Echoes (Book 1): Echoes

by Caplan, A. M.

  “Make sure you lock this up tight behind me. And I’d avoid taking that logging crossover, if you haven’t learned your lesson this time. Been some people I don’t recognize around here. Never hurts to be cautious.” He gave her one last appraising look, shaking his head a little, but finally he pulled the door closed.

  She reached forward to shoot the deadbolt but lurched dizzily, the floor currently in the midst of some kind of localized earthquake. She was caught before she hit the ground and set carefully on the beat-up couch. Hannah peeked through her tightly shut eyes to make sure he was still really there, then shut them against the spinning. He sat down in the dainty chair beside the couch. When it creaked in protest he quickly moved to sit down beside her.

  “I know you have a number of questions. I will answer those that I can. But first, are you hungry?”

  How could anybody be thinking about food right now? she thought. The last thing on her mind was eating. But her stomach thought otherwise and answered for her. She was pretty certain they both heard it growl.

  9

  It was the strangest day she’d ever had, and she’d had some strange ones. It had begun with falling off a bridge and ended with sitting across the table from a dead man, eating dinner in the most bizarrely normal way. That anything edible had been thrown together from the contents of her kitchen was almost as miraculous as the company.

  She was still challenging what she was seeing, testing the reality of it. He was still there, no matter how many times she screwed shut her one working eye and opened it again.

  “Is there something wrong with your eyesight? Is your vision blurring? I fear you may have a concussion.”

  “It’s possible, between the fall and you launching me across the room.”

  “My what?” His eyebrows furrowed, and he leaned forward.

  “Nothing. Anyway, I’m fine.” She shook her head, which made her vision swim a little. Maybe she did have a head injury. Hannah closed her eye until she could open it and see just one of him, then leaned back in her chair at the kitchen table and let out a little groan. Only part of it was from the ache; the rest was her uncomfortably full stomach.

  “I don’t know how you managed to put this together from what was here, but thank you.” She was painfully aware of the strange state of things, and also of a sudden shyness, sitting across from this man she had never met but had seen and thought about more than anyone else these last months. “Where did you find pasta? I’m pretty sure there were about three pieces of penne in a box in the pantry.”

  He took his empty plate to the sink and washed it thoroughly, then set it precisely upright in the dish rack to dry. He set his silverware up rigidly next to it and turned back to her.

  “When you saw me at the grocery store you dropped your bag and took off. I picked it up and followed you home. Along the way I also ended up with your hat, a jacket, and one glove. I fear the other may not be recoverable.” He smiled a small smile, showing white, even teeth. “Your pasta made it home. The pretzels were a total loss.”

  He turned to look out the kitchen window over the sink and she stole the moment to evaluate him. There was a shadow of red-blond stubble across his chin and up the line of his jaw now, but otherwise he was very close to how she remembered him. Her eyes flicked with embarrassment to the drawing of him along with all the other random bits of information tacked to her bulletin board.

  It was a close match, except in real life his face was a little bit softer around the edges. His skin was light, but not as fair as she had thought, and incredibly smooth and even—unusually so. The hair had been cut since she first saw him, not long enough now for the wave she recalled falling over his forehead, and darker than she remembered, not white blond but closer to the color of honey. He was very tall but not awkwardly so, just larger than normal in scale, the kind of person you would think was a professional athlete of some kind, a football player maybe, if you passed them on the street.

  She took one last bite of the now-cold pasta and pushed the plate aside, turning to face him. “Will you tell me what’s going on now?” Hannah took a shot at getting up against the protests of her stiff body, but he picked up her plate and she gratefully sank back down.

  He set it in the sink with a faint clink and turned back toward her, nodding.

  “But on the couch,” she said. “I don’t think this chair and I can be friends right now. Tell me your name.” She’d been mentally running up a sizable list of questions while they had eaten in silence, and it seemed like a good place to start.

  “My name is Asher.”

  It fit him. It was old fashioned but not too out of the ordinary here, where families handed down the same names generation after generation. It wasn’t strange to hear someone on the street calling for an Ezekiel or Job or even a Malachi.

  “No last name?”

  He smiled, but at what she wasn’t quite sure.

  “Smith.” Sure it was.

  “I hit you with my car. Six months and . . .” Her eyes flicked to the calendar. Apparently she had lost a couple days somewhere. Months was more like it, looking at the calendar page that hadn’t been turned, twice. She did the math.

  “Six months and three days ago. I hit you and you were lying on the ground bleeding, and you died.” She took a deep breath and it all spilled out in a rushed jumble. “And then I saw you in a car on the street, and then you were in my house—or at least I hallucinated you were—and then I shot you. But if you’re here now then you were real the first time, so you must have been real those other times too, right?”

  So much for the neat mental list. This was question vomit.

  He leaned back against the sofa and crossed his arms across his chest.

  “I was only stunned by the collision. I got up and walked away and an acquaintance picked me up. As you can see I am very much alive. No worse for wear. You must have dreamed I was here before now.” His tone was a little too flippant, and his eyes dared her to question the truth of his words.

