The Haunting of Autumn Lake (25 page)

“No,” Riley said, shaking his head. Yet in the next moment he began to laugh. “No. I ain’t mad, Nathaniel Wimber. But my daddy was.”

But Riley recovered quickly, saying, “I found my mother’s old letters last Christmas, Nate Wimber. I’d seen her sneakin’ out to the burn barrel behind the house in the dead of night. She lit a fire in it and hurried back in. But the wind blew the flames out. I went out there…curious to see what Mama was up to. They were letters she was burnin’, Nate Wimber. Letters from a man named Jerome Clayton.”

An audible gasp went up from the throats of the various specters, spooks, and other grisly onlookers.

“Ransom!” Autumn heard her mother call as she arrived, racing into the clearing. “Autumn! My baby!” she cried, reaching for her daughter. But Ransom caught his wife in his arms to stay her.

“What are you talkin’ about, Riley?” Nate asked.

“It was there, Nate Wimber…in the letters your wife and my mother was burnin’ in the burn barrel last Christmas,” Riley explained. “You ain’t my daddy. Jerome Clayton is. Didn’t you ever wonder why Mama wanted to get married with you so quick? I musta heard you brag on that a million times—about how my mother was so in love with you that she asked you to marry her…and you did…one week later.”

“You’re lyin’, son,” Nate said. “Why would you tell such a tale?”

Gentry had heard enough. Riley Wimber was mad. He knew the story of Jerome Clayton—the madman who had once tried to kill the woman who would soon be his mother-in-law—and he’d heard enough. It didn’t matter. Maybe history had somewhat repeated itself—as it always seemed to do—but it didn’t matter to him. All that mattered to him was Autumn.

Once they’d left the spook hollow behind, Gentry lifted Autumn into the soft straw in the hay wagon.

Ransom helped Vaden to mount the stranger’s horse he’d borrowed. Autumn listened to her frantic mother argue that she needed to see to her baby girl. But Ransom explained that even though Vaden was desperate to talk with Autumn, he needed to return the horse before they hung him for horse thieving. Furthermore, it was Gentry who needed to see to Autumn first.

Climbing up into the wagon seat, Gentry let go the brake and slapped the lines at the backs of the mule team. “Hold on, darlin’. It ain’t far. You just rest and gaze up at that big pumpkin in the sky you’re so fond of. I just wanna get out a ways away from folks first.”

Autumn brushed the tears from her cheeks—her swollen, tender, and no doubt already bruising cheeks. Would she ever get over the horror of it all? Would she ever? And yet what horror had there really been? Gentry had come for her, and Riley Wimber had taken nothing from her—nothing. As she lay there on a bed of straw, gazing up into the beautiful autumn sky, she realized that although it had been a horrifying experience—frightening to the very soul—Riley did not own any part of her. In fact, he owned less of her than he had before. The threats he’d made toward Gentry and her family were meaningless—he was meaningless. She knew that the only way Riley Wimber could ever continue to haunt her was if she let him, by holding tight to the memory of what had happened in the spook hollow instead of holding tight to all the beauty life held. And Gentry James was indeed the most beautiful thing it did hold.

The wagon slowed to a stop, and Gentry climbed over the wagon seat to sit next to Autumn in the straw. “I’ve been such a fool,” he said, taking her hands in his and kissing the backs of them. “I’m sorry for it too, Autumn.”

“You’re no fool, Gentry James,” she said, pulling her hands from his and wrapping her arms around his neck. “You my hero…the man I love…the only man I ever could love!” She wept against his shoulder—not for what had happened to her in the hollow at the hand of Riley Wimber but because the love she owned for Gentry was too much for one soul to contain.

“Then will you sell somebody else’s apples at the county fair, Autumn Lake?” he asked—and she thought it an odd question.

Pulling away from him just enough to gaze into his deep blue eyes and have butterflies swarm in her stomach at the sight of his dimples, she asked, “What? You asked me that earlier today. What do you mean will I sell somebody else’s apples next year?”

His smile broadened, and he tenderly brushed a length of hair from her forehead. “Will you sell my apples at the fair next year, Autumn?” Again she frowned with puzzlement. “I’m buyin’ your daddy’s extra place…the one with the old house and smaller orchards on it. And I was wonderin’ if you wanted to live in it with me…live with me, sleep with me, sell my apples with me, and have babies with me. Will you marry me, Autumn Lake?”

