The Haunting of Autumn Lake Read online

  Copyright © 2011

  The Haunting of Autumn Lake by Marcia Lynn McClure

  www.marcialynnmcclure.com

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, the contents of this e-book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any part or by any means without the prior written consent of the author and/or publisher.

  Published by Distractions Ink

  P.O. Box 15971

  Rio Rancho, NM 87174

  ©Copyright 2011 by M. Meyers

  A.K.A. Marcia Lynn McClure

  Cover Photography by

  ©Natalia Matveeva and ©James York | Dreamstime.com

  Cover Design by

  Sheri Brady | MightyPhoenixDesignStudio.com

  First Printed Edition: October 2011

  All character names and personalities in this work of fiction are entirely fictional,

  created solely in the imagination of the author.

  Any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.

  McClure, Marcia Lynn, 1965—

  The Haunting of Autumn Lake: a novel/by Marcia Lynn McClure.

  Printed in the United States of America

  None else in nature doth compare,

  Far fair beyond belief,

  Is love’s first kiss that lovers share,

  And Autumn’s Rubied Leaf.

  ~Marcia Lynn McClure

  Chapter One

  The dusky path meandering through the old maple and oak grove was still amply bestrewn with summer-green grass. Birds still chirped in the leafy branches above. Yet it was there—the slight change in breeze, the few leaves in the tops of the trees that had begun to tip with scarlet, gold, and burnt orange. Yes, it was there—the sense that summer was waning, that autumn was gently stretching forth her lovely, bejeweled hand to clasp the world in the wonder and beauty of harvesttime.

  Naturally, Autumn Lake always imagined autumn as a woman. It was her season, after all—the season she was named for—her mother’s most beloved time of year. So of course she imagined autumn itself was a personage—a woman of such great gentleness and beauty that all the world waited for her to appear, gasping at her loveliness when she did. Yes, the season of harvest and respite was a woman in Miss Autumn Lake’s bountiful imagination—auburn-haired, with ribbons of pumpkin orange and sage green woven through. Her eyes were the color of ripe green apples and her lips such a perfect bittersweet that all men who looked at her desired to kiss her. Autumn wore a gown of leafy amber and chestnut brown that swirled in the breezes the way dry leaves flurried when a little giggle of harvest’s breath whispered to them. Her lovely hands were spangled with golden vines, rubied rosehips, and amethyst mums, and at her feet were slippers woven of soft, supple corn silk and yet-green corn husks that would soon be honey-colored instead.

  With a heavy sigh, Autumn Lake wished for a moment that she were as beautiful as was the season of harvest—that her hair were auburn and her eyes the green of ripe and juicy apples. Yet, smiling to herself, she shook her head—glad at once that she favored her father. Oh, her mother was a beauty, it was said in town—and it was true. Yet her father was a handsome and striking man who still left women’s mouths hanging agape as he passed them in the street. What care did Autumn have for green eyes when hers were the blue of a stormy sky just like her father’s? What care had she for lovely auburn hair when hers was as black as a raven’s feathers and far softer than sable?

  Yes, Autumn looked like her father, but it was her mother’s composition in character that lived in her heart and permeated her soul. Even her brothers said she was the perfect half-and-half mixture of both their parents.

  Her eldest brother, Cole, had grown up in fear that he would not be the man his father was, for when he was a child, folks forever told him that he looked “just like your mother”—which greatly disturbed him. Of course, Cole was ever as handsome as his father (even for looking like his mother). He’d married a beauty of a girl, Ava, and moved to Telluride near Autumn’s aunt and uncle.

  Autumn’s second eldest brother, Sawyer, also had the look of his mother. He owned her character too and had been all his life into mischief, and leaving mayhem in his wake. Autumn’s father would grumble at Sawyer whenever he was in trouble, telling his son he was too much like his mother for his own good. Yet even for his tomfoolery and ability to find himself ever in a difficult pickle, Sawyer too had found a lovely young lady and wed her posthaste. Sawyer’s wife, Camila, owned a countenance as calm and serene as a summer’s evening, and she settled her husband in a manner no other person alive had ever been able to. Thus, Sawyer was more their mother in looks and character than any of Autumn’s brothers.

