Page 53 of The Souls of Lost Lake
“But ya gotta go quicklike,” Arnie added.
Ava yanked her finger back, her eyes widening. Ricky entered the room, and in a few steps her other brother had taken hold of her hand. His eyes narrowed. They were black.
“Fraidy-cat.” His growl wasn’t teasing. It was mean. Mean and annoyed. He shoved her finger into the flame, but unlike Arnie, he didn’t sweep her finger through it. He held it there. Ava whimpered. The flame touched the nerves in the tip of her finger.
“Ricky!” Arnie yelped.
Ava whimpered again, but Ricky leaned into her, his words a demand in her ear. “Don’t cry. Don’t ever cry.”
But she couldn’tnotcry. It hurt. She was a little girl. She wanted her ma. But ma wasn’t there. No one was there to rescue her. No one but—
The door to their cabin flung open and hit the wall.
“Richard!” the voice yelled with authority.
Ava opened her eyes from her perch on the forest floor. A chipmunk sat opposite her on a downed oak tree. Its cheeks were full with food it had scrounged. Ava breathed. Her breath scaredthe critter, and he dropped to all fours and hurtled away into the woods.
Richard.
The memory of her brother unnerved her. Was it even a memory? Had it happened? And the person at the door, stopping her brother from the fiery abuse. She couldn’t make out the voice in her recollection. Man. Woman. She had no idea. She couldn’t see them.
“They gotta be important somehow,” Ava muttered to herself, scooting to her knees before pushing herself up from the ground. Standing, she stared at the poplar grove. It wasn’t unique. Not really. There were poplar groves interspersed all over in these woods. She could no more claim that bunch of trees as near her family’s cabin than she could say that chipmunk knew the way.
It was time to face the facts. She had no idea where she was going. The part of her that had hoped she’d enter these woods and by instinct head to her childhood home was sorely disappointed. Ava swiped a dead leaf that stuck to her overalls. Maybe it was a good thing she had a memory, but what did a new memory about her brother wanting her to burn her finger off have to do with what happened to them all those years ago? Maybe everything. Probably nothing at all.
Ava kicked at a stick. It snapped.
Jipsy was missing—probably dead.
Matthew Hubbard was definitely dead.
Her family was more than dead, decomposed and turned back to dirt. Ava had seen the carcass of a deer once. She’d been out hunting with Widower Frisk—he always dragged her along so she could carry his burlap sack filled with squirrels he’d shot. She hated that job. Fleas jumping through the sack onto her and bitin’ her. But the dead deer... Ava rejoined her original thought. That deer had been all skin and bones, but several hunts later it was just bones, and then even they disappeared for the most part. The skull stayed there. A few ribs. She wondered if they really had turned to dust or if other animals had made off with them. Either way, the forestwasn’t friendly to the dead. It consumed them. It made them its own. Absorbed every drop of blood like a rain shower.
She started forward again. Might as well just try. Wander and try. See if her feet knew the way better than her brain. Ava wasn’t sure what she’d find when she got there anyway. Folks had said years ago that when they’d gone to the Coons home, the cabin had been all burned up. If people in Tempter’s Creek weren’t so dang sure she was a killer, she could’ve just asked someone the way to her family home. She had a feeling it was quite a ways back in. Her family had been loners. Not keen on people and socializing. The farther out they could be, the better. But Ava didn’t know why. Had her daddy just been mean? Maybe he’d been the one to kill them all. Tried to kill her and she’d run away with his weapon? Maybe. Then what happened to him? How’d he disappear?
All these questions and not a lick of an answer.
Ava neared the poplar grove. By now the morning sun was sending light crystals through the air. The white of poplars’ trunks seemed like an oasis in the middle of the dark woods. Fairies could live in here. Fairies or angels. That gave Ava pause. Angels. Did her family turn into angels when they died? Could they even without a proper burial?
A lump—probably a fallen log—lay in the midst of the poplars. Ava wound her way toward it. It seemed out of place there. Seemed to reason if it was a downed tree, it wouldn’t be all gray and lumpy, but white. Like a dead poplar.
She narrowed her eyes as she neared it. No. That wasn’t no downed tree. It was too short for that. A boulder maybe? Ava picked her way through buckthorn bushes, twigs snatching at her overalls. She pushed aside a branch with her left arm and ducked under another. Once in the clearing, Ava stilled.
“Good Lord in heaven...” It was a dead body. Human as they came. All curled up with the head tucked in and an arm over its face.
Ava tiptoed toward the corpse as if any noise might awakenit. Nearing it, she crouched next to the body. It was on its side, its back toward her. She looked around for something to turn it over with. She wasn’t of the mind to be touchin’ a dead body. No, thank you.
Finding a stick about two inches in diameter and nearing two feet long, Ava yanked it from its tangle with leaves and undergrowth. Once she gripped it in her left hand, she hooked it through the person’s elbow and tugged. It was a lot harder than she’d expected. Ava tugged again, this time the motion making her balance on her heels unstable.
With a cry, Ava fell forward onto the body. It was stiff and ungiving against her weight. Ava scrambled away from it, and as she did so, her own motion pulled it toward her. She stared at the face. Eyes were vacant, gazing emptily toward the sky. The face was swollen, mouth and lips open. Ava could see that the flesh around the neck was discolored, and the skin under their chin was bloated. As the body landed on its back, a sigh erupted from the body’s mouth. It was as if the dead gave up its spirit at last or somehow was still struggling to find breath through the shape of its shell. It told a tale that was gruesome in its form.
Ava pushed herself away from the body, staring at its profile. At first sight, one might’ve thought it to be the body of a man. But it wasn’t. Jipsy appeared dreadful in death. Her chest was bloodied, crusted over, and black.
Spinning, Ava bent and retched.
Bursting into the parsonage back door might not have been the wisest of decisions. Ava hurtled inside, slamming the door and falling back against it, her chest heaving from her wild run through the woods. Well, if she was bein’ honest, it was more of a run, then stop and gasp for air, run more, then walk really fast.
Noah leaped from his seat at the lunch table, his soup spoon clattering into his bowl.
