Echoes (Book 1): Echoes

by Caplan, A. M.

  “So the day of the accident, you remember I was coming from up on Barclay Mountain, where I went to spread Joel’s ashes?” The sheriff nodded. “I wasn’t in too great shape that day. I was pretty broken up about Joel, and I wore myself out climbing up and back. On my way out I guess I must’ve hit something, like a tree or phone pole or one of those big boulders in the parking lot there, you know the ones I’m talking about.”

  The sheriff was still looking at her, both eyebrows raised now, his forehead crinkled like a hound dog’s.

  “So anyway, on the way home I guess things just really caught up with me and something just . . . well. Anyway, I really thought I hit a person and killed him. I swear I did.”

  “Keep talking,” Sheriff Morgan said. “That still doesn’t explain the man sitting over there.”

  Hannah put down the mug she’d been fiddling with.

  “Yeah, about him. So right after you stopped to see me this last time, there was a knock on the door, and would you believe, the same man I’d been looking for all this time was standing on my front porch. It kind of all came rushing back then, who he was. I actually did know him, kind of. Tony is—was—a friend of Joel’s. They were in the air force together, and I met him years ago, when I was a lot younger, when we were living in Alaska, I think.”

  She looked over at Asher who was sitting just a little too woodenly. “It was in Alaska, wasn’t it? Were you stationed there?”

  He nodded but unhelpfully didn’t offer up any supporting falsehoods.

  “I don’t know why my brain put him in the road. Maybe I had a little schoolgirl crush on him at the time”—she was going to hit Asher with a frying pan later for that part—“or why he happened to be um, nude, but anyway, there he was.”

  The sheriff’s arms were at least uncrossed and he was leaning one shoulder against the doorframe. The man looked exhausted now that she looked at him properly. She poured a cup of coffee and sugared it heavily, recalling the way he took it from her time haunting his office. She handed it over, and thankfully he accepted it with a nod.

  “Tony.” She’d almost said Asher, and took a shallow breath and reminded herself to stick to the story. “Tony hasn’t been in the country, and when he finally heard about Joel passing away he came to pay his respects. I know I should’ve come and told you right after, but I was embarrassed. I’ve been putting off telling you.” She couldn’t summon up any tears so she settled on a look she hoped came across as remorseful.

  The sheriff didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t look ready to put them in cuffs either, so she held her breath.

  “Is that true? Tony, is it?”

  Asher nodded and finally spoke.

  “I knew Joel when we were both in the service. I was saddened to hear of his passing and that I missed his memorial service, so I decided to call on Hannah. I remembered her from back then and was surprised to see the state she was in when I showed up. When I finally got her to tell me the whole story, I decided to stick around a little bit, get things around here put back together, make sure she gets any help she needs.”

  Sheriff Morgan eyed Asher.

  “You look a little young to have known Hannah too many years ago.”

  Asher smiled. “I was just a new recruit when I met Joel. He took me under his wing, looked out for me.”

  The sheriff considered Asher for another moment, then nodded and looked back to Hannah, then back and forth once again.

  “You were right, you know,” Hannah said to the sheriff. “You were right when you sent me to see someone, as much as it kills me to say it. I was so messed up with losing Joel and everything. I just . . .” Hannah trailed off. Remembering that therapist was going to ruin her ability to look contrite, so she ducked her head in fake remorse.

  Sheriff Morgan took his hat off and scratched his head through the thin layer of hair. Hannah let out a secret sigh of relief. She’d spent enough time in his presence to know that when the hat came off, nobody was going to get more than an ear chewing.

  “Well, Hannah, lucky for you going a little distracted isn’t an actual crime, what with losing your only family and all,” the sheriff said. “And everything in the accident report was technically true when you get right down to it, since you really did think you saw what you said you did; it wasn’t the same as thinking it up and lying on purpose.” He set down his coffee cup and crossed his arms. “But on the other hand, a lot of man hours and money were wasted looking for the man sitting over there. We had the state police and EMS and a hundred volunteers out there. That’s a pretty serious matter, especially seeing as it was all for nothing.”

