Wren squeezed through the opening the guys had cleared, crouching low and avoiding getting her hair stuck in the growth. “You’re creeping me out.” She paused at the corner of the foundation, only to feel Eddie squeeze in beside her.

  “No one knows for sure, but this probably was the Coons homestead.”

  Wren pointed. “Is that part of a wall?” Through the web of branches and vines she could see the outline of what appeared to be boards, broken and sheared off yet still in a vertical position at the far wall.

  “I think so,” Eddie answered.

  “You two going to make room?” Troy broke in behind them. Wren felt his hand on her back as he attempted to squeeze in.

  “Hold on.” Eddie moved forward, dropping to an army crawl. He twisted his cap around so the brim lay against the back of his neck and scooted forward on his belly. Leaning over the edge of the fieldstone, he peered down. “There’s a basement. Or cellar maybe? It’s a good seven feet or so down.”

  “I’ll check it out.” Troy eased past Wren.

  “I got it.” Eddie started shoving at vines.

  “Seriously, dude, it’ll just take me a second.” Troy began his own battle against the growth.

  “If this is the Coons homestead,” Eddie grunted, “I want first dibs at the look.”

  “Don’t count me out yet, Markham,” Troy bantered back.

  Wren was going to kill them both very, very soon, and Ava Coons could writhe in jealousy.

  There was an oomf and then Eddie disappeared from sight, not waiting for Troy. Wren gave up. She wasn’t about to be left behind. Copying Eddie, she crawled in after. Another few feet gave her access to squeeze her torso onto the cool stone of the foundation. She curled her fingertips around the edge and peered over.

  By now, Troy had joined Eddie, and the men were toeing at the earth. Eddie bent and lifted an old glass bottle, the green a similar hue to the moss that spread across the back wall of the basement foundation.

  “Old medicine bottle?”

  “Could be.” Troy reached for it, and Eddie relinquished it.

  Wren twisted her body over the foundation wall and lowered herself, dropping the extra few feet. Her foot twisted upon landing, and a small pang shot through her ankle.

  “You okay?” Eddie asked.

  “I’m fine.” Wren offered a smile. The basement floor was covered in layers of dirt and sticks. Fieldstone that had dropped from the foundation littered the area, and a maple sapling grew in the far west corner. “Is that an old woodstove?” She pointed at the base of the sapling, where a rusted metal box lay on its side. A door hung open on the front, its bottom hinge busted off.

  “Looks like it.” Troy trudged over to it and squatted down. He lifted the door, and the remaining hinge grated and squeaked its resistance. “An old one, probably the main source of heat for the winter.”

  “Had to be. There wasn’t electricity or propane out here.” Eddie picked up another bottle, this one with the neck broken off. He turned it toward Wren. “It still has part of its label.”

  “I’m surprised no one has ever mentioned this place.” Wren nudged debris with the toe of her shoe.

  “It’s been mentioned,” Eddie countered. He was pulling free a rusted piece of wire from beneath a rotted log. “Locals know about it. It’s just not easy to get to, so is pretty much left alone.”

  “I guess I never paid attention,” Wren admitted.

  “So the Coonses really aren’t just a ghost story?” Troy countered.

  Eddie nodded, his cap still on backward. “The Coons family lived near Lost Lake back in the 1920s.”

  “Hey.” Troy’s boot thudded on the ground as he stomped on it. “Hear that?”

  Both Eddie and Wren perked up to listen. Troy kicked at the ground again, his blue eyes alight with interest. “It’s hollow.” He kneeled and scraped at the dirt. “There’s a hatch.”

  “Probably the cellar.” Eddie bent next to Troy and helped clear away the earth. The evening light was draining away, so Wren dug into the backpack Troy had discarded to retrieve a headlamp.

  “Here.” Troy stretched out his hand for it.

  “Ohhhhh no.” Wren smiled faintly. “Mine. You two have had your fun of being first in. If it’s a cellar, I’m going first this time.” Her senses fired like the engine on a race car. She flicked the light on and leaned over the men, eyeing the outline of a square hatch that looked as if, once open, it would swallow her whole.

