Forever Ash: The Witch Child of Helmach Creek (Frost & Flame Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Kueber

  Her mom walked up and stood next to her. 'Wow... creepy, huh?' she said. 'I wonder if we can get in?' she said pulling an old tarnished brass key from her pocket and holding it up between them.

  'Where did you get that?' Shari asked with a look of disbelief on her face. 'It was wrapped up in the deed and trust account paperwork. I found it when I opened the envelope to get the bank information...but there is no way this key is going to work in that old, dilapidated door.'

  Shari grabbed the key from her hand. 'Only one way to find out!' she walked up to the door with purpose. Brushing away cobwebs and moss from the door handle and the key hole, she inserted the key into the lock with ease. Looking over her shoulder she could see her mother still standing out in the tree and sapling filled 'front yard'. Shari grasped the head of the key in her fingers and applied a twisting pressure. At first she thought she had snapped the key off in the lock, but to her astonishment, the snapping sound was actually the lock mechanism turning. She removed the key, and placed it in her pocket. 'Got it!' she shouted to her mom.

  'Hurry up!' her mom shouted back as thunder sounded low in the distance. 'Aren't you coming?'

  'Alright, I'm coming. Be careful.'

  'No, I will wait for you, and we will be careful.'

  As she stepped onto the porch next to Shari, lightning struck and thunder shook the ground and the house.

  'Let’s just go!' her mom said, 'I don't want to be stuck here until this storm passes.'

  Shari reached out for the door handle and with a turn and push, the door was open. That is all of the story I know, except that they didn't stop at a hotel, they drove straight here. My sister brought in this box of photos and the wooden box with all of the original papers inside, and this...” She pulled the key out of the box. “Shari wouldn't come in, so our visit was very short. I called her the next day to find out what happened. I talked with Shari for nearly an hour, but all I really could get from her was something about feeling like she was on fire, and a shadowy monster, and fear. She finally stopped sobbing about the time that a migraine hit me and I had to end our conversation. That was when I started being 'haunted' as you say. I guess that gets you all up to date with everything I know...and then there's this” she said pointing to the display of photos she had so carefully arranged on the floor.

  “Stand over there,” she said, pointing to the opposite end of the room, “and look at the collage. Tell me what you see.” Nothing but a bunch of neatly placed photos was all I could see, but Jenn shouted out, “Oh my God! It’s Ashley! Can you see her face?”

  Katie stood open mouthed in amazement. I squinted and tried to look from different angles, and then suddenly, there it was. The dark and light contrasts of the brown tones, and black and white photos revealed a face, the face of a young girl. Perhaps it was our minds playing a trick called pixilation, where our brain finds familiar shapes and patterns, like seeing a bunny in the clouds, or perhaps it truly was somehow the little burning girl. Katie snapped a couple of photos and snatched us all out of our daze.

  “Okay, it's time to make some sort of a plan.” Katie blurted out. “Oops, sorry, that just kinda came out.”

  “No need to apologize, I'm with ya on that chica!” Jenn promptly supported Katie's suggestion. I had to agree with them. “Right! Where do we begin?” It was a rhetorical question. “Let's just make the assumption that we are going to West Virginia, and let's also assume that our sea salt 'trap' worked. Do we let Ashley go, or do we try to leave her behind and try to figure out what happened to her first?”

  Much to our amazement Dr. Em spoke up first. “If she is trapped, you must let her go! The last thing I want is to have any more experiences at her will, but it seems so wrong to hold anyone or anything against their will.”

  “That was very profound doc...and one very important point we have to realize is that we know nothing about what this girl has been through. We don't know what brought her to this place of anger and evil, if that's a correct interpretation. So far, all I have experienced has lead me to believe that this spirit has an incredible amount of power and a lot of pent up anger, if not truly evil.” I was being as honest as I could be, but I was immediately put in my place by Jenn followed directly by Katie.