  She hung her head. “Sheriff, I understand if you have to pass some of that cost on. I’ll figure something out. If I have to sell this place . . .” Hannah managed to squeak out a crocodile tear at that one.

  “Now come on, I’m not going to send you a bill, I just want you to understand the gravity of the matter.”

  Hannah did understand the gravity. That part was absolutely true.

  “Well, at least I can button this up. I admit, the whole thing was a head-scratcher. And I’m glad nobody’s really missing. There’s enough people missing for real, don’t need any more.” He looked at Asher and shook his head. “Darn good likeness now that I see you in person.”

  At the front door, the sheriff fiddled his hat back on and stepped out, then paused. “I almost forgot.” He looked back past her to where Asher was standing, blocking out the kitchen doorway. “You don’t happen to drive a big white SUV, matte paint job, weird silvery window tint?”

  Asher shook his head no.

  “Where’s your car?”

  They hadn’t considered that in the frantic minutes of cobbling together a story, but Asher didn’t miss a beat.

  “I came in a rental. Hannah followed me to Newton and we returned it today. Stopped to get some groceries after.”

  The sheriff nodded and looked at Hannah. “I was out past Davidson’s, you know that place with all the junk cars on the dirt road, the one that comes around the edge of your property on the side towards the lake.”

  She knew it well, eyesore that it was.

  “The car I was asking about was parked in the pull-off there. Blended in so well with the snow I wouldn’t a seen it ‘cept for the tires being black. Anyway, no plates, nobody in it that I could see, and locked up tight as a drum. I went down past the hedgerow to see if I could find the owner. Thought maybe they were lost, or hunting out of season or something, but I didn’t come across anybody, or tracks even. By the time I came back out of the woods it was gone. You see anybody strange around there lately?”

  Hannah cocked an eyebrow at Asher, and he just looked levelly back at her. Nope, nobody strange around here.

  “No, I haven’t seen anybody. We didn’t take the dirt road today. Looked like it might snow so we came the long way around.”

  Sheriff Morgan nodded. “Good call. It’s already started. Wouldn’t be February if we didn’t get another doozie of a storm or two before the month’s out. Anyway, keep your doors locked and all that, and if you see anything out of the ordinary, give me a call.”

  “Will do, Sheriff. Thanks.”

  He slipped out and Hannah made a point of shooting the bolt as loudly as possible behind him, watching through the curtain until his truck cleared the drifted turn of the driveway and disappeared from sight.

  Dropping the curtain, Hannah turned around to an empty room. She found Asher in the kitchen, unpacking the last of the grocery bags, his back to her.

  Maybe it was time for him to leave. She wondered once again if there was any danger except what had come from him being there. If he left, would he take it with him?

  The problem was, after all the time she’d spent trying to locate him, it was like finally being able to draw a full breath after holding it for too long. Asher had slipped from being a ghost to a real person, one who was trying to protect her. But what was he protecting her from? Saving her from herself had b
een one thing. Protecting her from an unknown quantity he might have brought into her life was another. She didn’t believe he would harm her, but that didn’t mean harm wouldn’t come to her. Maybe he should go. Right now.

  The closing of the pantry door snapped her back to reality. Hannah opened the cutlery drawer and pulled out a sharp kitchen knife, eyeing the wicked edge on the blade. She held it thoughtfully for a moment. When Asher turned around he looked at it, raising an eyebrow. Then he looked up at her.

  Maybe it was a terrible mistake, but she put the knife down on the scarred cutting board and slid it closer.

  “Hungry?”

  15

  Hannah waved aside Asher’s half-hearted offer of help with dinner, after which he quickly made himself scarce, slipping out the back door to take a look around. After going upstairs and retrieving the shotgun, she leaned it carefully against the end of the counter while she cooked. The act of cooking was familiar and comforting, and for a moment she felt like life had skipped backwards, to a time before her life had taken such a drastic downhill turn. The rattle of the lock brought her back to reality.

