The Raven Mocker (16 page)

Almost to the door. Suddenly, the heavy breathing from earlier resumed. Vernon was wrong about one thing—actually a lot of things, but this one mistake seemed larger than the rest. The sound didn’t belong to the thing pursuing him from behind. It belonged to something else, and whatever that was now pursued him in earnest.

Two dark shadows appeared on either side of him, stretching across the walls. Like the unearthly creature behind him, the shadows had human shapes and other characteristics, like long hair with the same dark feathers clumped in their hair. These two phantoms also carried knives and coup sticks that appeared quite real, moving ahead of him just as he reached the door. Desperately pushing on the door latch, he glanced long enough at one of the images to where he beheld its face that grimaced in anger. The features were definitely Native American except for the eyes. The eye sockets were empty. Soulless, and opening to a dark void that extended far beyond the confines of Langston Hall.

It all seemed like some terrible nightmare, except for the excruciating pain that resonated from just below his right elbow, along with the crimson trail the open wound left behind him. That was all
too
real, and he started to feel dizzy. If he could just open the door and tumble outside to safety….

The phantoms didn’t stop him, despite reaching the door before he did. Their essences began to dissipate as soon as he touched them. But the frightful sound of their chilling shrieks hindered him just enough to struggle with the door…how to open the damned thing with a pair of fucking Indian ghost faces screaming at you.

The latch finally did open, and he pushed through the door to the outside, where the crisp night air greeted him. He started to smile in relief on the porch—praising God that despite the loss of limb he would indeed see his grandkids and Maggie. He’d call 911 in just a moment, once he made it down the steps from the porch and put some distance between him and Langston Hall. But before he made it down the first step, two boney, powerful hands grabbed him by the ankles.

Without proper security staff on hand—including at the McClung Museum less than a hundred yards away, on a lonely Christmas night with no one around—Vernon’s shrill screams went unheard. Pulled back inside, the strange looking old man with yellow eyes and sharp jagged teeth dragged him all the way back to the shadows and then down into the basement. The thick steel door soon screeched shut, leaving only the smeared trail of blood from the wound where Vernon’s missing arm used to be. It was the first clue that told Frank Thomas he and his good buddy wouldn’t be sharing a few shots of peppermint Schnapps as previously planned.

Chapter Sixteen

“
Huh-h?”

Hanna awoke with a start. The living room in her grandfather’s cabin dark, except for the dying embers in the fireplace and the glow from the back porch light seeping in through a small crease in the backdoor curtains. Evelyn was supposed to sleep on the couch, but Hanna decided to forego her turn to sleep in the guestroom, allowing her big sister to sleep in a bed for the second consecutive night. Shawn preferred to sleep with his master tonight, despite her grandfather’s initial reluctance to share his bedroom with the dog. That meant Hanna had the rest of the main floor to herself. She preferred this arrangement since to her the couch slept more comfortable than either of the beds.

She pulled her thick comforter up to her chin with the expectation of drifting back to sleep in a moment. Bundled up like this she yawned, feeling the heated air from the fireplace gently caress her face. The clock on the table next to her grandfather’s recliner read 1:06 a.m. She watched the blue digital numbers change to 1:07 and then closed her eyes… until she heard three light knocks upon a glass window pane.

That woke her up for good. Had she been dreaming? She couldn’t say for sure, so she listened. Nothing happened at first, but as she looked over in time to see the clock’s readout click over to 1:12, the knocks repeated.

Frightened, she sat up on the couch. The knocks sounded like they came from the back door’s window. She glimpsed someone standing outside and gasped. The shadowed form was visible just to the right of the open crack in the curtains.

She struggled to find her voice, for when she did she intended to scream for her grandfather. But then something happened to change her mind completely

“
Hanna?” an older woman called to her.

“
Who’s there?” she replied, her soft voice shaking.

For a moment, the only response she received was silence.

“
It’s me… Grandma Susanne,” said the old woman, and Hanna realized now that the woman’s voice came from the figure standing outside. “I don’t have long, sweetheart, so come quickly.”

