by Aiden James
After sifting through them, he paused to unfold the note and study it closer, but set it aside once he realized the handwriting was faint. He turned his attention to the tooth, examining its blood-encrusted enamel.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here,” he said, his voice quiet and serious. “I see the bruise above your eye and the tiredness in your face. You’ve brought these things to us, which can transport themselves several miles on their own. I also recall the urgency in your wife’s note when I first read it Saturday and again yesterday.”
He stood and leaned across the desk.
“I’ve seen many strange and wonderful things during my lifetime,” he continued. “I’m willing to bet you’ve seen strange and maybe not quite so wonderful things recently. I might be able to help you, but you must trust me. It appears a powerful asgina, or spirit, followed you home to Colorado from the ravine and isn’t ready to let go of you just yet.”
“What do you suggest I do?” asked David, clinging to the thin hope John Running Deer might free him from the ghost’s tenacious grip.
“The first thing I need is for you to tell me everything that’s happened from the time of your picnic in the ravine up until today,” he said, sitting down in his chair. “The more details you remember, the better our chances will be in coming up with a cure for you and your family.”
David agreed, desperate for help. To his surprise, telling his story to a relative stranger came out a hell of a lot easier than it did with Miriam or Norm. He told John almost everything, sparing only the lurid details from his dream of Norm. When he finished, the ranger sat back in his chair, his expression somber.
“I’m not sure returning Allie Mae’s Treasures to the ravine is the answer,” he said. “As I told you, we get items all of the time. Some of the letters we’ve received over the years tell of runs of bad luck and occasional poltergeist activity that suddenly visited the lives of those who’ve taken something from the park. We try to take the things back to the exact spot they were removed from, but it hasn’t always worked out that way. We’ve rarely heard from the people again, unless they return to thank us.”
He paused to pick through the objects laid out upon his desk.
“Your situation is different. My feeling is we should try to find Allie Mae’s relatives, since what’s here should be of value to her descendants. It might be the very thing that brings her peace in the spirit world.”
“How do we accomplish that?” The idea of returning the bag to the ravine alone seemed more attractive to David than trying to find the owner of a partial name from a century ago.
“It sounds like a difficult task, I know,” agreed John. “But, I’ve got a contact who works for the census bureau in Knoxville.”
“How long do you think it would take them to find Allie’s relatives?”
“If I call Diane today, she might have an answer for us tomorrow. Definitely by the weekend at the latest,” he said. “Keep in mind that we’re talking about a small community which never grew beyond six hundred souls.”
“I was planning on going home tomorrow,” said David. “If worse comes to worst, I can wait here longer I suppose…. I’m not so sure Allie Mae would be as patient.”
He thought of Norm’s injuries and those administered to him and Tyler. Hell, tonight might be too late. John eyed him as if he could see the images in David’s mind.
“I’ve been running the names I remember through my memory since we met yesterday, but I can’t recall an ‘Allie’ or ‘Allie Mae’ in any of the cove records I’ve ever seen from the end of World War I through 1934, or even among the last stragglers who finally came back to gather the belongings they left behind in the early 1950s.” He got up to get himself another cup of coffee. “Would you like more coffee, David?”
“I’m okay at the moment, but thanks,” he said, taking another sip from his cup.
John returned to his desk with a steaming cup in hand and a less serious look on his face.
“You know, another idea just occurred to me,” he said. “I still intend to call my friend in Knoxville before lunch, but there’s one other place we can check.”
“Really?” David sat up straight, hopeful he could resolve this today without having to wait until Friday.
“One of the churches in the cove needed extensive termite treatment a few years back, and several boxes of old church meetings and other notes were found in a forgotten storage area beneath the pulpit,” John told him. “I remember going through the boxes out of curiosity, and I was surprised to find guest books and other attendance ledgers. I recall seeing a few birth and death announcements too.”
“Where are these boxes now?”
“Just a few miles away from where we’re sitting,” said John. “They’re stored in the supply shed behind the park station I told you about. We’ve been waiting on the ‘go ahead’ to ship them to Nashville for permanent storage. I wonder sometimes if the state’s archives forgot about them being here. If you’d like to take a look through these boxes, I can take you there this afternoon, once I’ve finished my one-thirty tour.”
“I’d like that,” said David. It could mean looking for a needle in a haystack, but his years of experience doing client audits taught him the importance of never overlooking a possible resource, since often a missing figure or answer he needed came from the most unlikely places.
“Well then, give me a few minutes to make sure we’re staffed through one o’clock, and I’ll place the call to Knoxville,” said John. “Would you be opposed to joining me for lunch?”
“Not at all.”
Sensing John could use the next few minutes without the extra distraction of entertaining him, he excused himself from his office, telling him he’d wait by his car in the parking lot, and offering to drive to wherever John had in mind for lunch.
Almost eleven-thirty, they arrived at a park restaurant located just outside Cades Cove. They talked about subjects that had nothing to do with Allie Mae, such as each other’s careers and families. John’s wife, the blond lady in the photograph, had passed away six years earlier from breast cancer. Her death hit their only daughter and two grand-daughters very hard. John Running Deer’s passions in life were his family and the preservation of the wilderness his forefathers cherished.
