by Aiden James
“That’s the farm up in Pigeon Forge I told you about last week,” she said. “I was just thinking of Uncle Zach and the last time I ever saw him.”
He paused to look at her from the album’s pictures.
“It was Christmas, and the year 1946,” she said. “He was fond of my pa and arrived after dark on Christmas Eve. It was real cold that year, I remember, and we spent most of the evening gathered around the fire. I’d only seen him twice before, and I just recently turned seven. The previous times I’d seen him, he’d try to tickle me or find some other way to make me laugh. I could see why Pa loved him so. But on that night, he acted real strange.”
She paused to take a sip from her cup of hot tea, and didn’t immediately resume.
“What do you mean?” asked David.
“Well, for one thing he kept looking over his shoulder, like he expected someone to be there,” she explained. “But that wasn’t all. When we went to bed, Pa had Bobby and I share our bed with him. Now, I know you might think that’s a bit strange by today’s standards, but back then no one thought much of it—especially when a person’s kin was involved and there wasn’t always a bed for them to sleep in. Uncle Zach kept us up all night, and I remember we worried Santa might not come to our home on account of it. He slept between us and kept sitting up in the bed, pointing at some invisible person and begging them to leave him alone…. It was so pitiful.”
“Do you think he saw someone, or was he losing his mind?” He tried to sound ambivalent, to not let on as to what he thought. Ruth regarded him serious for a moment, and then smiled coyly.
“I guess it doesn’t matter if you think I’m crazy or not,” she said, chuckling. “But, I’ve always felt he did see someone, or at least sensed someone. It was really soft, and I doubt your daddy heard it, but I’d be willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that I heard a girl’s voice speak to him from the darkest shadows in our bedroom.”
“Do you recall what the voice said?”
“Yes I do. The voice said ‘the time of my vengeance is nigh, and I’m coming for you real soon!’”
David was in the process of taking a drink from his iced tea, and suddenly spit it out onto the table.
“Are you all right, dear?” she asked, worriedly.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he told her, coughing while dabbing his napkin to clean up the mess he just made, and thankful nothing touched the photographs. Most of it landed on the sleeve of his jacket, which he brushed clean with his napkin. “Whatever became of Uncle Zach?”
“I never saw him again after that Christmas,” she said, her eyes dreamy as she reminisced. “The next afternoon, Christmas Day, he and Grandpa had a bad argument in our front yard. They both were shouting, and Uncle Zach said something about how you can’t escape God’s vengeance; that my grandpa’s sins would curse us all. He must’ve truly believed it, because his body was found a few weeks later in mid-January, 1947, hanging from the rafters in an abandoned barn just outside Omaha, Nebraska.”
“Zach was great grandpa’s brother, correct?” asked David. “Was his name Billy Ray?”
Bad enough to be blood related to Allie Mae’s murderer, he wanted confirmation that both Billy Ray and Zachariah survived that night.
Ruth sat up straight and eyed him curious.
“I know your daddy and my pa never mentioned his name when you were growing up, because that’s how much they hated him. No one called him anything other than Will or William, except Uncle Zach. And I only heard him use the name Billy Ray one time, and that was during their terrible argument on the front lawn of the house I still live in to this very day. How’d you know that name?”
He wasn’t sure how to respond. Until a few minutes ago he didn’t know for sure they were even related. The sad truth, he never knew the name of his great grandfather due to apathy while growing up in the shit haven of his highly dysfunctional family.
“I must’ve heard it somewhere, from someone who knew him, I guess.” A twist on words, but honest enough.
Ruth nodded, thoughtful, and then pointed back to the album.
“I know you’ve got a flight to catch soon, so I’ll move through what I’ve marked quickly. The rest you can look over on your own.”
She pointed to the pictures of the Pigeon Forge farm, which spanned several pages in the album. Most of the pictures taken from the 1920s up to the 1950s, one featured an older man with one hand on the shoulder of the man David recognized as his Grandpa Elbert when much younger. It might normally be hard to identify the elder man, his face shadowed beneath the brim of a straw sun hat. But the four long scars that stretched from his jaw to the base of his neck made his identity clear.
“Mean as a damned rattlesnake!” remarked Ruth, after she noted David’s horrified facial expression. “He didn’t have many friends from what I understand, but Grandpa Will had a great many people who’d wait hand and foot on him. Everybody I knew hated him—especially my father. Your daddy hated him too.”
“How about you, Auntie?” He couldn’t shake from his mind the terrible act he witnessed the night before. “Did you hate him?”
“I’d rather we just forget about him and move on,” she said, her tone even.
David sensed she kept a tight lid on that aspect of her upbringing. If her father’s treatment of her daughter, Celeste, gave any indication, then she certainly experienced similar sexual abuse growing up. Before he let her move on to the last photos he asked her how the old man got the scars along his neck.
“From a close encounter with a black bear is the way he always told it,” she recalled. “If it’d only been a grizzly. The world would’ve been a much nicer place for me and Bobby growing up, not to mention what my Pa and his two sisters went through.”
