by S A Jacobs
I caught the coin and immediately put it in my pocket. Robert pulled his golden pocket watch from his vest and looked at it shaking his head.
“Time is short. I’d say we have an hour and a half before the sun has completely risen. Follow me.”
“Follow you where?” I asked.
“I have something to show you. Consider it my payment for a job well done.”
Gordon looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. Robert turned and started walking through the woods. We all stepped in and followed.
“Robert, I thought you said someone needed to die in order to kill her.”
“I never said die. I said a sacrifice needed to be made. It looks like you chose to make the biggest sacrifice you could. Truth is, I didn’t believe people could come back after she took them over. Lucky for you, it appears they can.”
We trudged through the forest up the mountain. Soon, we were high enough that we approached the tree line. As we stepped through the last row of trees, we emerged in a dense fog. Robert continued moving forward. I couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of me.
“Guess this is why they named it Cloudland,” Robert said as he continued moving forward.
Soon the fog dissipated, and as it did, I realized we were standing in front of a massive building. I recognized it immediately from the photos I’d seen. It was the Cloudland Hotel. It was real and right in front of us. Robert never slowed. He walked up the staircase, onto the porch, and opened the massive door.
We all stepped inside as Robert held the door for us.
“Hurry now. Take the staircase up and then into the double door in the center.” he said.
We all walked in the very real building that hadn’t existed in almost a hundred years. The dark wooden staircase was covered in a beautiful red carpeting. I walked up the stairs with Melanie and Gordon following. At the top of the stairs stood an ornate dark wooden door. I took a deep breath and turned the handle. I stepped inside to a large study. The clock from my house was against the wall, and my father sat in the center of the room. He looked up as I stepped inside. He smiled and walked up to me.
We stood there in silence for a long moment. After all I’d been through, I had no clue what to say to him.
He stepped closer and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m proud of you son.”
There was so much I wanted to say, but in that moment nothing mattered. The years of frustration and sadness disappeared. I felt like things were finally set right. After a moment, he stepped back and looked at me.
“Thanks, Dad,” I whispered.
“I suppose I owe this guy some credit too. Who knew you were such a good shot?”
He extended his hand to Gordon, giving him a hearty handshake.
“Thank you for completing my mission,” Robert said. “With Spearfinger gone, we can all finally move on.”
“But what about the cache?” I asked. “Now it’s free for someone like Austin to go dig it up?”
“He’d need the heading first. Roger, what's the bearing?”
“Precisely two hundred and fifty degrees from that window!” my dad replied.
“Wrong!” Robert said.
My dad turned his face to Robert in confusion.
“David, there is nothing buried out there. There is a cache somewhere, but what was hidden here in the forest was just a red herring. My concern was more about the worthiness of the person seeking the cache. Spearfinger could not be defeated except by the right person. The coin was the key to her demise and is now the key to everything else. I have no doubt that a time will come when you will know exactly how to use that coin again! Until then, keep it safe.”
Robert shook my hand again and my dad hugged me once more before everything disappeared, and we were left standing on top of the mountain.
Epilogue
After the Cloudland Hotel disappeared before our eyes, the three of us were changed people. The reality was, with Spearfinger gone, a lot had changed. But for us as individuals, everything was different. With Gordon, I’d spent so much of my life never giving him a chance. I’d never appreciated him. At times I’d even hated him. When we were left standing there on the mountain, we just looked at each other for a moment and then shook hands. The handshake led to a hug. That was it physically. But at that moment we both gained a new understanding and respect for one another. It was unspoken, but it didn’t need to be said out loud. We just knew.
With Melanie, that was a little more complex. We had work to do. The one thing which was crystal clear however, was how we felt about each other. We drove down the mountain and headed to her cabin. The ride was spent in an awkward silence. Once at the house, we were both exhausted and needed rest, but above that we needed to talk. She explained what happened with Austin. That he had been harassing her and threatening her. She felt as though betraying me was the only way out. It might have worked, too.
She had betrayed me and broken my heart. All of that needed time to repair. The one thing I had no doubt about was the fact that it would be repaired. I was hurt but not in doubt. We had been through some things, things which helped us both understand just how important we were to one another.
With Robert having moved out of her cabin, that seemed like the ideal place for us to start our lives over together. In the months that followed that day, I sold my house and moved in. We made a return trip to Spearfinger’s Shack. There, we had a small service for Zeke. Just the three of us. Soon, his cabin was cleaned out and put on the market. I made the decision to purchase it, in addition to the other empty cabin next to Melanie’s. The two of us renovated them and turned the two adjacent cabins back into rental properties. It all just felt right. The two of us hadn’t escaped the small town like we dreamed, but we found each other which was a greater treasure than the cache could have ever held.