John’s last tour ended at two o’clock, leaving the rest of the afternoon free. The two men drove in John’s cruiser to the park station. Once there, they cleared a table inside his office and began bringing in the boxes.
For the next two hours they didn’t find anything helpful, though the first boxes produced an interesting assortment of documents that shed valuable light on life in Cades Cove during the two decades following World War I. John explained the community had always been unusually close knit, and that he learned to admire the people and their unique history despite his Cherokee forefathers being forced to leave the area. “They were for the most part a very caring community,” he commented, while helping David sift through church ledgers from 1919 through 1924.
They brought in the last boxes around five o’clock, when the security floodlights surrounding the station came on. Not wanting to take a break, David started in on the first of these boxes while John took a moment to relax at his desk. While absently sifting through the contents of “Allie Mae’s Treasures” spread out again on the desktop, John noticed the faint inscription on the torn locket.
He retrieved a magnifying glass and held the locket up to it. In the elaborate cursive style of the late nineteenth century Victorian period that pervaded into the early twentieth century, the inscription read: ‘To my darling granddaughter Allie on her 16th Christmas, 1915’.
“What year are we down to?” he asked.
“I’m just about finished looking through the ledger for 1918,” said David. “It looks like there’s several more like it still inside this box from earlier years. I can see the ones for 1916 and 1917 below what looks like a string-tied bunch of letters.”
“Hav
e you ever taken a close look at the locket?” John held it up by its golden chain.
“No, I haven’t,” he said, pausing to look where John sat. Even with the aid of his reading glasses, which he remembered to carry inside his briefcase, his eyes grew tired from the time already spent reading the penned lines on the ledgers and other documents that had faded over time. If John hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t have known he held the locket in his hand. He stood up and went over to the desk to get a closer look.
“I guess if we get any earlier than 1899 we’ll be in deep shit,” David observed dryly, after John showed him the inscription. “Miriam said something about this, or maybe it was about the young man who wrote the letter to Allie. Some kid named ‘Seth’, I think, who had gone off to fight in World War I.”
John immediately took interest in this information, careful in setting the locket down and unfolding the letter. Using the magnifier again, the faded penmanship became decipherable to his older eyes. He read the contents while David stood by him listening. Miriam had been right. The boy, Seth Sullivan, promised to marry Allie as soon as his enlistment ended.
Knowing the two items spanned at most a four-year period from 1914 to 1918, they now had a smaller window to focus on. Reinvigorated by the hope they drew nearer to learning Allie’s full identity, John joined David back at the table; opening the last box while David finished scouring through the 1918 ledger.
“Ah, hell,” sighed David, once he reached the November 1918 entries. He read a little bit more and then looked over at John sitting across from him. “There’s a note here about a community service being held at the Missionary Baptist church, which I take is not the same church these documents came from, because it mentions another Sunday evening service to follow ‘in this building’ after the other one finished.”
John nodded to confirm it true.
“Anyway, the service was to ‘honor the soldiers lost in the fight to keep Europe free from tyranny’, and attached to the page is an announcement listing nearly thirty names of the men who died overseas,” he continued. “In the middle of the list is the name ‘Thomas Seth Sullivan’. It might not be the same kid, but I doubt it. You said so yourself, that the community never grew beyond six hundred people.”
John asked to see the ledger and the announcement, and after David handed it to him, he agreed it had to be the same young man.
“Well, I guess it explains why only her name is carved on the oak tree where Miriam and I had our picnic.”
“A broken heart can be a terrible burden,” agreed John. “Especially for a female growing up back then, when women were considered old maids by their early twenties.”
David looked up, surprised and unaware of that fact. Since John had already set the journal down, busy rummaging through his box, he moved on to 1917’s ledger. After another fruitless search, he picked up the ledger from 1916. From January through April, there were no significant entries. In May, however, he found something of note. Beneath an ornate Mother’s Day announcement, which took place on May 14th, were two other loose pages stuck together by either some glue or other adhesive. From the look of how the pages mashed onto each other, it looked like it might have happened by accident, perhaps when something spilled onto the ledger and seeped down onto the pages.
The adhesive had hardened to where one couldn’t open the pages without tearing them. Not wanting to damage something which had value based on its age alone, he asked John to see if he could separate them. At first, he didn’t have much success either, and when the pages began to tear, David suggested they just move on. Suddenly the pages pulled apart, one falling to the floor while John held the other in his hand.
John looked astonished as he read the page he held while David picked up the other from the floor. Since John hadn’t finished yet, David looked at the other page. A memo detailing a meeting held the day after Mother’s Day, May 15th, 1916, his mouth soon dropped open. The ongoing search for a girl who disappeared Sunday night, the meeting had been called by the pastor and the girl’s parents to organize a wider search for her whereabouts. The girl’s name: Allie McCormick.
“I think I found her!” he announced excitedly, while reading other details.
