The Raven Mocker (32 page)

Butch stepped back out into the hallway and placed a call to his dispatcher, issuing a command for every available deputy to come to the cabin. Grateful, John nodded approvingly when Butch added that they needed to bring extra search equipment with them, but then frowned at the sheriff’s next request.

“
I need you to call Knoxville and get a forensic team out here, Norma,” said Butch into his handset, sheltering the receiver while turning away from John. “No bodies, but yeah, the request is warranted.... Tell them to get here pronto. From the looks of things we might have something important...something related to the UT homicides earlier this week.”

Chapter Thirty

What the hell?
...
Where am I??

David looked around anxious, surprised to find he’d been shackled to a cold stone floor. Darkness surrounded him, and the lone light source came from a fiery glow beyond a doorway, roughly two hundred feet from him. As dim objects grew easier to define when his eyes adjusted, he soon could make out the outline of a corridor leading up to the doorway. Enormous columns, each five to six feet thick and several stories high, stood on either side of the corridor. Jeweled mosaics featuring serpentine dragons covered each column, and the colorful reptiles appeared to crawl down the columns’ length, with the creatures’ angry, open mouths, full of sharp teeth, at the base.

As frightful as the images appeared, none of them came close to the hideousness of a face he’d seen recently. He couldn’t remember exactly when and where…. His eyes continued to adjust, and he soon recognized the motionless forms of Miriam and Evelyn, maybe thirty feet away. Bound similar to him, but sitting up, they were chained to a pair of columns on the corridor’s other side, clothed in the sweaters and jeans they had on when he last saw them. Cold enough in this place for their steady breaths to be visible, David shivered in his sweats and T-shirt, since about to get ready for bed when all hell broke loose…in John’s cabin? For some reason, that notion felt right and at the same time filled him with terror.

Could this be a dream? It didn’t seem likely. Memory brought a flood of images…images of terrifying phantoms with no eyes, and that goddamned repulsive face pursuing him from inside the stretched surface of the dresser mirror in the guestroom of John’s cabin. He recalled screaming Miriam’s name before two clammy hands grabbed his ankles and dragged him out of the living room, down the hall, and then carried him airborne through the guestroom into the mirror, where his chin banged painfully on the dresser’s edge. From there, things got even weirder and far more frightening. He watched helplessly as the wall closed up behind him, and he dropped into a deep dark chasm.

Other evidence confirmed the reality of his experience, like the bumps and stinging scrapes he felt on his chest, legs, and face. Not to mention his clothes still carried a raw earth odor.

But now they were here, wherever ‘here’ was…. He looked worriedly around him, casting another nervous look back to where Evelyn and Miriam sat motionless.
Are they still breathing??
It took a moment to discern misty tendrils rising into the air above their faces. What kind of place is this, anyway? Shackles and chains belonged in a prison or dungeon, but this ostentatious place looked like a palace or temple. The massive ornate columns pointed to some grand design.

That looks like real gold inlays along the base of the pillars, and probably the same stuff that’s glistening inside the cornices up above….
Something about the eyes of the dragon face. If I can just get a little closer to the face….

The eyes looked just like the ruby his aunt brought with her from Chattanooga…only bigger.

“
This shit can’t be real,” he mumbled.

Denial, despite the smooth, cold surface that greeted his fingers as he reached up and grazed the ruby ‘eye’ closest to where he lay.

A menacing moan resounded from behind him. The murmur faded, and when he glanced over his shoulder he couldn’t see anything. Beyond the reach of the faint illumination in front of him, everything lay shrouded in impenetrable darkness.

While debating whether or not he should say anything, to call out to the presence or try to waken Miriam or Evelyn, the moan erupted again, only this time it rumbled through the cold stone floor below him. His immediate response to pull desperately on the heavy shackles secured tight to his wrists and ankles, he prayed for some way to free himself. Now that he had a better look at his bonds in the dimness, they appeared quite crude with a rudimentary lock. Forged, cold, heavy iron. He wasn’t going anywhere without a key to unlock them.

Something snorted from within the darkness. Moisture formed in huge, twin mists that drifted toward the floor, only glimpsed as he again looked behind him.

If that shit came from the nose or snout of whatever is back there, then it’s very, very big! ‘Jurassic Park’ big…. Gotta get these mothers off somehow… better do it quick before I become lunch!!

Miriam uttered her own soft moan, and Evelyn stirred as well. The unseen menace lurking in the darkness answered his wife’s whimper with a meaner groan than before, which quickened David’s fear for her safety.

“
Miriam!”
he whispered, harsh, trying to get her attention without creating further agitation for the monstrous creature—surely it had to be enormous, with its deep rumbling groans and additional snout mists nearly as big as he. “If you can hear me, see if you can slide out of your chains.”

“
Uh-h-h…,” was her initial response. But then she awoke with a start and found that she couldn’t move, held fast by the heavy chains. She panicked. “David??
What’s going on?”

“
Keep your voice down!” he whispered again, this time less forceful. “There’s something in here with us and it…”

An angry roar suddenly cut through the air above them, silencing him. He instinctively flinched and pushed himself against the base of the nearest column. An immense black shadow flew swiftly through the air above, just beneath the ceiling.

Evelyn fully awake, she looked around herself in disbelief while Miriam cowered in terror, listening to the leathery flapping of giant wings while the mysterious creature passed over them as it moved toward the doorway. Its angry screeches echoed throughout the immense room and drew amazed expressions from all three, transformed into looks of terror when the flying menace sped back toward them, diving much lower on its return trip.

It flew past them again, a reddish blur in its wake as it climbed back into the air before circling high above. Hovering again in darkness, David hated trying to figure out what it would do next.

