectacle, if not for the justice of the event. Ava averted her eyes from Ned. She didn’t need him. Not him, not nobody, if she was honest. Jipsy nudged her with a bony elbow, and her sharp black eyes drilled into Ava.
“You could fare worse than Ned,” she hissed, reading Ava’s reticence to acknowledge the older man’s devotion.
Ava chose not to answer the woman who had taken her in the day she’d wandered from the woods covered in blood.
Town Councilman William Pitford raised beefy arms over his head and shouted for the room to still. The din silenced, and the thirty-plus people in attendance shifted their focus to the councilman and his balding head dotted with sweat. He swiped a bandanna over it as though he knew Ava was counting the droplets.
“Folks. Folks.” His repetition only made Ava’s nerves grate. “Folks, we need to settle down.”
“Settle down?” someone shouted. “After Matthew Hubbard’s been found with an ax to the head, you want us to all settle down?”
A few ladies gave a swooning moan. Ava noticed that Mrs. Sanderson maintained her ramrod-straight backbone and didn’t flinch.
“Folks!” Councilman Pitford reinforced his moniker for them with a pronounced octave raise. “We don’t know what’s happened!”
“What’s happened is someone done killed Hubbard with an ax!” Widower Frisk barked from beside Jipsy and Ava, his gray stubble around his mouth yellowed from his tobacco-chewing habit.
“Yeah, an’ you probably know who done it too!” another man retorted, making Ava step behind Jipsy. Not because the shrewish woman would do anything to protect her, but because it felt better than standing out in the open.
“Folks!” Councilman Pitford shouted.
“Hold up now!” Another male voice split through the ruckus of mutters and rumbling. It was the lead lawman in Tempter’s Creek, and he was, as Widower Frisk put it, no Wyatt Earp. He elbowed through a few men who were taller than him and rose up on the balls of his feet so his five-foot-four frame would appear as imposing as possible. Officer Floyd Larson hung his thumbs over his gun belt. At least his voice was baritone, and a deep one that bordered on being bass. It gave him the authority that his stature did not. “Here’s what we know—and it’s more than you shouldneedto know!” He eyed everyone in the room, his blue eyes narrowed. They landed on Ava for a moment, paused, then moved along. “Matthew Hubbard was found earlier today by Sanderson Mill.”
“My mill had nothing to do with this!” Mr. Sanderson inserted.
Officer Larson held up a hand. “No one is going to convict the scene of a crime, Sanderson.”
“My employees weren’t involved,” Sanderson insisted.
Officer Larson’s facial muscles tightened with annoyance. “What I was saying was that Mr. Hubbard’s body was found today, and we have concluded it was a murder.”
“What gave it away? The ax stickin’ out of his head?” someone barked from the back of the room. They met the question with grumbles, murmurs, and a few chuckles.
