Imprints

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  “Let’s hurry,” I added. The itch to find Jake had become a growing hole, deep and wide and gaping. I leaned over to pick up the towel-wrapped light.

  Ethan glanced at it curiously. “What’s with the towel?”

  I shivered a little, remembering Harmony’s fear. “A memory of Inclar is imprinted on the flashlight. That’s how I knew he was here—before I found him. I don’t want to feel it again.”

  “Ah. I see.” He shrugged off his jacket and placed it around my shoulders before switching on his own flashlight. The setting was dim, not something that would call attention to us, but helped immensely to illuminate our path through the brush. He took my hand, and we moved in silence toward the music.

  “How accurate is your timing of imprints?” he whispered after a moment. “Are you sure Inclar was alive last night?”

  “Pretty sure. Besides, he didn’t look like he’d been there long.”

  “Was he stiff? That could pinpoint the time of death a little.”

  “I didn’t exactly touch him. Well, I did step on him. I don’t think he felt stiff, but I can’t be sure.”

  Ethan nodded. “So he was killed sometime after the imprint and before you found him. That doesn’t narrow it down much.”

  “A coroner should be able to pinpoint it better.”

  “I wonder who killed him.” This he said idly, not really expecting a reply.

  I answered anyway. “My bet is on Gabe. He could have done it last night or early this morning before he left for Portland.”

  “And leave him in the woods all day for someone to find?”

  “He could have wounded Inclar and locked him up. Maybe he got loose and died trying to leave.”

  “I guess.” Ethan’s face was lit up momentarily by a patch of moonlight, and his features were drawn and anxious. I liked knowing that he wasn’t as calm as he seemed.

  At the same time we both noticed a faint light coming in our direction. Or sort of in our direction. A bit off to the right. “You go ahead,” Ethan whispered, snapping off his light. “Maybe they’re looking for you. I’ll stay here behind this tree. Shout if you need me.”

  If it was the killer, he meant, but we both avoided saying that. I moved on ahead, more carefully now without the light. My feet were frozen, but at least I still had Ethan’s jacket.

  Oops. Ethan’s jacket. Too late to give it back. I wondered what excuse I could give for somehow ending up with a man’s jacket in the middle of the woods.

  My body tensed as the light in front of me grew larger. A lantern, I saw now, swinging from someone’s hand. I squinted, trying to make out the person carrying it. Please don’t be the killer, I said over and over in my mind like a mantra.

  “Autumn? It is you!” A rush toward me, and I was being hugged to Jake’s chest so tightly I couldn’t breathe. He must have been looking for me for some time and with ample concern, because worry was imprinted on his jacket. Faintly, but enough for me to feel uncomfortable so close to him. I drew away, as he held up the lantern, looking me over.

  His smile died as he took note of the sweatshirt jacket I wore. “You were out here with Ethan, weren’t you?”

  “He came to make sure I was all right.”

  Anger flared in his eyes. “Why would you risk being discovered? People noticed you were missing!”

  “It wasn’t exactly planned.”

  “Yeah, right. You called him.”

  “Of course I called him.”

  “I thought we were contacting him tomorrow night.”

  Ethan stepped into the range of the light. “That was before she found a dead body.”

  “What!” Jake scowled at him before turning back to me. I noticed his dreads were in disarray, as though the tree branches had pulled at them during his search. His brown forehead was deeply furrowed.

  “It was Inclar,” I said, stifling annoyance that Ethan hadn’t let me break the news. “I learned that he’d been here, and I radioed Ethan so he could tell the police, but I sort of got lost on the way back and stumbled on Inclar’s body in the trees.”

  “You’re sure it was Inclar?”

  I nodded. As I envisioned the corpse, the shakiness in my stomach returned. I knew the memory of that sightless eye rolled up in Inclar’s motionless head would cause me many sleepless nights.

  “How did you know that—” Jake broke off as he spied the broken red flashlight in my hand. He understood at once what it meant because he set down his lantern and gently took it from me, hand towel and all, placing it in the pocket of his jacket. “That bad, huh?”

