Cades Cove: A Novel of Terror (Cades Cove Series #1)

by Aiden James

  How’d this place turn into such a frigging icebox, and so fast?

  “Ed?” Cynthia’s worried voice echoed weirdly from the edge of the hallway, near the stairs.

  “I’ll be right there!”

  His own nervousness surprised him. Normally not one to let his weaker emotions govern his behavior…but now his eyes also played tricks.

  As he turned off the lab’s overhead lights and prepared to close the door, he could’ve sworn something moved toward him in the dimness…something darker than the deep shadows of the windowless room. The ink-like form reached him just as he pulled the door shut. For a moment he simply stared at the closed door, expecting something else crazy to happen.

  There was no way in hell he’d venture inside the room a third time. He hurried to rejoin his fiancé at the end of the hall, casting several glances over his shoulder along the way. Anxious to leave, he led her out of the building. Despite December’s wintry chill outside, the air seemed warmer than it did on the second floor. They ran over to his Mazda and jumped inside, and the car swerved out of the parking lot before either one had their seatbelts fastened.

  He couldn’t vouch for Cynthia, but that strange feeling of being watched by someone or something unseen stayed with him until the University’s campus was no longer visible in the rearview mirror.

  There had to be a logical reason for all of this—just had to be. It’s what he kept telling himself all the way to Miami Beach.

  Chapter Two

  The Delta 747 jerked suddenly and then dipped, as flight 1409 approached the eastern edge of Denver’s metro sprawl. Ruth Gaurni’er tightened her grip on the left arm of her seat, gazing anxiously out her window, thankful no one seemed to notice her surprised gasp. Nearly a decade since her last trip to Denver, she’d forgotten the turbulent winds the region is well known for.

  She sighed, her nervousness hidden behind gentle brown eyes. Only the fine lines around her mouth as she pursed her lips gave evidence that her teeth were clinched tight. A handsome woman in her early sixties, she rarely looked her age. Even more so this afternoon, dressed in a sharp burgundy pantsuit with her hair freshly accented the day before with enough brunette shade to lesson the light grey that normally defined her look.

  Her seatbelt secured in accordance with the advisory light above her seat, she quietly opened her carry-on bag. Call it superstition, or perhaps a compulsory need to make sure the jewels were still there. Either way, she couldn’t stop herself from checking. They remained safely wrapped in protective tissue inside the rectangular box that had been their home for much of the past 40 years.

  “It’s time, David,” she whispered to no one in particular, relaxing her jaw as she unwrapped the largest gem.

  Being the only passenger sitting in her row allowed ample opportunity to feed her obsession, to check one last time before the plane’s descent into Denver International Airport. She raised her head above the seats to check on the stewardess’s location, who was busy collecting empty glasses and paper trash in the plane’s coach section. At least another minute in relative privacy, she uncovered the clear oblong diamond resting inside the box.

  A flawless gem nearly two inches in length, and half that in width, Ruth couldn’t remember the exact carat weight from its last valuation, shortly after her husband, Peter, passed away twenty years ago. But enough to push the stone’s value to well over two hundred thousand dollars—a conservative estimate, since the Atlanta-based appraiser told her at the time how the smooth surface and near pristine condition of the jewel added an undetermined amount to its value. Not to mention the non-faceted stone had been polished without any obvious tool marks. She squinted, crinkling her nose while studying it, as often amazed something so wondrous found its way into her family’s otherwise sordid legacy.

  The remaining three jewels in the box were similarly shaped and also non-faceted, though not near as large. These consisted of a smaller yellow diamond and two sapphires, one a brilliant blue while the other a deeper purple hue.

  Ruth smiled sadly as she considered their inestimable value and cost to her family, since the jewels once belonged to a larger collection of her grandfather’s. The immense wealth had come with a far greater price than the gemstones could ever repay. Anyone unfortunate enough to live under the unmerciful control of William Hobbs Sr., the lecherous old codger who survived far longer than a judicious God should ever allow, could never be compensated for the endless tyranny that reigned on for decades through his male descendents.

  But this was a time to rejoice—not fret about past injuries. The man long removed from this life, not all of his descendents took after him. Her beloved nephew, David Hobbs, was nothing like his great-grandfather, and his sons, Tyler and Chris took after their father, thank the Lord. And to think she’d be spending the Christmas holidays with them—she pinched herself earlier while waiting in Chattanooga’s airport for her flight, just to make sure this wasn’t a dream.

  She especially looked forward to visiting with Miriam, David’s lovely wife, and her grand niece, Jillian. It would be so much fun to take everyone shopping for something special this Christmas instead of mailing gifts, as always done in the past. A great surprise awaited David and Miriam, in addition to the four precious jewels. She carried trust papers, entitling him and his heirs to a large inheritance first mentioned this past October, when he came to Tennessee on a business trip. Her only regret, the gems remained an incomplete set, as she’d misplaced a quarter-sized ruby. Unlike the other stones, the ruby was circular in shape, and thinner in width. She hoped to look for it again when she returned home in early January.

  Satisfied for now, she wrapped up everything and placed the box back inside her carry-on bag and locked it. She then returned her attention to the view through her window. The plane veered further to the west, following its predestined approach to DIA. The landscape below her completely white, the city and surrounding areas had been blanketed by several snowstorms during the past week.

  Landing soon, she started to smile. But an uneasy feeling washed over her. It wasn’t the first time this had happened lately, and the feeling always came with the same thought. Something was strangely mysterious about David when she last saw him in October. She recalled his abhorred reaction to what they discussed briefly from her past…about a family ghost.

  Ruth snickered slightly and shrugged her shoulders, pushing the worrisome thought from her mind. The snow-covered roads and houses becoming more clearly defined, the plane began its final descent.

