Echoes of the Past (2 page)

He wandered out onto the screened-in porch and looked out at
the lake. The strong night winds whipped it into
a frenzy
as if the water boiled with anger. He checked his watch.
Two
in the morning again.
He needed to break this habit. These unusually
vivid dreams had started the first night he’d arrived at the resort. Most of
them, exquisite, erotic fantasies, left him dissatisfied, but tonight’s dream
had transitioned into a flight for his life. From personal research, he knew a
dream’s meaning rarely had anything to do with its contents. This research
project into the source of the water in the lake meant everything to him
personally and professionally. He was afraid something would happen to ruin it.
That explained being chased, but it didn’t explain the sexual fantasies. Those
he understood easily enough.

He recognized the woman in his dreams as the shawl-wrapped stranger
who walked along the beach every now and then. Beautiful and exotic, something
about her called to his soul. He preferred women who didn’t look like carbon
copies of others, and this one intrigued him. He thought about her now.

He’d noticed her the night he’d arrived. He never slept well
in a new bed. Unable to settle, he’d stepped out onto the porch and noticed
someone else apparently suffering from insomnia. A woman, a blanket wrapped
around herself, her hair in a long braid down her back, strolled along the edge
of the sandy beach. She’d moved southeast toward the edge of the lookout. He’d
stepped outside to get a better look at her, but she’d vanished.

The next night, his imagination and libido had taken over,
and in his dreams, she’d entered his leafy grotto, and they’d had mind-blowing
sex. The things they’d done to one another. Thank God he’d awakened before his
body had finished responding to his fantasy.

He’d gotten up, frustrated as old hell, and had gone
downstairs. Standing in the screened-in porch, he’d looked out at the lake.
Unlike tonight, the water had resembled a mirror reflecting the stars on its
surface, and he’d been suspended between the water and the sky—everything
brighter, crisper, and clearer than he’d expected. Animals scurried in the
brush nearby. Bats swooped overhead. An owl hooted, and he’d shivered. Didn’t
some of the Native American tribes believe death followed the cries of an owl?

He’d turned to go back inside when he’d glimpsed his mystery
woman coming along the beach from the marshy area to the north. He’d called out
to her. She’d turned at the sound of his voice and stopped. In the moonlight,
he’d seen the sparkle of silver tears on her cheeks. Naked, he’d hurried into
the kitchen, grabbed his damp swimsuit off the drying rack, and rushed out, but
she’d disappeared.

He blinked, and the memory passed. He’d never seen a storm
as vicious as tonight’s. The rain came down in sheets. Thank God the kids had
made it back safely. He turned to go inside when a flash of lightning, the
first he’d noticed tonight, illuminated the beach.

What the hell?

The woman, wrapped in her blanket, walked along the beach as
if all hell wasn’t breaking loose around her. He ran to the door and raced
across the short expanse of grass. He stopped at the edge of the water. Where
had she gone? As she’d done every time he’d tried to catch her, she’d vanished.
Wet through, he hurried back inside. He saw the light go out in Jackson’s room.

Tony entered the cabin, stripped off his wet clothes, and
tossed them in the kitchen sink. Naked and shivering, he climbed the stairs and
went into the bathroom. He took a hot shower and then dried his shoulder-length
hair. He needed to get it cut. He grabbed a clean T-shirt and a pair of boxers
out of the drawer. Exhausted, he fell into bed hoping for sleep.

* * * *

Naked, she lies on her
back inside the green, leafy grotto, which meshes seamlessly into the
landscape. It’s late morning, and after last night’s storm, everything smells clean
and fresh. She stares up at the man she loves, but darkness and his long,
honey-brown hair shadow his face. Her body hums in anticipation of his touch.
Her nipples harden. His large, calloused hands caress her, and where they touch,
her flesh burns with desire.

He runs the fingers of
one hand through her unbraided hair. His lips capture hers in a searing kiss,
branding her his. She reaches up to him. She opens her mouth, and a deep moan
escapes her as his lips meet hers.