The memo further described Allie as ‘the eldest daughter of Samuel and Esther McCormick, age seventeen’. Members from all three churches in the area had gathered, with the intent to search throughout Cades Cove until they found her. He held out the page to John, feeling like there might be light at the end of this hellish tunnel after all. Meanwhile, John finished reading the page he held in his hand. Unlike David, he wasn’t smiling anymore.
“I think you’re definitely correct about finding Allie’s identity,” said John, evenly. “But before you get too excited, you need to read this.”
David stepped over to where John stood. David’s smile also faded. The page dealt with the same incident, but from another meeting several days later on Friday, May 19th 1916. A call to arms to find two local young men at any cost, who hadn’t been seen since the disappearance of Allie McCormick, their names were Zachariah and Billy Ray Hobson, and a sub note listed the older Hobson, Billy Ray, as a convicted felon.
“Shit!” Not believing his eyes, David carefully scanned the details a second time.
“They definitely are the same first names you mentioned this morning,” said John, having finished reviewing the other page’s contents.
“Yeah, they are,” whispered David.
“And the brothers’ last name is similar to yours. Although I doubt a spirit would use that as a reason to connect with the living.”
David wasn’t so sure. After all, the ghost seemed quite confident in addressing him and Tyler as Billy Ray and Zachariah. Hoping to learn more, he read through the rest of the 1916 ledger, disappointed to find no other mention of either Allie McCormick’s disappearance or the Hobson brothers’ fate.
“Well, I believe we now have enough information to work with,” said John, glancing at his watch once David finished examining the 1916 ledger. Just after 6 p.m. “Diane should have the preliminary work done by tomorrow morning. I’ll call her first thing and give her the names of Allie’s parents as well as the Hobson brothers. I think it might be interesting to find out what became of them too.”
David felt reluctant to stop searching for more information, but realized the likelihood of finding more gems was remote. After John secured the ledger holding the 1916 Mother’s Day documents in a small safe located in the back of the building, they closed and sealed the boxes and then returned them to the storage shed. David thanked him again for all of his help, and they agreed to touch base Wednesday morning.
On the way back to Gatlinburg, David changed his return flight home from his cell phone to the following Sunday afternoon. He hoped this gave John Running Deer’s census contact in Knoxville enough time to get him the names of Allie’s relatives.
Next, he called his aunt in Chattanooga, and after explaining his business trip now extended through the weekend, they made plans for lunch on Sunday before his flight to Denver. That left Miriam and his search for another place to stay through Saturday night. Since already near Gatlinburg, he grabbed a bite while looking for a vacant hotel room on the strip. He planned to call her once he settled in for the night, updating her on all that happened today.
***
The Whitestone Motel had the only vacancy on Gatlinburg’s strip. Since it sat on the side closest to Pigeon Forge and furthest from the park, David reserved it for just three nights, hoping to get something closer on Friday afternoon.
Built in the early 1960s and named for its stone façade, the motel looked like it hadn’t been remodeled since. David checked into his room on the first floor shortly after eight o’clock, near the far end of the building where the parking lot bore numerous potholes. Greeted by the smell of stale cigarette smoke and mildew when he stepped inside his room, at least the bed linens and towels appeared clean. Mold encroached along the edges of the bathtub an
d sink. The room’s overall condition affirmed why the innkeeper seemed eager to reserve it for three nights. He wondered how a motel like this survived when it wasn’t peak season.
“Hey, babe, it’s me.” He held an old rotary telephone receiver pressed tightly against his ear. The room had two double beds, and his luggage lay open on the bed closest to the door while he stretched out on the other bed next to the bathroom.
“I’m still in Gatlinburg, so let me give you the number where I’ll be the next few nights.”
“What’s wrong?” Miriam sounded alarmed. “I thought you were going to Chattanooga tonight and would be flying home tomorrow!”
“I know… me too,” he told her. “But, Allie Mae had other ideas. I found her bag waiting on my nightstand when I woke up.”
“What??!”
“I know, darlin’, I know…that’s how I felt this morning,” he said, his tone soothing. “But, John Running Deer, the ranger I told you about last night, helped me find out who she was today. Her name was Allie McCormick, and he has a friend who can hopefully help us track down her relatives. John thinks it could help her find peace.”
“I don’t know if that will work.” It sounded like she tried to cover the receiver so he wouldn’t hear her sniff. “I still think you need to take the damned thing back where we first saw it, to that tree in the ravine!”
“John told me yesterday they get a lot of stuff taken from the park each year,” he said. “Returning an item to the original spot it was taken from doesn’t have much affect one way or another on the hauntings people experience. He even offered to take the bag there for me when I left it with him yesterday, and you’d think the spirit knew that too. Obviously, there’s something else she’s after, and it makes sense she’d want me to find the rightful heir to the bag.”
“I’m still not convinced.”
“There were a couple of other things we learned today,” added David, hoping to get her to agree with him. “The locket has a faint inscription that says it was given to Allie Mae on her sixteenth Christmas back in 1915. And the boy named in the letter, Seth Sullivan, showed up on a list of young men in a church ledger who died in World War I back in 1918.”
