Cades Cove: A Novel of Terror (Cades Cove Series #1)

by Aiden James

  “That poor girl….”

  “Yeah.” The image that popped into his mind definitely wasn’t the one in hers. He pictured Norm’s violated corpse pleading not to forget what she did to him. “So, is everything okay at home?”

  “Jan and I went over to the house today,” she said. “It might be safe to move back this weekend, but I want Sara to visit first to make sure.”

  “Nothing’s happened in the townhouse or anyplace else, I take it?”

  “No, nothing has.” A moment of awkward silence followed. “So, when are you coming home?”

  “I changed my return flight to Sunday, and I’ve already set a lunch date that afternoon with Auntie,” he said. “John thinks it might take until the weekend to find Allie’s relatives. Hopefully, it’ll all be finished by the time I check out of here on Friday, and maybe I’ll drive down to Chattanooga and spend a day or two there.”

  “I miss you so much, David….” Her voice sounded hushed and lonely.

  Miriam took down the address and phone number of the Whitestone Motel before she hung up, leaving him to listen to a crackling dial tone indicative of the motel’s aged phone lines. To keep his mind distracted, for the next few hours he worked on the Applewood reports, finishing half of them. By then it was almost midnight. After the unexpected visitation from Allie Mae last night he decided to leave the TV on low and faced it toward the door, providing just enough light for him to see the room’s entirety. With the covers pulled up to his chin, he stared at the clock on his nightstand. An aqua-colored monster from when the motel first opened, the minute hand crept slow, tracking the time from 12:10 to 12:37 a.m. when he dozed off.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “M-m-u-u-r-r-der-r-r-er-r-r!”

  David opened his eyes, awakened by the whisper that passed over his face. The room completely dark, not even the parking lot lamps’ glow penetrated the murkiness. He noticed the curtains’ unusual thickness when he turned up the heater before retiring, assuming it was the motel’s way of compensating its guests for the sparse insulation. At least one couldn’t be bothered by any car or truck lights coming in late, as most of the motel’s patrons seemed to be in the long-haul transportation business.

  The television blank and silent, he couldn’t even make out its outline. The heater’s comforting hum also absent, it left the room in a hostile stillness. Suddenly the sound of a deep sigh filled the air above the space between the two beds. Something floated there.

  He raised himself, fully aware of his distinct disadvantage against whoever was here with him. Peering into the darkness where the sigh came from, he reached for the lamp switch next to his bed.

  “Don’t do it!”

  The feminine voice surreal, the accent and the fact it sounded both near and far was familiar.

  “Allie Mae?”

  The air around him already chilled from the lack of heat, it now grew even colder. The presence drew near to him. A brilliant blue eye appeared, aglow in the darkness less than a foot away. The eye especially beautiful, it squinted. Perhaps scrutinizing him, or more likely, its owner was seriously pissed.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked, trying to remain calm but terrified, finding it impossible to control the unsteadiness in his voice.

  The eye moved closer, and as it did he became aware of a soft gurgling sound, which reminded him of the tiny streams he used to find in the mountain valleys of Colorado. Cold drafts of air brushed against his face as the eye came within a few inches of his own eyes, as if the head shrouded by darkness positioned itself to kiss him. The smell of raw meat filled his nostrils. He pushed himself back against the bed’s headboard.

  “To take back what you’ve stolen,” the voice replied, softer and almost normal, erupting from the gurgle noise and sending an icy spray upon him. “And kill the wicked seed once and for all!”

  “I didn’t steal your bag of treasures, and I’ll happily give it back!” He clutched his bedspread tightly and shrunk away from the eye, the smell, and the gurgling. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right!”

  “It’s too late to give it back,” replied the garbled voice, sending forth another spray of chilled droplets onto his face. David cringed in response and closed his eyes. “It’s too late to give back my life, Billy Ray-y-y-y!”