  “You’re admitting that I hit you, then where are the scars? Your face was cut down to the bone from top to bottom. One of your eyes was gone.” Hannah tried not to sound accusatory, but there was definitely acid creeping into her tone. She made an effort to calm down. After all, wasn’t this what she had been wanting so badly, to know he was real? The added bonus of finding out she hadn’t killed someone wasn’t a bad thing either. Getting an honest explanation was what she wanted, and she was at risk of blowing it with her temper.

  “It was just a scratch. It must have looked worse than it was; it was very dark out if you recall. Everything healed up without a mark.” His arms were still crossed against his chest and his foot jiggled just the smallest bit.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. If this had been a poker game, that jiggle would definitely be his tell. Funny, while the story was exactly what she wanted to hear, it wasn’t the truth and she knew it.

  “Who picked you up then?” she said. “There wasn’t another car on the road, I would have seen it. You didn’t have a cell phone on you to call anyone with, and I got up for less than a minute. You just disappeared, and you didn’t even leave a drop of blood behind. They looked for you with bloodhounds and search parties. There wasn’t a trace of you or anyone else.”

  She was exhausted and in pain, she’d almost died, and she was starting to lose the war against holding her temper. While he’d just saved her life—which she was grateful for—he was the reason for all of this in the first place, and now he was definitely lying to her. He’d better have a good reason.

  “Fine,” he said. “No one picked me up. I was alone. I was poaching and was afraid of being caught. So after you hit me, I got up and walked away to avoid any trouble.”

  “You were hunting naked?” He didn’t have an immediate answer for that question. “And how did you end up with my bag and my groceries?” she said.

  His arms were still crossed defensively, and his
expression had grown stony. “I saw you at the grocery store and you took off running. I gathered up your things and followed you here and left them on the porch. I was never in your house. Maybe you imagined I was.”

  “Why were you there when I was on the bridge?”

  “I just happened to be passing by on my way home and saw you about to jump. You have answers to your questions, and no reason to further upset your life with worries about my well-being.”

  “Okay, let’s pretend for a minute that any of what you just said is true. That still doesn’t explain where all the blood went. What about the bullet holes in my room? I shot you. I tried to give you CPR, but you died, again, and then you just vanished.”

  Cool it, Hannah. She took a slow breath and thought for a moment before she continued. “I don’t believe you. Thanks for saving me and making sure I’m in one piece, but I don’t buy it. I know what I saw. Everyone, including me, has tried to convince me I made it all up or that there’s some other explanation. But since you’re sitting here right now, I believe myself. I know it happened, all of it.”

  A sharp pain was settling in the middle of her forehead. She squeezed her eye shut until it subsided slightly, then changed tack.

  “Listen, I hit you and I thought I killed you. I was sure you were dead, and I have been paying for it every day and night since then,” she said. “I did everything I could to find you, and when I couldn’t and everyone believed I was making it up, I tried to come to terms with having lost my mind. I failed. Miserably.” Hannah opened her eye. “Then it happened again. I shot you, though what you were doing in my house is a whole other question. Anyway, I’m at fault for hurting you, so you don’t owe me anything, but you could at least tell me the truth?”

  He opened his mouth to speak but closed it again, staring at her intently for a moment. Then he stood up abruptly, looking out the front door and across the yard.

  “After all this,” she said, “after everything that has happened, you aren’t even going to tell me what’s going on. Do you know what my life has been like, trying to find you?”

  Finally he came and sat back down, beside her where she couldn’t see the expression on his face.

  “Does it make a difference?” he said. “You believed you killed me. I am clearly alive. Is that not enough? You can pick yourself up, get back to your life knowing you were right and there is nothing wrong with your mind. Do you need to possess every detail?”

  They sat in loaded silence for a moment, the only sound the tick of the ugly Swiss clock between the doorframe and the window.

  “Yes!” It came out angry, and she stopped, made herself control her temper. “And no,” she said more softly. “I’m alive right now, and despite how it may have looked to you, I’m happy about that. It’s apparent now you aren’t dead, and you actually exist, so that’s supremely helpful with the crippling guilt and the overall sense of insanity I’ve been living with. On the other hand,” she said, “if I hit you and I didn’t kill you, and you just walked away and disappeared, then why are you here? Why did you come in here in the middle of the night like an intruder? Why did you follow me off a bridge yesterday?”

  Hannah swallowed and hoped he would turn to face her. He was eerily still, like a giant stone man. Suddenly he got up again and walked toward the kitchen. Her head turned to follow him to where he stopped in the doorway and put his hands on either side of the frame, leaning forward wearily.

  “I am sorry my explanation does not satisfy you,” he said. “I hope you will be okay after this point. I am clearly alive; there is no need to continue to suffer for my sake. I did not intend to drive you to where you ended up, but I hope now I was able to keep the situation from becoming fatal. It would be best if you accepted what I have told you and moved on.” He walked through the kitchen, opened the back door, and left, closing it behind him with a click of finality.

