“But you did return, you do,” Hannah said. “And what, no one noticed?”
“Oh, we returned. But consider the time. Imagine if you died in front of a witness and vanished. It would be assumed you were either whisked up to heaven or were a witch, demon, whatever explanation was most acceptable based on the belief systems of the time. At most you might become a local legend or a cautionary tale. On the off chance you came back on the same continent and could find a way to return to where you came from, it would be seen as a miracle, or a curse. I am sure people like me have returned to their homes only to be burned at the stake or ducked for witchcraft, or best case scenario, proclaimed a miracle and sainted. That has actually happened more than once. No one would attribute it to anything else, especially in the past.”
Hannah plunked an ice cube into her now warm but equally crappy wine and sat down across from him.
“Okay, I’ll buy that. But that was then. Now technology allows you to get right back to where you came from, if you wanted to, and probably prove with DNA or something that you’re the same person. Why hasn’t someone done that and, I don’t know, taken over the world or convinced people they were a god? Or at least gotten really really rich and famous for not ever dying.”
“But they have and they do. Can you not think of at least one person in history to vanish and come back from the dead and amass a powerful following?”
“No way? Really?” Her mind was a little blown. “Wait, but where is he now?”
Asher laughed out loud. “Who knows. Still trying, probably. Hoping to have another go round. That problem is exactly what I am talking about, and it actually makes it easier for me to live in peace. The further people have come into modernity, the less willing they are to believe things that are right in front of them. Consider your own case.”
It was true. She’d seen him die and disappear with her own eyes and come back more than once, and she still hadn’t believed it.
He cocked his head toward the computer. “Hiding in plain sight. If you go online, there are entire websites of old photos side by side with pictures of modern celebrities, meant to be amusing. You cannot imagine how many of them are correct. And those are the ones I know of, the ones who have chosen to be in the public eye. How many am I not aware of? People have made the connection and they do not even believe it.”
Hannah’s hand was twitching toward her laptop. He shook his head no, and she sighed. Maybe later.
Asher continued. “Many of us have managed to accumulate great wealth and power in this day and age, with what we are as a tool, but never directly because of it. Humanity now will not accept something that so clearly must be impossible. You could put together a suitcase full of proof that a person like me has walked the earth for hundreds of years and hand deliver it to any major news outlet, and at best they would send it over to the National Enquirer.”
“What about the—”
Hannah jumped from her chair and tipped over her wine, a trail of red snaking its way to the floor. She ducked down below the level of the table.
“Get down, something just went past the window.”
Asher was down almost as soon as she spoke, though less successfully out of the way. She was certain she’d seen a dark shape silently pass by the narrow border window to the left of the back door.
Hannah grabbed the shotgun from where it was leaning against the wall and snicked off the safety.
“Stay here,” Asher hissed. She reached up to flick off the light, then hesitated. He shook his head no. Whoever it was might not know they’d been seen.
Another shadow passed by, then a third in quick succession. Asher motioned her down into the corner, where the end cabinet met the wall and made a small, less vulnerable space, then held out his hand for the gun. Hannah started to hand it to him, then paused, relief dawning on her face.
“Deer.”
“What?” he hissed. “Give me the gun.”
“It’s the deer,” she said. He paused, then nodded in understanding.
“Give me the gun, let me check,” he whispered. She relinquished it unwillingly and stayed down, but she wasn’t frozen in fear now.
Asher moved silently to the back door, staying low, then eased aside the window covering to look out. He let it slide back into place and turned around.
“Deer,” he confirmed with evident relief.
She uncurled from the corner. “I haven’t seen a single animal since you got here. Usually I have that whole group roaming the yard all night. They like to eat the grapevines and dig under the snow at the edge of the wood, especially when there’s a lot of snow, since it’s not as deep under the trees.”
“There have not been any deer lately?”
“Not a single one.” She grabbed a rag and started to clean up the stream of wine that had made its way across the table and was puddling on the floor.
“I think that means our company is probably gone for the moment. We should go.”
Hannah looked at him, then the rag. She realized how relieved she was that it was only deer, and how terrified she’d been until she knew otherwise. Hannah tossed the rag overhand into the sink.
“Let’s go.”
17
Asher stomped on the gas, barreling up the last few feet of the driveway, using the momentum to crash through the deep pile of snow that had been plowed across it. They fish-tailed through the turn, skidding out almost to the opposite ditch, but he deftly corrected at the last second, bringing them back into their lane on the slick road. He drove with the lights off, using only the sliver of moon to navigate by; she hoped his eyesight really had improved with age, because she was struggling to make out much of anything through the windshield in front of her.
“Where are we going?” Hannah grabbed the handle above her head and braced when he made another quick turn a few minutes later. He didn’t answer, driving with his eyes fixed on the road. Suddenly they turned again, and sharply, the car bottoming out as they squeezed through a nearly invisible space in the trees. They were on the washboard surface of a narrow lane Hannah didn’t recognize. If she had to guess, she’d say they were somewhere off the dirt road that wound between her property and the steep hilly land beyond it, except in all the times she’d driven it, Hannah had never noticed another road coming off from it.
