Cape Ingénue

By E. Bard

Set in the small town of Schill Harbour, the story follows the misadventures of sixteen year old Sandrin Hawkes. With the discovery of a classmate’s body at a local swimming hole, the girl is thrown into an unsettling mystery, a nest of long buried secrets and maybe even a treasure hunt. Could her classmate’s death have been more than just a terrible accident?
When Sandrin teams up with an unlikely partner, local juvenile delinquent Colt, the two soon uncover more than they ever imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: E. Bard
• Release date: Sep 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9780987794208

E. Bard

About six years ago I began working on a few stories that I could customize for my children, their friends and a couple of relatives. I had it in mind that I could occasionally produce these customized paperbacks as a small, experimental business. It never fully took shape, but my children and the friends and parents who read the novels enjoyed them. They encouraged me. The books here are the original self published editions so I've priced them for a quick cheap read.Please feel free to leave your honest review. I would really like to know what you thought of the books. They're just meant to be enjoyed - they're not literature. So a great big thank you to all you readers out there who took the time to download them. And please remember... Your reviews will help me decide whether or not to turn these novels into series.Check out my website if you want info on the customized paperback versions. (Yes customizing these novels is still an option. It's just not a full throttle gig. Examples are shown on the website and blog).

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Cape Ingénue

E. Bard

Copyright 2011 E. Bard

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

SMASHWORDS LICENCE NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Any use of currently existing people, places or events is for entirely fictional purposes. Any resemblance to people, places or events not mentioned or referenced in the end notes is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Acknowledgements

Notes

CHAPTER 1

There was a hole at the back of the cubby. It was the kind of hole that was dark and gloomy, the kind that warned you not to go and put your hand in it. If you did, you might get away with retrieving exactly what you had hidden in the hole. You might come away with as little as a few cobwebs glued to your knuckles, the remains of long lost dust bunnies adhering to whatever valuable item you were retrieving, and the odd hungry spider sizing up the fleshy portions of your hand.

That was if you were lucky.

Sandrin stared at the hole and its blackness, partly obscured by a somewhat loose wall board. She hated it when her friend Kestrel asked her go upstairs and grab her wallet from ‘that safe spot’ where little brothers didn’t think to look. Those same little brothers never thought to look in cubbies masterfully camouflaged by a host of girly items.

Gingerly fitting her fingers along the edge of the loose board, Sandrin pried at the flowery looking piece of wood. The small board usually made a tight fit so it could blend almost seamlessly into the wall papered inside of the nook. It was already mostly removed from the hole, but the opening still wasn’t quite large enough for Sandrin’s hand.

With a little struggle the board finally came away. Perfectly sized for a rather large hand, or something else of a similar shape, the not-to-be-forgotten hole of shadows stared up at the girl. And for a second, Sandrin stared back. She thought she could almost glimpse some of that inky history responsible for holding the old heritage home together.

With a deep breath and lightning speed, Sandrin plunged her hand into the murk. She snatched up her friend’s wallet. Relatively clean, but dragging some spindly threads and a very surprised looking black thing that skittered back into the hole, the girl turned the wallet over in her hand. Sandrin breathed a sigh of relief. No rats this time.

Thumping back down the staircase in the rambling old house Kestrel’s family had just moved back into, Sandrin called to her friend.

Kestrel! Gross! Next time get it yourself!

Her friend stood smiling, just a short distance across the black and white tiles at the foot of the stairs.

Come on Sands…you love it! You’re just jealous you don’t have a creepy old house to hide stuff in.

Sure, that’s it. You know how I hate doing that! Don’t you feel the slightest guilt that I could be attacked by a giant blood thirsty rat? Can’t you find another scary disgusting place to hide your stuff?

I’ve tried. The others just don’t match up. Besides, how else am I going to prove to you that there is no curse or any bad luck linked to that hiding spot? Come on! We’re going to meet everyone. It’s going to be awesome. The guys might even jump into the falls.

