by S A Jacobs
“There are a lot of trails up there. How’d you find him?”
“Yeah, a ton of trails, but I knew Roger. In all the time I’d been up there with him he was always going back to the same few trails when he could. Didn’t hurt that it had been a wet week, and I knew his boot tracks better than my own.”
“Was it that part of the trail leading to that old shelter?”
“Yeah, you know it?”
“Well yeah, I remember hiking that with him. Actually, that reminds me. That was the part of the trail that got rerouted when I was a kid, right?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“I have this memory of my dad talking on the phone to someone about trying to get it rerouted. I remember him saying something about people getting hurt and going missing in that section of the trail. You know anything about that?”
“Aw hell, that was Rog being Rog. Let me tell ya, when he made a decision, he would do anything to make it happen. He wanted the trail rerouted so he exaggerated some things to make his point.”
“Exaggerated? So did it happen or not?”
“Nah, I mean, there was that Barnes kid that went missing back then. But there was nothing to say he was even on that mountain let alone that trail. Roger just used it to make his point. At the end of the day, he was the expert on the trails. So he won.”
“But if that was a part of the trail he loved, then why would he reroute the main trail away from it?”
“I never did understand that one much. Like I said, he’d made up his mind on it. Honestly, we were so busy back then with a quarter of the staff we have today, we just kinda had to trust each other on matters like that.”
There was something about the way he spoke that made me question what he was saying. There was a slight change in tone when he spoke about the trail reroute, a discomfort. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to get much more from him unless I pushed to the point he shut down. There was only one thing nagging at me that I wanted to ask.
“Listen, thanks for taking the time. It helps to hear some of this stuff, ya know?”
“Don’t mention it! You’re always welcome here, you know that. And if you ever change your mind, I’m sure I have a uniform and a badge for you so you can follow in your old man's footsteps.”
“On that, I was curious what ever happened to my house. I mean the substation.”
“Ya know, that place has been locked up since you moved out. There is always talk of making it a gift shop or a museum or something, but there’s never a budget to back it up. So, it just sits there.”
“You think I’d be able to go there one day? I would like to walk through there again and see what I can remember.”
Gordon sat back in the chair silently pondering this.
“Aw hell, you know what. I’ll give you the key. Don’t mess the place up, and get me the key back. But yeah, if anyone deserves to go through that place it’s you. Let me just grab the key from my office... Listen, don’t tell nobody ‘bout me givin’ you the key. I’m sure I’m breaking some sort of rule.”
As I headed out to the substation I thought back to that missing kid Gordon mentioned. This would have been a perfect time to have the research team from my TV show. I did know someone who might help me uncover something. I picked up my phone and called Jim.
“David, how the hell are you?” Jim said.
“I’m good, just home in between recordings. How is everything up at the Villa with Kat?”
“Everything is great, but we miss you. You gotta come back up here sometime!”
“You’re right. I will. But until then, I got a favor to call in.”
“Anything.”
“Listen, remember you had that buddy, the computer guy that got you a bunch of info on Sam?”
“Aw yeah, Paul.”
“You think he’d be able to research something for me?”
“Yeah, what you got?”
“I need to find out anything I can about a kid that went missing in Roan Mountain around 1997. The name was Barnes.”
“I’ll forward the info. and see what he can dig up.”
“Thanks, bro. Listen, I gotta run, but I’ll call you back when I got some time later.”
Paul was a hacker extraordinaire who’d been able to help Jim find a bunch of interesting and hidden information while I was working on the case involving the demon at his Villa. I didn’t know what, if anything, I was looking for from him. But something told me I should try.
I pulled up to the substation, my childhood home. Gordon was right, the place was untouched. I had to park on the side of the road as the driveway was chained off. As I walked up, it looked just as I remembered it aside from the fact that the forest was about to reclaim it. Clearly, no one had walked up there in years. I made my way up the creaky steps of the front porch. I put the key from Gordon into the padlock securing the front door. After jiggling it a bit, the lock loosened up and opened. I opened the door of my home and stepped in.
The inside was exactly as I remembered it. On my left was the small living room with the grandfather clock where my dad would sit reading and smoking his pipe. On the right was the dining room that led into the kitchen. That was the exact table I’d been sitting at in my vision. I eyed the old olive green phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen.
I made my way back to the staircase by the door and headed upstairs to my room. My bed was still there, but the room was stark and empty. I ran my fingers along the wall seeing the pinholes from where my Kurt Cobain poster once hung. I vaguely remembered how all of my possessions just appeared one day at my aunt's house.
I walked over to my dad’s office. While my room was completely stripped of everything, his office looked exactly like it had the last time I’d seen it, aside from the missing stack of papers and maps that always cluttered his desktop. I made my way over to the dusty wooden office chair and sat down. I stared at the desk for a few minutes, envisioning talking to a childhood version of myself with me being my dad. I opened up the top drawer. It was a mess of rulers and protractors and such, but then something caught my eye. On the bottom of the drawer there was some writing on the wood. I pulled the drawer out further and started throwing its contents onto the desk. Once empty, I could make out the scribble. “11:27 - 250°” was written there.