  Autumn’s brother just older than she was living in Boston with his maternal grandparents and attending university. Price was his father inside and his mother without. Serious-minded, ever-scowling, and occasionally irritated with the antics of his siblings, Price did not want to tend orchards and vines the way his father did. He wanted to practice law—linger in courtrooms and rummage over documents. Now, although courtrooms and documents were not at all something Autumn’s father would find alluring, Price did. And so it was with heavy hearts that Autumn’s parent’s agreed to allow Price to attend university so very far away.

  Now, Autumn—being the youngest of her parents’ children and the only girl—had always been told that she, with her dark hair and stormy eyes, looked the most like her father. Yet her daydreaming ways and tendency to bungle, fumble, and clumsily trip her way through life proved nothing if not the fact that she was indeed her mother’s daughter.

  Autumn’s smile broadened at her own musings, for it was true. When she looked in the mirror, she saw nothing of her mother—only a feminine version of her father staring back at her. Still, considering she’d spent the whole of the afternoon sitting in a field of pumpkins sketching Jethro as a gift for her mother for Christmas, Autumn was perfectly content in knowing it was her mother’s heart that beat in her bosom. Her father’s eyes and her mother’s heart—it was a perfect combination to be. Autumn was happy in the knowledge. She had always been happy in it.

  She sighed, for she was nearing the bridge now—the old, red-covered bridge that spanned the widest point of the creek.

  “Hello, my darlings,” Autumn greeted the cattails to her right as she left the grassy path through the maples and oaks and started down the wheel-rutted road leading over the bridge. “Are you feeling anxious to pop today? It’s in the air—can you feel it? Soon you’ll be fluffy and white and puffin’ your cotton onto the breeze.”

  Carefully, Autumn stepped off the road and into the saturated grasses on the banks of the creek. Giggling, she reached out to caress a particularly large cattail bloom. Oh, how she adored the sense of the soft, brown velvet beneath her fingertips! She would be sad to see the cattails pop and leave nothing but dry leaves and empty stems. She breathed a sigh of disappointment, knowing that her mother would ask her to toss out the enormous gathering of cattails she had collected and arranged in one corner of her room. In a year past, Autumn had neglected to put her cattail bouquet outside, and they’d popped while the family was away visiting her aunt and uncle in Telluride. It had been quite a chore to clean the seeds of thirty-seven cattails out of the house, and every year since Autumn’s mother reminded her that cattails were meant to die outside, where they could see the blue autumn sky and feel the fresh breezes as they sent their seedling babies off to propagate on the banks of the creek. Yes—from the looks of the cattails by the old bridge, Autumn determined she’d best bring the ones from her bedroom out of doors as soon as possible.

 
“Good-bye, my darlings,” she called to her pretty brown velvet and slender-leafed pets as she returned to the road and again ambled toward the bridge.

  A breeze caught the leaves of the nearby maple tree, sending leaf whispers out into the day. Autumn giggled, her heart swelling in her bosom. It was nearly here! Her season! Pretty autumn was approaching. She felt as if a sister she’d never known were coming for a visit, and the joy inside her chest was thrilling in the euphoria it sent racing through her.

  At the thought of euphoric racing, Autumn Lake stopped cold in her tracks. She puffed a breath of summoning courage as she gazed at the old covered bridge before her. Ever since she was a child and Sawyer had read to her the fascinating yet thoroughly haunting story of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Mr. Washington Irving, Autumn had secreted a fear of bridges. Each time she was meant to cross a bridge (especially the old covered bridge on the far side of the orchards), she expected the ghostly headless horseman to appear and attempt to decapitate her. Oh, certainly the tale of the Specter did nothing to soothe her either, for it was said that this was to be a year of the Specter. As the story went, the local phantom, the Specter, only appeared once every two years. This was to be the year of the Specter, and Autumn did not like crossing bridges even when it was not a year of the Specter.

  Gulping down her fear, however, Autumn glanced behind her, assuring herself that there was no headless horseman riding up behind her intent on stealing her head.