Hanna stood up quietly, never removing her eyes from the back door while she put on her housecoat and slippers. Cautious, she moved toward the door while tying her sash around her waist. When she reached it, the shadowed figure stepped out of her direct view, to the right. She almost decided right then to awaken her grandfather before proceeding further.

“
I’ve got a special Christmas gift for John, dearie,” said the woman, from outside. Now that Hanna stood closer, it really sounded like her grandma. “It’s something I wanted so desperately to give him five years ago, but I crossed over before that could happen. Please… let me give it to you to give to him.”

The anguish in her voice sounded genuine.

“
Grandma…so it’s really you?”

Hanna peered through the crease in the curtains, and when she saw an older woman standing there and not some young thug trying to break in, she pulled the curtains back so she could get a good look at her.

“
Oh, Hanna…how I’ve missed you
so
much!”

The woman stepped in front of the window, removing a tan scarf from in front of her face. She wore a long hooded wool coat that Hanna recalled as her favorite choice when dressing for the severe winter weather in the Smoky Mountains. Powdered snow covered her shoulders, and Hanna noticed that another inch of snow had fallen upon the porch since she retired for the evening, just before midnight.

Tears welled in the woman’s eyes, and she removed the hood from her head, revealing the long blond curls that defined Grandma Susanne’s look. In fact, she never forfeited her beautiful hair, despite the terrible fight she eventually lost to breast cancer. Her soft green eyes seemed to glow under the porch lights, which reminded Hanna of how she appeared to her as a little girl, and the delighted welcome she would always get when time to make a visit to grandpa and grandma’s mountain cabin.

She didn’t understand how any of this could be possible. All Hanna knew for sure at the moment, the woman knocking on the cabin’s back door was definitely her grandmother. Yes, it made no sense at all that a dead person could come back from the grave. But, it must be true because it happened right now.

“
Grandma!” she said, excited, pulling frantic on the locks to open the door. “I’ve missed you just as much!”

Once the door was open she stepped out onto the porch, throwing her arms around the old woman, her Grandma Susanne. She sobbed, and Grandma Susanne wept as well, though mindful to tell her granddaughter to keep her voice down so as not to awaken Evelyn and John. The two embraced for several minutes until Hanna was ready to let go and hear about the gift Grandma Susanne had for her grandfather.

“
Let’s take a short walk,” said the older woman, pointing toward the northeast corner of John Running Deer’s property. “Your grandpa’s surprise is something you’ll need to bring back with you from the woods. It isn’t far from here.”

Her smile warm and sweet, Hanna couldn’t help being drawn to the benevolence that radiated from the woman. Clothed in just her nightclothes and slippers in the chilled mountain air, she nodded shyly and placed her hand inside her grandmother’s palm, ignoring the nagging thought she should first alert her grandfather and sister before venturing into the woods.

Grandma Susanne’s hand felt warm, and brought back more memories from Hanna’s childhood. Strangely, the warmth spread throughout her body, and she scarcely noticed the subfreezing temperature around her.

Hand in hand, they stepped down from the porch and headed toward the woods. The light from the moon illuminated the area around them. A soft breeze moved through the woods once they moved past Shawn’s doghouse, bringing with it the wood on wood sound John heard earlier in the day. Since he didn’t tell her or Evelyn about his visit into the woods, she was unaware of the gruesome scene awaiting her. Thankfully, the light from the moon barely penetrated the thick pine foliage above their heads as they walked into the woods. Hanna noticed the bones hanging from the cedar’s branch, but she assumed they’d been there awhile, since she couldn’t see the wolf’s coat hidden in the shadows, nor its head and paws lying at the tree’s base.

“
Stay close to me, Hanna, and we should reach our destination shortly,” Grandma Susanne advised, once they moved deeper into the woods where the trees grew closer together and sure-footing became precarious on sloping, uneven terrain.

The old woman had no trouble navigating through the thick dimness where Hanna fought to keep up with her.