Three Months Later
I had just returned home after spending the last week in Los Angeles with my production company going through the proposed plans for the next season of my show. I had still not signed on for another season. I wanted to make the show into something that I enjoyed, and I could be proud of. The producers looked at the numbers and wanted nothing to change. I even floated the idea of working with Renegade Jack whom I’d contacted and found out we did have a lot in common. The producers saw his YouTube numbers and immediately loved the idea… at least on paper. However, they needed to produce it. His brand of single camera, low production just wouldn’t fly with them.
It was a long week of tense conversations. I was anxious to see Melanie again. I missed her. With the business of cabin rentals up and running, she was happier than she’d ever been. She had a purpose, she had a job where she was her own boss, and she was successful.
When I arrived home, I found Melanie waiting for me on the porch. She greeted me with a hug and kiss. In that very moment, my phone rang. I was about to turn it off. I was sure it was my producers coming back with yet another offer. But I looked at the screen of the phone. It wasn’t my producers at all, it was Charlene, Renegade Jack’s girlfriend and producer. I apologized to Melanie and reluctantly answered the phone.
“David, is that you?”
“Yeah, what’s up?
“It’s Jack. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.” She was more upset than I’d ever heard her.
“What do you mean?”
“He went off to film another video. Some place in New York. But something went wrong. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know I need to talk to you.”
“What do you mean you need to talk to me?”
“I’m sending you a video. Jack uploaded it this morning, like he normally does when he’s on the road. So I can start editing them. This one was uploaded and instead of all the notes he normally provides, there was just a short message. It said ‘Send David Now!’”
“Where is he, exactly?”
“Shit I don’t know, some abandoned place on the St. Lawrence River. It used to be owned by John Hubbard. But I
can’t get a hold of him. My calls don’t go through, he doesn’t reply to my messages. Something is wrong!”
“You sure about that name?”
“Yes dammit, will you help me?”
“Let me watch the video, and I’ll call you right back.”
I hung up the phone and looked at Melanie.
“Something tells me you’re not going to be home for very long,” she said, giving me a hug.
“Jack’s in trouble, I guess. Wants me to come out there.”
“Okay, doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, I suppose.”
I didn’t respond. I just stood there silent for a moment.
“David, what is it?”
“The last time Charlene heard from him, he was shooting video at a house owned by John Hubbard. John Hubbard was one of the Sovereign Lords.”
A Note from S.A. Jacobs
First and foremost, thank you! It’s the support of readers like you that keeps David’s story going! It’s been an incredible journey with plenty more adventure and haunts to come!
I did want to stop for a minute to give you a little background on this story. A few years ago, I had the experience of a lifetime. Fellow writers, P.T. Hylton and Jonathan Benecke, invited me to spend a week hiking the Appalachian Trail with them. Being able to experience the majesty of the Appalachian Mountains was an adventure I’ll never forget. We finished our hike at Carver’s Gap and subsequently stopped in Roan Mountain. The community of Roan Mountain is truly a wonderful place, which also happens to have some of the best homemade pizza I’ve ever eaten. I knew Roan Mountain needed to be the setting for this book. While I tried to capture the sheer beauty of this community in my writing, the story also sheds light on the fictitious dark history of the Cloudland Hotel.
It’s important for me to make the distinction between the fantasy of my writing and beauty of the real community present in Roan Mountain. My only hope is that you may be intrigued to learn more about the real Roan Mountain and all its splendor. It truly is an amazing place!
On the same note, I wish to recognize the real men and women who represent the U.S. Forest Service. It’s only through their hard work that places like Carver’s Gap and the Pisgah-Cherokee National Forest are preserved and available to us. It is truly a blessing that we can experience the untainted landscape of our country in this way.
Long story short, if you have the means, visit the real community of Roan Mountain. Stop by the Roan Mountain State Park Visitors Center and buy a sticker while checking out some of the real history of the Cloudland Hotel. Then head up to Carver’s Gap. It’s an experience well worth your time!
Please take a moment to check out the writings of P.T. Hylton and Jonathan Benecke. Their books have truly amazed and captivated me.
Finally, if you don’t want to miss the next installment of David’s adventures in the Paranormal Archaeologist series, click here.
Thanks for reading!
S.A. Jacobs
Contents
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part II
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part III
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
A Note from S.A. Jacobs