“Yes, Gentry James,” Autumn wept, taking his face in her hands and pressing her thumbs into his dimples. “I’ll marry you, and I’ll sleep in your arms and have your babies. And next year, I’ll sell your apples for you.”

“Our apples…for us,” he mumbled as he gathered her into his arms.

“Our apples,” Autumn sighed.

All the ugliness of the night was forgotten. As Gentry held Autumn in the safety of his arms—as he kissed her with kisses borne wholly of passionate, thoroughgoing love and the promise of happiness—Autumn Lake thought there was nothing she loved so much as the season for which she was named—nothing, that was, save her handsome, heroic lover Gentry James.

Epilogue

“Oh, Ransom!” Vaden sighed as she snuggled against her husband, her face resting on the bareness of his broad chest, her arm lying across his stomach. “Don’t you just love our little Apple? Can you believe how she’s growing? Why, she’ll be running headlong into trouble any day now.”

Ransom chuckled. “Just like her mother and grandmother,” he mumbled.

“She looks just like her daddy,” Vaden added. “Those deep blue eyes and dimples. It makes me glad Autumn married Gentry…just so some of our grandbabies could have those dimples like their daddy.”

Again Ransom chuckled, a broad smile spreading across his face as he envisioned his beautiful little granddaughter, Applelynn James. She was a beauty, and it wouldn’t be long before Gentry would know what it was like to be the old king instead of the handsome prince. Ransom owned empathy for his son-in-law for that.

“Which reminds me, Tawny Johnson swears she saw the Specter outside her bedroom window last night.”

“The Specter?” Ransom groaned. He thought for a moment, however, and admitted, “Well, I guess it has been two years, hasn’t it? Since Gentry went ridin’ around pretendin’ to be the Specter. I guess that would make it about time for the stories to start up again…and for Tawny Johnson to start tryin’ to get herself some attention…as well as a husband.”

“But here’s the thing, Ransom,” Vaden added. “Uncle Dan and Aunt Myra saw him last night too…just out back of the general store! Well, a ways off in the distance anyway. And you know Myra and Dan wouldn’t make up somethin’ like that. Uncle Dan says the dirt is all churned up out there at the ol’ cowboy’s grave too. So if it isn’t Gentry riding around in a shredded cloth and turning up soil and leaving strips of a bloodied sheet out there at the old graveyard, then who’s doing it this time?”

Ransom frowned. “The soil was turned up again?” he asked.

“Yep. That’s what Aunt Myra says,” she answered. “And Uncle Dan pulled a length of old bloodied sheet out of it that was at least two feet long, she said.” She paused a moment and then asked, “Why do you ask?”

“Well, darlin’…I never told you this before, because your imagination gets so worked up this time of year the way it is, but Gentry told me that day we come out there and found you girls at the grave of that ol’ cowboy…that he didn’t have nothin’ to do with turnin’ up that soil or leavin’ that swatch of sheet there.”

Vaden sat up and looked down at Ransom, causing him to immediately wish he’d thought a little more about it before he’d revealed to Vaden what Gentry had told him.

“Ransom Lake!” she exclaimed. “Why on earth would you tell me this now? You know I won’t sleep for month because of it!”

But Ransom chuckled, reached up, buried his hands in his wife’s soft hair, and said, “Oh, I know you won’t sleep for a month, darlin’…but it won’t have a thing to do with that ol’ Specter. I promise you that.”

Vaden giggled as Ransom pulled her to him and began to ravage her with impassioned kisses. “I love you, Grandpa Handsome,” she whispered.

“And I love you, Vaden. I love you.”

The rider was robed in a bloodied and shredded sheet, riding along the hill just beyond Ransom Lake’s orchards. Ransom Lake was a good man—the best of men. There was no reason to haunt a man the likes of him. And so on the rider rode on—toward the next nearest house and the next nearest orchard…

“Oh, Abner’s noisy tonight, isn’t he?” Autumn James asked in a whisper as she slipped into bed next to her husband.

“That’s because it’s so bright out,” Gentry said. “He needs a woman too.”