Yeah, no doubt. They’re crazy. Sandrin agreed as she picked up her back pack, meeting Kestrel at the front door. Still, the girl couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that planted itself inside her the moment she pushed her hand through the hole in that old house.

Warm sunlight poured through the doorway creating an aura around Sandrin’s friend. Maybe Kestrel was right? Maybe she should bury her misgivings and look forward to the incredible day they were about to start. Kestrel was usually so positive about everything it was hard not to agree with her, so Sandrin just smiled at her friend and shrugged.

The only thing Sandrin really didn’t agree with, was that Kestrel so easily dismissed the fact that whenever they hid anything in that funky hiding place, that little hole at the back of the cubby, bad luck followed. It was just plain weird.

Over time, it had become almost like a superstition to the girl.

Normally Sandrin wasn’t the type to be superstitious. That was for crazy people. Not that Sandrin thought the logical superstitions like not walking under a ladder or not sweeping at night because you might sweep away all that loose money that fell into the shadows under furniture were crazy. No. Those superstitions were reasonable. It was just that the cubby, and its weird little space that provided an unnatural glimpse into the house like a wound might, really were unlucky. How could Kestrel never see it?

Sandrin tried to explain it to her friend Kestrel. It was like the superstitions athletes sometimes had. It was like wearing lucky socks. The socks didn’t make you win but maybe you played better in them because they fit better. So you thought of them as lucky.

Only that dank little hole in the miniature sized closet space wasn’t lucky.

So, as Sandrin explained, it might be more like avoiding an unlucky food, or taking a certain route to the arena.

There was probably no amount of luck involved. It was just that some things seemed like luck even when there were real, valid reasons for those things that worked certain ways; only no one took the time to figure out why they worked so they weren’t always consciously realized. Those things just collectively became luck.

So maybe athletes were smarter than Sandrin had previously given them credit?

Nah.

Whatever the case, it was the same for the cubby. Sandrin imagined that reaching into the depths of that hole, scraping against the very bones of the house, was like reaching into some forbidden, long buried secret that belonged in the past. It was a violation, a part of history guarded by rats and spiders, so that when that old dust was lifted, there were consequences to be had.

Kestrel had scoffed, but in a good natured way.

Laughing a little, Kestrel grabbed the soccer ball and towels and told Sandrin that today was going to be excellent. As soon as they got out into the sun, all that creepy darkness and all of the girl’s over active misgivings would burn away. Sandrin would see.

Kestrel was even going to splurge for pizza after they all met up and hiked to the waterfall. How unlucky was that?

Sandrin adjusted her own pack and followed her friend out into the sunlight. There was plenty of time to muse about the mysteries of the universe and how one little old rat hole in a very old house had managed to fit itself into the very fabric of things, affecting the outcome of anything from how well your hair behaved to how a sport’s match could turn out.

A little imagination could be dangerous sometimes.

And that was exactly how Sandrin’s supposed to be perfect day started.

********

Perfect was exactly how the afternoon had started. And this perfect a Saturday was rare. The kind that Sandrin and her friends would take to full advantage.

Standing in the golden filtered sunlight of autumn, Sandrin Hawkes stood and listened to her heartbeat. The steady patter kept her company and led the beat to the music she was listening to in her head. But she could still hear the rustle of the dried gold and russet leaves and the distant roar of the waterfall through it. For some reason it was something that she couldn’t quite block out. She closed her eyes, felt the sun on her lids and cranked up the music on her iPod. It was too bad the charge was dying. If she was lucky, she might get another full song out of it.

Unfortunately, it just wasn’t working.

For the last three days she and her friends had enjoyed the warm Indian summer: bright sun and Tee shirt temperatures all wrested into the explosion of fall colours. It was like one of those gifts, one of those last treasured moments from a season that held the kind of careless enjoyment a teenager lived for. It couldn’t have been better if someone had reached in and plucked up a perfect day in August, throwing it into the middle of October after splashing it with a riot of bright crimsons, ambers and ochers.

If only.