  “Let me go. No guessing what’s down there.” Eddie gave her a sideways look. Of course he would challenge her.

  “Like Ava Coons’s stockpile of murdered bodies? No way. I got to the headlamp first.” Her retort sounded far from brave as she’d hoped, and Eddie knew it. While Troy was preoccupied with wedging a stick into the crack to pry open the hatch, Wren couldn’t escape Eddie’s furrowed-brow study of her.

  “What?” The headlamp shone in his eyes.

  Eddie held up a palm to block it. “You’re spooked.”

  Wren challenged him back with a look that was meant to be confident, but even she knew it wavered. “I can’t shake the idea of little Jasmine being out here all alone.”

  “Got it,” Troy announced as the cellar trapdoor gave way.

  “Fabulous,” Wren muttered.

  “Sure you want to go first?” Eddie pointed at the cellar. “Dark as Hades in there.”

  The black hole stared up at Wren with the ominous insinuation that not only was it dark, but it hid many untold secrets.

  “I’ve got this.” She noticed her voice had dropped to just above a whisper.

  Still squatting next to the opening, Troy looked up at her and said, “Maybe Ava Coons is hiding down there.”

  “Stop it.” Wren glowered at him.

  “There’s a lot of variables to a ghost story,” Eddie interjected, “and not all of them are true. There is a possibility of finding a body.”

  “Eddie!” That was the last thing she needed to hear from him and his logical way of thinking. Especially with Ava Coons’s spirit hovering over them like a horrid omen, and Jasmine Riviera having gone missing.

  “My bad,” he apologized.

  Wren nodded while imagining the long, bony arm of a skeleton reaching out from the darkness and grabbing her ankle, pulling her down into the depths.

  “Give me the lamp. I’ll go.” Eddie wagged his fingers toward Wren.

  She scowled at her childhood pal. “Think again, Edward James Markham.” Wren lowered herself so she sat on her backside, her legs hanging into the cavernous pit. There was a ladder, and she rested her feet on it.

  “Careful. That thing is old,” Troy warned.

  Great. Now she was really freaked. “Here.” Wren yanked the headlamp from her head and handed it to Eddie.

  He laughed and pushed it back toward her. “Wren.” Their eyes connected and spoke a thousand words without even verbalizing them.

  Just go. You’re fine.

  I’m scared.

  Sure. So was every explorer ever. It’s just an old cellar. Go, Wren.

  Eddie, I’m scared.

  You’re overreacting.

  Say again?

  I said you’re overreacting, Wren.

  “Fine!” Wren’s exclamation of irritation toward Eddie startled Troy. She shot him an apologetic look and then lowered herself into the cellar.

  The hole smelled of damp earth, undisturbed for years. As she swung her head around, the light shone against the cellar walls. Roots grew from the dirt. She noted a few boards acting as braces were still standing against the earth-carved walls.

  “No body,” she announced.

  “Yet,” Eddie teased back.

  It was dark. So dark. A few spiderwebs swooped across the ladder and stuck to her hands as Wren gripped the rungs. Their sticky netting was disgusting, and she removed the hand with the most cobwebs on it and wiped it frantically against her jeans.

  “You okay?” Troy stared down at her from above, but she couldn’t look up for fear of blinding him with the headlamp.

  “Yeah. The ladder seems strong.”

  “What do you see?” Eddie asked.

  Wren paused a few feet from the floor and scanned the small cellar. The far wall held four shelves. On them were various old tin cans, a few bottles, and a couple of jars of who knew what. A barrel stood near the far wall. Wren stepped to the ground and eased her way toward the barrel. As she peeked in, the light revealed a mound of dirt at the bottom. Maybe old potatoes returned to the earth from whence they had come? There was also a glass bottle. She reached down, careful to avoid one large cobweb that spanned the bottom third of the barrel. Wrapping her fingers around the neck of the bottle, she lifted it.

  “Rum.” The world above her fell away. Troy and Eddie’s voices became distant echoes. Rum from the 1920s. Prohibition era, if her history classes served her well. Which meant one of the Coonses had probably hidden this rum beneath all the potatoes. A lost bottle of illegal liquor, left behind after a murdering child hacked them all to death and threw their bodies into Lost Lake.

