“Sorry,” he said weakly. “Got a sudden headache.”
The cop bought the story, but Annika didn’t. She turned to the cop and talked some more, but Soren didn’t hear them. “He had already shown me what I could become,” Evan wrote. “A figure we both knew. Of course we did. He was me.”
Evan Turner had seen himself in the forest. He’d assumed it was a vision, but Soren knew the truth. He understood even if Evan had not.
John said there were answers in the forest, just not the ones he expected. Well, he was right about the second part at least. Soren thought he was ready for most things, but not this.
Annika and the cop were leaving the cell and heading outside. Soren was walking, but his mind kept returning to Evan’s words. “But he was a very different Evan Turner.”
Yes, boy, yes he was. You just didn’t know it. If only he had told him; if only he had said . . .
Annika was shaking the cop’s hand and smiling at him. Soren noticed the officer hand her his business card and say that if there was anything he could do for her, “anything at all,” she should call. The cop was about as subtle as a sledgehammer.
They were outside and in the car before Annika rounded on him.
“What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. You?” she shouted.
Soren saw their driver, Miles, flinch. Soren opened his mouth to respond, but Annika started shouting again.
“Seriously, what the fuck, Soren? Are you trying to blow everything? The cops don’t have to play nice. You know that better than anyone. And at the very least we want to seem professional and courteous and—I don’t know, I’m just spitballing here—sane. Were you being normal back there? Mr. I’ve-Got-a-Headache. You looked like you’d seen a ghost. And it wasn’t normal, it was weird.”
“The letter,” Soren said.
“Was a clue,” she finished. “Why are you freaking out about it?”
“Don’t you understand?” Soren said. “Don’t you know what it means?”
Annika shook her head.
“That Reapoke Forest has a greater pull than we thought,” she said. “That somehow it was able to lure Evan back. I have no idea why the Association would want Evan to go back there, but it’s a strange organization.”
Soren stared at her, stupefied. Had she really missed it?
“He saw himself, Annika,” he said.
“I got that,” she said. “Coakley showed him a vision—”
“He saw himself, Annika,” Soren repeated. “Don’t you get what that means?”
Annika’s eyes widened and she threw up her hands.
“That he’s an egomaniac?” she asked. “What’s the big deal, Soren?”
“He saw a fucking pretender,” Soren said. “He saw a doppelgänger in the forest. That’s the big deal. Don’t you understand? They’re all pretenders. It’s the missing piece of the puzzle. Coakley and his crew are pretenders. They must have been living in the forest for a hundred years. It’s a lost tribe of them. They’re—”
The slap came as a total surprise, stinging Soren’s face. He stopped talking and put his hand to his cheek.
“Why?” he asked.
“You,” Annika said calmly, “have lost your shit. You’re not thinking.”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“No, you’re the one who doesn’t get it,” she said. “Look at yourself. You’re shaking.”
It was true. Soren held out his hand and noticed how he couldn’t keep it still. He felt flushed, and he wiped sweat from his brow.
“Soren, listen to me,” she said. “There aren’t pretenders in that forest.”
“But he said—”
“I know what he said. But think it through. Do pretenders normally stand there and point at the people they’ve copied, giving messages about sin?”
“No, but—”
“Do they dress differently—say, in a pair of white robes?”
“They always dress exactly the same so as not to draw attention to themselves,” Soren said. “But—”
Annika held up her hand to interrupt him.
“Could a pretender keep the shape of a single person for two hundred years?” she asked.
“Evan wasn’t . . .” He stopped himself. “Coakley.”
“You just said ‘Coakley and his crew are pretenders.’ You’re the expert on doppelgängers, but does that seem likely to you? They took the shapes of people from two centuries ago and hung around in a forest? Is that what they typically do? That’s not what you told me when we first met. You said—”
“They lie. They cheat. They murder. They’re the most vicious monsters ever created,” Soren finished.
“Yes,” Annika said. “Coakley has murdered people, but is he following the typical pattern of a pretender? More to the point, can pretenders turn incorporeal, letting their hands go through people? Can they disappear into thin air?”
Soren leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.
“No,” he said finally. “No, they can’t.”
“Was the boy you saw in the forest a pretender? You told Wallace you’d seen his son. Do you think he was a pretender, too?”
Soren kept his eyes closed.
“No,” he said again. “No, I don’t. He could have never disappeared like that if he was. He didn’t run, he didn’t move, he just vanished. Doppelgängers can’t do that.”
“Right,” she said. “And does it seem likely that Evan happened to find a single pretender in the forest? Or is it more probable that there’s something else going on here? Maybe Coakley really did send him a vision. Maybe he dreamed it later and now believes it’s real. Who the hell knows? But does that sound like a pretender to you?”
Soren opened his eyes and looked at her, feeling defeated.
“No,” he said again.
“I don’t know what’s behind this,” she said. “I can’t explain how Evan saw a ghost version of himself. But it wasn’t a pretender, right?”
Soren nodded glumly.
“But it raises a question,” Annika said. “Why did you have this reaction when you thought that it was? Why did you lose your cool like that?”