  “He wouldn’t want a woman’s head anyway,” she mumbled to herself, even as rising fear caused her heart to pound in her chest. “And besides,” she said, looking back to the old bridge, “I’m eighteen years old…nineteen in less than a month. Surely I can cross the bridge without runnin’.”

  Pulling her sketchbook to her chest and tightly folding her arms across it, she spoke aloud to the cattails. “Wish me luck, my darlings…for I do prefer to keep my head attached to the rest of me.”

  As Autumn stepped onto the bridge, the roof blocked the warm sunshine, making the space inside the bridge dark and gloomy. Yet she’d expected this. What else would one expect of a covered bridge? After all, its very purpose was protection from the elements, and that included the heat of the summer sun. Naturally, Autumn preferred to think of its purpose as being made for something else—the seclusion necessary for the romance of lovers’ trysts.

  She sighed with disenchantment for a moment—disappointment at never having had a lover of her own. She thought how different it would be to cross the old bridge if her arm were linked to that of a strong and handsome lover. Still, she had no lover, and the fact remained that she must indeed cross the bridge.

  Gulping her fear once more, Autumn tried to imagine couples lingering in the dark of the bridge, captured in loving embraces, sparking such kisses as to ignite the dark within. She remembered then the Fourth of July several years before. On one of his trips to Denver, Autumn’s father had discovered something he referred to as a bottle cracker. She remembered how amazed and excited her brothers had been when their father had shown them the long firework sticks he’d purchased. Each stick had a firecracker secured to one end and nothing at the other. Her father had placed the free end of the stick into a sarsaparilla bottle and lit the fuse attached to the firecracker at the protruding end, sending the small firework soaring into the black Fourth of July night sky to watch it explode in a flash of bright, colorful sparks. Her brothers had never been so entertained in all their lives. And though Autumn and her mother did not like the loud explosion that accompanied each bottle cracker’s demise, it was a beautiful sight—and it was exactly what Autumn imagined happened in the minds of any lovers who dared to kiss in the darkness of the old covered bridge.

  Thus, again she tried to walk at a normal pace—tried to ignore the urge to glance back over her shoulder. But the other side of the creek, and the escape of the bridge, seemed no closer than it had a moment before. Autumn gulped another mouthful of fear and quickened her step a bit. She would be free in a moment—in just a moment or two more.

  And then she heard it—the low rumble approaching at her back. Someone was on the road! Fear gripped her, and she quickened her step again. Closer! It was drawing closer! Yet the fearful beating of her heart was ringing so loudly in her ears that she could not discern whether it was a lone rider approaching or a wagon, carriage, or some other conveyance.

  Panic overtook Autumn then, and she began to run—run for the sunshine beckoning at the end of the bridge before her—run for safety, before Irving’s headless horseman was upon her and lopping off her head! She knew she could run faster if she were to abandon her sketchbook—to drop it and return to retrieve it later. Yet her sketches of Jethro were inside—the sketches she planned to use to assist her in painting Jethro’s portrait as her Christmas gift to her mother. She could not abandon it! She would not! And so she ran—Autumn Lake ran as fast as she could. And even when she heard hooves begin across the bridge behind her—even as she reminded herself that neither Irving’s headless horseman nor the Specter had ever been seen during the day—she still ran.

  It was not until she’d left the bridge—not until sunlight rinsed her with warmth and relief—that Autumn Lake turned to see whether it was a man with no head or the Specter who was pursing her.

  At the sight of the familiar team of horses and wagon that had followed her out of the bridge, Autumn sighed—then giggled.

  “Daddy!” she scolded her father as he smiled at her. “You scared the waddin’ out of me!”

  Her father chuckled as he pulled the team to a stop. Autumn’s soul was instantly warmed by the sight of the crow’s-feet wrinkles at the corners of his stormy-colored eyes.

  “Did I?” her father asked. “Well, I’m sorry, darlin’. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I thought the Specter was comin’ up behind me,” Autumn exclaimed as she climbed up the wagon wheel to sit next to her father on the seat. “Or at least that the headless horseman was comin’ for my head!”