  Ethan looked thoughtfully from one of us to the other, and I felt a rush of irritation at Jake for knowing me so well. I didn’t want anything to come between me and Ethan. We’d started something, and I wanted to see where it led. “Thanks,” I muttered with ill grace.

  I shrugged off Ethan’s jacket and passed it to him. “You’d better get going,” I told him. To Jake, I added, “He’s driving into town to notify the police about Inclar.”

  “Isn’t that going to throw off our plans?” Jake said. “I mean, if the police show up?”

  “A man is dead, Jake! We have to report it. They might cover it up if we don’t.” Belatedly, I realized that both Jake and I were together now and could escape with Ethan if we wanted. After all, I had promised Tawnia to leave at even a hint of danger. “In fact, now that you’re here, we should both go. Right now.”

  Jake’s body tensed. “You’re right. You should definitely go with Ethan. But I can’t leave yet.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you!”

  “I’ll be fine, but I’m going to look around, starting tonight when everyone’s sleeping. That’s what I came for.”

  I gave him a stubborn glare. “I thought you came here because of me.”

  “Well, that too. But now there’s another reason.” He hesitated a heartbeat before adding, “I saw her.”

  Ethan’s face became animated. “My sister?”

  “No, a girl who looks like Victoria Fullmer. If it is her, she’s gained a lot of weight, and she’s a bit out of it. Vacant, dreamy. She was with a few other women who brought more food out to the tables. I didn’t have the chance to talk to her.”

  “Then we can’t leave yet,” I decided. “And no”—I held up a hand to silence the words I knew Jake would speak—“I’m not leaving without you. That’s final.”

  I waited for Ethan to insist on everyone leaving, or at least me, but he only nodded. “Okay, but be careful.” He looked at Jake. “Can you find your way back?”

  “No problem.”

  “As long as you keep an eye on each other, you should be okay.”

  Jake nodded. “We’ll be fine.”

  We all seemed to be adjusting to the fact that there was a dead body in the forest not far from us, some adjusting better than others. Of course, I was the only one who had actually seen the corpse, so it was only natural that I’d feel the most creeped out.

  Ethan reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.” It was a promise, no doubt an attempt to make his intentions toward me clear to Jake.

  “Okay,” I said. Jake’s face was impassive.

  “Bye,” Ethan muttered and turned away. I watched as the darkness swallowed him.

  “Show me where the body is.” Jake retrieved his lantern.

  I made a face. “I’m not sure I can find it again. It was somewhere past the outhouse near the end of that side house. But farther out in the woods. I think.”

  “If I get you close, do you think you could find the place?”

  “Maybe.”

  We were both avoiding talking about Ethan. I hoped my starting a relationship with him didn’t mean I’d lose Jake. He meant a lot to me. Besides Tawnia and Bret, he was my best friend.

  Jake slipped off his jacket and pulled it over my bare arms, ignoring my feeble protests that he’d be cold in his short-sleeved T-shirt. I relented because already his worry had faded from his jacket. Mo
st clothing imprints are like that—fleeting, even in beloved items. If the jacket hadn’t been leather and Jake’s emotion so strong, it probably wouldn’t have held the imprint in the first place.

  Or maybe I only wished to feel Jake’s concern. The thought that his worry might be entirely in my mind depressed me utterly. What was the use of reading imprints if I couldn’t tell when they were real?

  No, I wasn’t imagining things. Whether he ever saw me as a woman or not, he was my friend, and it was his job to worry about me, as I did about him.

  “We’ll have to hurry,” Jake said. “Dar will be looking for us.”

  “You told him I was gone?”

  “No, but I heard him ask a woman where you were, and she said she’d left you out here with a flashlight. Of course I couldn’t tell them about your lack of a sense of direction.”

  “The light broke.”

  He nodded. “When you dropped it because of the imprint. I figured that much. Anyway, since I was going to the outhouse myself, I volunteered to look for you.”

  “You found it by yourself?”