  A splash of icy liquid against his throat and T-shirt emphasized the fervency of this last statement. Ever fearful, he opened his eyes. Another eye as grotesque as the first eye lovely had since joined it. Its mutilated cornea and iris glowed as a ruptured mass of fire and blood within the torn edges of the socket.

  “I’m not Billy Ray! My name’s David!!” he shouted.

  “Ya are what ya are and always will be, Billy Ray-y-y-y!” the voice hissed in anger. “Ya’ll and yer seed have killed and taken whatever ya’ve pleased! But, no more!! There ain’t no more hidin’ from yer sins!!!”

  “No, you’ve got the wrong guy! I’ve never done anything to you—”

  “M-m-m-u-r-r-r-der-r-r-er-r-r!!”

  He threw up his hands to protect himself as she shrieked her condemnation over and over, the echo resounding loudly throughout the room before returning to where he lay huddled against the headboard. Iciness gripped the base of his bed and steadily moved up toward him, chilling the bones in his feet, legs, and thighs as it touched him. Out of the darkness the two eyes suddenly looked up at him from his waist, revealing the entity now caressed his body like a famished lover, moving from his feet to his genitals and on up to his face. He whimpered in horror as something cold, wet and slimy crept inside his shirt toward his throat.

  Screaming in terror, he slapped at himself, falling out of the bed. He grabbed the nightstand, pulling the top drawer out while groping for the lamp’s pole. A pair of frigid arms embraced him from behind, and even icier hands pinched his nipples. Coldness beyond anything he’d ever known flowed through him from behind, freezing his lungs to where he couldn’t breathe. He began to pass out. The last thing he remembered, turning on the light switch.

  David awoke lying on the floor between the two beds. The nightstand lamp on, his head throbbed worse than any migraine he could remember. He groggily stood up and moved over to the clock, which still faced his bed. It read 3:38 a.m.

  After replacing the nightstand’s drawer in its slot and checking to make sure the heater still worked, he set the thermostat and blower on high and went into the bathroom. He intended to splash water in his face and take something for his pounding headache. But when he looked in the mirror, he could only stare at his reflection.

  His face and T-shirt were covered with blood.

  Chapter Thirty

  Tired and feverish, he headed back to the park Wednesday afternoon. Finding it hard to keep his eyes open while he navigated the highway slick from steady rain, the previous night’s events remained fresh in his mind. David found himself reliving his first verifiable physical contact with the spirit of Allie Mae McCormick.

  His first shower an act of squeamish determination, he forced himself to withstand scalding water for almost fifteen minutes. Once thoroughly cleansed of the blood and other yellowish fluid he tried not to think long about, he placed his bedclothes in a dry-clean bag from inside the dresser. As for the bed linens, they weren’t nearly as soiled as he expected, which made his later explanation to the innkeeper’s assistant of a sudden and severe nosebleed in the middle of the night believable.

  Propped up in a chair between the door and window, he wrapped himself tightly in a spare blanket he took from the closet. The room’s temperature comfortable again, he kept the curtains pushed open and all of the lights on, waking every twenty to thirty minutes from the unsettling sensation of falling into a dark abyss.

  By noon he had dressed and taken the soiled bed linens to the front office, tossing the dry-clean bag in a dumpster. He then drove to the local Shoney’s, sticking to the hottest items on the buffet bar. With three cups of coffee and another to go, he set out for a return trip to the Ca
des Cove visitors’ center.

  David regretted not getting John’s phone number to make sure he’d be there. When he passed the wooden “Welcome to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park” sign, he opened his briefcase next to him to make sure the bag remained there. It did. He closed the briefcase and turned up the stereo, thankful for the clear signal from a classic rock station in nearby Knoxville.

  John Running Deer had just finished his last tour of the day when David arrived at his small office in the visitors’ center. He motioned for David to join him at his desk, eyeing him curiously.

  ‘Rough night?” he asked, his tone impish.