  She set the rum bottle on the dirt floor and roved her gaze to the other wall. More wooden shelves, most of them broken now, with jars of food long since leaked and decayed, lying in pieces on the floor. Several shards of glass from Mason jars were piled in the corner. Wren could make out something beneath them.

  Stepping toward the pile, she leaned over and carefully picked up one of the broken jars. Setting it to the side, she repeated the motion a few times until she could make out what was buried beneath.

  A doll.

  Wren mimed a gag even though no one could see her. Of course. Of course there would be an old cracked-faced porcelain doll in the cellar of the murder house of the Northwoods. She tentatively reached for the head of the doll, her fingers wrapping around its hair. She lifted it, bits of glass from the jars falling away.

  “That’s human hair.”

  “Gah!” Wren spun around and slapped her palm against Eddie’s chest. He’d climbed down and had come up behind her without so much as a peep. Troy was halfway down the ladder behind him. The cellar was fast becoming very tiny.

  “That’s human hair,” Eddie repeated.

  Wren let go of the doll. Eddie’s hand shot out and grabbed it by the foot before it descended onto its previous graveyard of shattered Mason jars.

  “Careful.” The doll now hung upside down, his hand wrapped around one of its legs. The hair was not synthetic and fine. It was coarse, half of it missing from the doll’s head, the remaining hair tied by a ragged velvet string. The doll’s face stared up at Wren from its upside-down position. Its eyes were rolled back into the doll’s head, and its face had a gazillion tiny cracks in it. But the mouth was still pink, as if painted on only months before. The purple-flowered dress that covered the doll hung away from its body, revealing the cloth underside, stuffed with whatever dolls were stuffed with back in the day. The porcelain legs were somehow sewn into and attached to the cloth torso of the doll, and one of the legs was missing its leather bootie.

  “Wren.” Eddie’s voice was grave, and it sent a chill through her. A chill that disturbed her worse than the doll hanging from his hand. He shifted his fingers, turning the bottom of the doll’s foot toward her. “Look.”

  Wren studied the foot, then lifted her eyes to Eddie. “What?”

  “Look.” He said that awful lone word again.

  So she looked closer. Wren read the name etched into the bottom of the doll’s foot and then inked over so it was difficult to miss.

  Arwen.

  Arwen. A name synonymous with Tolkien. Was her name known even before the books had been written? Did the name exist in 1930 when the Coons family was murdered? When their cabin was burned to the foundation, and when their cellar was sealed like a tomb for the next ninety-plus years?

  Arwen.

  Her name was written on the foot of the old doll with the clarity of an omen that had risen from its historical grave. A soul that had returned to life, awakened, and was now ready to roam free and tell its true tale.

  10

  Ava

  “Do not leave the parsonage.” Noah’s directive sliced through Ava with the swiftness of a well-sharpened blade.

  Ava froze in her spot on the worn-out stuffed chair in the front room. Hanny was putzing in the kitchen making tea, and Noah had entered the front door in a hustle. He slammed it too. Which seemed out of sorts for the soft-spoken man. Now his eyes were sparking with that fire and brimstone Ava expected from a preacher. She shrank into the chair. Sure enough, he was going to level it on her, and here she was with nothing to defend herself with except the pillow she leaned against. And its tassels were already coming off, so they sure wouldn’t be of any help!

  “What if I have to use the outhouse?” She countered with the first thought that popped into her head.

  Noah looked at her sharply, assessing whether she was joking. His brow furrowed. “We have indoor plumbing.”

  “Sure. You’re right.” And he was, Ava remembered. She also remembered how nice the indoor plumbing had been. No swatting mosquitoes away from your bare legs when you had to do your business in the middle of the night—or day. “I might need to take a walk, though,” she added for the sake of defense.

  Noah yanked his hat from his head and tossed it onto the desk by the window. He ran agitated fingers through his hair, mussing it and making Ava wonder when the last time was he’d had a haircut. Not that she minded. She was used to grubby-looking men who didn’t pomade their hair into submission.

  “Just—don’t leave.” His response was inadequate.