  “That smells very good.”

  She nodded to Asher when he stepped back in and shook the snow out of his hair. He locked the door behind him and wedged the chair back under the handle.

  “There are new footprints out there, mostly the sheriff’s, I would guess. They will be covered over soon enough. The older sets are gone already, though it makes no difference. I was not able to follow them far when they were fresh, so where their maker went, I cannot be sure.”

  Avoiding the spatter of grease from the skillet, she set it on the trivet in the middle of the table. “Who do you think was in the car?” Hannah said. “I’m guessing not poachers, not in that nice a vehicle. Other than that I don’t get a lot of people just wandering around out there, especially in the winter. And they probably wouldn’t be on foot. Everybody around here has an ATV or a snowmobile.”

  They ate in silence, him steadily, her picking thoughtfully. Midway she got up and poured herself a glass of wine from the box in the fridge. It occurred to her that it was the first drink she’d had since he’d pulled her out of the river. The urge had stopped with the nightmares and the rotten bloody taste she’d had in her mouth since the accident. Both had disappeared when Asher arrived.

  “Wine?”

  He shook his head, and she sat and took a sip while her chicken grew cold. It was pretty terrible wine, now that she really tasted it, and she set it aside unfinished. Maybe it was time to level up from the cardboardeaux.

  He cleaned his plate in silence before looking up.

  “I think we should consider going to stay somewhere else for a time.”

  She frowned. Not that she should, or he should, but they.

  “Do you think that’s necessary?” she said. He didn’t answer immediately, eyeing the skillet of chicken in the middle of the table. She spooned the rest of it onto his plate and pushed the salad bowl in his direction.

  “If this is about you, and you’re concerned about putting me in danger, you think us both going somewhere is the best thing to do?” It sounded harsher than she intended, but it was true. She wasn’t ungrateful for his help, and she’d decided not to ask him to go just yet, but leaving her house to go somewhere with him, a strange man she’d just met, sounded like a generally bad life choice.

  He paused, fork in midair, to speak. “There is a chance there is nothing going on beyond mundane trespassing. If I were certain that was the case I would have left when I knew you were on the mend and no longer in danger. However, if the person out there is someone else, my leaving might do you no good.”

  “You’ve said as much, so enlighten me then. If it isn’t out-of-season hunting, then who is it? Who’s the monster in the woods who might be after you, and why should that mean anything to me? You seem pretty concerned, and it’d be nice to know what I’m supposed to be afraid of.”

  He chewed slowly and swallowed his last bite before looking up. Asher was looking at her that way again, straight at her, but she’d be damned if she was going to look away. Hannah was getting better at their stare downs, not as thrown off by his strangely colored eyes and his habit of not blinking.

  “Beyond my better judgment I told you about myself. I did it because you refused to accept any other explanation, and that turned out to be hazardous to your health. Why could you not accept an alternative? Any one of them would have been far more believable,” he said.

  Answering a question with a question. But she bit.

  “Because none of those other explanations cut it. So far, what you’ve told me is the only thing that actually matched up with what I know happened. It seems unbelievable, but in all this time it’s the only chain of events that works, even if it doesn’t make sense, at least not in the normal way.” She paused to collect her thoughts. “Last night I kept asking myself why it was so hard to believe what you told me. My answer was because it’s impossible, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why that mattered. It happened, I know it happened, so that means it is possible. And why not? I’ve watched movies and read books where unbelievable things happen, and never blinked because I’ve decided it’s okay because it’s fiction. I’m choosing to apply that to reality. I’m broadening my horizons of possibility, for the present at least.”

  She put her clean dish in the drainer with a little more force than was necessary, as if physically putting an explanation point after her words. Strangely, saying it out loud had served to make it more true for her. She turned and leaned against the sink, facing him.