  “You know, at first, with the headaches and the attitude problems, I would have said the same thing, but when she appeared in my room last night, she talked to me just like any other preadolescent girl I have ever met.”

  “Absolutely! I think maybe she just doesn't understand her powers, and how they are affecting us.” “Point made, and taken.” I digressed. “That could make a lot of sense if she had spent her entire afterlife at the farm, and it's possible, even probable, that Shari was the first human contact she had made. That being said, we could be understanding the effects of her powers more than she does. Just thinking the possibilities out loud.” My statements were broken and scattered, but I think my point was well received.

  “Then, I think in all fairness, we need to go back to the other room, talk to Ash again, and then clean up our mess. We can go over our audio and video this week, and next weekend we will plan on a visit to the farm. Ashley can choose to go, or not, but we should express our intentions to her today, and let it be her decision.” Katie's words rang true, and really made perfect sense to me, they made a different kind of sense to Jenn.

  “Well hell!” Jenn exclaimed. “Ash, Ashley Sue, A.S.H. I can't believe I didn't make that connection when I saw the writing on the envelope, she told me to call her Ash.”

  “That does make sense, except for the 'H.'... I'm not sure where that initial comes into play. I suppose if we are going to try to help Ash, it only makes sense for her to understand our purpose. She may hold the key to this mystery, and she may even be able to help. Hell she might even want to help.” I usually spoke from a very scientific perspective, but even though I was holding back a flood of emotions, I also spoke from the heart.

  Jenn spoke from the heart too, and in one statement she had created the beginning of a plan, and in truth, it would be the most important element of this investigation so far.

  “We need a truce.”

  Chapter7 THE TRUCE

  We found ourselves back in the front sitting room gathered around the coffee table. The digital recorder was still running when we sat down. We turned on the K-II meter and carefully placed it next to the recorder.

  Jenn spoke first. “Ashley, are you still here?”

  A few seconds passed and then the second green light on the meter faintly flickered and went out. I responded to her acknowledgment and began to explain our plan. “Ashley... Jenn, Katie and I are going to take a trip to your farm. We want to try to figure out what happened and how we can help you. Do you understand?”

  The light flickered once again. It seemed to be an obvious, although weak response to my question. “We are sorry that we have held you here, but we needed to discuss a few things in private and now that we have, we want to talk with you about some of them.”

  Katie interjected, “We aren't sure if you understand what you have been doing, but some of it has caused us a great deal of pain and trouble. Do you know what a truce is?” One more faint flicker as if her 'batteries' were running out of power. “Good. Can we call a truce? We just don't want you to hurt us anymore.” The light flickered a bit stronger and for a second longer than before. “Awesome.”

  “Okay,” Jenn began again, “We are going to remove the circle that is holding you here in a little while, but first we want to let you know that we aren't angry with you, and we don't want to hurt you in any way. We want to help.”

  “We are leaving it up to you, if you want to come with us or not. If you don't want to go back to the farm for whatever reason, we understand. If you do want to go, we would appreciate if you would work with us, and help us solve this mystery, and in turn, maybe we can help you find peace.” I stared at the meter the entire time looking for a sign, but nothing happened.

  I nodded to
Emily and she disappeared into the other room and then quickly returned with a broom, dust pan, and a damp cloth. She handed me the cloth and as she swept up the sea salt, I wiped up the residue with the rag, buffing and polishing the floor as I went.

  When we were nearly finished I said, “Jenn, you can probably turn off the recorder now, if you want.” She nodded picking it up and then turning it off. Just as she was gathering up the camera, and other recorders, the K-II meter lit up fully two times. She spoke up saying, “Is that better?” and the meter twinkled like a red, yellow and green Christmas tree. We all could not hold back the smiles, not even Dr. Em.

  The thick accent came out clearly as she spoke. “You three are amazing! I have never heard of anyone so well educated and experienced in dealing with this type of thing. I feel blessed that you all live so close. I can't imagine how far I would have to go to find another team of experts like yourselves.”