The road shot steeply upward, and he flicked the headlights on, cutting through the pitch blackness under the tight-knit branches. It was a close fit, hemmed in by the pines on both sides, and she winced as branches scraped against the doors of her car. They snaked though several more quick, tight turns before the road suddenly opened up in front of them. The narrow slice of moon was visible again through fat, falling snowflakes, and she caught a glimpse of a log cabin before the headlights winked out.
“I had no idea there was anything up here. How’d you find this place?” she said.
“Airbnb.”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking. Shaking the snowflakes off her head she followed him closely on the stone path around to the front door, hand on the back of his coat to guide her. They stopped, and she heard him unlock the door and open it.
“Wait here.” His warm bulk disappeared and Hannah waited impatiently, ears straining for any sound. She jumped when his voice sounded out somewhere in front of her. “Come in. I am going to hide your car in the garage. I will be right back.”
Sliding across the icy stoop, she made it inside and stood stiffly on the doormat in the dark. Just when she’d decided to start fumbling around for a light switch, Asher melted out of the darkness and turned on a table lamp, throwing a pale yellow ring of light across the room. It illuminated a pair of overstuffed couches around a coffee table made from a giant, solid square of rough-hewn wood. Beyond them were walls of solid peeled log, and at the far end of the room, a great bank of windows that came to a peak far above her. The panes were black in the darkness except for the moon perfectly framed in the highest triangular pane. She’d grown disoriented driving i
n the dark, but the moon in the window meant they looked out toward the valley they’d just come from. If they were as high up as she thought they were, they might even look out over the rolling hills and scattered lakes between here and the mountains.
Walking back to Hannah, Asher reached over her shoulder and punched a series of numbers into a key pad.
“Stay inside. Keep the lights off out here where the windows are not shaded. I will be upstairs, in the loft. There is a bedroom past the kitchen you can use.”
“Wait, what if someone—”
He flicked off the lamp and disappeared into the dark, leaving her alone, her boots dripping melting snow onto the door mat.
Clouds drifted over the moon and blocked out what little light there had been. Hannah shuffled toward where she was fairly sure the kitchen was, not making it very far before one of her knees made contact with a table she hadn’t seen coming. She swore loud enough for it to echo off the bare walls. Asher could see better in the dark, and she hoped he heard better too, since most of the profanity was aimed at him and his not leaving a light on for two more minutes.
The first door she came to past the kitchen turned out to be a small half bathroom, the second a closet. Then another encounter between her shin and a piece of unseen furniture. This one brought tears to her eyes, and not only from the pain. She was running scared from her home, and it had landed her in a strange place, stumbling around in the darkness all alone. What was I thinking, leaving my house and coming here with him? I let fear get the best of me, and here I am, just as scared. At least at home I knew where I was.
The third door was finally the promised bedroom. She fumbled for the light switch then shut the door behind her, turning the lock and leaning against it, taking a deep breath. She was here, she’d come here of her own free will, whatever that brought her, and right now she had no other choice but to deal with it.
The room was as foreign as the rest of the house, dominated by a large bed with a headboard made from a half-moon-shaped slice from a massive tree, tawny colored and sanded to dull smoothness. Hannah reached out and ran her hand down over the hundreds of rings, the subtle color changes marking countless years of growth, down to where they were blocked by a mound of pillows. They looked so inviting. Letting her bag slide to the floor, she sat down, just to rest for a minute. She was so worked up there was no way she’d be able to sleep, not here in this strange place, not knowing who might be looking for them and where they might be. But she was so tired. She just needed to sit for a while. Hannah leaned back against the fluffy mountain of pillows, just to rest, just for a minute.
The sound of footsteps over her head woke her. Hannah listened as they clomped across the room. She heard another door open and close again with a squeak, then the house returned to silence.
Rolling over and getting up, she unlocked the door and peeked her head out. “Asher,” she said. “Hello.” When there was no reply and no Asher, she decided it counted as permission to rummage around his cupboards.
Hannah took her tea to stand in front of the bank of windows she’d seen last night. They opened onto a wide porch, and over the heavy beams of the deck railing she could see the storm had finally snowed itself out, and a thick blanket of white had washed everything clean and softened the edges of a tumble of boulders at the edge of the yard. Past them the land dropped off and a magnificent view opened up; the entire valley below with the town nestled at its base, the river wrapped around it like a lazy, coiled snake, and beyond them the mountains rolling off in waves.
“I believe an author built this. Writes books about vampires and werewolves, all sorts of supernatural nonsense.”