  “At least until I wake up and find out I’ve really been in a coma hallucinating this whole time, or that I’m really heavily medicated in a rubber room somewhere. Then I’ll be forced to revaluate.”

  He considered her for a moment, then nodded, the corners of his mouth tugging up into a smile.

  “So now that you have decided you are willing to believe me, at least at present, consider this. Would it be too much more of a stretch to believe I am not entirely unique in my condition?”

  Her mouth opened into a little o. She pulled out a chair and flopped down into it. “It’s not just you?”

  “Sorry, but as it turns out I am not terribly unique. There are others like me out there, scattered through the world..”

  She sat back, trying to wrap her head around it.

  “Knowing there are more of us,” he said, “and seeing as you know what I am, can you imagine then that you are the only person who is aware of our existence? Beings like myself are of great interest to a number of people and groups, and for a variety of reasons, some good, some rather nefarious.”

  “Okay, I get that,” Hannah said, “and I get that you don’t know which one might be creeping around outside. But no offense, none of them has anything to do with me. I mean, if you’re worried about my safety, maybe you should just make your own little trail in the snow and let them follow it the hell away from me.”

  He shook his head. Hannah wasn’t sure, but he looked a little hurt. She looked down, suddenly sorry.

  “I hope it has nothing at all to do with you. If I were sure who it was, and that they would not harm you strictly because of association, or try to use you as leverage, I would leave today,” he said. “But there is no way for me to be sure just yet. So I think it best if you remain with me for the immediate future.”

  “But you have an idea who it might be.”

  He nodded. “Rather a fear. I can’t be certain, but there is the party who concerns me most.”

  “Who?”

  He didn’t answer immediately, looking down at his hands.

  “My sister.”

  Just when she thought things were as weird as they were going to get today.

  Asher stood suddenly and went to the sink. He pulled aside the towel covering the window and looked blankly out across the yard.

  “Well?” she asked.

  He turned to her. “W
ell what?”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, come on. You can’t really throw that out there and then stop.”

  He turned to look out into the waning light one last time before letting the towel fall back across the window and sitting down.

  “My sister, Amara, she is like me,” he said. “I imagine you gathered as much since I am concerned about the possibility of her presence. One would think having a sibling in the same circumstances would be a good thing. Maybe it would have been, if things had gone differently. Unfortunately, our relationship is rather . . . strained.”

  Asher looked suddenly older, like his face was carved from stone. “Hannah, in my very first life, all those centuries ago, I did something I will always regret, and because of it my sister died—for what we could only have imagined was the only time—hating me. She hates me still. And because of it, Amara has made sure, even after all this time, that I never forget what I did. As if I needed her to remind me. But she persists, and she has made it into a twisted, never-ending game between us.” He had been talking to his folded hands, but now he looked up at Hannah. “Whenever she finds me, which she always eventually does, she tortures and kills whomever might cause me anguish, and then she kills me. She kills me and resets the game so she can play it over.”

  Hannah sat back, silent for a moment.

  “So you think if it’s your sister out there, she might kill me because it would hurt you? That’s stupid. It’s not like we’re dating. I accidentally killed you with my car.”

  He shook his head. “It does not matter what the reality is. That I have shown an interest in your well-being will be enough. She has killed people for far less.”

  “What did you do to her?” Her voice was timid.

  He shook his head.

  “Hannah, please listen to me. I have lived many years and done many things I do not care to look back on, but given enough time, nearly every wrong fades and lifts away. Except one. There is one burden that cannot be lifted, no matter how many years pass. The weight of human life is heavy and it is permanent. Since I cannot escape it, I can at least try not to accumulate the weight of any more deaths on my conscience.” He stood up suddenly and walked to the door. “As soon as I can find out for sure who has been skulking around out there, I will be on my way and you will return to your life. That is my hope. Unless it is my sister. If it is my sister, I do not know if it is possible for you to be made safe. My sister Amara is . . .” He stepped outside into the snow without finishing.