He wanted to answer her, but he couldn’t find the words. He kept waiting for them to arrive but they didn’t.
“I get it,” Annika said. “You said I was the one keeping secrets. And maybe I kept a few, but you have a house full of them, Soren Chase. I haven’t known you long, but I’ve never seen you this way. I wanted to mention this a while ago, but remember at the séance when you were taunting the pretender? ‘You’re pathetic. Who could love a thing like you?’”
Soren nodded.
“I saw the look on your face; you were enjoying yourself,” Annika said. “You liked inflicting mental anguish on that thing.”
“It was trying to kill—”
“That wasn’t about us,” Annika said. “That was about you. I just don’t know why. Why do you hate pretenders so much?”
The question hung in the air.
After a few minutes Annika stopped waiting for a response. She turned to Miles and started giving him directions.
“Uh-uh,” he said. “Boss told me specifically not to take you out that way again.”
“We’re not going to Reapoke Forest,” Annika said. “We’re going to go see a few locals—and I hope they can give us some answers.”
They drove out of Richmond in silence, with Soren still trying to form words on his lips.
Chapter Twenty-One
The puzzle in Soren’s mind had shattered to pieces again.
For one brief, shining moment, it had all made sense. Everything had fit in place. He saw all the faces from the forest—Jeremiah Coakley, Owen Leggett, Samuel Mitchell, Evan Turner, and even the Native Americans—circling the word “pretenders.”
But Annika’s cold, hard logic had blown that idea apart. The solution had been no solution at all. Despair crept over him, the gnawing feeling that he was near the answer but it was going to escape him. It
would all slip through his fingers. The puzzle would never be complete.
He could feel Annika staring at him, watching him with some unreadable expression. Perhaps she thought he was cracking up. Maybe he was. The image of Evan Turner seeing himself in the forest weighed on him. It didn’t fit with what he thought he knew.
His mind turned over questions he couldn’t answer. What was the commonality between all the figures in Reapoke Forest? Other than geography, was there anything that connected these disparate people?
More perplexing was what a group like the Association was up to. Yes, the forest was cursed, a malady of negative psychic power. So what? How was that of any value to a man—or thing—like Randolph Chastain?
When he got home, he would have to look up the rest of the cases, the other people mentioned in Annika’s file. There must be something he was overlooking.
“We’re here,” Annika said.
Soren looked up to see the car pull into a parking lot in front of a large building. A sign nearby identified it as Samaria Baptist Church.
“I don’t need a religious intervention, Annika,” Soren said in confusion.
“No, but you wanted to see the Chickahominy people,” she said. “Here they are.”
Soren tried to shake off the sluggishness of his brain.
“At a church?” he asked.
“The tribe was Christianized hundreds of years ago, Soren,” she said. “It’s not that strange. Did you expect they would still be living in longhouses or something?”
“I don’t even know what a longhouse is,” he said. “I was thinking more of a teepee.”
“Wrong Indians,” she said.
Now that they were here, Soren realized how flawed his plan was. They needed information, but he didn’t know who to contact or how. In his head it had all been so simple. He would arrive at the tribe, find the chief, and demand to know what happened in the haunted forest four hundred years ago. Now that strategy seemed incredibly stupid.
“Come on,” Annika said, and she hopped out of the car.
He opened the door and followed after her as she strolled confidently toward the church.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“You said you wanted to talk,” Annika answered. “I got us a meeting with the tribe historian.”
Soren looked at her in wonder.
“When the hell did you do that?” he asked.
“In the car, when you were off in la-la land,” she said. “You seem like you’re feeling a little better at any rate.”
Soren nodded. The cobwebs around his brain were starting to clear.
“We’re in luck,” she said. “Wallace gives tons of money to lots of people. One of his pet causes has been winning federal recognition for certain Virginia Indian tribes.”
“Including the Chickahominy,” Soren said.
“Yes,” she said. “Apparently the tribe was extremely helpful in searching for Owen back in the 1970s. Wallace doesn’t forget. It also means we can secure a meeting pretty easily.”
They walked in through brightly painted white double doors. Almost immediately he saw two figures approaching them. An older woman walked forward, with a younger man trailing after. The woman stuck out her hand to Annika.
“Tabitha Jefferson,” she said. “Pleased to meet any friend of Wallace Leggett.”
She turned to Soren and grasped his hand, too. She was striking, with long brown hair flecked with gray. Soren guessed she was in her early fifties. She had an easy and warm manner about her. Soren noticed her earrings, which were large silver hoops with a small enamel turtle hanging in the middle. The turtle’s color was accentuated by her dark brown skin.
The man behind her cleared his throat, and Soren turned to find a familiar face.
“Kael,” Soren said in surprise. Soren almost didn’t recognize him. Instead of deerskins, he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The nose ring was also missing.
Tabitha looked from Kael to Soren and then back again.
“You’ve met my son?” she asked.
Kael gave him a warning look that bordered on panic.