  “No. They gave me this lantern and sent a boy to show me the way. Once we got there I told him I could manage.”

  We tromped through the woods in silence for a few minutes. The music was louder now, and with the movement my feet felt warmer. I flexed my toes into the dirt of the forest floor and felt strangely comforted.

  “Okay,” Jake said. “There’s the house.”

  “I couldn’t really see it before,” I said, “but this looks almost right. Maybe farther into the forest.”

  After a minute more of walking, my flesh became alive with goose bumps. Not because of anything as weird as my odd talent but because the area looked familiar. “Around that tree,” I panted. I remembered vividly the shock of seeing Inclar lying in the dirt, and my stomach grew taut as I anticipated the body.

  It was gone.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” Jake asked.

  “It was right here. I swear!” There was the tree beneath where Inclar had lain, the light flickering down to his sightless good eye. “See, there’s an impression.” But the light from the lantern was too weak to show details.

  Jake studied the spot doubtfully, moving the lantern slowly over the spot. He was probably remembering how terrible I was with directions, but I was sure we’d found the right place. It felt right.

  “Well, he’s not here now,” Jake said. “Are you sure he was dead?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Did he have any wounds? Maybe he was just passed out.”

  “He. Was. Dead,” I insisted, punctuating every word. With a shaky hand, I reached out and touched the tree, feeling nothing except the ancient calm feeling that pervaded the entire forest. I fell to my knees and scrabbled in the dirt, searching for something, anything, that might have retained an imprint of Inclar’s final moments. “It’s got to be here. Something’s got to be here. He was dead. I saw it!” Even I recognized the frantic note in my voice. Had I been imagining all of it? Had Inclar even been here at all?

  Jake grabbed my hands and held them. “I believe you.”

  The words calmed me, and after a minute, he began brushing the dirt and decaying plant matter from my hands. The smell of the mixture was sweet and foresty; his touch was gentle and hypnotic. After a moment, he pulled me to my feet and picked up his lantern. “Let’s get back.”

  “What will I say about how long I was gone?”

  “How about you saw a squirrel or something and followed it. Then you tripped and your light broke and you got lost. I found you when you called out.”

  “I guess.” I was too mentally and physically exhausted to come up with an alternate scenario of my saving him, as I might have on another day.

  We’d gone only a few yards when a light flickered in the distance, from the direction I thought might be the outhouse.

  “Then again,” Jake said nearly under his breath, “we’ve both been out here a long time. And if a dead body really was here, we might need something more convincing to cover our tracks.” With a smooth motion, he stopped and pulled me into his arms.

  And kissed me.

  Oh, boy. It was some kiss, and that’s saying a lot because he was still holding the lantern and didn’t have the use of both hands to hold me close. The kiss was warm and exciting and promising all at once. I felt both as though I were on a roller coaster plunging down a vertical incline and yet cradled in a hot tub full of bubbling water. Not at all like a casual kiss between friends. Not simply pleasant.

  I hadn’t expected this. Was it fake or was it real? Sadly, I knew the answer. Yet as much as I liked Ethan and wanted to explore a relationship with him, and as much as I knew Jake wasn’t meant for me, I wanted more than anything for this kiss to be real.

  Chapter 15

  There you two are.” Dar loomed from behind the trees, looking larger in the dancing shadows cast by his lantern, a bear of a man. “We were beginning to worry.”

  Jake gave his spie1 about finding me, and Dar put a comforting hand on my back as if I were an old friend. “I’m glad Jake found you. You’re probably freezing. Poor thing.”

  “It’s better now with Jake’s jacket.”

  Not to mention the kiss, but Dar didn’t comment on that, though he didn’t seem surprised, either. I remembered Harmony’s comment about Dar liking me. His calm reaction to Jake’s and my supposed closeness didn’t seem to validate her idea.

