by Aiden James
Dying to ask Janice if she knew of any other place Sara might’ve chosen to hide the jewels, it just wasn’t the right time to do so. Miriam would agree it best to wait until after the initial shock of Sara’s attack wore off, perhaps after they returned from Breckenridge. But he worried what to tell Ruth in the meantime, since she never wanted to leave the heirlooms in Sara’s possession to begin with.
There now was much to consider in light of the attack. Did the sudden cessation of paranormal events in his household have anything to do with what happened to Sara? The fact her coma wasn’t due to physical trauma fueled this line of thought. He pictured Christopher’s description of the withered ‘tree man’, and how this thing later ransacked Auntie’s room. Was it too far-fetched to think such a malevolent presence would follow an unsuspecting middle-aged woman home and viciously attack her before she even had the chance to take her coat off?
“Thank you for being here with me this afternoon, David,” said Janice, coming over to where he now stood with Miriam, just inside the exit from the waiting area. They hugged, and he patted her shoulder affectionately as they let go. “I’ll call Mir first thing in the morning to let you guys know if I’m coming along or not.”
“Take as long as you need, Jan,” he told her.
“I’ll call you later tonight,” said Miriam.
Miriam and David headed for the elevator, waving goodbye before joining another nurse in the elevator, whose shift had just ended. They soon returned home in David’s pride and joy, his cherished midnight black BMW Z4. He suggested she drive, hoping it might help lift her spirit. When she pulled the car into the exit lane for Littleton from I-25, David’s cell phone rang.
“It’s John!” He smiled broadly. “I was just thinking about calling him once we got home.”
Miriam smiled as well, and motioned for him to take the call.
“Hey, John!” he nearly yelled into the receiver of his cell phone. “It’s about time we talked, eh?... Yeah, it was good. Here’s wishing you a belated very Merry Christmas! How was your holiday?... Oh, yeah?.... What??... What do you mean she’s gone??”
He turned toward Miriam, whose expression mimicked his own shock. Meanwhile, he continued to listen, offering only short, stunned comments to whatever John Running Deer told him on the other end of the line. For the next few minutes it continued like that, while Miriam deftly navigated the snow-packed shortcuts to their neighborhood. David hung up, promising to be there for John if he needed anything—to call him when he knew more information, regardless of the hour.
“What’s going on, hon’?” asked Miriam, her countenance clouded with even more worry than before.
At first, David could only shake his head. “It took John’s granddaughter, Hanna, from his cabin late last night,” he told her, his voice a mere whisper.
“‘What’ took her?” she asked, the nervousness in her voice revealed she knew the likely answer.
“The spirit that’s been haunting us both,” he said, his voice cracking.
“What? How’s that possible??” She began to weep. Pulling the Z4 into the long curved driveway in front of their home, her shoulders heaved as tears flowed down her face. David ignored his own shock and remorse in order to take her into his arms.
Jillian and Christopher dragged Aunt Ruth outside to meet them at the car. Holding Miriam even tighter, David had a clear view through the driver’s side window. He greeted their alarmed expressions with a worried smile, silently mouthing ‘everything’s going to be all right’.
But it wouldn’t be.
Chapter Eighteen
Evelyn put her arms around John’s shoulders after he disconnected his call to David in Denver. He turned toward her with the receiver in his hand, his bottom lip trembling.
“Don’t give up hope, Grandpa—we will find her.”
Her expression confident, she fought hard to restrain the wave of dread that threatened to overtake her. She had to be strong, if for no other reason than to keep him focused on finding Hanna.
The first to notice her younger sister gone, when she quietly moved into the kitchen at daybreak, she assumed Hanna might still be sleeping. Evelyn carefully took out the skillet and bacon and eggs to start breakfast, making as little noise as possible. It wasn’t until she glanced into the living room that she saw the empty couch. She didn’t panic until a little later, after she searched the entire cabin, gently opening John’s bedroom door after failing to find her anywhere else.