  “‘Rough’ isn’t the right word for it,” David replied. “I’ll tell you about it later.” He smiled weakly as he sat down across from John, sipping a cup of coffee from a lobby vending machine.

  “Well, I have some very good news,” said John, pulling out a three-page fax from a manila folder. “Here’s a report I received this morning from Diane Sellers, my contact at the census bureau.”

  David pulled his chair around to where he could see it. Formatted as a summarized genealogy, it began in 1901 when Samuel and Esther McCormick first took ownership of a small parcel of land just east of John Oliver’s spread in Cades Cove. A blacksmith by trade, Samuel brought his wife and two daughters, two-year old Allie Mae and Emma Sue McCormick, just a few months old when the McCormicks moved from Ashville, North Carolina. Samuel also brought his mother, Virginia McCormick, with him to Tennessee.

  Samuel prospered as a reliable smith and soon purchased additional acreage along with adding horses, hogs, and other livestock. The family continued to prosper until Samuel died in April 1918. The cause of death unknown, the Oliver clan purchased the McCormick property in February 1923 after Esther died that year of tuberculosis. Virginia McCormick had died of influenza back in 1917, six years earlier.

  The report contained no additional mention of Allie Mae’s life or eventual fate. As for her sister Emma Sue, she married a local farmer named Lester Crockett, who also migrated from North Carolina. His family purchased a homestead on the eastern side of the cove, near where the visitors’ center stood today. They married in October 1921 and she gave birth to a daughter named Allie Esther Crockett almost two years later in September of 1923. Emma died from the same disease that killed her mother, tuberculosis, in August 1926, leaving her husband to care for their only child.

  In June 1934, Lester Crockett moved out of Cades Cove, taking ten-year-old Allie Esther, along with his new wife, Loretta, and their three-year-old son, Joshua, to a small town fifteen miles north called Rocky Grove. Allie Esther married a local man from Rocky Grove named Milton Edder in May 1941. She bore two sons, the first named Ezra in November 1946, after Milton returned home from Germany in World War II. The second, Jacob, was born in August 1951. Ezra died in a car accident in 1962, and Milton passed away from a heart attack on Christmas Day in 1975. Ezra never married and had no known descendants.

  Jacob Edder married Leslie Holmes from Knoxville in October 1982, and they moved to Johnson City, Tennessee in 1985. They have two sons: Michael, born in May 1988, and Vernon, who followed in July 1991.

  “Here’s the important thing,” said John, pointing to the bottom of the second page. “According to the latest documents Diane found, Allie Esther is still alive.”

  “She would be a rarity, it seems, based on everybody else’s lifespan listed here,” observed David. “She’d be almost ninety by now, right?”

  “Yes, she is,” said John, and then pointed to the next line. “Here’s her last known address and the phone number should be correct. According to Diane, she still lives in Rocky Grove, in the very same house her husband Milton purchased back in 1941.”

  They both looked at each other in silence, afraid to make the next move. They had successfully tracked down Allie Mae’s closest living relative, but now hesitated to make contact.

  “Let me call her,” said David, after staring at the desk phone for nearly a minute. “I’m not sure exactly what to say, but I’m pretty good at speaking with strangers on the phone. Unless you’d rather handle this.” He looked over at John.

  “It would be best if you handle this yourself,” he agreed, standing. He motioned for David to take his seat next to the telephone. “I’ll give you a few minutes alone to talk with her, which will give me an opportunity to check on everything else around here. We’ve been unusually busy this week.”

  He left him with Allie Esther Edder’s name, address, and phone number. David took a moment to think about what he wanted to say to Allie Mae’s niece. Then he picked up the handset and dialed her number.

  His mouth went dry and his eagerness dimmed once the phone reached its fourth ring without an answer. He assumed he’d reach the number’s voicemail, but the phone kept ringing. Just before he hung up after the eighth ring someone answered.

  “Hello?” The voice soft and frail, it definitely belonged to an elderly woman.