Autumn smiled. “If a certain heroic Gentry James I know could manage to run out Thanksgivin’ mornin’ nearly two years back and shoot a wild turkey so that Abner could have his life spared and a turkey dinner could still be served…then surely you can find a woman for him, honey.”

“Catchin’ a turkey is a might different than shootin’ one, darlin’,” Gentry chuckled.

Autumn sighed. “Oh, wasn’t the harvest moon beautiful this year, Gentry? I swear, every year it just looks more and more wonderful to me.”

Gentry smiled as his wife nestled in next to him, resting her head on his broad chest and laying one soft arm across his stomach. “Well, Apple sure seemed to like it, that’s for sure,” he said quietly. Apple was asleep in her bed in the next room, and he didn’t want to wake her. It had taken them nearly an hour to settle her down and get her to sleep after all the excitement of seeing the harvest moon rise—not to mention the fact that her grandmother had let her eat as many cookies as she’d wanted.

“Oh, she did, didn’t she?” Autumn sighed. “Thank you for bein’ so patient and lettin’ us stay so late.
And
for not thinkin’ I’m goin’ mad for seein’ the Specter.”

Gentry chuckled. “How could I think you’re mad when I seen him too?” he asked. “Though I do wonder who it is that took to dressin’ up like the Specter this year. I can promise you, it’s a lot more work than a body would think.”

“My guess is Jasper Wyatt,” Autumn answered. “He’s finally gotten sweet on Candy Johnson after all these years, and she likes the idea of the Specter risin’ out of the grave almost as much as I used to.”

“Well, whoever it is, he can have at it, and I wish him luck,” Gentry said. “As for me,” he mumbled, rolling Autumn onto her back and covering her body with his own. “I’d much rather have at you, punkin.”

“Then have at me, Gentry James,” Autumn whispered, reaching up and pressing her thumbs into his dimples. “Because the only thing that gives me more goose bumps than the rising of that big orange harvest moon…is you. Only ever you.”

As Gentry’s mouth captured hers in warm, loving, impassioned kiss, Autumn sighed with contentment. Life was truly a wonder—a splendor unsurpassed—and at the center of it stood her little Apple and her handsome husband, Gentry James.

The rider on the dark horse paused outside of Gentry James’s orchards, his ragged, bloody garb unfurled in the autumn breeze like a shredded battle banner. Gentry James was a good man too, and both earth and heaven could use more like him.

Many things had transpired since last the Specter been seen riding over the shadowed horizon. Many things had begun, and many things had ended—including the haunting of Autumn Lake. As the harvest moon lit the night and the landscape with a golden warmth, the rider rode back toward town—toward home.

Author’s Note

For years, I’ve sworn to myself that I would never, ever write any sort of sequel to
The Visions of Ransom Lake
. I love Ransom and Vaden’s story, and I didn’t want to risk writing something that turned out to be a big disappointment to anybody, including myself! I just was afraid to do it—didn’t want to try and measure up to what is one of my favorite stories.

Therefore, anytime someone would ask me to think about writing a sequel to
The Visions of Ransom Lake
, anxiety would detonate in my bosom, and I’d simply cry, “No, no, no, no,
no
! I can’t go there! Too much pressure! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” And thus, life went merrily along. Every autumn, friends would write to me and let me know that they had just reread
The Visions of Ransom Lake
and were swooning over Handsome Ransom as much as they ever had before—that it was their favorite book to read in the fall—and I would wonder what in the world it is about that particular book that owns such a big part of my heart and theirs.

I think there’s just something about Ransom Lake himself—the haunted, brooding, fabulously gorgeous, Old West manly man who doesn’t see his own worth and yet is in every aspect the hero. Selfless, strong, capable—he’s just perfect and yet perfectly flawed at the same time. Of course, he’s “lethally handsome” as well.

And then there’s Vaden. I’ve explained many times over the years that Vaden is the heroine in my books that I most relate to in many ways. She loves nature and life and sees the beauty around her. She loves the people in her life—her aunt, uncle, and snippy, sometimes misunderstood sister (not that my sister is snippy and misunderstood—she’s not—but you know what I mean, right?). Vaden is always tripping up, finding herself in some sort of mess or humiliating circumstance, or shoving her own foot in her mouth. She also looks beneath the surface when it comes to people around her. She saw who Ransom Lake really was and endeavored to help him to see the same.