That’s when he awoke. He immediately joined the search, his worried murmurs growing steadily worse. After seeing Hanna’s faint slipper imprints alongside a set of much larger bare footprints on the back porch, he and Evelyn dressed hurriedly. With Shawn’s help, they tracked the footprints until they disappeared in a clearing located less than half a mile from the cabin. Thick cloud cover from earlier had dispersed, allowing the sun’s light to bathe the near-pristine wilderness.
The butchered wolf remains were still covered with ice crystals from the early morning frost that for the moment escaped the sun’s warmth. Evelyn paused when she saw the garish sight, casting a suspicious glance toward her grandfather who hurried to track the trail of footprints now threatened by the sun. She ran to catch up to him. Once they reached the clearing together, he moved over to the slab-shaped boulder, dropping to his knees while rubbing his hands across its cool surface.
Unbeknownst to Evelyn at the time, the alter-shaped rock was once just that, according to what she would later learn from John. Sobbing, he cried out to his ancestors for help—to bring Hanna back to him before the entity could sacrifice her life. He spoke in the native language of his forefathers, and Evelyn was appalled by his plaintive words that echoed around them, which he may have forgotten she could translate, based on her own shamanist training from three different tribes spread out across the country. She waited for him to finish, helping him back to his feet. Together they returned to the cabin, keeping watchful eyes out for any sign of Hanna. But other than her melting footprints in the snow, there was nothing.
When John regained enough of his composure, he told Evelyn about the altar, once part of an ancient chain of shrines in the Smoky Mountains created by an early North American people that had long since disappeared. Long before their Cherokee ancestors moved into this region from the north a thousand years ago. Two Eagles Cry, John’s grandfather, showed him a similar altar as a boy, and told him how this earlier people often sacrificed their captive enemies to their bloodthirsty deities. Aware of the altar in the clearing near his cabin, John had disregarded its importance, since this earlier culture had long since disappeared.
Though Evelyn understood the supernatural nature of what they were dealing with, she suggested they call the police. John, still distraught, told her not yet… at least not until he had a chance to search deeper in the woods for Hanna. He hastily ate the quick breakfast she prepared and then dressed more appropriate for a longer stay outside.
Evelyn also dressed warmer. Together, and with Shawn, they searched the woods surrounding the clearing for the next several hours. But to no avail. Discouraged, they came back to the cabin shortly after noon.
John placed a call to the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department. Due to the holiday week, the staff had been reduced with everyone expected back by New Years Eve. One of the few deputies available, Jerry Van Hueson, agreed to stop by the next morning once 24 hours had passed since Hanna’s disappearance. Evelyn watched her grandfather become incensed by this, but knew he understood as well as she that it would take a hell of lot more help than the sheriff’s department or any other law enforcement agency could provide in order to find and rescue Hanna from the demon that took her.
Perhaps, as John suggested, it had something to do with the long forgotten ‘spirit people’ who once ruled this section of North America centuries ago, according to Cherokee lore. The notion seemed ridiculous to Evelyn at first. Yet, how else to explain Hanna’s slipper trail that led to the ancient altar, a
long with the dismembered wolf carcass left at the edge of her grandfather’s property? Not to mention the strange toe marks next to Hanna’s. John told her the unusual imprints were identical to others he found yesterday.
Together, they discussed this until the sun dipped behind the mountains around 4:30 p.m. John felt the powerful urge to try to reach David one more time, calling his cell phone, since he could never reach him at the Hobbs’ home number in Littleton.
“Grandpa… hang up the phone and I’ll prepare my cards for a reading,” said Evelyn, gently, moving to take the receiver from his hand now that his conversation with David had ended. “Let me at least try to find out what the entity intends to do. Maybe I can also determine the general area where it has taken her.”
He almost relented, loosening his grip on the handset. But then he gripped it even tighter.