Hannah jumped when Asher spoke. He was pulling a sweater over his head while he walked down the stairs from the loft. He looked amused, breaking into a smile. His mood was as sunny this morning as it had been dark last night. Maybe he had just been tired. She tried and failed to recall actually seeing him sleep since they’d met, whereas it seemed like she was always either passing out or nodding off mid-sentence. Maybe grumpy from lack of sleep applied to people who had been alive forever too.
“Nonsense? Wait, there aren’t any werewolves?” Hannah sipped her tea and tried to pick out landmarks she knew from the land below. “I wasn’t aware anyone famous lived around here.”
“I did not suggest they were famous. Prolific though, based on the library. In any case, I do not believe the owner spends a great deal of time here. This place did not seem much used when I took it over. When I decided to extend my stay they were happy to oblige me for as long as I wished.”
He came to stand beside her and looked out over the valley, where white wisps of fog drifted by, covering and uncovering the town below.
“My house would be just over there.” She pointed her finger toward a small clearing far below them in the distance. He followed the direction she was pointing and nodded.
“How long have you been here? The whole time, since the accident?” She wasn’t accusatory, though part of her prickled, knowing that for at least part of the time he’d been here, watching from the shadows while she struggled to find him. And it was a little creepy.
“In this house? For some months. I was not sure what was going on, or why I kept returning to this area. I am still not certain about that. In the beginning I was staying in a rather disagreeable motel outside of town, but after I found out you could describe me and were still looking for me, I felt it best to retreat to somewhere less visible. I was struggling to blend in there anyway. Going unnoticed would be difficult for me in a town this small even if there was not a drawing of me on every telephone pole.”
He was smiling at her. This Asher’s face was less angular and tense than she’d seen so far. Definitely better rested.
“And you still don’t know why you’re here?”
He nodded, then turned toward the kitchen. “I have theories and ideas. None that make sense. But I have long since come to terms with there not always being a logical explanation.”
“How long do you think we’ll stay here?”
Hannah had followed him to the kitchen and was rummaging through the refrigerator, deciding what to make for breakfast. Asher offered to fend for himself, but she shooed him away. He might be perfectly able to cook, but she didn’t get the impression he enjoyed it, not nearly as much as she did.
“I went out before dawn and looked around. Our tracks were covered and the snow in all directions is undisturbed, so I have no reason to believe we have been followed here. This house is secluded and has an adequate security system. I would say we will stay for at least a few days, maybe more.”
She nodded in resignation. Maybe it was all nothing anyway, and no one had been able to follow them because no one was trying to, but it was better to be safe and not afraid. As much as she would rather be in her own house, in her own bed, this place felt like its own little fortress on top of the mountain. She hoped it was as secure as it felt.
“You think we’re safe here?”
He nodded.
“For now.”
Asher disappeared as soon as he’d eaten, and for lack of anything else to do, Hannah went to sit in the large, open living room. The couch where she sat faced the wide bank of windows that looked toward Barclay Mountain, the highest of the knobby peaks in the distance. She thought about the last time she’d been there, standing on the sheared-off cliff. The spot was visible from here, a faint scar near the summit. If I was there on a clear day would I be able to see this house? Was it here staring at me when I went up to spread Joel’s ashes, right before my entire life morphed into a horror movie? As if in response the sun brightened and flashed across the glass, brightening the room. The cabin must look like a point of light from far off when the sun reflected off the massive windows, a daytime star sitting on a neighboring peak. She might have seen it that day if only she’d picked up her head and looked.
Finally forcing herself to look away, Hannah tried again to settle into the book sh
e’d chosen from the wall of shelves in the office.
She turned a page but then flipped it back, not remembering anything she’d just read. It was failing to pull her in the way a book usually did, and she thought about going and choosing a new one, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t interest her any more than this one. The books here were strange, all by the same author—the cabin’s owner she supposed—and all so new the spines cracked when she opened the covers. She would have traded all of them for one of the worn-to-shreds paperbacks from her room.
“Is there anyone who would report you missing?”
She jumped, and the stiff book snapped shut when it hit the floor. “Missing?” Hannah picked it back up, fingering the thin crinkled line where the spine had broken, before laying it in her lap.
“Is there anyone who is going to come looking for you if you are not home or if you miss too many phone calls?”
She shrugged. “The sheriff seemed satisfied, so I can’t imagine he’d be worried.” She opened the book back up and tried to look like she was reading it.
“Anyone else?”
“Nope. No one else.”
Hannah didn’t look at him and she kept her tone cheerful, because she didn’t want to see a look of pity. It wasn’t necessary. Her life had always been full enough and happy, until recently. She had friends scattered across the country, across the world even, in all the places she’d lived. Maybe they didn’t talk every day, or even every month, but they kept in touch in varying levels of regularity. She just didn’t have a great many people in her life that were there every day. It was the price paid for living in a town this small, especially since she hadn’t grown up here.
The couch dipped on the other end when Asher sat down. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him looking out over the valley, the surface of the river so still and reflective it was as if it gave off its own light.
Echoes (Book 1): Echoes Page 14