Sandrin fingered the straps on her back pack and unzipped her light jacket. The light breeze felt good. There was no way she could have turned her friends down for a hike up to the waterfall on a day like this.

If only she had known. If only she could have changed something.

If only she had made Kestrel get her own wallet.

Sandrin shuffled her feet on the solid ground, sometimes tapping the rocky mud, sometimes pushing into it with the toes of her shoe. It just didn’t make a difference. No matter what she did, no matter where she tried to look or what phantom music she tried to fill her head with, her attention was always drawn back to the where the water pooled at the foot of the steep, cliff like scarp ahead.

A mere two hours earlier, three friends, Sandrin and her two classmates Kestrel and Wren had set out to hike up the old pathway to their favourite summer swimming hole. Aimlessly padding along the pathway that led the teens in and out of the woods, jumping over rotted logs and treading carefully beside precariously overhung ridges, they moved almost like a group of hapless puppies. They were carefree, filled with the promise of a summer day in fall.

That morning when Wren had suggested they meet friends up at their favourite spot on their day off school, it had just felt right. The spot was perfect; close enough to town that some of the guys who didn’t drive yet could still get there. It wasn’t even all that far into the forest, just a nice hike into some dense woods that hid an amazing secret.

The swimming hole was something even a lot of the locals didn’t know about, but most of the teenagers did. The waterfall, actually two small waterfalls that fed into a much larger, dramatic fall, was actually part of a very innocuous looking stream. The stream was slow and calm down by the road where it slipped lazily under the cracked paved surface of the culvert. Few people would have guessed that only a short distance away, the water had carved its way through the shear rock faces of the hilly land.

Sandrin and her friends knew about it, along with most of the kids in town. They had spent several late afternoons there, splashing around in one of the turbulent pools to cool off after work, meeting friends and keeping the searing heat of summer at bay.

It just seemed like the most logical place for the three girls to spend the afternoon. The weather report had promised almost surrealistic temperatures for the day, reaching into the low or even mid twenties.

The girls knew it would probably be far too cold to go in, regardless of how warm the air was today. That wasn’t the point anyway. The three girls were supposed to meet up with some classmates. They were going to hike around a bit, and no doubt, enjoy the recklessness of the boys they were about to meet up with. Sandrin knew the boys fairly well. They wouldn’t disappoint. They wouldn’t hesitate to jump into the frigid water.

Immediately, Sandrin regretted her last thought. It brought her back to the present.

One of the boys, Kevin MacGilroy, wasn’t going to meet them here today. He was already here, probably had been for hours, maybe even since last night.

Sandrin felt her heart skip a beat as her insides tightened. She wasn’t supposed to let her thoughts lead her back to reality. She had to hold on until the others got back.

The now imaginary music in her head failed her. She knew she was going to walk back to the edge and peer down into the pool again. She couldn’t stop herself. She felt like she owed it to someone. Did she owe it to herself? Did she owe it to him?

Each time she had moved back onto the path, or hid in the comfort of the trees, it seemed unreal. If she stepped into the sunlight, bright enough to bring tears to her hazel eyes and warm her chestnut locks, she could believe it wasn’t real.

It was like he really wasn’t down there. It was like she had imagined the whole thing and was just waiting for her friends to return from the car because they forgot something. While she hesitated by the trees, she could almost convince herself of that.

Slowly, Sandrin stepped forward. She was going to have to look again; if only to remind herself that it really was true. Almost idly she wondered if her friends had the same sense of unreality, if they had managed to block it out of their minds now that they were on their way to get help.

Where were her friends? Sandrin wondered. It seemed like she had been waiting here for an hour. She cursed that she had offered to stay behind, waiting for her peers to get help. It wasn’t like he needed company. It was such a strange thing, a weird idea that maybe only teenage girls could come up with. Together, Sandrin, Kestrel and Wren had all decided that one of them should stay behind and wait; that one of them should stay with the boy.

It was almost like a superstition.

