The Ghost of Tobacco Road

by Dale Young

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he reached behind him and pulled the doll out of his waistband of his pants and out from under his shirt. He held the doll in his hand and slowly extended it towards the ghost.

  At first Clara made no effort to take the doll and for one long terrifying moment Logan thought that the doll was not going to satisfy her. But suddenly she dropped the tobacco axe and took the doll from Logan using both of her hands. He watched as she slowly brought the old, handmade doll to her until she was holding it tightly against her chest.

  Then something strange began to happen.

  Logan drew in a deep breath as he watched Clara’s face slowly begin to change. In the bright moonlight he could see the color return to her skin. The empty eye sockets slowly faded away and were replaced by the bright eyes of a child. The matted hair around her face began to move in the breeze, free of the dirt and grime that had weighted it down for decades.

  Clara looked at Logan and smiled. Then she pulled the doll close to her face and closed her eyes. After a few moments she opened them again and looked at Logan one more time. Then she slowly turned around and walked through the adjoining row of tobacco plants. A moment later, Logan watched as she faded away and then disappeared. He started to call out her name but caught himself. He knew she would not answer, nor would she return.

  It was then that Logan realized that the ghost of tobacco road was gone forever.

  29

  Sheriff Tom Patterson stood stoically at the edge of the tobacco field watching the two men from the county coroner’s office do what they could to get the remains of Chip McPhale’s corpse into a body bag. He shook his head and looked down at his feet just as Logan and Colby walked up to him. The rising sun was just barely above the distant tree line and the morning air was crisp and carried the scent of tobacco leaves and the Skeleton River.

  “Good morning,” Logan said. Colby nodded at the sheriff as she came to a stop and looked out into the field at the men working on Chip’s body.

  “It’s a busy morning,” replied the sheriff. Logan could sense irritation in the man’s voice. “I’ve got a dead body out there in that field that looks like it’s been run through a wood chipper. Ethan McPhale got the shit beat out of him last night by an intruder, and if that’s not enough, Harmon Blackwell decided to nibble on the end of his thirty eight last night. He blew his brains all over the wall of his office. Damn near sent Sandy into cardiac arrest when she found him this morning. Is there something you want to tell me, Logan?”

  Logan was speechless. Why in the world would Harmon kill himself?

  After a long pause, Logan finally spoke. “Uh, no Sheriff Patterson. I have no idea. Why would you think I would know anything?”

  Patterson rubbed his chin. “He’s your lawyer. I figured you might have some sort of insight into why he would take his own life.”

  “I have no idea, sheriff. I wish I could help but I have nothing to offer you.”

  Patterson looked at Logan. “Harmon had an old picture of your great-grandmother in his lap. It was taken a long time ago. I figured you might know something about that too.”

  He hesitated and then thought better of it. What could it hurt to tell the sheriff what he knew? Rosemary and Harmon were both dead.

  “All I can tell you sheriff is that I think Harmon and Rosemary had something going a long, long time ago. He told me a little about it but not much. The times I met with him he drank and smoked the whole time. He seemed happy, but only on the surface.”

  The sheriff thought about this and then turned his head and looked across the field at the McPhale house sitting on the top of the distant rise.

  “So he wanted to be with his long lost love? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I guess,” replied Logan. It was the best he could do considering the circumstances. He suddenly remembered that Harmon had said that all he needed was a cold grave to crawl into. Now it appeared that the old man would finally have what he wanted.

  Patterson shook his head and then looked back out into the tobacco field. “Sandy said that last week Harmon went to see a doctor in Raleigh. She said he got a phone call a few days later and she didn’t think it was good news. She said Harmon had a different look in his eyes after that call. Maybe that’s the reason he took his own life.” Patterson then looked at Logan again. “He did enjoy the leaf more than most people.”

  Logan nodded his head and frowned. Then he looked at Colby before looking back out into the field where the men were still working on Chip’s body.

  Patterson paused for a moment. “Ethan McPhale is in the emergency room at County. But he’ll probably be released today. His injuries aren’t life threatening.” Then the sheriff looked at Logan. “Exactly where were you last night, Mr. Shaw?”

  He picked up on the shift in the sheriff’s tone and the fact that he had suddenly switched to using last names. He was about to say something when Colby spoke up.

  “He was here with me, Tom.” Then she paused for a second. “All night long.”

  Logan could see the jealousy flash hot across the sheriff’s face. But then it passed and the sheriff regained his composure.

  “I see.” Patterson looked at Colby. “Well I’ll still need a statement from both of you.”

  “There’s not much to say, sheriff. I came down this morning to make coffee, looked out the window and saw buzzards circling over the field. I got a little curious and that’s when I found the body. Then I came in and called your office.”

  “We found the bat,” the sheriff interrupted. “We’ll be fingerprinting it later this morning.”

  He felt his stomach tense. He knew he had to say something.

  “Hopefully you’ll get some leads, sheriff. And I hope Ethan is okay. As for his brother out there, well…”

  Then Patterson spoke. “I guess this puts an end to the rumors about past members of the McPhale family being behind the killings over the years. And Chip and Ethan too.”