David reached over and grasped her hand, thanking her for the painful information she shared. She offered a wan smile in response and moved on to the last sections she had marked in the album. Mostly pictures from his early childhood, it amazed him how many there were.
“Like I said, your daddy loved you dearly, David,” she said. “Even if he wasn’t around much and had a difficult time showing his tender side, he’d play with you whenever he could and take photographs of you along with your momma.”
They visited together until one-thirty that afternoon, when he needed to leave in order to get his rental car returned in time for his three o’clock flight. He helped her return the album to its tote bag and accepted the bag from her, intending to bring it on the aircraft as a carry-on to protect it. He then walked her to her car. After a warm goodbye, and again saying he looked forward to her upcoming Christmas visit, he got in his car and headed for the airport.
He boarded the plane destined for Denver by 2:45 p.m. While awaiting takeoff, he decided to view more pictures from the album. Some of the photographs came from the early years of the twentieth century and possibly from the last decade of the nineteenth century. He regretted not asking his aunt about when ‘Hobson’ changed to ‘Hobbs’. Curious to learn the storied reasons behind the change, he already knew what most likely inspired it.
Perusing these early pictures he came upon one taken in front of the Methodist Church in Cades Cove. The year 1915, the photograph appeared to have been taken during that spring or summer. A bake sale or something like it, with an assortment of pies and cakes piled on several tables in front of a few hundred souls gathered for the event. Most of the men and women dressed in their Sunday best, near the front of the throng stood a pair of beautiful girls wearing light bonnets and whose hair hung in ringlets. One of the girls was Allie Mae McCormick.
David brought the image closer to his face, admiring again her unusual beauty. The girl next to her appeared just as pretty, certainly her sister, Emma Sue. As he scanned to see what the other family members looked like, he saw two other familiar faces nearby. Zachariah and Billy Ray Hobson stood less than fifteen feet to the right and a few rows back of the McCormick girls. Zachariah faced the camera, wearing the same seriou
s expression that most of the people in the photograph had on their faces.
Only one person in the crowd smiled. Billy Ray. His sly grin told of his disregard for the photographer’s instructions as he looked toward the McCormick sisters. If the picture had captured the front of his face instead of his profile, perhaps his lecherous leer would’ve also been obvious. The picture told so much in light of what would happen the next spring, as well as what befell his family nearly a century later.
The plane taxied for takeoff and David closed the album. He placed it back inside the tote bag and slid the bag beneath his window seat. Grateful the nearest seats to him sat empty, it afforded him privacy to reflect on all that had happened. So much pain…so needlessly visited upon his loved ones, as well as upon Allie Mae and her family. And all of it came down to the evil of one man, Billy Ray Hobson; the man who’s changed last name didn’t save his descendants from the curse of his wickedness.
He thought about the strange sensation of being taken over the night before, and how his dreams during the past week brought similar experiences. The fact that one of the dreams and Allie Mae’s murder and rape were eerily linked made him wonder if his great, great grandpa’s spirit briefly took possession of his body. Or, maybe it meant something far worse.
The plane safely in the air, the hills of Tennessee became smaller and smaller in the window as his flight headed toward the immense mountain range to the west. David closed his eyes and buried his face in a pillow provided earlier by the stewardess. For the rest of the ride home he wept.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“When are we going, Daddy?”
“In a few minutes. Right after everyone’s done eating their lunch. And that means your veggies too.”
David moved through the kitchen, casting a playful look of scorn toward Christopher. His youngest child sat sullen in front of his plate. The Sloppy Joe gone, the green beans remained untouched. Excitement filled the household on this second Saturday in December. The annual Hobbs Christmas tree hunt was set for that afternoon—depending on when Christopher finished his meal.
“Can we take a rain check on waiting for Chris, Dad, and get out of here?” asked Tyler. “I’ve got something important to do later on and I don’t want to miss out on decorating the tree before I have to leave.”
“Let’s ask Mom!” piped in Jillian. “She’ll be right back!”
“Oh, where is she?” asked David, grabbing a Coke from the refrigerator.
“She’s outside checking the mail—here she comes now!”
Jillian limped briskly to the front door and opened it for her mom, whose hands overflowed with Christmas cards and an assortment of bills. Scattered snowflakes filled the air behind Miriam as she stepped inside. She removed her scarf, but left her coat on since they were about to leave anyway.
“Is Chris done yet?” she asked.
“No, but Ty would like a ‘rain check’!” said Jillian, before David had a chance to respond.
Miriam moved into the dining room, setting the Christmas cards inside the antique crystal bowl that Aunt Ruth gave them the year before. Pleased she had finally found a good use for it, the bowl held nearly a dozen open Christmas cards that would later be hung along the hall tree in the foyer. She planned to fill the bowl with a mixture of glitter-painted pinecones and leftover ornaments from the tree before Ruth’s arrival next weekend.
“I think I can go for that,” she said, as David joined her in the dining room.
She sorted through the mail and placed the latest cards inside the bowl when he came up behind her, kissing her on the neck.
“Yippee-e-e-e!” exclaimed Jillian from the kitchen. “Come on, Chris! You’re done!!”