  We all responded with thanks in our own ways, and looking back and forth at each other with half smiles, I'm sure we were all thinking the same thing. We weren't experts, we were lucky...damn lucky.

  I reached down to pick up the last piece of equipment, the KII meter, and just as I was about to grab it, it spun to one side as if it was taunting me. It lit up one green light, and I asked the women if they had noticed.

  “I didn't see it... Could you light up the K-II meter again please?” Jenn asked politely, and every light glowed for a moment. “Thank you.” she said.

  Katie followed up with the semi-sarcastic remark, “That was weird.” which caused us all to smile. I took a second swipe at it as I looked up and around thinking I was going to see something else, but there was nothing and I picked it up and placed it back into the foam cut-out in my case where it belonged. Katie smiled as she reached down and picked up her recorder and quietly ended the recording.

  *** Once back inside the car and on the way back to Jenn's house, the conversations ran. It was decided that I would research the location on the deed and try to map out a route to get us to the family farm. Jenn would research the genealogy, and Katie would research the history of the general area. We had decided that it would be best to leave out late Friday night and drive all night. That would give us all day Saturday to find the farm, do our investigating, and still give us some time Sunday to wrap up any loose ends before we had to make the long trip back home.

  The team met up at Starbucks on Thursday evening to finalize the plans. It was decided that we would take the old Chevy G-20 custom van. It was an older van, but even though the outside showed its age, it had low mileage, and the interior was like new. There was even a tv and VCR built in, though I was sure none of us would be watching 'Ghost Buster's ' on the way. It had plenty of room for all of our equipment and bags, and even a bench seat in the back that converted to a bed if we needed to take turns resting. The van had four captain's chair seats that were as comfortable as any easy chair I had ever sat in, and laid back far enough that a person could easily sleep in one of them too, if needed.

  While enjoying our choice of Starbuck's flavors, we each spoke about our week and the lack of activity. It was almost disappointing, and we wondered if Ash was still 'hanging around' us, or if she had stayed with the doc.

  At one point Jenn said, “Have you all listened to your audio from Dr. Em's house?”

  “Yeah, but I didn't get any e.v.p.s” I said with a solemn tone. “Me either.” said Jenn. “What I did get was some pretty dim flickers on the video recording...but what's really cool is there is a washed out spot on the video that drifts across the room and stops right at the coffee table when the K-II lights up the first time. It stays there until we leave the room and then it just kinda slowly shrinks to almost nothing. Then when we came back in and cleaned up the salt, it got more prominent, but not as strong as it had been when it first appeared.”

  “Wow!” I was ecstatic. “Okay, here is my theory... the salt circle was supposed to subdue and contain the spirit.... so, it must drain the energy somehow.”

  “Precisely!” Katie exclaimed. The whole time Jenn smiled that devious smile that let us know she had already figured all that out, but let us do our own thinking.

  Katie continued. “Well, I guess I'm not the only one who captured some evidence. I was dying to say something earlier when we were talking about whether or not Ash was with us or the doc.... let me just say, I think she might be laying low, but I'd bet my last dollar she is with us, probably right now.”

  “Really?” Jenn and I said in unison and then burst out laughing. I added, “What kind of evidence did you get that makes you so sure of that?”

  A grin grew across Katie's face as she drew her recorder out of her purse and laid it on the table. “You want me to tell you, or you wanna hear for it for yourselves?”

  “Duh!” Jenn was being Jenn, and we all knew the question may as well have been rhetorical. “Okay. There was a lot of background noise that sounded like a voice, or voices, but I couldn't make sense of any of it. This is all I got that I can make any sense of. This was after you had already cleaned up the salt and just before we turned off the recorders. We really got lucky to catch this.”

  Looking around the coffee shop to find it was mostly devoid of customers, Katie turned up the volume on the recorder and pressed the play button. At first all I could hear was static and us shuffling around, then we heard the voice. “Can't you understand me? Take me with you!” It sounded desperate and anxious. Then Jenn's voice blared out on the recording, “Is that better?” followed by a drawn out “Yessssss” almost like a sigh of relief and when I reached for my K-II meter, the recorder actually picked up the sound of it sliding on the table and a small child giggling. Ash was playing with me.