  “Is this Mrs. Allie Esther Edder?” David hoped he achieved the warmth of a neighbor and not some cheesy telemarketer persona.

  “It is,” drawled the voice, in the accent once indigenous to the hills of eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as western Virginia and North Carolina.

  “Hi, ma’am, my name is David Hobbs. My family and I have come into possession of a keepsake we believe belongs to your family, and would like to return it to you.”

  He smiled after saying this, hopeful he might actually be near the end of his plight. What he said came out much smoother than he envisioned, pleased she hadn’t hung up before he finished.

  “Oh?...What kind of keepsake are ya talkin’ ‘bout?” She seemed curious, clearing her throat.

  “It’s a little bag made from cloth with a leather strap on it, and it contains a sleigh bell, a blue ribbon, a gold chain with part of a locket attached to the chain, and a letter,” explained David. “It also has ‘Allie Mae’s Treasures’ stitched on the front of it in blue thread.”

  He waited patiently for a reply that didn’t come. He thought he heard sniffling and worried she might be crying. Something fell loudly on the floor, like a cane or maybe the phone itself, and he heard the anxious voice of a young man shouting something inaudible, accompanied by heavy steps running toward the phone across a hardwood floor.

  “Granny? What happened??”

  David heard the old woman groan as the young man, obviously her grandson, helped her up. The noise from a chair sliding on the hardwood floor, along with the light strain of the two struggling to get her back into the chair echoed from somewhere near the fallen handset. Allie Esther said something about a man on the phone between sobs and her grandson picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello,” David replied, swallowing hard, not knowing how to continue now that his contact with Allie Esther had been interrupted.

  “What the fuck do you want?” her grandson demanded, his tone menacing.

  “My name is David Hobbs, and I—.”

  “I don’t give a flyin’ fuck who you are, you goddamned cock sucker!” said the young man, whose venom seemed far worse than warranted.

  “I have something that belongs to you!” David hoped he would pause long enough for him to explain about the bag.

  “Ain’t you listenin’ to me, asshole?” he shouted into the phone. “I don’t care why you called, just don’t do it again!”

  “It belonged to your grandmother’s aunt!” Desperation took hold of David, and he looked anxiously over his shoulder when John returned, who appeared worried.

  “I don’t fuckin’ care!!” A moment of silence followed, and then the grandson continued, his voice hushed but shaking as his rage continued to boil over. “If…you ever call us again, mister, I swear to God I’ll find you and tear your heart out and feed it to you while you lay dyin’. You got that? And don’t even think about comin’ to see us, or I’ll shoot your ass dead where you stand!”

  Before David could
say anything else, the line went dead. He stared absently at the cursed bag resting inside his briefcase on the desktop while he listened to the dial tone. It wasn’t until the operator recording broke in that he looked at John again, who stood beside him.

  “I take it you spoke to someone in the household,” said John, his tone compassionate. “I heard you from the lobby.”

  “Sorry about that,” whispered David, descending rapidly into despair. The spirit’s words from last night rang true. Too late to give the bag back, indeed. “I spoke to Allie Esther, and I think she collapsed once I told her about the bag. The next thing I know, her grandson threatened to kill me if I ever tried to contact her again.”

  John nodded while he moved over to the other chair and prepared to sit down.

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you with this,” said David, getting to his feet and closing his briefcase. John stopped him.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “The people who lived here before the park was created were an honest, hardworking lot. A handshake meant far more than a paper contract ever did, and important personal business was always best when face to face.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  The grandson’s threats repeated in David’s head.

  “I don’t think it’ll be hard to find her address in Rocky Grove, although there are quite a few older dirt roads and hidden hollows up that way,” said John. “If you and I went there together in my park cruiser, they might see we’re coming to them on official business and not just a pair of panderers. Besides, seeing an old man like me might make the grandson hesitant to shoot…at least the old man.” He cracked a wry smile.