The Raven Mocker (14 page)

She held it out to David, her upturned palm unsteady. A gemstone roughly the diameter of a quarter and a half inch thick, and the jewel she told the family about two days ago. The completion of a set of five gems intended to be the inheritance of the lone remaining Hobbs clan—the Colorado Hobbs family—that descended from the vile and wicked patriarch once known as Billy Ray Hobson. Tyler and everyone else now knew the specter he saw was indeed him, and the one who left the item under her pillow—his last surviving grandchild.

Tyler would eventually learn, after the ensuing ordeal ended, that she considered this particular stone as cursed. A defiled object left for her to find like the trinkets the old bastard would leave behind after he violated her as a young girl. The reason why she wept and could barely contain her sorrow and shame. She begged David to take the glistening ruby from her.

Watching his dad gently remove the non-faceted jewel from her palm and deposited it in his coat pocket, Tyler could tell he understood her pain. Such senseless suffering delivered by the man David called a ‘horribly wicked and twisted fuck’ back in November when he first shared the photo album with him.

David tried to speak, but nothing came out. He dropped to his knees and hugged his aunt tightly, with Miriam holding on with him. All three wept, while Tyler and his younger siblings helplessly looked on.

Chapter Fourteen

John Running Deer stood on his back porch, shielding his eyes from the bright afternoon sun. The air felt crisp and cool, but still warmer than it had been earlier in the day. A few clouds dotted the sky, and the forecast called for significant snow again by nightfall.

Shawn had almost finished taking care of his business, and would soon seek to get inside the cabin rather than stick near to his own private igloo. Certainly, the temperature was mild enough for Shawn to spend the warmer daylight hours outside today. John had his granddaughters to thank for his prized husky’s newfound preference to be inside the cabin rather than out. He smiled while considering Hanna and Evelyn’s copious charms, and how easily they disrupted his routine and turned his watchdog into a demur pup. And they did so in just a few days’ time. He hated the idea of them going back to Knoxville and Johnson City tomorrow, after the Christmas holiday ended.

It made him ache even more for Susanne and the days when his granddaughters were still little girls. Only a short matter of time before they graduated from college and then moved on with their lives, their careers might take them even farther away from Gatlinburg, Tennessee. He’d already begun preparing himself for that likelihood, the very thing he coached them to aspire for since completing high school.

Shawn finished and wagged his tail as he prepared to meet John on the porch. But suddenly he stopped, looking out toward the densely wooded area just north of John’s cabin. His tail ceased to move and pointed downward, and he growled protectively with sharp canines bared at an unseen menace his master couldn’t detect.

But John did hear something. It sounded as if wooden chimes hung in the branches of the evergreen trees that stood like tall sentinels along the border of his property. The objects clanged softly against each other as a light breeze traveled through the woods. John stepped down the porch’s worn wooden stairs and moved out into the backyard, never removing his probing gaze from those evergreens, deftly avoiding slick patches where melted snow had turned the ground into a muddy mess. He removed the chain from Shawn’s neck, commanding him to stay next to his side. Cautious, John made his way to the area where the clatter emanated from.

The sound of wood on wood grew louder, and Shawn’s growls became more urgent, punctuated by agitated whines.

“
Steady, boy,” John whispered, bending down to stroke his neck. “Stay with Daddy.”

John soon saw what made the noise. His initial reaction one of horror, he carefully examined the leg and rib bones of a dead wolf hung by strips of blood-streaked rawhide and sinew from a stout cedar tree’s longest branch. Beyond the tree lay a pristine forest that stretched for miles toward the deepest wilderness of the Smoky Mountains. Wolves were infrequent visitors to his property, naturally skittish in the presence of mankind.

“
What in God’s name happened here?” he whispered, motioning for Shawn to wait while he took a moment to examine the immediate area around them.

