Page 64 of The Souls of Lost Lake
Eventually, Ava’s coughing ceased, and she lay across Noah, her head in the crook of his elbow. He pushed wet hair from her face. Ava closed her eyes at the sensation. It comforted her. It was warm and safe and—
“What’n heck were you thinking?” Noah’s sudden deviation from anything tender startled Ava into further awareness that she was sprawled in the arms of the preacher after her surreal experience that bordered on suicidal.
Ava shoved Noah, and he fell backward as she scrambled from her place in his lap. “What’d you do that for?” she shouted. She was angry and couldn’t comprehend why. It filled her. Every pore of her. She’d been thwarted. Canceled from completing what she’d been so close to accomplishing.
“Savingyou? I wassavingyou?” Noah matched her tone.
They sat a few feet apart, water dripping down their faces. The forest bordering the lake was silent. The sky had gone dark as clouds passed over, blocking out the stars.
Noah moved to his knees. “I asked you if you knew where we were, and the next thing I know, you’re hauling off into the woods in some catatonic state. I could hardly keep up with you!”
Ava’s breaths still hurt. Her lungs were sore. Her throat throbbed. She breathed like she had just finished running for miles.
“Then you’re crawling into the lake like a madwoman! Have you lost your mind?” Noah spat the last unfriendly word at her.
Ava didn’t answer. She looked beyond him. Around them. Her eyes assessed all the shadows, all the bulges and formations that jutted from the darkness. She stiffened. Straightened. Starting to her feet, she tripped forward. Her shoes were heavy with water, her overalls weighing each step down as they dripped water onto the gravelly shore.
“Ava?” Noah was gentler now. He was concerned. She could hear it in his voice, and yet he sounded distant. Behind her.
She increased her pace, stumbling as she moved from the shoreline into the brush. It was overgrown. So thick. Ava swiped at buckthorn bushes and shoved her way through blackberry bushes that grabbed and hooked on her clothes.
“Ava!” Noah cried again.
Ava could hear him crashing behind her. But it was coming clearer now. The tree. A big looming oak tree. Its trunk was massive, wide enough that if it was hollowed, she could fit her entire person inside it. Smaller oak and saplings branched under its canopy. She remembered the tree. Its oak branch Pa had hung a swing from. The swing wasn’t there. At least she couldn’t see it in the dark.
The remains of home grew out of the agonizing night. What was left of the Coons cabin rose from the undergrowth like the memories in her heart tangled with the brush of today. She could make out the edges of fieldstone. The foundation. Charred support beams rose into the air several feet before breaking off into upright spikes. But she remembered it—remembered it as it had been. A cabin, on the lake, its windows glowing—as if it had been alive.
A sob crowded Ava’s already sore throat. She grappled her way to the foundation, reaching to grasp one of the corner posts, ignoring how it broke off into a decade’s-old bits of coal.
“Ava!” Noah puffed from his rush to catch up to her.
She ignored him and instead lowered to her backside, balancing on the fieldstone and then sliding into the abyss below. Her feet crunched on stone, and her ankle twisted, a sharp pang sending thrills of pain up her leg. Ava crumpled to the floor of the cabin,her body mashing into the debris. A dead tree had fallen into it, its branches breaking off and scratching her arm.
“Ma.” Her whisper was an ache that grew in her soul. Ava connected with the remembrance of her. Rough hands from the labor of living in seclusion, churning her own butter, helping stack wood, and doing laundry without the modern benefits of a washing machine. “Ma.” This time her word was a choked sob. A cry for a family she’d lost, for a woman she could barely recall, and a nurturing she had been cheated out of.
Noah dropped beside her, his landing far more secure than hers had been. Water squished from his shoes as he crouched beside her. Ava felt his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it away. She didn’t want to be touched. Didn’t want to be aware of any other presence than the elusive memories of her family. There was a horror growing inside her. A dread. She could hear it. A scream. Shouting.
Whack
Ava slapped her hands over her face, unconcerned by the sting of flesh against flesh. She wanted to erase the sound from her mind.
Another scream.
She hit her face again.
Heavy footsteps on a wood floor.
The heels of her hands pounded her temples repeatedly.
Whack, whack...
The echo of Arnie’s yell.
Ava’s fingers tore at her hair. She curled into herself, rocking back and forth. “Stop. Stop. Stop.” They were coming. Small, captured moments from a time she had anchored herself far away from, never to drift back into those troubled waters.
She saw it then. In her memory. The cavern. The hole in the ground. Ava pushed off Noah, who was attempting to grapple her into stillness. Slugging at him with her forearm, she shoved him aside, scraping her body across the remains of the cabin floor until she reached it.
The cellar. The door was still intact but covered over with vinesand branches. Ava clawed at them, tearing them away from their secure grip on the past. Here. It was here. Safety. In the cellar. Her fingertips edged under the trapdoor and lifted. Dust blew into her face. Old familiarity beckoned Ava to twist her body around and settle her feet on the ladder rungs.