  Ava wrestled the pillow into her lap and played with the half-worn-off tassels. “Why not? Outside of the fact that half the town wants to string me up by my toes.” She avoided mentioning her midnight escapade into the darkness that had left her again with no memories, and for sure with a swollen knee. It wouldn’t help her cause to bring that up. Her argument was already thinner than the ice on Deer Lake during a warm spring.

  Noah rested his hands at his waist and eyed her. They barely knew each other and here they were habituating like man and wife. Ava felt warmth spread up her cheeks. Well, not like man and wife. Hanny might be their umbrella of redemption, but considering she was hard of hearing and moved with the speed of a snail, she wouldn’t be much help if there was any hanky-panky going on.

  “You need to trust me on this,” Noah said with a sigh.

  “I never trust no man,” Ava retorted, suddenly feeling backward. Like her words jumbled, and she was shy a string of pearls of being worthy to even sit in the parsonage. Noah Pritchard was cultured. Maybe not rich, but he spoke fine. She was an orphaned child from the woods and had all the etiquette of a groundhog at an evening ball.

  “Please.” Much of the spark had dimmed in his eyes. Whatever hellfire he’d been wanting to rage had been put under control. Ava wished she could see the preacher lose his temper. At least then she’d know what to do with him. A small flicker in his eyes made her cheeks warm even more. Enough to make her irritated. Maybe more at herself, but she decided to take it out on him anyway.

  Ava wanted to stand, but her knee was throbbing. “Ever seen a bird in a cage, Preacher Pritchard?”

  “Noah.”

  “Ever seen a bird in a cage, Noah? Near on breaks their wings tryin’ to bust free. Now, I’m no fancy bird, but even a sparrow wants to fly now and then.”

  “They think you killed Jipsy.”

  Ava stilled. “I didn’t.” She hadn’t wanted to ruminate on the idea of Jipsy being dead. Being murdered. She hadn’t been remarkably fond of the older woman, but she’d hardly wished harm on her.

  “You sure?”

  Her silence answered for her.

  Noah blew another massive sigh from his mouth, and he plopped down across from her in a straight-back chair and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “The town thinks you’ve run off, Ava.” Dark eyes lifted to meet hers. “Vanished, and you took Jipsy’s body with you.”

  Ava reared back, her eyes widening. “I did no such thing!”

  Noah continued as though she hadn’t interrupted. “Let me lay out the facts for you as clear as I’m able.”

  “Please do, Preacher Pritchard.” Ava crossed her arms over her chest.

  Noah scowled at her. “Widower Frisk found blood this morning all over their front porch. Jipsy has disappeared—not unlike your family did, according to Deputy Larson. Mr. Sanderson states he saw you wandering last night—which you were.”

  “You were with me,” Ava snapped.

  “They don’t know that.”

  “You didn’t tell them? You didn’t tell them you brought me back here?”

  Noah held out his hands to slow her down. She sure wasn’t keen on slowing down. Yesterday she’d wanted to run from the crowd of naysayers, but today she wanted to confront them all. How would they like it if they spent their childhood wonderin’ what had happened to their family and why they disappeared and where all the blood came from? How would they like it if the entire town decided they were guilty of killin’ just because their parents died in a similar way?

  “Ava.”

  The way the preacher said her name brought her frenetic thoughts to a standstill. His voice mesmerized her for a long moment. Kind of like the time she’d seen Ned take a draw from his cigarette and then close his eyes as if some sort of calm had come over him.

  Noah edged forward in his chair, nearing her. His nearness was like Ned’s cigarette. Hypnotic in a curious sort of way. What would it taste like? Ava’s eyes dropped to the preacher’s mouth.

  For Pete’s sake, she was sure as shootin’ going to hell in a handbasket now.

  “Ava,” he said again.

  This time she bit her tongue and lifted her eyes to meet his.

  “Listen to me really careful now, all right?”

  She nodded.

  “The townsfolk are suspicious you’re behind all of this, even though no one has found Jipsy’s body.”

  “Then how do they know she’s dead?” Ava interrupted.

  “Assumption based on the amount of blood.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t no pig?”

 

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