“Any good leads?”
“Yes. I thought we’d head up to Mountain Home, Arkansas.”
“Arkansas again? Aren’t you tired of Arkansas yet?”
“There’s a man there who wants to talk about his sister. She was a gypsy who died almost twenty years ago.
“He claims she knew about the Yellowstone Event and came back after she died to warn people it was coming.”
“Has Penny been out?”
“Three times already. I really wish you’d stop feeding her biscuits and gravy.”
“But she loves biscuits and gravy. Don’t you Penny girl?”
Penny didn’t have a clue what he said. But she wagged her tail anyway.
She figured if she agreed with him he might slip her a piece of sausage under the table.
“I know she does. But it goes right through her.
“And it’s one of the reasons she’s round. Dachshunds are supposed to be long and skinny. They’re not supposed to be shaped like a basketball.”
“Maybe we just need to stop more often and walk her more.”
“That would help, yes.”
“Where did you say this gypsy brother was?”
Mountain Home, Arkansas. We can be there tomorrow after we stop to talk to the lady about her ghost cat.”
Chapter 28
The cat ghost lady was standard stuff, and Rocki and Darrell left her a tad unconvinced.
She, of course, swore by her tale that her beloved tabby Sunshine, departed for some four years now, visited her each night as she waited to drift off to sleep.
“I know it’s her. I can tell by the way she scratches up in the attic. And I can hear her walking up there sometimes.
“We were always so close. We had a special relationship. She was, by far, the best cat I’ve ever owned. And I’ve owned an awful lot of them.”
They’d seen squirrels running across the roof of the old frame farmhouse before meeting Mrs. Smalley and being invited in for tea and talk.
But they didn’t put two and two together until the kindly old woman began talking of Sunshine.
And how no, she never actually saw the ghost of Sunshine.
Never actually heard her meow.
And how Sunshine never came down from the attic to visit with her, as close as they were when the old cat was alive.
This was a dead end. Many of their interviews were.
They assumed the squirrels running across her roof had made their way into her attic and were rooting around in its insulation.
But they wouldn’t mention that to her.
They could see from the way her face brightened when she spoke of Sunshine that the fantasy which was Sunshine’s ghost meant so much to her.
So instead they paid her lip service.
Told her how wonderful it was that Sunshine loved her enough to return to her. And to spend her afterlife with her.
It didn’t hurt to humor an old woman whose greatest sin was that she was lonely and needed someone to talk to.
She hadn’t seen her children in ages, she said. Was too old to travel to see her grandchildren, or the great- grandchildren either.
For years now it had been just her and her cats, who she called her “furry kids.”
They gave the woman two hours of their time, and drank several cups of her hot tea.
They left her knowing full well it was two hours they’d never get back. That the story of Sunshine the ghost cat wouldn’t find a place in their book of ghosts.
It would be filed away and perhaps used in their book of Americana stories they may or may not get around to writing someday.
For they never really threw anything away.
Their last vision of Widow Smalley was of her standing on her front porch, waving goodbye to them as they pulled away.
She had a very large smile upon her face.
They’d made her day.
They’d given her the gift of their time. They’d listened to her. Few people take the time to listen to old folks anymore, and that’s a dreadful shame. For old folks represent our yesterdays. Days that will never come back.
And old folks have the best stories to tell, for those who just take the time to listen to them.
Some would have looked at the morning as a bust.
Darrell and Rocki looked upon it as a treasure.
For some things are just far more valuable than another stupid ghost story in another stupid ghost book.
“Where next?” Darrell asked as the two neared the highway.
Rocki consulted her map and replied, “Head west on I-30. We’ll make it to Texarkana and then shoot over to Wichita Falls. Should be there by sunset if you don’t see any signs that say, ‘World’s biggest ball of string, ten miles’ and make us detour.”
“Hey, that was only one time.”
“One time for the string. And another time for the world’s longest stuffed rattlesnake. And another time for the world’s biggest chicken farm, and…”
“Okay, okay. I get your point. I’m aim it directly at Wichita Falls and hit the autopilot button.”
“Uh, huh. We’ll see.”
As though Madame Fate were listening to their conversation, it was at that very moment they passed a billboard:
DON’T PASS UP THE CHANCE TO SEE WILBUR SWENSON’S BIRTHPLACE!
HIGHWAY 81, EXIT 281. THEN FOURTEEN MILES NORTH.
Darrell looked at Rocki from the corner of his eye and said, “But honey… we might never get another chance to see Wilbur Swenson’s birthplace.”
“You don’t even know who Wilbur Swenson is, do you?”
“Not a clue. But he must have been somebody important. If he wasn’t they wouldn’t have made a billboard for him. I’ve never had my own billboard, have you?”
It was a valid question, but she wasn’t buying it.