  Jenn and I sat there open jawed while Katie looked at us contentedly and took a sip of her Frappuccino. “What? Are those good e.v.p.s? You think they're important?” She glared at us for a second and then began laughing. I love this team and our camaraderie. I wouldn't trade these two for anything in the world!

  “I have to admit, that was amazing!” I proudly stated, “Those are going on the website when this is all said and done.” Katie bashfully smiled, and I could tell she was as proud of those e.v.p.s as I was. Jenn agreed, “If that doesn't make the website, I'm firing the webmaster.” and shot me a half smile look. “Oh, by the way, I did some research on the doc's family tree.” she pulled out a paper from her book bag and laid it on the table in front of us.

  Family Tree(s)

  Family Tree(s)

  Elijah F. Covand 1851

  Kathrine A. Martin 1852-1872 Margarette Mayes 1854-1922 | |

  Female / boy

  William Covand 1884-1970 Josiah Covand

  Sara Smitts 1896-1979 1896-1979 1919

  /

  Bradley Covand 1937-2010 Serena Covand

  Maria Vasquez 1943-2001 Michael Stevens

  /

 

 

  Arthur Miles 1963- 2004

  |

  Shari Miles Shari Miles “You see that right there?” Jenn said pointing to a leaf on the tree where it was simply written 'female'. “You see there is no birth or death dates, and no name. I think this may be Ash, our burning girl.”

  She was right. It made perfect sense and the time line seemed to fit as well. Jenn began producing documents she had found online. About ten years before the civil war started, a young man named Elijah F. Helmach was born and his family had moved to a small rural area just west of Summersville, West Virginia, and Elijah would have been nearly thirty years old when he left West Virginia for Kentucky, and eventually Tennessee. Sometime during those years in the Appalachian foothills, he took a wife named Kathrine, had a child, a girl who remained unnamed. His wife died and this 'female' is the only record of his daughter. Then his trail disappeared, just about the exact time that an Elijah F. Covand appeared.

  “Well Jenn, I must say I'm impressed. That's some great info to have researched in just a few days.” I
smiled, thinking she deserved a literal 'pat on the back', but that would have embarrassed all of us. Not that I was above embarrassing us all in public, but I truly was proud of her research.

  “Yeah, that's pretty damn impressive!” Katie said putting her hands on her hips and sticking her tongue out at Jenn. Either Jennifer's sarcasm was rubbing off, or Katie was becoming very comfortable as a viable part of the team. Whichever it was, I didn't care. I only knew it was great to have a small team that was so close and understood each other so well, that we could just be ourselves, and truly be friends above all else.

  “I did a little searching myself” Katie continued. “I didn't find much really, except for this awesome little local history museum. I called them up yesterday and I talked to a woman there who told me they have a ton of antebellum pieces....and... a library of historical books, newspapers and stuff like that. Best part is they have a special collection of things that were all written by locals, some fictional stories, and some others that are more like historical non-fiction. I told her that we were coming there to do some historical research on the town, its people, local legends and different things, and she offered to give me unlimited access to the library for a few hours in the morning. I don't know what I'll find, if anything, but I think it's worth checking out.”

  “Once again girls, I couldn't have asked for a better team. Thanks Katie, you have more than earned your place with E.V.P. We were lucky to find you!” It didn't matter how often I gloated on them, I never felt like it was enough, and they never expected or assumed they deserved it. I can't remember ever being disappointed in anything they did.

  The evening was ended with a plan to have Jenn and Katie come to my apartment and leave out from there at around 8 p.m. I would load up everything I thought we might need from the office tonight in the EVP Machine, as the old van had been labeled, and that would give my OCD all evening Friday to go over every detail a dozen times before they arrived.