The Ghost of Tobacco Road

by Dale Young

  “I guess we’re about done for today. Can you tell me where I can find a motel for the night? I can stay there after we see the house.”

  Harmon chuckled and then reached for the plug to extinguish his pipe. “A motel?”

  “Well, I assume we still have business to take care of and I’m in no hurry to get back to Wilmington. My staff is watching my car lot, so I have no need to hurry back.” Logan instantly regretted the remark. He remembered what Harmon had said about how lawyers hire people to find out things for them. Harmon knew he didn’t have a staff of people. But Harmon let the remark go without challenging it. After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Logan said, “After we see the house I figured I’d find a place to stay and come back in the morning.”

  “You have no need for a motel, Logan. I’ve got the keys to your new home right here in my desk. You can stay there tonight, and tomorrow night or for as long as you want. I assume you’ll need to go back to Wilmington to take care of things at some point but if I were a betting man I’d say that your car selling days are over. At any rate, the house is yours now so you won’t need a motel. And that’s a good thing, by the way. The few motels we have left in town are not exactly the best places to stay. Some of them even rent their rooms by the hour, if you know what I mean.” Harmon winked at Logan and smiled.

  Logan was relieved at the sound of this. He was hoping that Harmon would say that he could stay in the house. Motels were expensive, even cheap ones. He knew he didn’t have enough money to stay in a motel all week while he settled his great-grandmother’s estate.

  “That’s sounds great, Harmon. Anything beats a roach motel.”

  He smiled as he opened the drawer to his desk. He removed a key ring containing two keys.

  “Those days are over for you, Logan. It wouldn’t be right for the great-grandson of the late Rosemary Abigail Shaw to be staying in a roach motel.” Harmon then closed his desk drawer and Logan watched as he locked it with a small key on his own key chain.

  “Now, shall we take a drive out to your new house?”

  “That would be great, Harmon. And when we get there the first thing I’d like to see is maybe a photo of my great-grandmother.”

  “I believe I can accommodate that request,” Harmon said as he rose from his chair.

  11

  September, 1965

  Carson Shaw walked slowly towards the row of tobacco barns situated at the edge of his field. The night was cool and the fields of bare tobacco stalks were bathed in the yellow light of the harvest moon. He could see the smoke from the first chimney rising into the night sky like a ghostly finger pointing towards the heavens.

  The harvest had been good and Carson smiled to himself when he thought of the amount of money hanging in the barns, money in the form of tobacco leaves. He needed to check the fires before turning in for the night to make sure everything was okay. Soon Shepard, one of his hired hands, would arrive to tend to the fires for the rest of the night. But Carson always liked to check things for himself before calling it a day.

  Carson thought about his wife Rosemary and how she was still distraught over their daughter. But he knew Rosemary would be okay. Surely their daughter would return home with her child and things would get back to normal. But Carson knew that there was also a very good chance that she would not, and that he and Rosemary would never see their daughter, or their grandson again. But the leaf waits for no one, Carson thought as he walked towards the tobacco barn. He knew that he had work to do and that he could worry about his daughter once the tobacco was sold at the market.

  Times were good for Carson and his family. His fields had produced another harvest for them. And times were reasonably good for the country. Things had recovered from the assassination of President Kennedy and the only dark cloud on the horizon was what was going on in Vietnam. But Carson knew that he and Rosemary only had a daughter, so they didn’t need to worry about a son being drafted into the Army. Carson knew he had seen enough fighting during his time in the Army during World War II to know that he never wanted to see his son, or anyone’s son have to go through what he had gone through in Europe. But people in the country were worried about what was going on in Vietnam and as much as Carson didn’t want to admit it, this worrying was good for business. People tended to smoke more when they were worried about something.

  Carson walked around to the rear of the first barn and stoked the fire in the firebox. The heat and smoke from the fire traveled up into a flue that led into the barn, thus heating the interior of the barn and drying the tobacco leaves without directly exposing them to the smoke. Then he walked around to the door of the barn to have a look inside. Hung from the rafters were dozens of tobacco spears, each strung with hundreds of leaves of Brightleaf tobacco. Carson knew those leaves were as good as gold.

  Carson checked the rest of the barns spaced in a row down the edge of his field. When he finished tending to the firebox on the last barn, he walked inside to check the leaves.

  Carson did not see the lone figure standing in the corner of the barn when he opened the door and stepped inside. He removed his hat just as he walked underneath the first row of tobacco leaves hanging above him. The heat in the barn was stifling, and just as he brought the back of his hand across his forehead to wipe away the sweat, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

  Carson Shaw feared no man. His experiences during the war coupled with two decades of hard tobacco farming had made him a strong and willful man. But when he saw the figure move in the shadows of the corner of his barn he felt fear rush through his body.

  “It’s true…” Carson said as he looked at the killer, his voice nothing more than a whisper. His eyes grew wide as the killer stepped out of the shadows into the yellow moonlight pouring in through the open door. In one hand the killer held a tobacco spear and in the other what looked like a small hatchet. Carson knew the small hatchet was a tobacco axe. He had used one for many years to cut the stalks of the tobacco plants when that was still done by hand.