The
scene changes.
He runs along
the edge of the forest across the lake. Run, my love, she screams silently as
all around her the women urge their men to hurry, pointing at him, screaming
instructions. He stops, and once she knows he’s seen her, she turns away.
They’ll catch him, and she can’t bear to watch him be killed. She pulls her
marriage blanket tightly around her shoulders. Everyone thinks she’s made it
for another. Sobbing, she hurries away from the beach…

Michelle Thomas awoke in tears as she had so many nights
since arriving in Thunder Bay. Bathed in sweat, she shivered with need and a
bone-deep cold invaded her body. The nightmares, usually terrifying, realistic
visions of her watery death, exhausted her. Recently the dreams which had
plagued her most of her life had changed, and these new ones in which she was
both participant and witness, frustrated and grieved her. She preferred those
old night terrors to these out of body erotic fantasies with a man whose face she
never saw, but loved with every ounce of her being. Tonight, the thought of his
capture and death made the pain of loss worse than ever. How could she go on
like this?

Her wild weeping slowed to sobbing. She got out of bed and
padded into the motel room’s washroom. She turned on the light and gasped at
the mirror’s reflection. The face of a woman who closely resembled her—the Mohawk
woman in braids she’d been seeing off and on for weeks now—glared accusingly at
her.

“What do you want from me?” She yelled at the face in the
mirror,
anguish loud in her tear-filled voice. “You’re dead.
He’s dead. I don’t have any answers for you. Go away. Leave me in peace.”

She’d be glad to leave this cursed place in the morning and
get back to her own neglected apartment in Toronto. With luck, the ghost would
stay here and let her get on with her life. Tonight, as it did every time it
manifested itself, the spirit stared reproachfully at her, tears running down
its cheeks. The specter had first appeared shortly after her arrival in Thunder
Bay. As much as she’d like to ignore the manifestation, she couldn’t.

Michelle turned on the tap, and the image vanished replaced
by her own. With trembling hand, she held a glass under the spigot and filled
it with water. She opened her cosmetic case and took out two acetaminophen
tablets to ease the headache pounding in her skull.

She returned to the bedroom, turned up the heat, sat on the
bed, and wrapped herself in the comforter, searching for solace, knowing she’d
find none. Ghosts didn’t frighten her, but something about this manifestation
unsettled her. Madam Mohawk, as she referred to the spirit, represented her
past, an ancestry she denied vigorously. Her birth mother may have been Mohawk,
but those people had tossed her away as an infant. She’d been “reborn white” to
kind and loving adoptive parents she missed terribly, and by God, she’d stay
“white” no matter what.

She’d recently investigated reincarnation, and while
skeptical about what she’d read, there were aspects of the haunting which fit
the pattern more than she’d like to believe. She’d also taken time to study mental
illnesses, which might present the same way. She didn’t have Multiple
Personality Disorder, but the ghostly presence and her increased aversion to
water disconcerted her. Something was wrong, and she needed to fix it before it
drove her crazy.

Michelle stared into the quiet darkness. She hated the
silence. It reminded her of the before-time when she’d been normal like
everyone else. She’d fallen out of a canoe at summer camp at age twelve. It had
taken time to find her in the murky waters of the lake, and even more time to
get her to shore. When she’d awakened in the hospital after nine days in a
coma, she hadn’t been alone. She’d heard voices no one else heard, saw people
who weren’t there, and all of them had something in common—they’d all drowned.
She hadn’t understood what had happened to her, but it hadn’t taken her long to
realize her little quirk needed to be kept secret, even from those closest to
her.

Because of her near-drowning, Michelle disliked water.
Although her parents had insisted she learn to swim, she always thought she’d
rather undergo root-canal surgery than go swimming in a lake. Helping those
who’d died that way find peace and comforting those who grieved, helped control
her distress. Unfortunately, her fear of water had escalated into a serious
problem lately, one she wasn’t prepared to share with anyone.

Nestled in the blanket in the warm room, she recognized the
various sounds emerging in the darkness—crickets, bullfrogs, an owl, and the
screech of car tires. Outside, gusts of wind blew against the windows rattling
the screen. Inside, the ticking of her alarm clock matched her heartbeat. Who
was her mysterious, faceless lover? The things the man could do to her body! Even
now, the memory of his rough hands against her skin sent waves of need through
her. Tonight, there had been a different aspect to the dream, one that upset
her more than usual. What atrocities would she have witnessed if she hadn’t
awakened? She didn’t know how much more pain her poor heart could tolerate.