The skinned and bloody hide of the animal also hung from the branch, swinging back and forth from a steady breeze. The wolf’s head lay positioned to where it’s frightened, glassy eyes looked out toward the cabin from the base of the cedar. The animal’s four severed paws arranged in a ring around its gaping jaw, the entrails and other organs were nowhere to be found.

John stepped over to the head, noticing trails of dark crimson covered recent snow that escaped the sun’s reach beneath a thick evergreen canopy. Along with the blood trail were moccasin impressions in the snow, along with what looked like an unusually large naked human footprint with odd toe marks. He followed the trail around the tree, until the footprints abruptly disappeared roughly thirty feet into the forest.

After standing motionless, listening to the wind as it moved through the dense woods around him, John returned to where Shawn waited for him near the cedar tree. He thought Shawn would venture closer to the remains out of normal canine curiosity, but the dog remained where he’d left him, glancing nervously toward the cabin.

“
Everything will be okay, boy,” John told him, his tone soothing, knowing otherwise.

Gently stroking the husky’s neck, he surveyed the scene once more. It had been many years since he’d witnessed anything like this. The last time was when his grandfather, a great shaman who refused to add an English surname or nickname to his Cherokee name of ‘
Tali Awohali Atloyasdi’
or ‘Two Eagles Cry’, took him as a young teenager to a hidden sacred burial area where Cherokee skeletons from long ago lay exposed in the open air on high wooden pallets. Animal bones hanging from thatched, wooden pole frames, along with weathered deerskin ornamental shields, accompanied some of these remains along with the weapons most favored by each honored warrior.

But those bones were ancient in comparison to what had been left here next to John’s property. His grandfather told him the sacred mountain grave site hadn’t been used since the mid-nineteenth century, carefully camouflaged from Andrew Jackson’s armies and others who hunted the Smoky Mountains looking for renegade Cherokees refusing the federal mandate to join their brethren heading westward on the Trail of Tears. To John’s knowledge, no one had since practiced the protecting or cursing of an area like this anymore.

Knowing the message was intended for him greatly worried John. An even worse portent, in his mind, than the terrible visitations he’d endured for the past month. At least those had a predictable pattern and outcome, where at the end of the day he and his family remained safe from harm—at least so far.

“
Grandpa? Are you okay?!”

Evelyn stood on the back porch, shielding her eyes as she looked in his direction. Luckily the wind had died down just before she called to him, and the ‘wooden’ noise of the wolf bones hitting each other was barely audible. His granddaughters thrown into a panic was the last thing he needed. Especially today, Christmas, where they’d already enjoyed a fabulous morning together, sharing more presents and merriment around a warm fire in the living room.

“
I’m fine—just checking some deer tracks!” he called back to her. “I’ll be there in a minute!”

John urged Shawn to head back to the house. The dog glanced one last time at the woods before trotting up to the porch, seemingly happy as hell to get away from there. He looked back at John a couple of times, just to make sure he came too. But John lingered long enough to try and sense if anyone remained, hidden within the forest’s dense foliage. If someone was near, he couldn’t detect it. He stepped back onto his property, and as he moved toward the cabin he felt less anxious. His home that had seen the births and growth to womanhood of first his daughter and then his granddaughters would protect them all as it had for more than forty years.

“
Are you sure it was deer tracks?” Evelyn asked as he stepped onto the porch.

He paused to look again toward the woods. Shawn had already snuck in, and Hanna met him in time to wipe his paws clean.

“
Hanna said she heard some animal crying in pain early this morning, just before sunrise. But she didn’t see anything when she looked through the back door window…. Maybe she and I should take a look later.”

“
That won’t be necessary,” John assured her, forcing a broad smile and praying she couldn’t see or sense the plummeting depth of his worry. “It’s just deer tracks. Maybe Hanna heard a screeching owl. They can sound pretty heartrending sometimes.”