  Her father laughed, and she kissed his cheek, inhaling the comforting aroma of shaving soap, leather gloves, horsehair, and saddles. It was the scent of her father, and Autumn was instantly soothed.

  “And where have you been, honey?” her father asked as she linked one arm through his, snuggling against his broad shoulder. He slapped the lines at the team’s back, and the wagon lurched forward.

  “I’ve been workin’ on my Christmas gift for Mama,” she answered.

  Her father chuckled again. “Still sketchin’ Jethro, huh?”

  “Of course! I want to capture every essence of him if I’m gonna paint him well. You know how seriously I take my paintin’s, Daddy,” Autumn reminded her father.

  “Oh, I do indeed. I do indeed.” She felt him kiss the top of her head and snuggled closer to him.

  “And where have you been?” she asked in return.

  “Oh, just into town. Took some apples over to your aunt and uncle, picked up some sugar and spices for your mama…just things like that,” her father answered with a sigh that revealed his fatigue. Her father worked hard, and the large, solid muscles in his arms were one evidence of it.

  Autumn sighed—smiled as mischief began to bounce around in her head. “And did you leave a wave of swoonin’ females in your wake, Daddy?” she teased.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Autumn,” her father gently scolded. “Don’t you start in on me too. I woulda thought you and your mother woulda been tired of that old joke by now. I swear, every dang time I go to town…one or the other of you just has to—”

  “But it’s true, Daddy,” Autumn interrupted. She lifted her head to look at her father. “I’ve seen it myself.”

  “Oh, you have not,” he grumbled.

  Autumn’s smile broadened. She knew her father still wasn’t comfortable with the fact that he was the handsomest man any woman had ever laid eyes on. He still couldn’t see it—his own allure and attractiveness—even though every woman in the world could, espec
ially her mother. She studied his hair. It had once been raven like her own but now boasted beautiful white at his temples and salt-and-pepper everywhere else. His jaw was strong and square with a slight cleft in his chin. His cheekbones showed strength, and the set of his lips was perfect. The powerful, sculpted musculature of his shoulders, arms, and chest could not be hidden beneath his shirt. Thus, all in all, Autumn easily believed her mother when she professed that there wasn’t a better looking man walking the face of the earth.

  Autumn kissed her index finger and placed it at the wrinkles at the outer corner of her father’s eye. “I love you, Daddy,” she began, “even if you can’t admit women adore you. Why, just last week Mama said she saw ol’ Belva Johnson lickin’ the drool from her lips after you passed by.”

  “Oh, for cryin’ in the bucket, girl!” her father grumbled. “Let your poor father grow old and ugly without all your nonsense.”

  But Autumn only laughed. “Oh, Daddy!’ she sighed. “You know it’s true. It’s why everybody in town still calls you—”

  “Don’t say it,” he interrupted, although chuckling.

  “It’s why everybody still calls you Handsome Ransom, Daddy,” Autumn finished. “And they always will.”

  Chapter Two

  Ransom Lake shook his head, amused by his daughter’s flattery—deeply moved by her admiration and love. He loved Cole, Sawyer, and Price, his sons. He loved them more than life itself. They gave him strength, motivation, and manly companionship. But his daughter, Autumn? Somehow Ransom’s little girl tenderized his heart something awful—reduced him to a mushy, sentimental pulp. Yep, although she didn’t know it, Autumn had her daddy wrapped around her little finger almost as tightly as her mother had him wrapped around hers. How he loved his little girl, and how he worried for her. Autumn was so much her mother—sweet, kindhearted, a daydreamer, and the most compassionate soul he’d ever encountered—and Ransom worried nearly constantly about her, wondered what would happen to his baby girl to scar her. And he knew she would be scarred. Everyone owned scars—if not physical ones, then emotional ones—scars that branded the heart and soul. But scars were part of life, and Ransom could only hope that Autumn’s scars would not be caused by deep, emotional wounds. Both Ransom and his beautiful, loving wife, Vaden, carried vivid scars on their hearts. Ransom prayed his daughter’s would not be so deep as theirs.