Sandrin had offered to stay. It had seemed reasonable at the time; that was up until her friends had disappeared along the path and their voices were lost in the distance. From that point on, Sandrin had tried to stay away from the edge of the scarp, that steep treacherous descent to the pool that lay at the foot of the big waterfall.

Why she had been the one chosen to stay was no mystery. She was the one who always picked the difficult tasks, even if no one had volunteered her. She could lose herself in her mind if she had to; she could distract herself with music or other thoughts to avoid the onslaught of emotions. Usually. If only she could block out reality now, spend her difficult time trying to figure things out, observing things that others might miss in the emotion of a moment.

Her feet crunched on some dry leaves as Sandrin edged forward. In places the ground was slippery and she skidded a little. Sandrin drew a quick breath and stopped. She was going to have to be more careful. Sandrin rested a hand on the papery bark of a yellow birch, feeling the smoothness of the freshly peeled section beneath her fingers.

Concentrating more on her footing now, Sandrin reached forward with her hands subconsciously, connecting with trees as she made her way along. The ground dipped down toward the rocky vertical descent to the pool, and the going was a little tricky.

With a solid grasp on the tree to her left, one foot on the roots and the other on a sharp jut of rock, Sandrin stared straight ahead at the grey rock wall facing her from the other side of the waterfall pool. She took a deep breath before looking down.

Peeking over the edge, Sandrin could see the jagged rocks, the frayed rope they all used to make their way down to the pool. She looked at the pool, at the rolling frothing water just below the fall, at the cold, scooped out rock basin. She looked at the calm rocky lips of the pool, the smooth rocks perfect for stretching out on. Slowly she let her eyes move to the more distant gravely surfaces surrounding the water, barely touched by the oddly gentle ripples that had lost all their vigour by the time they reached the pool’s edges. Sandrin and her friends had set their towels there dozens of times like countless teenagers before them.

There weren’t any towels there now. There was something else. There was Kevin.

Sandrin was calmer this time as she stared down at him. There was always the chance that it wasn’t him, but Sandrin knew better. It was him. Sandrin could tell by his clothes. He’d worn them yesterday when he asked her out.

It wasn’t just the clothes either. It was his shape, his hair. Even wet and dark, Sandrin knew his hair. She knew just about everything there was to know about him; everything that she could possibly know from a distance the way a girl with a crush would.

She’d liked Kevin ever since she met him five years ago when she first moved from the outskirts right into the town. She liked his humour, his take no crap attitude and his easy smile. It hadn’t taken her a second to agree to go out with him. She thought maybe he was laughing at her when she’d said yes so quickly. It was his sparkly eyes and that incredible smile that told her his feelings were genuine.

Now everything had changed. Forever. There wasn’t going to be any going out. There wasn’t going to be any gazing at sparkly eyes and an easy smile for Sandrin again. Ever.

Sandrin looked at Kevin, floating face down at the far end of the pool. Almost without awareness the girl was looking for signs. Signs of anything. A struggle? An accident? If she was more confident in her ability to climb, she would have scrambled her way down to the pool.

From where she was, Sandrin could tell, as could her friends, that the boy had been like that for a while. The parts of his arms that extended from his jacket sleeves were the colour of the rocks. Even though she couldn’t make out the details that were possible if she was up close, she could still see that his skin had an unnatural rubbery quality to it. The boy had probably been in the pond all night.

If she wasn’t still in shock, and occupying her mind with details, she would have cried.

Sandrin had been the first to see Kevin’s lifeless form in the water. She had been looking at the rope, the only safe way down to the pool, when she realized the bottom half of the rope was gone. When she saw the rope in the water, she saw him. Kevin. And time stopped.

It’s this way, Wren’s voice broke through Sandrin’s thoughts. We go off the path here.

Sandrin could hear the noise of several people approaching. She called out to them, but her voice cracked. Her over here was still probably audible enough. She could make out some shapes through the trees.

Sandrin! Kestrel exclaimed. Deeper voices echoed her name. Sandrin recognized a few.

There she is.

It was Emory, Kestrel’s on again off again boyfriend.