“I need to make a few more calls, and then we’ll see about a reading,” he told her quietly. “Why don’t you wait in the living room while I call Dr. Kirkland and Dr. Pollack. It shouldn’t take long. I must warn them one last time about the bones and relics they took from the ravine….”
He didn’t have to finish for her to understand fully what he intended to tell the two esteemed professors from the University of Tennessee. The bones and relics—including the jeweled gold scepter with an extremely sharp ivory edge that Dr. Pollack was especially enamored with from the moment it had been unearthed—must immediately be returned to where they were taken from, and reburied.
But that alone wouldn’t be enough to appease the spirit’s anger. Formal apologies handled the ancient way, with shaman dances and the incantations of the Cherokee, performed in the presence of the two contrite Caucasians while the items were reburied would be the minimum expectation. Then it would be up to the mighty anisgas, the warrior forefathers to come through on John’s and her behalf, as they beseeched them to rescue Hanna from her imprisonment in the underworld.
Neither one conceded she might already be dead.
***
The first call went to Dr. Peter Kirkland, picked up by the professor after the second ring. John was pleased to finally connect with him after weeks of getting the runaround from the Forensic Department at UT and leaving numerous voice mails that were never returned. Despite his urge to lash out in anger, John maintained remarkable self-control in discussing what had happened. Dr. Kirkland patiently allowed him to tell all that had transpired for him and his family since Thanksgiving, including Hanna’s disappearance. But when John entreated his help in gathering the items taken from the sacred ravine in Cades Cove, the professor responded with the arrogance that had irritated John since he made the regrettable decision to tell him about the uncovered remains of Allie Mae McCormick.
John lashed out at Dr. Kirkland when he responded as if he heard nothing John told him. The professor’s steadfast pragmatism left him shortsighted about the consequences he and Dr. Pollack now faced. The call escalated into a shouting match that ended with John demanding he turn the items over or he’d forcibly do it himself.
Evelyn started to move toward the kitchen as she watched her grandfather tremble in anger, but he waved her off. Despite Dr. Kirkland hanging up on him, he needed to make one last plea for help with this. Perhaps Dr. Walter Pollack would listen, being a noted expert in the study of the ancient Native American peoples who once flourished in the southeastern United States.
John dialed Dr. Pollack’s home number after failing to reach the professor at his office. Elaine Pollack, the professor’s wife answered. His request to speak with her husband summarily denied, she’d already said goodbye and left him with a dial tone before he could say anything else. He called again. This time she responded even more sharply than the previous attempt, telling him to keep his ‘Indian affairs’ to himself until after the holidays, and to show ‘better honor and respect for this time of year like a good Christian.’ She tersely hung up leaving him completely livid.
“Look! Tell your husband that I need to speak to him NOW-W-WW!!” he shouted into the receiver when he spoke to her a third time, his blood pressure raising to the point his chest ached. “If anything happens to my little girl… my granddaughter, because of what he’s done, Dr. Pollack will personally pay for it all!!... You got that, lady? Let me speak to him now—”
Elaine Pollack hung up again. All further attempts to contact her husband reached either a busy signal or were directly transferred to voice mail. John slowly returned the handset to the small cove in the kitchen, his shoulders shaking. This time, Evelyn came to him in the kitchen. Tears streamed down his face. She wrapped her arms around him and the two wept together bitterly, while the sunset’s last vestige waned, giving way to the night’s dark wintry chill.
Chapter Nineteen
Shortly after sunset, Dr. Peter Kirkland hurried along the stone pathway that led to the lighted steps of Dr. Walter Pollack’s stately Italianate styled mansion. The front door framed within an immense arch, he hesitated just before ringing the doorbell, casting a third glance over his shoulder toward the eastern woods. The previous two times he did this, right after parking his Jeep in the circular drive in front of the Pollack estate, revealed nothing definitive to worry about. Yet the unmistakable feeling of being observed and studied by someone hidden nearby, perhaps behind the thick tree line across from the driveway, left him anxious to get inside the house as quick as possible.