Something felt important about it. I took out my phone and took a picture of it before putting everything back in the desk and closing it. I stood up and was about to leave when I remembered Gordon mentioning my dad’s journals. I walked over to the closet and opened the door. Inside, my dad’s uniforms hung and below them was a file box. I opened the file box to reveal a stack of papers, maps, and notebooks. There had to be twenty old composition books with black and white marbled covers. I couldn’t begin to scratch the surface of everything in the box at that moment. I decided to take the box with me. I headed out and loaded the box in my truck before I went back to lock up the house.
On my way back home, I thought about the fact that I had no idea what I was after. Yes, there was my vision, but how much more was there to discover? The one topic I hadn’t broached with Gordon was the KGC, but I doubted he would have much to offer and that seemed a bit too sensitive a topic for that conversation. I also doubted that the box of papers and notebooks would yield any clues on that front. Yet, I took them.
I found myself being mad at my dad again. I was mad about the puzzle, the secret of the KGC. I was mad at the sheer fact that he’d died without being able to answer those questions for me. I’d spent a lot of time being angry with him in the past. It was exactly why I’d coped by blocking his very existence from my mind. I didn’t like being mad at him, but I was. It wasn’t my choice, but it was the situation I was in.
My phone started buzzing, and I looked to see Jim had texted me.
“Paul is over at my place. Call me ASAP!!!”
A few minutes later, I trudged inside my house with the file box and sat down to call Jim.
“Hey David, I g
ot Paul here,” Jim said. “You’re gonna wanna hear this. Let me put him on speaker.”
“Uh David…” a voice said. “This is Paul. Like Jim said, I started looking into that name, Barnes. I don’t know what this all adds up to, but there is some seriously covered up shit here. I’m talking like JFK style.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
“Well okay, you gave me the names Barnes and Roan Mountain, right? So I started looking at that. There are two different stories from the same time period. One, the story that was publicly available and then a completely different story beforehand. Let’s start with the more public story. It reads that on May 12th, 1997, a seventeen-year-old Jamie Barnes was reported missing to the Johnson City Police. The story says he had gotten in a fight with his parents the previous Friday and had taken off. When he didn’t return by Monday, his parents called the police. Then, on June 21st, a guy taking a hike in the woods comes across his body. The reports all show that he died of exposure. He was found only a couple miles from his house in a place called White Rock. So everything seemed to be simple.”
“Seemed to be?”
“Yeah, like I said, that is one story. The other story only really matches up on a couple points. Let me walk you through it. This story starts earlier, on May 9th. So, at 11pm on the 9th, a group of kids approach a forest ranger on Roan Mountain screaming about something in the woods attacking their friend. Apparently they had gone hiking and found some secluded spot to drink or smoke up or whatever. That was when something came out of the woods and attacked their friend ...their friend named Jamie Barnes. There are search reports for the next couple days that led to nothing. Then, a ranger finds Jamie’s body on a Roan Mountain trail on May 12th.”
“I’m a little confused. How can a body be discovered twice?”
“Hell, you know these government agencies. They will do anything to avoid bad press.”
“So what, they just kept his body on ice and changed the story a bit?”
“Well, that is kinda what I was thinking. But then I found the autopsy report. This report again falls into the second hidden storyline here. Anyway, despite the initial reports of him being attacked, there isn’t as much as even a scratch on the body. No cuts, nothing. The cause of death is listed as liver failure. But here is where shit gets really messed up. So, in a typical autopsy, all of the organs are taken out, examined, weighed, and all that. On this report, it has all of that information. However, when it gets to the liver, everything is just blank. No information. Like it wasn’t removed or examined at all, which is fine except for the fact that it listed liver failure as being the cause of death.”
“Wow! That sounds pretty messed up, but what makes you think this is more than simply avoiding bad press? I get it, something is amiss for sure, but not sure I see anything all JFK style in this.”
“Well, a lot of that comes with how I found the info. See, there are two completely different reports from completely different agencies. The first story comes from the Johnson City Police, publicly available thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, and of course my mad skills to get it without waiting for a request to go through. But the second, that is more hidden. It is all in documents from the National Forestry Division. I don’t know how much you know about that, but let's just say the Forestry Division has often been unwilling to comply with that Freedom of Information Act. These documents came from good old fashioned hacking while any FIA request to the department would only ever turn up the original police reports.”
“Still struggling to see the JFK cover up there.”
“Okay, let me connect the dots for you. A kid goes camping and something happens. The rangers do their job, end up finding him, but they are not responsible for communication with anyone outside. They forward everything to the police and other agencies. I mean, it isn’t like the forestry division is going to perform an autopsy. Anyway, by the time the parents call the police, his body has already been found. The police know this but say nothing, not until some other government agency conducts an autopsy. The police are just held back by them. Over a month goes by until the police are given this alternate storyline to go off. I checked the name of the guy who supposedly found the body in the police report, a Leonard Gale. He doesn’t exist. As a person, he is a ghost...no records, no birth certificate, no residence. However, his name comes up in police reports all over. It’s the government's version of John Doe.”