After a few hundred feet of dense woodland, they reached a small clearing bathed in the moon’s luminance. Hanna’s slippers were covered with mud, pine needles and other grit from the forest floor. Even so, she felt privileged. Grandma Susanne pointed to a large boulder in the middle of the clearing and led the way over to it. The top surface of the massive rock flat and fairly smooth, she brushed away the snow with her coat’s sleeve and motioned for Hanna to sit down on it.

“
I know it’s a little cold, dearie, but we’ll only be here for a moment,” Grandma Susanne told her, gently patting Hanna’s shoulder and stroking her face with the back of her hand.

The warmth from her touch flowed through Hanna’s entire being, rendering her impervious to the frigid environment again, despite small misty clouds with each breath.

Once situated comfortable upon the rock, Grandma Susanne took a few steps back from her, to where a cluster of much smaller rocks sat. She looked over her shoulder at something on the other side of the rocks, unseen by Hanna, who assumed this must be the surprise her grandmother mentioned.

“
Now…Hanna, I want you to close your eyes and slowly count to ten, like you used to do when you were a little girl and we played ‘hide and seek’ in the cabin,” Grandma Susanne advised, her loving smile unwavering. “When you’re done counting, I’ll show you something amazing. A sight that John and even Evelyn would be greatly impressed with, too, I’m sure.”

Hanna returned her smile, giggling like the small child she once was. When her grandmother passed away five years ago, she took it harder than anyone other than her grandfather. She’d always longed for a reunion like this, but Hanna never dreamed she’d be given the chance to reconnect with her grandmother—at least not before tonight. Eager to participate, she closed her eyes and began counting.

Grandma Susanne continued to smile, a slight trace of amusement on her face. She stooped down and picked up four glistening objects from the snow next to the rock cluster. Gemstones, cylindrical in shape and non-faceted. Two of them were diamonds, along with a pair of sapphires. All four gems unique enough to be considered priceless, until very recently they had been in the possession of Sara Palmer in Denver, Colorado, courtesy of David Hobbs.

As soon as Grandma Susanne picked up the stones and stood up straight, her warm green eyes melted into hollow sockets. Her warm smile also faded, into a sardonic grin. She stepped over to Hanna, who had just reached the count of seven. Before she finished, the figure continued to morph into the withered corpse that surely rested under the earth—if Susanne Rae Running Deer were to be exhumed from her final earthly resting place.

The figure could’ve remained like this, poised to horribly frighten the unsuspecting granddaughter of the ranger and his beloved late wife. But at the last moment, it morphed into its natural state. By the time Hanna opened her eyes to see her grandmother’s promised surprise, a repulsive and very tall old man stood above her.

He obscured the moon above, which cast an eerie glow on his long gray hair. The deep reddish grooves in his skin had already softened and filled in somewhat after his recent meal at Langston Hall. But his eyes, iridescent and yellow, with pupils that narrowed predatorily as he studied her, were more than enough to elicit a shrill scream from Hanna. She nearly lost her breath once she opened her eyes and found this hideous naked monster of human deformity standing over her. He didn’t even need to flash a full smile featuring his blood-streaked jagged teeth to get that response, which his shit-eating smirk revealed was the prize he’d hoped for.

The scream may have been all that he desired, his bloodlust satisfied earlier. But the fact her scream gave birth to several shriller shrieks seemed to annoy him. He raised his hand holding the four jewels, and unfurled the curled fingernails into bloodstained talons. Hanna’s eyes grew wider with fright and her cries more urgent. He hesitated…as if in silent debate about filleting her throat and removing the source of his irritation.

But instead of killing her, he merely blew upon the gemstones, which emitted sparks and a puff of black smoke. When the smoke reached her face, she choked to the point she could no longer breathe, but only until she passed out and collapsed on the ground. Confirming she lay unconscious, the figure backed up from her, raising his hands into the air and clicking his curled fingernails together above his head. The wind rustled loud from the surrounding woods, and two elongated shadows arose from the higher evergreens that lined the southwest portion of the forest.