The doorbell’s polyphonic chimes reverberated throughout the main floor. Dr. Kirkland raised his gloved hand to shield the porch light’s yellow glare while he peered through the small medieval-like window inset on the side of the door closest to him. The foyer inside dark, the window reflected a distorted image of a bespectacled middle-aged bearded man, with receding white hair pushed to and fro by the wind.
The foyer suddenly filled with light, illuminated by a large crystal chandelier. A moment later the heavy wooden door began to open, and the delicate face of Elaine Pollack peered out toward him. A railroad heiress whose family was among the oldest money clans in Knoxville, the eighty-acre Pollack estate had been procured a decade earlier by her parents’ considerable wealth. Her father’s affluence had also been largely responsible for Walter Pollack’s rapid rise within the academic ranks, to where he now stood next in line for the Archeology Department’s chair position.
Elaine studied Peter Kirkland for a moment as he stood in the cold, waiting for her to grant him admission inside her privileged abode. Her alluringly soft blue eyes radiated warmth that belied her amused smirk.
“Walter’s expecting you upstairs, Peter,” she told him smugly, brushing her shoulder length blond hair away from her face before pulling the door open enough for him to squeeze through.
“I expected Charles to be the one to let me in tonight,” said Peter, sliding past her as he stepped into the foyer, the soles of his winter boots echoing throughout the main level as he stepped onto the gray marble floor.
He noticed now her dark green housecoat and wondered if she’d taken ill since his last visit, just two days prior to Christmas Eve. He felt a twinge of guilt as he watched her struggle to close the door, but knew she wouldn’t appreciate any chivalry from him.
“He’s off tonight,” she explained, turning toward him after locking the door, pausing to peer outside through the same tiny window that he’d looked through moments earlier. “Even the family butler deserves a holiday break, I suppose.”
“Hmmm,” his only response, followed by awkward silence between them. He could feel her contempt radiate toward him as she brushed by, and he prayed for something witty to say that wouldn’t fall prey to her biting sarcasm.
“Like I said, Walter is expecting you.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him just before leaving the foyer, pointing to the adjoining turret and the curved wrought iron stairway that would take him to Dr. Pollack’s second floor office.
Dr. Kirkland removed his coat and added it to the brass hall tree next to the front door. By t
he time he’d gathered his briefcase and straightened his sweater, Elaine had disappeared from view. He didn’t see her in the living room as he peered through the railings while climbing the stairs to the second floor. His view was partially obscured by the large flocked Christmas tree standing near the foyer. But at least he now had more time to think of something clever to say to her when his visit ended.
He never stopped trying to re-ingratiate himself on friendly terms after an unfortunate incident involving her philandering husband and a young intern last fall, which he knew about but said nothing to her or even to his wife, Darlene, one of Elaine’s closest friends. Only her desire for the esteemed status as a University of Tennessee department chairman’s wife kept her marriage to Dr. Pollack intact. Rather than take it out on him, she chose Walter’s closest friend and colleague at the university to revile in his place.
Walter’s upstairs office sat just down the hallway to the right of the stairway. The hall itself reminded Peter of a five star hotel—the Ritz Carlton would be so lucky to have imported marble columns and an exquisite Mediterranean runner along its length that complemented expensive European millwork. The place had even been modeled after a castle in Milan, or so Elaine once told him—back when their speaking terms went beyond mere formality.
“Pete, come on in!”
Walter stood up from behind a massive mahogany desk that sat in front of a large stained glass window featuring a giant falcon as it soared over a mountain stream similar to what lay just a few hundred feet from the mansion. Slightly taller than Peter, his curly blond hair, steel blue eyes and chiseled facial features alluded to a Greek god. Dressed in faded Levis and a pair of house slippers, the outline of his well-toned upper body was clearly visible underneath his red flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.