Christopher joined her in celebration while Miriam examined the return address on one of the last cards in the pile of mail.
“This one’s for you from Gatlinburg,” she said, smiling as she held it out for David to take.
The envelope thicker than any of the others in the stack, he eagerly tore it open when he saw that it came from John Running Deer.
“Are we ready to go yet? Daddy, get your coat!” said Jillian, bouncing into the dining room with Christopher right behind her. Sadie’s high-pitched bark accompanied her eager tail-wag as she chased after them.
“Hold on, everyone,” said Miriam, looking over David’s shoulder. He had just sat down at the table after opening John’s card. “Daddy’s got something important to look over and then we’ll be on our way.”
A specialty Christmas card from Gatlinburg, it featured Santa’s sleigh being pulled through the air with a beautiful moonlit view of the Smoky Mountains in the background. In addition to the warm holiday wish inscribed inside the card, both John and Evelyn signed it together. A letter addressed to David fell out and landed on the table. After Miriam quieted the kids once more with a promise of a definite departure within the next ten minutes, she urged him to open it up so they could both read it. He laid it open on the table:
Dear David,
It was very good to hear from you again this past Thanksgiving, and both Evelyn and I look forward to your family’s visit next April during your kid’s spring break from school. We’re already planning lots of fun things to do, and I’ve booked the week off from my normal tour duties. Evelyn plans to join us as well. She and her boyfriend broke up right after Thanksgiving. (She has been sad the past two weeks, but realizes it is better that it ended now instead of later, since they planned to marry next summer.)
The reason I included this letter with our card is mainly to let you know the latest news about Allie Mae. I know we discussed some of this already, but in case you wanted the specifics of what has been going on and the important people involved, you’ll now have a copy of that information.
As we discussed back in early November, Micky Webster and I visited the ravine the day before Halloween. Following your description, we found the stone slab in the nearby woods. It wasn’t easy to find, but we finally uncovered it, roughly twenty feet away from the oak tree that bears her name. Since we had a pretty good idea what was lying beneath it, we contacted Dr. Peter Kirkland and his forensic specialists at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. It was a decision I soon regretted, and now feel it better to have left her remains undisturbed where they were.
Dr. Kirkland visited the site three days later, and brought a small hoisting machine to safely lift the slab. Underneath were numerous smashed bone fragments and a few traces of soiled blue and white fabric. He soon determined the bones were human, and his team carefully lifted the remains out of the ground. To be certain they got them all, they dug down nearly six feet into the earth. The professor wanted to be sure none of the remains had settled deeper into the ground, since the ravine has been flooded on several occasions since 1916.
The team was ready to place the stone slab back over the hole, when one of the grad students noticed something unusual about the slab’s underside. Once he pointed it out to the rest of us, I was surprised no one noticed it sooner. Circular symbols had been carved in snake-like lines moving from one end of the slab to the other. Dr. Kirkland was very excited about this. He contacted another professor at the university, named Dr. Walter Pollack, whose specialty I understand is archaeology. Dr. Kirkland called on his expertise because he’s supposed to know a lot about the Indians and other ancient races living in the southeastern United States, particularly my people the Cherokee.
Dr. Pollack became quite excited once he saw the stone carvings—even more excited than Dr. Kirkland. He believes complex civilizations lived in this region long before my people’s ancestors, the Iroquois from up north, arrived around 1000 AD. From the way the symbols were carved he stated they could be two to three thousand years old.
The point of all this is that they dug into the hole again, which I didn’t object to. But I did object when they also wanted to dig into the surrounding area. Despite my concerns, they received official permission from the park service in Washington D.C. by th
e next afternoon. Micky and I made sure the dig stayed within the permit’s boundaries.
By nightfall on November 5th, a large section of the ravine had been dug up. Several more slabs were found, including the largest one that formed the ledge at the top of the ravine. Despite their irritation with me and my earlier protests, Dr. Kirkland and Dr. Pollack allowed me to see a curious artifact found almost ten feet below where the bone and fabric fragments were discovered. The only way I can describe this object is as a golden scepter with a very sharp ivory edge on one end. The scepter is in excellent condition, measuring nearly four feet with many of the same symbols discovered earlier engraved along its length.
Bear with me, David. I needed to revisit some information so you’ll understand the importance of what I tell you next. By the end of the week, the human remains were verified as belonging to a young female, between the ages of fourteen and nineteen, which fits Allie Mae’s description. The violence you described, David, couldn’t be verified since so many of the bones were crushed when the slab was dropped on top of the body (that fact has now officially been confirmed by the forensic specialists). The most recent carbon dating test placed the bones’ presence in the hole between seventy-five to a hundred years, which also confirms what you saw that night in the ravine.
Here’s where this gets really strange. Other bones were mixed in with the first skeleton, and Dr. Kirkland wondered if we had stumbled on the ‘depository for an early twentieth century mass murderer’. But, since some of the bones were found where the scepter was located, nearly a dozen feet below the surface, the mass murderer idea doesn’t make sense. Dr. Pollack thinks that some of these older bones drifted to the earth’s surface over the years while the rest remained deeper in the earth with the scepter.