She suspected whatever the ghost needed was tied up with the
erotic dreams far more vivid than any real-life experience she’d had.
Everything centered on the man. She chuckled, the sound loud in the silent
room.

Okay. I’m desperately
in love with a man whose face I can’t see, who’s been dead for a couple hundred
years. How pathetic is that?

She closed her eyes and imagined his hands moving slowly
across her naked flesh, enflaming her. Desire pooled in her stomach. She
imagined her hands roaming across his beautiful body, tracing every scar there.
She ran her fingers through his long, wavy, honey-brown hair. She felt his
full, warm lips on hers, tasted him when his tongue invaded her mouth and tangled
with hers.

Who are you?
Her
heart begged.

She shook her head, blinked, and forced herself out of the
fantasy.
The last thing I need is to go
there again tonight.

Unfortunately, the ghost she saw didn’t speak, so where
would she find the two-hundred-year-old
ghost of the man she loved, the one who obviously needed her help? Most likely
in this area since the haunting had started here, but duty called her back to
Toronto tomorrow.

“I will come back and find you.” Her voice echoed in the
silence of the room. She looked at the clock—two a.m. She had to get up at
seven to catch her flight. Feeling a bit calmer, she stretched out on the bed
and closed her eyes. The vision in the mirror filled her mind, and wept as she
always did.

* * * *

Frantic pounding at the door woke Tony from a sound sleep.
He looked at the alarm beside the bed—barely after eight.

“Professor Steele! Wake up! Please wake up? They’re dead, professor,
they’re dead!” Jackson’s panic-filled voice jolted Tony into full
consciousness.

What the hell?
Dead?
Who’s dead?

He jumped out of bed, grabbed the jeans off the floor where
he’d dropped them the previous night, and hurried barefoot down the stairs to
open the door. Jackson’s fist hovered in mid-air preparing to pound on the door
again. Tony noticed the frantic look on the young man’s face and realized the
water streaming down his cheeks was a mixture of rain and tears. The boy panted
and Tony forced himself to assume a calm he didn’t feel. He needed to be strong
to support Jackson in his obvious distress.

“What happened, Jackson? Who’s dead?” he asked abruptly, his
tone as professorial as he could make it.

The young man pointed to the beach, to the spot where the
woman had stood the night before. On the sand, next to a canoe and assorted
branches and other debris, lay a lump of rags. Fear coursed through his veins,
and his heart leaped into his throat. Instead of vanishing, had the woman been
swept into the angry water? In that storm, a rip current could have formed and
pulled her in.

He raced down the stairs, oblivious to the cold on his feet
and the rain lashing at him as it had the night before. Jackson followed him. They
stopped beside the body—no, bodies—
feet ashore, heads
under water.

“Oh, my God!”
Aaron lay supine in
the water, his face barely submerged. The head tucked under his, the body
bundled inside the zippered jacket, must belong to either Lindsay or
Lissa
. He moved toward his students, intent on pulling them
from their watery grave, but Isaac, the resorts handyman grabbed his arm.

“No, Professor. I’m sorry, but we can’t touch them. Kara’s
called nine-one-one. We need to wait for the police.”

Tony heard a shrill scream and turned in time to see
Lissa
collapse to the ground. Jackson stood numbly beside
her.
It’s Lindsay then
.

“Jackson,” he yelled, but the boy didn’t respond. Tony
walked over to him and shook him.

The boy, obviously in shock, blinked his eyes. He looked
like a lost, frightened child. Tears coursed down his cheeks.

Tony spoke abruptly. “Help me get her inside. She’ll catch
pneumonia out here. She’s wet right through.”

The sound of footfalls on the grass alerted him to a new arrival.
Tony looked up. Kara ran across the grass toward them. The girl didn’t need to
see the bodies. Bad enough
Lissa
and Jackson had. No
doubt the image would remain with them, as it would with him, for the rest of
their lives.