  Before Carson could move, the killer dropped the tobacco axe, put both hands on the spear and lunged towards him. The tobacco spear pierced Carson’s throat and traveled upwards into his skull. His limp body fell forward, snapping the wooden tobacco spear in half as he fell. But as with all of the victims, death was not the end of the ritual. The death of the victim was never enough. It was only the mutilation, one borne out of anger and rage that could satiate the killer.

  The killer walked slowly back to where the tobacco axe lay on the dirt floor of the barn, its blade glinting in the yellow moonlight. The killer picked up the axe and walked back to Carson’s body, which was still twitching in the last throes of death. The killer raised the tobacco axe high in the air and then brought it down violently so that it sliced into the side of Carson’s skull. Blood splattered against the side of the barn and the tips of the tobacco leaves hanging overhead. This blow from the axe extinguished what life was left in Carson Shaw and caused his body to go limp. Then the axe was raised and brought down again and again in an act of fury until Carson’s entire body, face and head included, was hacked into nothing more than a bloody mound of unrecognizable flesh and bone. Then as quickly as it had started, the mutilation ended. The killer stepped out of the barn into the moonlight and disappeared into the tobacco field.

  It would be more than an hour before Shepard would find Carson’s mutilated corpse in the barn, or what he thought was Carson’s corpse. He could not be sure at first. In the days that followed it was said that Rosemary’s wails of agony could be heard wafting through the tobacco fields every night as she mourned the loss of her beloved Carson. Those that believed the McPhales were behind the killing would cast yet another suspicious eye on the members of that family as they walked the streets of the town in the days following the murder. The others that believed the land was cursed would cast a wary eye on the Shaw Fields as they drove past them, wondering when the ghost of tobacco road would return under a harv
est moon to kill once again.

  12

  2014

  Chip McPhale sat in his dilapidated pickup truck under the shade of an oak tree just down the road from the long driveway that led to the Shaw house. In his mind he could see himself turning into the driveway in a brand-new truck and parking in front of the stately house. It just wasn’t right that old Rosemary had sat in that house for decades, nothing more than a recluse waiting on the Reaper to show up and escort her to Hell. Well, Chip thought, now the Reaper had done his work and the old woman was gone. Word around town was that now the house belonged to some long-lost relative of hers. But that wasn’t going to be a problem, Chip thought as he watched Harmon’s Mercedes followed by another car turn into the driveway. This new guy would leave. Yes, Chip thought, this new guy will leave in a hurry if he knows what’s best for him. Chip knew that this new relative of Rosemary’s wouldn’t last a week in the Shaw house.

  As the second car disappeared down the driveway, Chip put his old truck in gear and slowly pulled out and onto the road. It was time to introduce himself to the new owner and say hello to that damn highfalutin Harmon Blackwell. After all, Chip reasoned, he and the new guy were going to be neighbors and it wouldn’t be right for them not to have a proper introduction.

  ***

  Logan’s mouth dropped open as he brought his car to a stop next to Harmon’s Mercedes. Their cars were parked in the circle in front of the house, a house the likes of which Logan had never seen before. It wasn’t that the house was all that large, but it had a stately appearance that Logan found overwhelming.

  The house had four large white columns and a front porch that ran the length of the house. Eight large windows, four above and four on the first floor covered the front of the house. The dormers on the roof told Logan that the house either had either a third floor or a large attic. The paint was peeling and most of the shrubbery was overgrown and it was evident to Logan that the house needed some maintenance. There were two chimneys, one on each side of the house, which gave the house a balanced look and feel. Simple yet stately, Logan thought as he turned off his car and opened the door. Before getting out of his car, Logan tucked his keys under the edge of the visor. Harmon had already gotten out of his car and was waiting for Logan to join him.

  He shut his car door and walked over to Harmon who was standing by the front steps that led up to the porch. Harmon was studying the large statue in the middle of the driveway circle in front of the house.

  “She had the water turned off to that statue years ago.” Harmon nodded towards the statue sitting in the middle of the dry fountain pool. “She said the noise kept her up at night.” Harmon was trying to downplay the house and grounds in an effort to calm Logan. He could tell by looking at Logan that he was overwhelmed by the sight of the house.

  Logan stopped halfway between his car and where Harmon was standing. He tilted his head back and ran his eyes across the roofline of the house before settling on the dark windows of the dormers poking out of the roof above the second floor of the house.

  “Me?” The word was more of a statement of doubt than a question.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Me. You’re telling me that I own this? This house?”

  Harmon smiled.

  “Yes Logan, you own it and the land. Like I said, it was Rosemary’s wish for you to have it. This is your home now, that is, if you want it to be.”

  Harmon’s last statement was more than Logan could process. Of course he wanted the house. That was easy enough. Only a fool would choose an old mobile home in an industrial park over a stately Southern manor like the one sitting before him. Still, Logan was having a hard time believing that all of this was really happening and that the house he was looking at was going to be his new home.

  “That’s some driveway,” Logan said as he looked back down the long narrow road that tunneled through the trees between the main road and the house. The trees were live oaks with beards hanging from the limbs. At least that’s what Logan had called them when he was young. His father had always told him the trees with beards were called Grandfather Oaks.