The misdirection seemed to work. They shared a laugh at how Hanna often overreacted to so many things. John opened the back door, motioning for her to go inside before him. He followed her into the kitchen, where the scents of cinnamon and nutmeg embraced him. The afternoon promised to be as merry as the morning had been. As he closed the back door, he allowed himself one last glance toward the woods. Still no sign of anything, but another breeze moved through the trees, awakening once more the now eerie sound of bones tapping against each other. John shuddered and locked the door. Despite several more hours of daylight, he closed the curtain and set the dead bolt. He wasn’t taking any chances.

Chapter Fifteen

Just after eight o’clock Christmas evening, Vernon Mathis arrived at Langston Hall. The building looked cold and foreboding as he pointed his flashlight’s beam to either side of the cement steps and then through the glassed front door as he climbed up to the porch. All lights were off, both inside and outside the former dormitory, except for a slight glow emanating from the upper stairwell in the rear of the main floor. That would be consistent with the information he’d been given by Jerry Simmons, the security staff dispatcher who called him at home earlier tonight. John Campbell stated he turned on some internal lights last night around midnight, Christmas Eve, before he left. That really was all John had to say of importance in his hastily composed resignation letter, which he later delivered to Jerry’s desk at the University of Tennessee’s main administration office right before his shift started today, at 4 p.m.

Vernon wasn’t an unreasonable man, or so he told anyone interested in hearing his perspective on how he ran his crew. Most of the time, anyway. Only when a situation severely tested his patience—like tonight, after his entire staff bailed and left him to manage the security functions for both Langston Hall and the McClung Museum alone—would his squared jaw and sharp jowl lines reveal the grizzled retired police veteran that he was. Physically fit with defined, powerful muscles, Vernon wore his hair close-cropped in military fashion, which minimized the ever-increasing loss of his hairline. He liked the fact he looked intimidating, and it usually took a solitary stern look from him to coerce subservience in any of his direct reports. And when seriously pissed, again like right now, his deep blue eyes flashed as narrow slits two shades lighter, easily reinforcing the venomous power of his words.

“
Merry fucking Christmas, you bunch of assholes!
” he hissed as he opened the building’s front door, even more incensed by the fact it was unlocked.

The pussy John Campbell couldn’t even get that right. Until last night’s fiasco, John had been very dependable. In two and a half years, he’d called out just once, and that was due to a severe flu bug which almost shut down the entire University campus. Vernon still couldn’t believe he left him high and dry like this. The fact that the trainee, Matt Edmonds, permanently left his post at the McClung Museum earlier today came as only a slight surprise. And Johnnie Mercer, Steve Holland, and Tony Williams were attendance problems just waiting to get fired. He especially couldn’t believe the theatrics put on a few nights ago by Tony “the tank”…some fierce ‘weapon’ he turned out to be. Fucking crybaby, more like it. Only Pete Lindsey remained loyal, but then again, Pete’s just a part-timer filling in one or two shifts per week.

So, now it’s all up to Ole Vern.

His buddy, Frank Thomas, agreed to moonlight for him here at Langston around ten o’clock. Another surly veteran from Knoxville’s finest, unlike Vernon he still had a few years to go before he could collect full retirement benefits. Grateful that he was able to help out on such short notice, it allowed Vernon the opportunity to check on another trainee from the other side of campus, Billy Peacock, who agreed to fill in at the museum across the way later tonight. Vernon remained hopeful he could rejoin his wife and grandkids at home by midnight—if they hadn’t already gone to bed.

He turned on the outside security lamps and also the main floor’s long row of fluorescent lights. Surprised to see his breath inside the building, it seemed even colder than the subfreezing temperatures outside. His immediate assumption that the heater must’ve died made little sense. Dr. Peter Kirkland told him it had been fairly expensive to restore, where two of the building’s three units were replaced with new ones. Vernon had thought the whole extravagance of restoring the building in order for the basement cold storage area to be utilized was a bit much, until he made a joke about it in the professor’s presence. Dr. Kirkland’s response quite curt, he threatened to ‘find another security chief’ who would do a better job of protecting the University’s interests.