  Hannah sat there, shocked. Her head drifted forward until she was staring straight ahead at the front door, at the neat wooden square that covered the broken pane. Eventually she swallowed and stiffly hauled herself up from the couch and to her feet. She went to the kitchen and looked at the messy room with its overflowing waste basket and rolls of dust in the corners. The only clean thing was his plate and cutlery, standing rigidly at attention in the drainer. With a sigh she turned off the light and dragged her protesting body up the stairs.

  10

  Her body and mind were both beyond exhausted, but even burrowed warmly under the layers of blankets, shotgun napping on the other side of the bed, Hannah struggled to fall asleep. She tossed and turned, rerunning the jumbled, unbelievable bits of the day over and over in her mind. Finally, through sheer inability to keep her beat-up body awake, she drifted into a fitful, dream-filled sleep.

  Hannah found herself falling from the bridge again, but in a world that had been upended, so the sparkling river was like a waterfall, and she was sliding headfirst, down and down and down across its surface, edges of white ice reaching together on either side of her. She could see her shadow, arms stretched wide like wings, the water shimmering and wavering like old green glass just in front of her, close enough that she could have reached down and trailed her fingers over the surface as she fell.

  Each time she tried, she was pulled back by an unseen hand. Finally, she saw the black pool at the river’s end, but there was no fear in the landing, like there had been none in the falling. She broke through the surface like a diver, but instead of being sharp and icy, it was like falling into new snow that was strangely warm and soft as cotton batting. No water rushed into her sinuses, just the smell of wood smoke on the air. Instead of the weight of the dark pool, Hannah could feel the sun against her skin. Under the water it was calm. Perfect meaninglessness calm.

  It was wonderfully peaceful because it was the first night since the accident she hadn’t seen him when she closed her eyes. Hannah was pulled gently from the dream by the morning sun cutting directly though the sheer curtains and warming a line across her face. She stretched under the blankets, her body protesting, though not as violently as yesterday. It felt more like a day after too much exercise, like she had run a marathon. Or had run a marathon, finished first, and been trampled by every other person in the race.

  Both eyes opened today, and flipping back the covers, Hannah could see the side of her left leg was covered in an unattractive camouflage of red scratches and purple and black bruises. The mottling continued up her thigh and under the hem of the t-shirt she’d slept in, popping back out from the armhole. The other side had fared a little better, not visibly marked up, but as sore as she expected when she raised her arm.

  She quickly put the arm back down. She stank. Like pond water and old sweat.

  In the bathroom she turned on the shower and waited for the water to heat up. When she took off her shirt it peeled away audibly, and she winced as the fabric separated from where it was glued to the scraped skin on her back. Hannah dropped it to the floor with disgust and toed it in the direction of the trash can.

  The hot water was a revelation. She sat in the bottom of the tub watching it circle the drain in a dingy swirl and disappear between her feet until the heat petered out. After wrapping her hair in a towel, she swiped a hand across the mirror to clear the steam.

  The dark bags under her eyes and the hollow cheeks she had seen in the mirror at the grocery store were now accompanied by a swollen and split black eye. Purple and red ran down her cheek and over her chin in one continuous bruise that traveled downward to her shoulder. She let the condensation build back up and her reflection fade away to a blurry, indistinct outline of someone more recognizable.

  After several minutes and no small amount of swearing, she’d managed to work most of the knots out of her matted hair, and it finally fell straight and dark, clinging in damp hanks to the middle of her back. Hannah shivered, cooling down quickly out from under the warm spray, and threw on a pair of sweatpants and a fleece shirt. Looking around at the accumu
lated piles of dirty clothes on the floor and draped over every available surface, she sighed then stuffed the hamper full and lugged it to the top of the stairs with her less sore arm.

  Thunk. Thunk. She jumped. There was a thump against the side of the house, then another. She paused. It came again, making the loose windowpanes rattle.

  Abandoning the hamper, Hannah tiptoed quietly down the stairs. By the front door she pulled the curtain aside, jerking backward when a quartered piece of wood hit the siding and fell onto a stack under the window. Hannah opened the door to see a retreating figure in plaid flannel making its way back to the woodpile. She wasn’t sure if Asher heard her open the door or not, but he didn’t turn.

  Deftly, he placed a section of log on the block and split it cleanly in two, again and again until the last of the pile was split. He leaned the axe against the block and gathered up a giant load of wood, balancing all of it carefully in one big arm.

  Asher didn’t look at her when he stepped onto the porch and tossed the last pieces on the pile. The crib was full of split wood, and what wouldn’t fit was stacked neatly down the length of the porch.

  “You should lock your door at night.” He brushed the wood chips off his arms and turned back toward the woodpile.

  That was the second bossy man to tell her that in as many days. Truthfully, living where she did, locking or not locking the door at night was about a fifty-fifty occurrence. She figured if a person really wanted to get in, a locked door wasn’t going to keep them out for long, and Asher was the only shady character she’d ever seen in the area. The town was so small they didn’t have a resident peeping Tom or even a lecherous old guy to worry about. Dan from the Beer Barn stared at her ass sometimes, but that was about the extent of the local creepiness.

  Anyway, she hadn’t been raised helpless. She knew how to handle the shotgun in her room—as he well knew—and in her mind that leveled out some of her lack of diligence in use of the deadbolt.