“So you’re saying the entire police report is false?”
“Exactly. I would bet there was no hiker who found a body. That report wasn’t even written by the police. It was handed to them with the body post-autopsy.”
“Alright, I mean I love a good conspiracy and even have my tin-foil hat here, but this is a bit much. What reason would the government have to hide something like this?”
“That’s the only question left. I don’t know, but there is something there for sure.”
“Okay, I gotta think this all through. Can you email me those reports? I’d love to look at them myself.”
“Sure thing, I’ll send them over now, but be careful with this stuff. It’s all hidden for a reason. Don’t go stirring the pot too much and asking too many questions. The higher up the chain things like this go, the quicker they get silenced.”
“Now that, I can agree with. Thanks.”
By the time I got home, the reports had arrived in my email box. I started looking through them. Obviously my interest was piqued when Paul mentioned that those reports came from my father's office. I knew I had to keep quiet about that for now. The first report I looked at was from the police department. Since the body was found in the National Forest, the ranger was listed at the scene of John Doe’s discovery. That ranger was Roger Spur, my father.
I opened the second set of reports, the ones Paul said were ‘hidden.’ Those reports were from my father's office, but the ranger listed on them was Gordon Owens, the same ranger who told me there was nothing to the story of Barnes and that trail. Even more concerning to me was one name that caught my attention when I read the report. The report listed the friends who approached Gordon. Among those friends listed was Derek Soto. I already knew exactly who Derek was. He was the deceased older brother of Austin, Melanie’s ex-husband.
12
A government cover-up was the last thing I’d expected to find in relation to all this. I knew Gordon was not telling me the straight story, but did it really go this deep? The more I thought about it, the more I developed a ‘What would Linda say?’ mentality. Linda always looked for a deeper connection in everything. I knew, with this, I needed to find something connecting everything beyond the surface. While I was unable to see all the connections, I decided to look where this started, with Melanie and her cabin.
I knew there was energy there from Robert Mason. That had to be my next step. Investigate that to the fullest. I sent Melanie a text saying that I was heading back to her cabin. I got in my truck and headed there.
I pulled up to the sleepy cottage and started walking up to the door. As I approached, I heard a car speeding down the gravel drive. When I turned to look, a beat-up Toyota skidded to a stop in front of the cabin. With the car still running, Zeke stepped out and approached me.
The relaxed man I drank with on the porch only a few days ago looked completely different. He was out of breath and dripping with sweat.
“David, right?” he yelled as he approached.
“Hey Zeke, good to see you again. What's goin’ on?”
“Look, did you see a dog down there when you pulled in?”
“No, sorry.”
“Shit man, I gotta go find him.”
“Wait, weren’t you telling me your dog ran away like months ago?”
“Yeah, but he came back…well kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“Man, this morning I heard barking so I came out on the porch, and there he was like fifteen feet from my door. Something’s wrong with him, though. It
’s like it’s him, but he just doesn’t act the same at all. Anyway, he took off a few minutes ago. I gotta find him. I can’t lose him again!”
“Let me help! I know this area pretty good. Certainly, another set of eyes wouldn’t hurt.”
“I gotta run while I have a fresh trail to follow. But if I lose it, I’ll come back for help.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I just gotta go!”
Within a few seconds, his Toyota was kicking up gravel as he sped down the drive. With Zeke gone, it was time for me to focus on the house. I pulled the key out from under the mat and took a deep breath as I opened the door. The house was still and silent. The cabin creaked with every step. I slowly prodded around the downstairs level before making my way to the loft. Something felt different and empty about the cabin. It was as if the negative energy I’d felt before had vanished. I was hoping that it was simply a side effect of me trying to trap the energy upstairs.
Upon entering the loft, I realized it too was still. The negative energy was simply gone. I slowly made my way to the door in the wall and gently brushed away the line of salt. I opened the door, expecting the rush of cold air I’d felt previously. There was nothing. It was warm and still, exactly what you would expect of a normal attic. I knelt at the door, leaning into the attic. After I’d sat there for several seconds, things started changing. A warm glow of light overhead began to overtake the attic, until the entire space was lit brightly enough for me to see everything. The signature of Robert Mason shone prominently in the light.
I crawled farther into the attic to get a better look. Once I was fully inside, the door slammed shut with a loud bang. Panic rose in my chest. The concern was quickly squelched as I sensed no danger around me. I needed to simply let the energy guide me. At that moment, there was an uncomfortable sensation on my thigh. It felt warm, almost burning. As I tried to push past it and investigate the attic further, the burning sensation escalated. It felt as if there was a hot stone pressing into my leg. As the burning intensified, I started rubbing my thigh, trying to brush away whatever it was.