  “Let’s get something warm into you. And on you.” Dar gently propelled me in the direction of the houses, or at least what I hoped was in that direction. “It gets quite cold out here at night even in the summer. We should have fixed you up better before sending you out into the wilderness like this. We’ll change all that tonight before you go to bed.” He gave a hearty chuckle. I craned my neck to try to see Jake’s face, but he was behind us now. I couldn’t tell what he’d thought about our encounter. I wished I could call Tawnia and see what she made of it.

  The party was winding down when we returned, and Dar deposited me near a fire barrel before going off to find someone to assign me a bed. Jake had his hands shoved deep into the pocket of his torn jeans and didn’t meet my gaze. He looked almost like a stranger at that moment in his old clothes, his pencil-sized dreadlocks askew, but when I examined his brown face it was all Jake.

  “What?” he asked, finally lifting his eyes.

  “What was that all about?” I had to bluff my way through the question because it was what I would have done if it hadn’t meant anything to me.

  “Making it look real, that’s all.” His dark eyes skidded past mine.

  “It sure felt real.”

  He dragged his eyes back to me. For a moment neither of us spoke. At last he opened his mouth, but I’ll never know what he was going to say because at that moment Dar returned with a large woman dressed in a bright red dress.

  “This is Scarlet,” Dar said. “She’s in charge of housing and clothing, so if you ever need anything in that respect, see her. She’ll get you both fixed up with clothes and a bed.”

  She was big and beautiful and black, and I knew her instantly from the woman in Tawnia’s drawing when she’d been trying to sketch Victoria. All doubts that my sister was sketching scenes from real life were put to rest once and for all.

  Scarlet put her warm brown arms around me. “Ah, child. I heard you got lost.” I detected a slight southern accent in her honeyed voice. She was about my height and easily six times my width, but she wore her mass with a confidence that didn’t need excusing. Her face was round, and her eyes large and expressive. She was cuddly, for lack of a better word, and I loved her instantly.

  I found myself leaning against Scarlet, letting her whisk me away from Jake to a bathing room inside the women’s side of the singles’ house where she already had water boiling on a big black stove. Apparently the indoor piping Harmony had talked of didn’t include hot water, but there was plenty of wood stacked by the stove
and more where that came from, according to Scarlet.

  “My, don’t you have the prettiest eyes,” she said as she poured the water into a metal bathtub in a corner of the room.

  “Thank you.” Pretty was a dang sight better than weird.

  “Would you like a cup of hot tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Why don’t you get into the water, child, and I’ll bring it to you.”

  I shed Jake’s jacket and my dress, sighing with pleasure as I edged into the hot water. A few minutes later, Scarlet gave me a humongous cup of herbal tea and left me alone to soak. I surveyed the room from the big tub, noticing the triple line of tiny cubbies full of toothbrushes, hairbrushes, and accessories. Next to that was the largest sink I’d ever seen, and a single wide mirror.

  I used a bit of shampoo from a large communal bottle on the nearby table, smelling the sweet scent of camomile. The bottle had no label, and I suspected it was Harmony Farm’s own brand. The lump on the back of my head wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been Friday morning, and as I gently washed the area, I remembered Shannon’s measuring it. Had he learned any more about the case? I wished I could tell him about finding Inclar.

  Scarlet returned shortly with a stack of towels and a flannel nightgown that was long and billowy and comfortable. She clucked over a scrape on my big toe, bandaged it with deft hands, pulled socks over the bandaged foot and over the good foot, too, and finally toweled my short hair until it was almost dry.

  “There now,” she said. “I bet that feels a darn sight better. You just brush your teeth right here, and then it’s off to bed. I took the liberty of movin’ some of your personal objects here earlier. We use this toothpaste. It’s biodegradable.”

  I reached for the toothbrush in the indicated cubby and saw that it was indeed mine, complete with its yellow plastic cover. Somehow it didn’t feel awkward, her going through my things, though a part of my brain said that it should. I didn’t even mind sharing toothpaste with strangers. My sister would be appalled; Tawnia didn’t share toothpaste, not even with Bret.

  When I was finished, Scarlet put another arm around my shoulders and led me down a narrow hall to a small room with two wooden bunk beds and the same cheap linoleum floor as in the hallway.