“Keep driving, Bucko.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Darrell always said he called her “ma’am” because he respected his elders. In reality he was several months older than Rocki.
He really called her ma’am to keep himself out of the doghouse, although he spent a considerable amount of time there anyway.
They rolled into Little Rock in late afternoon, just in time to swing by Little Rock Air Force Base where Darrell was once stationed.
One of his old friends, Steve Clark, was stationed there and Darrell wanted to say hello and have a beer or six.
Rocki, although she hated driving the Winnie, drove the fourteen miles to the KOA campground where they stayed the night and where Penny found herself a new boyfriend.
It was a fun day but a long one, and they retired for the night wondering about the man they were going to interview in Mountain Home the following morning.
And what it must have been like to grow up in a family of fortune tellers.
Chapter 29
“They don’t like to be called fortune tellers,” he told them.
“They prefer to be called seers. ‘Fortune tellers’ calls up visions of fraud and deceit. A seer, on the other hand, is a person of great wisdom and talent.”
Darrell didn’t say anything, but he was absolutely right.
Before they’d arrived at Jonny Rosco’s house he’d considered all of them carnival hucksters and nothing more.
“In my family, only the women had the gift. Male seers are rare, but not unheard of. Some families have several. But mine, alas, had none. I myself could no more tell the future than give myself a kidney transplant.
“I used to tell people it was up to my sisters and cousins to tell the future. I’d be content with being able to tell the past.”
He paused to see if they got his joke. They both smiled to indicate they did and he went on.
“My sister’s name was Stella, but her working name was Madame Cervelli. She worked various carnival circuits for over fifty years. She died several years ago, but has come to visit us occasionally since then.”
Rocki asked the standard questions.
“Do you have any photographic evidence of her? Any pictures you’ve taken of her when she came to call?”
“No, I don’t, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. It’s just that… well, these types of stories are more dramatic and more believable by skeptical readers if they’re accompanied by photographs or eye-witness verification.”
“Oh, I assure you there are plenty of eye witnesses who can verify the story I’m about to tell you. Thousands of them, in fact.”
“Thousands?”
“All the people who read the paper that day.”
“The paper?”
“The Mt. Home Daily News. I walked into their office the next day and insisted they write an article about my sister and her visit. To warn everyone. They probably thought I was crazy. Or maybe they thought I’d get violent or something. But they interviewed me and sure enough the next day there was an article in the paper.”
“When was that, exactly?”
“Three years ago, more or less. I have a copy of it. I’ll show it to you to back up my story. And everyone who read the newspaper that day can bear witness to my claims.”
By now Darrell was equal parts curious and confused.
“Perhaps you should just start at the beginning.”
“Not long before she died Stella came to me. She was pale and almost hysterical. She’d had a vision a few days before that beneath Yellowstone National Park was a monstrous volcano. And that it was going to erupt soon.
“She came to me and told me about it. But I’m afraid I scoffed at her. I mean, who knew? Nobody knew anything about the Yellowstone Caldera back then.
“But I was literate on computers and she wasn’t. So I did some research and discovered she was right. That there was indeed a super volcano beneath the park.
“She went on to say that in her vision two teenagers would someday have the opportunity to tell the world of the volcano and save millions of lives.
“She said their names were Tony and Hannah, and she said one day they would come to see her for a reading. And that when they did she would tell them of the roles fate had reserved for them.
“Then she died suddenly.
“I had forgotten all about her vision until she came to me three years ago in my own vision. And this was a big thing for me, because as I said I don’t get visions. What the family calls ‘the gift.’ I’ve never had it.
“She told me she was able to appear before Tony and Hannah and gave them the warning. But that she wasn’t sure they’d take it seriously.
“Just in case they didn’t, she wanted me to try to spread the word. So I did just that. I went to the local paper and they did an article, and it was a really nice article.
“But it did no good. After it was published I thought the government would heed Stella’s warning. That they would investigate the volcano and would agree it was getting ready to erupt.
“And that they would take action to start evacuating the people close to the park. That they would declare the whole area a forbidden zone and keep people out of it.”
Rocki was fascinated by the story.
Darrell was a bit more skeptical.
Jonny Rosco could see it in his face.
“Hold on a minute,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find the paper.”
He was gone for several minutes, during which time Rocki and Darrell debated the chances he was dangerous.
Or at the very least demented.
But when he appeared again he had a folded and yellowed newspaper.
It wasn’t much of a newspaper. Only a few pages. But it was a small town, after all, and the paper was printed on a Tuesday.
Every newspaperman knows that Tuesday is the slowest news day of the week and typically produces the thinnest paper.
Which made sense for the Daily News to run the story on that particular day.
Jonny handed the paper to Darrell, who felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck as he read.
It was all there.
The story about a gypsy fortune teller on a carnival midway who had a vision.