  “Yes it is,” replied Harmon. “Rosemary liked her privacy. Harmon then patted his forehead with his handkerchief before returning it to his pocket. “Sorry for the condition of the house, Logan. Rosemary kind of let it go in her later years. But it’s all just on the surface. The house is sound and you won’t have any problems. It just needs to be painted.”

  Logan nodded and looked at the statue again. Then his eyes wandered over to a strange contraption sticking out of the ground near the front porch steps. It was about five feet tall and made out of what looked like wrought iron rods. One large wrought iron rod came out of the ground and fanned out into a dozen smaller rods that were welded to the center rod near the top. Each small rod had a colorful bottle stuck on the end of it.

  “It’s a bottle tree,” Harmon replied as he once again removed his handkerchief and patted his forehead. Logan figured it had to be the heat, but part of him had the funny feeling that Harmon was nervous.

  “A what?” Logan replied as he returned his eyes to the colorful bottles.

  “A bottle tree,” Harmon repeated. “Lots of people around here have them. Some people believe they trap evil spirits. They date back hundreds of years.” Harmon let this hang in the air to see what Logan would say.

  “You’re shitting me,” Harmon. “Evil spirits… Yeah, right.”

  He looked at the bottles and even though he knew it had to be a bunch of baloney, he couldn’t help but wonder if it might be true. People in the old days were a lot smarter than people were nowadays, he thought as he looked at the bottle tree.

  Logan started to ask Harmon another question but he was interrupted by the sound of Chip McPhale’s approaching pickup truck. He brought it to a stop directly behind Logan’s car, so close in fact that Logan thought for a moment that the truck was going to nudge his rear bumper. Logan recognized the hat on Chip’s head and remembered seeing him in the diner earlier in the day. Then he remembered what Colby had said, and also what Harmon had said about the entire McPhale family.

  “Harmon.” Chip shut the door of his truck and tipped the bib of his hat. Harmon didn’t reply. He only narrowed his eyes as he watched Chip approach.

  Chip walked between Logan’s car and Harmon’s Mercedes before stopping near the front of both cars. He looked down at Logan’s car and then turned around and leaned up against it. It was his way of telling Logan that he wasn’t afraid of him.

  “Chip,” Harmon finally said, forcing as much cordiality into his voice as he could. He knew Chip was a troublemaker who had no regard for anything, least of all the law.

  Chip looked at Logan. “So you must be the new owner.”

  “That’s what they tell me,” Logan said as he looked at Chip and then at Harmon.

  “Welcome,” said Chip as he adjusted the bib of his hat. Then he looked at Harmon.

  “Have you told him?”

  Harmon paused for a second and then cleared his throat.

  “Yes, Chip, I have. He knows about the land.”

  “We’re due for one. Did you tell him that too?”

  “I believe I mentioned that to Mr. Shaw in my office. I told him that if history is our guide there will be a murder in the Shaw Fields soon.”

  “You did mention it, Harmon. You were very thorough.” And then Logan turned to Chip and mustered what courage he could find. While he spoke to Harmon he kept his eyes on Chip.

  “You told me all about the murders, the McPhale family and the curse on the land. And I like I told Mr. Blackwell, Chip, I don’t believe in ghosts and goblins rattling chains in the attic.”

  Chip looked at Logan and felt his blood begin to simmer. Who the hell was this new city kid and who did he think he was talking to?

  Logan had figured that Chip would be in his face by now trying to pick a fight. The fact that Logan had said what he did and Chip was still leaning against th
e car gave Logan a small bolt of self-confidence. But then it was gone as quickly as it had arrived when Logan saw Chip push himself off of the car’s fender and adjust his hat. Logan swallowed hard as he watched Chip began to walk directly towards him and Harmon.

  Chip stopped less than a foot away from Logan, close enough that Logan could smell the whiskey on Chip’s breath. Logan had demons of his own and knew that whiskey smell better than most men.

  “If you know about the land and that old lady that lived in this house then I imagine you won’t be staying around here very long. I give you a week. You’ll leave, and my brother and I will take this land once and for all. You can count on it.” Chip then took another step towards Logan and was close enough that the bib of his hat almost touched Logan’s forehead. Logan knew he had to do something to respond to what Chip had said. If Chip wanted to measure dicks, then so be it, Logan thought to himself before finally speaking.

  “According to my attorney, this house and land now belongs to me. So you’re trespassing. I suggest you get back in that piece of shit 1978 Chevy of yours and get off my land.” Logan’s experience with cars allowed him to accurately nail the year of Chip’s truck. For a second he saw a flicker of doubt in Chip’s eyes but it was quickly replaced with anger.

  Chip looked at Logan and then at Harmon. He then turned his head and ejected a stream of red tobacco juice from his mouth. It hit the ground near the front bumper of Logan’s car. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand and then looked into Logan’s eyes.

  “If that’s the way you want to play it then suit yourself, city boy.”

  With this Chip got back in his truck, cranked the engine and put the transmission in reverse. He back around the circle and then drove down the driveway and out onto the main road. Logan and Harmon both watched as Chip’s truck slowly disappeared down the road.