Page 63 of The Souls of Lost Lake
“Even Widower Frisk owns one.”
“Well, I don’t.” It was said with enough emphasis that Ava could take the clue Noah was shutting down the conversation. “Listen.” He leaned close enough that she could see the whites of his eyes. “Do you have any sense of where Jipsy’s body is from here? Any sense at all?”
Ava looked around, eyeing the depths and recesses of the forest. It was haunting here. All the crevices and sheltered places were hiding spots for all that couldn’t be explained. It brought unheralded the fact that the woods resembled her memories. Her life. Filled with places that were unseen and unexplained.
A chill passed through her. She squinted, staring into the blackness. If a spirit could call to her, beckon her, it would be now. A specter weaving among the trees until it drifted into her, merging with her.
Come.
Ava could hear it. Noah dissipated into nothingness, his body becoming a vapor that bled into the trees like a fog.
Come home.
“Jipsy?” Ava called. The night was not a friendly place. The voice was unfamiliar to her. Neither male nor female. Simply a murmur.
Ava moved toward the voice, straining to see, to make out a person, a form, but she saw nothing. The void beyond was unending. It was a maze of twisted trees and branches, bushes and undergrowth. She pushed her way through, ignoring everything but the mystical beckoning that Ava could not disregard.
We’re waiting for you.
Ava moved faster now. Stumbling over roots and rocks underfoot. They were waiting for her. She needed to come. To hurry. More than one voice joined the soloist now. It was a chorus. A chorus of unremembered souls. Those who had perished here. She knew that now. It was the dead. The dead were calling to her. From a place deep in the fathomless recesses of the forest.
Ava tripped, her toe hooking on a vine that ate at her foot and sent her catapulting forward. With a cry, she skidded on the ground, her knees colliding with the earth and her palms scraping on the underbrush. It was a decline. Her body rolled forward, the blanket of wet leaves beneath her adding momentum as she tried to stop.
The woods opened up as she slid to a halt against a rotted fallen log. Bark splintered off, the smell of mold and dead tree assaulting her senses. Ava breathed heavily, grappling to catch her breath, but feeling as if someone had wrapped skeletal fingers around her throat and was squeezing. Blackness invaded the corners of her eyes, then cleared, then formed again.
Ava shook her head. “No. No, please,” she muttered, clawing at her throat to disengage the ghoulish hands from her skin. “Leave me alone.” Her breath caught on a sob. Another sob. “Leave me—alone.”
She lifted her eyes. The sky opened up above her. The trees thinned out and parted as if they were a crowd of onlookers making way for something larger, more powerful, and more intimidating. Ava scraped at her throat. The hands. They wouldn’t loosen. She could feel her eyes widening as she gasped for breath. For air.
There. It was there. Ava saw the lake. It undulated with navy-blue waves that licked the shoreline like a beast tasting its prey. Stars reflected off its water, shimmering spirits of souls long forgotten. Ava twisted onto her hands and knees, crawling toward the shoreline.
Come. Find us.
The voices were louder now. More distinct.
“Ma?” Ava cried, lifting her right hand and reaching for the waters.
Ava?
“Ma!” Her hands submerged in the wet silty bottom of the lake as Ava reached the edge of the water. She crawled into the lake, determined. A fierce protectiveness rose in her. She would fight for them. Their souls lay entombed here. She could feel it. Sense it. The souls of her family. Butchered and left to bleed into the lake, the very essence that made up their lives.
The lake pulled her under. She would go. To find them. For the first time in forever, Ava could see their faces. Ma, Pa, Arnie, and Ricky. Water sucked at her ankles. She opened her eyes in the murky depths and saw the lake weeds waving to her from the bottom. A hand and arm stretched from the depths, fingers wrapping around her ankle. In the silt on the lake bed, a face emerged. Eyes open. Long hair floating and waving like the weeds that beckoned her to come to them.
Ava’s arms cut through the water, directing her body to go downward. To join—
A force jerked on her neck. Under her arms.
Ava fought, clawing at the restraints that tugged on her, taking her away from her family. She watched the hand release her ankle, the face disappearing as the lake water washed over it.
“Nooo!” Her voice was warbled. Muffled. Water filled her throat, gagging her protest.
Air pummeled her face as Ava broke through the surface. She screamed, but the water in her mouth and lungs prohibited the sound. Water splashed as she was hauled from the lake. Ava pried at the arms that hooked under her shoulders and locked her against a body not much larger than hers but possessing a strength she couldn’t fight against.
She couldn’t breathe. Ava was half thrown onto the shore, her back scraping against small pebbles. Now breath seemed essential. She sucked at the air, but it wouldn’t come, barred by a waterywall in her lungs. She was pushed onto her side. Her chest heaved, choking, and water pushed up her throat, through her nose, choking and relieving her simultaneously.
“That’s it.” He sprawled next to her on the shore, pulling her into his lap so she lay over his arm. He pounded her back.
Ava vomited more water this time, the blessed sensation of air kissing her lungs and bringing awareness to her. Noah held her, but he too was dripping with lake water, his shirt clinging to his chest. Ava was limp in his lap. All her strength ebbed from her body. She coughed. Choked. Spit up more water.