  “I think we all know what killed Chip McPhale.”

  Patterson looked at Colby, then he looked out over the field towards the river. “It’s been almost twenty years since someone died out in that field. Let’s hope it’s another twenty before it happens again.”

  The three of them were silent for a minute. Then the silence was broken by one of the men working on Chip’s body. He was yelling from out in the field and waving his arm in an attempt to get the sheriff’s attention. When Patterson noticed, he looked at Logan and Colby.

  “Excuse me for a second.” He turned and walked out into the field towards the men.

  He watched as the sheriff walked out into the middle of the field. Once he reached the men one of them handed him something. But at this distance Logan couldn’t tell what it was. He watched as the sheriff examined the item and then began to walk back up the row and out of the field.

  “What is it?” sheriff, Logan asked as Patterson walked up to him and Colby. Then Logan got a good look at what the sheriff was carrying and felt his heart palpitate in his chest.

  In Sheriff Patterson’s hand was a small tobacco axe. The blade of the axe was covered with a thick layer of rust and the wooden handle was nearly rotten from years of exposure to the weather.

  “What do you make of that, sheriff?”

  Despite asking the sheriff this question, Logan knew what he was looking at. It was the tobacco axe Clara had used to kill Chip McPhale, and most likely every other victim over the years. Logan remembered her dropping it when he had handed her the doll, and in his haste to leave the field last night after she disappeared he had not thought to pick it up.

  “Do you mind, sheriff?” Logan held out his hand. He wanted to hold the axe and examine it.

  Patterson paused but then thought better of it. “I guess not. I doubt it’s going to be entered into evidence. I mean, look at the damn blade. It’s so rusted and dull that there’s no way in hell it could be used to hack someone to pieces. And the handle is
about rotten. One good swing and the head would probably break off. I don’t see how it can be considered the murder weapon. But they did find a .38 revolver close to the body. It will go into evidence even though it’s loaded but hasn’t been fired.” Patterson handed the axe to Logan.

  Logan took the axe and ran his thumb along the surface of the blade. It was rough and covered in a thick layer of reddish brown rust as if it had been lying in the field for decades. He offered it to Colby and she took it gently in her hands and then turned it back and forth to examine it. She tried to hide her astonishment at holding what she knew was the murder weapon of the ghost of tobacco road. After a minute or so she handed it back to Patterson.

  “If you don’t mind, sheriff, I’d like to have this back when you’re finished with it. There’s no telling how many past members of my family have used that axe. I’ve got an old trunk full of family heirlooms up in the attic. This will make a nice addition to it.”

  Sheriff Patterson thought about this for a moment. He looked at Logan and then at the old rusted tobacco axe. There was no dried blood on the axe and by the looks of it he knew that it probably had nothing to do with Chip’s murder. It probably was just an old artifact left in the field long ago by someone working the tobacco. Perhaps it had been uncovered the last time the field had been plowed.

  “Take it, Logan. I have no use for it,” Sheriff Patterson said as he handed the old axe to Logan.

  30

  Logan held Clara’s tobacco axe in his hands and looked at it one more time before wrapping it in the cloth. Then he laid it gently into the attic trunk. Colby was sitting on the floor underneath the light reading the old diary they had found in the trunk. The sun was setting outside and the dormer windows of the attic were the color of lavender.

  “What’s its say?” Logan asked as he sat down and leaned up against the trunk. He could tell by the expression on Colby’s face that she was upset. Even though they had spent most of the day trying to forget the events of the previous night, Logan knew it would take her more than a day to get over it, if she ever got over it.

  “It’s awful. I don’t know if I can read much more. Those poor little girls…”

  “What little girls?”

  “Rosemary and her sister, Clara. This diary apparently belonged to the woman who adopted Rosemary and Clara from the orphan train. She signs her name Florence”. Colby looked up at Logan. “You’re great-grandmother and her sister were orphans, Logan. They were adopted right from one of the trains.”

  “They were orphans? I’ll bet Harmon didn’t even know that. He said Rosemary never liked to talk about her parents.” As Logan said this, Colby returned her attention to the diary and began to read again.

  He watched as Colby frowned and then looked away from the diary again, like she had just read something that disturbed her.

  “What is it?” Logan looked at Colby.

  “She writes about bringing Rosemary and Clara home from the orphan train on the day they adopted them. Apparently back then people just showed up at the train station and picked the children they wanted. So Florence and her husband, she doesn’t give his name, went to the station and picked out Rosemary and Clara. She writes that her husband wanted boys because they were better farmhands but all the boys were taken when they got there that day so they chose the two girls. The people on the train said Rosemary and Clara’s mother had died of tuberculosis in New York City and their father had abandoned them. They were found living on the streets and taken into custody as wards of the state.”

  “For the love of God,” replied Logan. “How horrible.”

  “It gets worse. You might not want to hear it,” Colby said as she studied a page of the diary.

  “Considering the events of the past twenty four hours, I think I’m probably up to hearing just about anything at this point. What does it say?”