Evelyn joined Miriam in a frantic effort to free themselves, frantically pulling at the chains around their torsos. Scarcely able to move her bonds, she chanted incantations in a nervous tone that matched the whimpering pitch of Miriam’s cursed misgivings. Listening, David teetered ever closer to the edge of despair, since Evelyn had seemed so confident and sure of herself and her magic in his previous dealing with her. That definitely wasn’t the case now.

Other noises echoed toward them from beyond the lighted doorway in the distance. Unlike the chilling screeches and roars from the menace lurking somewhere above, these noises were definitely human in origin. Blood-curdling screams and pleas for mercy from a middle-aged man and a young girl cut shrilly through the air, drifting down the corridor to them. Another voice also present, this one resonated deeply in a strange language. The owner of this voice, a male by the sound of it, seemed delighted by the man and girl’s cries from obvious suffering.

Both Evelyn and Miriam looked anxiously toward David in the dimness, their worried grimaces at first resembled maniacal smiles until they both sobbed fearful.

“
Evelyn, can you somehow slide out of your chains?”

David’s last hope, Miriam’s escalating murmurs told him that she couldn’t free herself from hers. Likely the same for Evelyn, he wouldn’t allow himself to think all was lost… at least not yet.

“
We
can’t
do it!” cried Miriam, looking over at Evelyn before turning her attention back to him. “Both of us are
stuck!!”

“
Shit!”
he hissed.

His shackles seemed heavier as his own panic rose quickly. His mind went blank while desperately seeking some other means of escape.

“
Hold on, Miriam—I’ll think of something!”

“
Think of
what?
”

Her exasperation always made it harder for him to concentrate.

“
Something!”

“
Please, both of you
stop!”
Evelyn scolded, seemingly in control of her emotions again. “Your devotion to one another will serve us so much better than any anger over what has happened to us! We need to put our hearts and heads together and come up with an idea that—
Oh, my, God! Watch out, David!!”

Her courage melted as her eyes now focused on something coming down from the ceiling.

He looked up in time to see an immense, open mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth descend upon him. Similar to the images portrayed on the columns lining the corridor, a pair of glowing red eyes appeared, along with the rest of the enormous serpent’s slithering body. The creature’s face resembled the Chinese dragons he once saw depicted everywhere in San Francisco’s ‘China Town’, with huge flared nostrils on its long snout and two rows of golden horns on its head just above the brow. It veered away long enough to snap its dangerous jaws at Miriam and Evelyn, who screamed and pressed themselves against the columns they were chained to on the corridor’s other side. Then it dropped itself upon the floor, its focus again on David.

The serpent let out a roar that shook the entire room to where even the immense columns creaked as if they might crumble. Deliberate, it slithered toward him, its mouth opening wider as it approached the helpless, terrified man huddled in a fetal position on the floor. He could only listen and watch…Miriam and Evelyn’s frantic cries and shrieks along with the creature’s leathery skin brushing against the stone floor as it approached.

Resigned to his eminent death, he called out to his beloved wife, expressing his undying devotion one last time and then closed his eyes. The creature’s hot breath, laden with the stench of rotten meat filled the air around him, the last thing he considered as it arrived.

Chapter Thirty-one

Sunset came early to the Smoky Mountains Friday night. Or, at least it felt that way to John. The forensic team had just finished their examination of his cabin, where sprayed Luminol revealed widespread blood residue upon most of the living room floor and lighter blood spatter on two walls. Despite his and Butch’s earlier detection of an acrid scent hinting at bloodshed, his steadfast hope of finding his granddaughters alive overrode the growing mountain of evidence that said otherwise.

“
We’re all done, I reckon,” advised the leader of the team, Sam Roberson.

A tall, slender, steel blue-eyed man in his late forties, with a thick head of salt and pepper hair, he closed his supply case and ushered the rest of his team, two other males and one female, out of the cabin. Born and raised in nearby Pigeon Forge, John had met Sam once before, during an investigation following a series of break-ins into two of the nearby national park’s visitor centers.

“
It might take a few weeks to get the final analysis on everything we collected this afternoon, but I’m sure either Butch or the detectives you spoke with recently will be in touch.”

“
Thanks for your time today, Sam,” John told him, thinking again about where the collected blood and tissue samples probably came from.
Evelyn? Hanna? Or, both?
“I’ll wait to hear the results when you get them in.”

He bit his lip while closing the front door. There would be a time to grieve, but not yet. Something inside told him so…a piece still missing. And as long as the puzzle remained incomplete, he refused to accept the loss of those dearest to him. That included David and Miriam Hobbs, who for some reason traveled to Gatlinburg yesterday and then came here. He and Butch gathered this information from the rental agreement found inside the Honda Odyssey, which the Sevier County Sheriff’s Dept had since impounded for further inspection.

“
Shawn?...Where are you, boy?”

John waited for Shawn by his recliner, who ran down the hallway from one of the bedrooms and then cowered low as he approached his master. John worried that some of the glass chips in the guestroom from the destroyed mirror might get stuck in the husky’s paws. However, Shawn’s paws were fine…but something else seemed wrong. Shawn continued to look back toward the hallway, as if expecting someone else to suddenly step out into the living room.

After pausing to listen, with his ears and instincts, John returned to his intended task of carefully clearing away his granddaughter’s belongings left on his favorite chair and the table next to it. No one else was there...just Shawn and him. The laptop lay closed, courtesy of Sam once his staff finished dusting for prints and collecting possible DNA evidence. Her notepad still sat open on the table. It, too, had been checked.