“He gave us directions the other day when we were out by the powwow,” Annika said, apparently cluing in to Kael’s signals.
The look of relief on Kael’s face was almost comical.
“Oh,” Tabitha said. “Would you like to come back?”
Soren and Annika followed her through the narthex, out into a hallway and then into a back room that looked like a study.
“I mostly work at the church,” she said. “But my father was a historian, and a lot of it rubbed off on to me. I’m now passing most of what I know on to Kael. I’m sorry you couldn’t give us more warning, Ms. Taylor. I would have brought over some items from the cultural center. It’s just across the street, if you have time.”
Soren noticed there were at least a few objects in the church. On the wall of the study were several old headdresses, as well as an old bow with a quiver of arrows nearby.
“Please, call me Annika,” she replied. “And I’m sorry about the time. We were just in the area and hoped we could find someone to help us.”
“I can’t tell you what a help Wallace has been,” Tabitha said. “He’s been one of our staunchest supporters and very helpful in convincing others to join the cause.”
“Federal recognition?” Soren asked.
Tabitha nodded enthusiastically.
“We’ve been trying since 1996,” she said. “Virginia recognized us two decades ago, but the federal government has been far more stubborn. With Wallace’s help, we nearly succeeded a few years ago.”
“What stopped you?” Soren asked.
“Politics,” she said. “A bill was poised to clear the Senate until one senator raised concerns that it wasn’t a congressional issue. He wanted it to be handled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which doesn’t help us any.”
“Mom, they’re not here for the spiel,” Kael said. “Actually, I don’t really know why they’re here.”
“Oh, yes,” Tabitha said. “You must forgive me. It’s easy for me to start talking about the cause once I get started. What exactly did you want to know? Was there something specific you were inquiring about?”
Soren wasn’t sure where to begin, but Annika started.
“We’re investigating Reapoke Forest,” she said.
The effect was immediate. The smile froze on Tabitha Jefferson’s face, and her son glanced at her nervously. She eyed them warily.
“That’s an old term for that place,” she said. “I wasn’t aware anyone used it anymore. Why are you interested?”
“Do you know about Wallace’s son?” Annika asked.
Tabitha nodded.
“We’ve helped him as much as we can,” she said. “But I’m afraid . . .”
She didn’t finish her sentence.
“It’s more than just Owen,” Soren said. “The people in control of that land are up to something.”
“I’m well aware of the Association, Mr. Chase,” Tabitha said, her voice cold. “Indeed, our interaction with them goes back decades. But I still don’t understand—what do you want from us?”
“We need to know more about Reapoke’s history,” Annika said. “We’re trying to understand what happened there.”
Tabitha gave a short laugh.
“What didn’t happen there?” she asked. “Murder, rape, kidnapping. It is a forest full of sin, Ms. Taylor.”
“Was it always that way, though?” Soren asked. “Before the colonists came, did anything happen near that spot? A massacre perhaps? Maybe an intratribe battle or disagreement?”
“Next you’re going to ask me if it’s the site of an Indian burial ground,” Tabitha said.
Soren inadvertently looked at Annika. It was a quick gesture, but Kael caught it.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “Really? Are we going to do this again?”
“Relax,” his mother said.
“No, I’m just really tired of t
his shit,” Kael said. “Every ghost story has to have dead Indians at the bottom of it. ‘Oh no, it was the site of an Indian burial ground!’ What is it with white people? Do you think Indians are magical or something? Somehow our dead have supernatural abilities?”
“It’s related to guilt,” Tabitha said, putting a hand on Kael’s knee. “We’ve talked about this. The persistent legend is an unconscious expression of remorse for what the colonists did to us. The family that moves into a new house in Poltergeist may be innocent, but the blood of their forefathers is on their hands. The past has teeth and reaches out to bite them.”
Soren raised his eyebrows at that, remembering that Terry had said much the same thing to him earlier.
“It’s more than that,” Kael said. “We’re just a convenient scapegoat. Something’s haunted? It’s the Indians. We’re like elves or leprechauns now. People don’t even believe we exist.”
“Actually, leprechauns are real, too,” Soren said.
Kael stared at him.
“I can’t tell if you’re joking, dude, and that worries me,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Soren said. “For the record, I was never concerned about an Indian burial ground. But, Tabitha, you said something—‘the past has teeth.’ That’s exactly what I’m worried about. Since 1622 the people on that land have met with unfortunate accidents. What I want to know is, does it go back further than that?”
Tabitha paused for a moment.
“No,” she said. “We’ve lived near the river since the beginning of time, but there are no stories of anything unusual there. Not until the colonists came. That’s when the trouble started.”
Soren was crestfallen. His entire theory rested on the idea that there was something dark and disturbing in Reapoke Forest’s past that they hadn’t already stumbled onto. Simultaneously, he chastised himself for being so consumed with that idea. The forest was haunted; was it important how it became that way?
But he couldn’t escape the feeling—no, the dead certainty—that it did. He was missing a massive piece of the puzzle, and this had to be it.
The Forest of Forever (The Soren Chase Series, Book One) Page 20
