Page 94 of The Souls of Lost Lake
“Don’t be too hard on your parents for not keeping things straight with your birth certificate. Times were tough back then, and yourmom—she wasn’t in the frame of mind to be organized. Even when you were in grade school ... you probably never knew, but she struggled. With depression and the like. I always wanted her to be seen by someone. I suggested once to your father that maybe she was bipolar. She had such mood swings. But neither of them would have anything to do with it. She said she had Pippin, and she had you, and that was all she needed.”
“Mom often seemed just out of reach,” Wren admitted. It was why she’d gravitated so toward Patty.
Grandma was silent for a long moment, and then Wren heard her sigh. “I know she was. Something in those years after Pippin was born and before you came along ... well, it changed her. She wasn’t ever the same again. But I always figured that’s what the loss of six babies will do to a woman.”
38
Ava
She hadn’t been the same since the night Noah had awakened her from her nightmare. But then neither had he. Looking each other in the eyes was simply not going to happen. But it wasn’t just the brewing between her and Noah, it was the remembering. The remembering had left Ava huddled in the parsonage like a scared little girl all over again. She was both petrified and angry simultaneously. How she could recall her parents’ and her brothers’ mutilated bodies, but not their killer, was infuriating. Remembering the terror that soaked into the marrow of her bones as a child and settled there was another factor that left Ava paralyzed.
She sat on her bed, her back against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. Across the room, perched on her dresser, was the doll.Herdoll. Retrieving it from the cellar, Ava had expected to be comforted in its return. The girl doll in the purple dress with the head of human hair twisted into a little tail at the back of its head. But what once had been an imaginary friend in a reclusive life was now a demon taunting her.
Dead, dead, they’re all dead.
Came today and chopped off their heads.
Put them in pieces, in bits and in blood.
Laid them in death in a pile in the mud.
The limericks played over and over in Ava’s mind. Subliminal. Traveling the space between them in the bedroom. Floating across the air, over the whitewashed wood floors, brushing the patchwork quilt on the bed, and settling in every nerve of Ava’s body. She swore the doll smiled. The corner of its porcelain lips twisting into an evil mockery.
There is the lake, so bury them there.
Keep it a secret, your personal terror.
But I will know, and I will hide,
the fact that as a child you lied.
Ava grabbed her pillow and launched it at the doll. It hit her, sending it toppling to the floor. Yet she remained unshattered. Her face only cracked into more thin spidery lines. Her eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling, much like Ava’s mother’s had, and the doll’s mouth remained turned in its tiny contorted smile.
Lied. She hadn’t lied. She just couldn’t remember. Not when she was thirteen, and not now. Ava slid off the bed and retrieved the pillow, tossing it back in its place. She bent to pick up the doll, then paused. Something in her mind was hiding from her. Just in the shadows. Of course, it was the owner of those boots. The ones that had clomped down the cellar ladder. The body that had stood there, contemplating. Debating whether to kill Ava? In retrospect, Ava knew she couldn’t have truly been hidden out of sight from the killer. He had spared her. Why?
She retrieved the doll, its body soft under her grasp. They stared at each other. One questioning, the other accusing.
There was a knock, then the doorknob on her bedroom door rattled. She spun toward it, holding the doll against her chest as if it would protect her while simultaneously imagining the doll gnawing at her flesh with its wicked face.
“Ava?”
It was Noah.
Ava crossed the room, doll still against her, pressed into the pleated front of her green dress. She missed her overalls. Hanny had whisked them off to her house on the pretense of washing them. She’d not returned them but instead had brought the green dress. Ava supposed washing heavier denim was difficult for the old woman. She should help Hanny...
Ava pulled the door open. She directed her gaze to the tip of his nose. Avoiding his eyes. She didn’t really know what she felt. Not with him. Not with her memories. Not with anything.
Noah shifted his weight on his feet. “Jipsy’s funeral is this afternoon.”
“I know.”
“I figured you may entertain thoughts of trying to attend in the shadows, but I wanted to request that you don’t. I know you’re not keen on how things are right now, but—”
“I’m not comin’.” Ava put Noah’s fears to rest. She wasn’t planning on doing anything today that made her susceptible to that creeper hiding in the forest. Her fingers touched her cheek. Noah’s eyes followed her movement.
He nodded. “Good. I’m hoping, once she’s laid to rest, things will settle down a bit.”
Ava scoffed at him with a laugh. “Tempter’s Creek will never let nothin’ rest.”