A vision which revealed what at that time few Americans knew: that there was a huge volcano beneath one of their most loved parks.
The story told of the gypsy’s quest to warn the millions who would die during the eruption. And that she foresaw a young couple who one day would be in the position to provide such a warning.
Their names, the paper said, would be Hannah and Tony.
Jonny said, “There’s something else too.
“My sister has a granddaughter. Same last name, Cervelli. Her given name is Julianna.
“Julianna’s mother was estranged from my sister. She never let Stella see her granddaughter, and her granddaughter was a young girl when Stella died.
“Even though she wasn’t allowed to see her granddaughter, she was concerned for her safety. And that’s the other reason she came back from the dead to warn everyone.”
Rocki was puzzled.
“I don’t understand. How are those two things: the granddaughter and the Yellowstone Event related?
“Stella knew that Julianna, when she grew up, would be fond of Yellowstone National Park and would not stray far from it.
“At first I didn’t understand what she meant. She said the vision of a grown-up Julianna was very faint.
“She said she knew that Julianna would grow up to be a beautiful woman. And that she would live within the shadow of Yellowstone.
“And that Hannah and Tony, by warning the public of the ‘great calamity,’ as she called it, would get Julianna away from the park as well.”
“Do you mind if I take photos of the newspaper, in case your newspaper office doesn’t have a spare copy in their archives?”
“There is no need for that. I only kept it to prove Stella was no fake. I trust you’ll do that for me, so I no longer have need of the paper. You may take it with you.”
They wrapped up the interview and said their goodbyes, then walked across the man’s yard toward the RV.
Darrell turned to Rocki and said, “We’ve got to get to Little Rock. We’ve got to interview Hannah and Tony Carson.”
Chapter 30
Little Rock, at over fifteen hundred miles from the center of Yellowstone National Park, was considered in the safe zone.
The mood was tense, as it was all over the nation in this time of great uncertainty.
But it hadn’t turned into Crazy Town, as all the cities in the danger zones had in recent days.
In every city in the danger zones the short-sighted were rioting.
Those with more common sense weren’t wasting their time carrying signs.
They were spending their time making plans.
Plans to try to sell their homes to naysayers who didn’t believe the volcano was going to blow so they could move elsewhere.
Plans to buy new homes in the safe zone. Or, since most couldn’t afford a mortgage on a second home, to rent.
Plans to search for employment in the safe zone. For Americans spend their money. They don’t save it. And precious few people in the danger zones had any significant money to live on while they were looking for new jobs.
Many were moving in with relatives or friends. It was just a matter of coordinating their move.
But even that could be a monumental task, since rental trucks were harder to find than hen’s teeth. And moving companies had all taken their phones off the hook.
They had ten times as much work as they could handle, and were having trouble finding workers willing to go anywhere near Yellowstone.
In every major city in the danger zones there were people going door to door for a variety of reasons. To make offers on homes… to offer their packing services… to offer to fill up one’s pickup and drive it anywhere the homeowner wanted for a premium price…
But in Little Rock, because it was in the safe zone, things on residential streets were pretty quiet.
Occasionally a reporter w
ould knock on the Carsons’ door, trying to get a new story from an angle nobody else had beaten them to.
But as each day went by the reporters lost more and more interest in Hannah and Tony.
They’d become old news.
When Hannah waved goodbye to Gwen and Melvyn and watched them drive down the street, she’d seen no one else around.
She hadn’t seen a car door open three houses away, on the opposite side of the street, as she turned and went back inside.
She hadn’t heard anyone climbing her front steps as she opened the dishwasher and started inspecting each dish as she pulled it out and put it away.
When the doorbell rang she wrongfully assumed it was Gwen and Melvyn, returning because they’d forgotten something.
She walked quickly back through the living room and opened the door with a smile on her face.
The smile didn’t last long.
And she lost her voice.
It was up to her visitor to speak first.
“I know I’m probably the last person in the world you want to see.”
“Um… you might say that. What do you want?”
“I want to help,” Rebecca said. “I want to help you find your baby.”
“Um… come in.”
Two weeks before Hannah hated this woman. She considered her pure evil.
And Rebecca was right. She was absolutely the last person in the world Hannah expected or wanted to see.
But Hannah could not send away anyone offering to help her find Samson.
Especially the woman who conceivably knew exactly where he was.
“You owe me an explanation,” Hannah said in a soft voice.
“I know. When we parted I had every intention of fulfilling my promise to have Samson brought to you.
“The last time I saw him he was healthy and happy and cooing. Such a delightful little boy.
“I trusted a woman who’d done work for us several times in the past. Someone who gave no indication she couldn’t be trusted.
“And we still don’t know why she stole the baby. She had a troubled past, yes. But so do a lot of our other contract workers.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 3): A Nation Gone Crazy Page 10