  Colby inhaled and then put her hand over her mouth. What she was reading in the diary was bothering her deeply.

  “Florence writes about how her husband beat the girls. He was an abusive man, it seems.”

  Logan felt his stomach turn. “I’ll bet he beat this Florence lady as well.”

  “Probably,” replied Colby, visibly shaken by what she was reading. “Apparently one night Florence confronted her husband when he was beating Clara. He apparently let go of Clara and turned his attention to Florence. But she writes that she was afraid to tell the police because she knew she couldn’t handle the farm if they took her husband away. So she must have just decided to live with it.”

  “I’ll be damned,” replied Logan.

  Colby flipped through a few more pages of the diary and then her eyes grew wide when she read what was written at the top of the page.

  “Now what?” Logan leaned in towards Colby.

  “The next entry in the diary starts out We buried Clara today.”

  “So the old man beat her to death?”

  “It doesn’t really say what happened. It just says they buried her,” Colby said as she looked up from the diary at Logan who was frowning in disgust.

  “That explains the funeral procession.”

  Colby’s face grew serious. “What?”

  “The funeral procession. I saw it last night. This house has a way of showing you things that it wants you to see, like scenes from its past. I watched a funeral procession out of one of the upstairs windows. There were people following a horse-drawn cart carrying a coffin. It must have been Clara’s. The procession went along the far edge of the field and turned into the woods towards that old sharecropper’s house.”

  “Sounds like you found Rosemary’s liquor cabinet is what it sounds like. You’re telling me you watched Clara’s funeral procession. That page of the diary is dated 1930, Logan.”

  “Yep, I watched it.” Logan said matter-of-factly. “And Rosemary doesn’t have a liquor cabinet. I’ve already looked. But I saw the funeral procession. And I saw other scenes from the past too.”

  “This explains everything. All the killings over the years… The brutality of them. It seems Clara’s ghost had a score to settle.” Colby then began to flip through the remaining pages of the diary.

  “The last entry is dated 1948. Florence must have died that year,” Colby said when she got to the last page.

  Logan frowned. “And Rosemary was left alone with the house and the land.”

  “Yep,” Colby said. “She was grown by then and she must have married Carson not long after Florence died. They raised tobacco on the land and made a living for themselves.”

  He thought about this and nodded his head.

  “Let’s hope that now she can rest in peace,” Logan said as he got to his feet. Colby handed him the old diary and he placed it in the trunk on top of the tobacco axe wrapped in cloth. Then he closed the lid of the trunk.

  ***

  Logan listened to the grandfather clock chime from the downstairs foyer. It was two o’clock in the morning. Colby was sleeping soundly beside him. The lovemaking from earlier had been heavenly and Logan could tell by her breathing pattern that Colby was in a deep sleep. He slowly got out of bed, being careful not to wake her. Once on his feet he crept slowly out of the bedroom and into the hallway. He took a few steps forward and then stopped and waited.

  Suddenly the walls of the hallway were bathed in swirling light. Logan waited for the light show to die down and then walked to the first bedroom that overlooked the backyard of the house. Once inside the bedroom he walked to the window so that he could view the scene that was being offered to him by the house.

  A harvest moon floated high over the fields, illuminating the tobacco plants with a silvery glow. Logan scanned the field but didn’t see any movement. He couldn’t understand why the house wanted to show him an empty tobacco field in the middle of the night. He was about to step away from the window when movement below the window caught his eye.

  He watched as a grown man appeared in the yard below him. He was walking briskly towards the tobac
co field holding a young girl by her arm. She was fighting against him but the man was tall and strong and had no problem controlling her. Logan watched as both of them moved across the yard to the edge of the tobacco field. The man paused and looked down at the girl and then pulled her by the arm and into the field.

  The man moved quickly between the rows of tobacco plants with the young girl in tow. Logan watched as she continued to resist as they moved farther into the field. Before long both of them were swallowed up in the sea of tobacco plants and Logan could no longer make out their shapes.

  He tried to locate them in the field but it was no use. The man and the girl had disappeared from his sight, too far away for him to see them. He stood at the window and waited. His eyes scanned the field from one side all the way to the other, to the edge of the distant bank of the Skeleton River, but he could not see them. Time seemed to slow to a crawl and Logan lost count of the minutes as they passed. He wanted to turn and pull away from the window but he could not move. He knew that the house was not ready for him to leave the window. There was still something left for him to see.

  Just then Logan noticed movement in the middle of the tobacco field. He watched as the man came back into view, walking slowly up the row towards the house. Logan looked closely at the man and then realized that the girl was not with him. He was alone.

  When the man reached the edge of the field he stopped and stood still. Then Logan felt a shiver run down his body as the man tilted his head back and looked up at the window where he was standing.

  “He sees me,” Logan muttered under his breath. But before Logan could react, the kaleidoscope of lights suddenly returned causing him to raise his hand over his eyes. After a few seconds the lights died down and Logan found himself staring back out into the present day version of his tobacco field.

  The man was gone.