  Chapter Three

  “Get a move on it, kids!”

  David Hobbs stood waiting at the foot of the stairs near the foyer of his family’s spacious home in Littleton, Colorado, dressed in a blue turtleneck sweater and his favorite pair of Wranglers. As was his habit, he absently stroked his close-cropped blond beard. Strong and handsome, with warm eyes that morphed between hazel and bright green depending on his mood, he cleared his throat in preparation for a more urgent command to get his children’s attention. Excited about having their great aunt come to Denver that afternoon to spend the Christmas holidays with them, they were busy chasing one another across the upstairs landing.

  “Kids!”

  “We’re coming, Daddy!”

  Jillian Hobbs, David’s twelve-year-old daughter limped around the corner of the landing, nearly tripping on her way downstairs. Dressed in jeans and a Denver Broncos sweatshirt, she was already a tall, slender beauty with the same blond hair and green eyes as her father. She smiled warmly at her dad while heading down the stairs, despite her hips’ stiffness due to a painful flare-up from her chronic SCFE

  He felt a momentary tug on his heart that went beyond empathy for her present discomfort, realizing in just a couple of years she’d likely start dating. Luckily, her older brother, Tyler, was even more protective than David. He and the youngest Hobbs, Christopher, were dressed in similar winter attire and followed close behind her. Tyler, fourteen, favored his mother, whose thick d
ark hair and piercing blue eyes made him quite popular with many of the girls at Goddard Middle School, while the strong physical stature and cynical humor he inherited from David kept him well-liked by the guys.

  “Ty’s letting me play with his PSP, Daddy!” said Christopher, excited.

  Closely resembling his older sister at nine years, with the same colored hair, eyes, and impish smile, he raised the device in the air and pointed at it, nearly running over his sister on the way downstairs. He heeded his dad’s warnings to slow down and not pull on the evergreen garland hung just a few days earlier.

  “Well, let’s get this show on the road,” said David, his bright eyes softening now that he had their collective attention. “Where’s your mom?”

  “Right here,” said Miriam, her snow boots clicking against the dining room’s oak floor as she moved toward the foyer where the rest of her family gathered. Dressed casual like everyone else, her flowing, shoulder-length jet-black hair and radiant complexion seemed to set the air around her aglow—or maybe it was the luminance in her sky-blue eyes that sparkled with the same excitement as her kids.

  David wished he could whisk her upstairs to ravish right then. But already running late to pick up his aunt he ushered everyone outside, pausing to make sure Sadie, the family’s Yorkshire terrier, had enough food and water to last until their return home later that afternoon. He set the security alarm in the foyer and joined his family as they piled into their minivan idling in the driveway.

  ***

  “Sadie’s acting strange again,” whispered Miriam, once they headed north on I-25, the main thoroughfare connecting the southern portion of the metro sprawl to the rest of the Denver area. Determined to keep her voice low, she glanced behind the front passenger seat toward the kids, preoccupied with either their game systems or IPods in the back seats. “Didn’t you notice how she went right under the couch once she realized we were leaving?”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” David agreed. “She’s been real skittish. She won’t even go outside without someone right beside her, and I see she’s been sleeping at night with Jill again.”

  “She’s been like this since last Saturday, when we returned home after picking up the Christmas tree.”

  Miriam kept her attention straight ahead, as if fixed on the road before them, and didn’t look over at David until he responded. Yes, he noticed something amiss since last Saturday, though subtle at first. It had indeed started after they came home from picking out this year’s Christmas tree that afternoon. The house felt different somehow when they returned in the evening, like an intruder snuck in during their brief absence. David thought the dog’s reaction had something to do with the tree, since Sadie often barked when a new piece of furniture or an appliance was brought home. This year’s Douglas fir, an eight-foot beauty, could’ve looked like some bristly monster to a color-blind animal with limited depth perception.

  “Maybe we should take her to the vet again.”

  His response nonchalant, he hoped to draw her other observations first.

  “Perhaps we should,” she said tersely, as if aware of his tactic. “But the dining room has felt like an icebox since then too.”

  She looked over at him when he didn’t immediately respond. He offered a warm smile, hoping she’d take this as the compassion he intended and not condescendence.

  “Don’t act like you haven’t noticed anything different. I’ve seen you look over your shoulder the past few days and shake your head when you didn’t see anything,” she continued, glancing toward the back seats again as if worried her accusatory tone might’ve perked someone else’s attention. The kids remained lost in their cyber-worlds.

  “Yeah, okay…so maybe I’ve sensed a few odd things this past week,” he admitted, glancing at her while keeping his focus on the road. “The chill in the dining room is a little creepy. But if it wasn’t for the warmth that’s everywhere else on the main floor, I’d just assume the problem has something to do with the severe weather we’ve experienced during the past couple of weeks.”

  This could make sense, since most of Colorado and the Midwest had been blanketed with heavy snows and near-arctic temperatures during much of December so far. But the space heater he added a few days ago to the dining room did little to warm it. Obviously, something else kept the room so cold.

  To make matters worse, it seemed like the icy ‘feeling’ periodically moved throughout the main floor, as if some large unfriendly presence would take a tour of the house every so often. He witnessed this while getting something to eat from the kitchen and again while adding another log to the fireplace in the living room. The small hairs on his neck and arm perked up once he felt the coldness invade the warmth.

  If not for an earlier terrifying experience in October, where his family survived a violent haunting brought on by the angry spirit of a raped and murdered teenage girl who followed him and Miriam home to Colorado from Tennessee, David would’ve thought most, if not all, of what happened this past week rationally explainable. That earlier experience changed the way he viewed the world around him forever.

  When the haunting ended, after David returned to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to resolve his ancestors’ sins and bring peace to the tormented spirit of Allie Mae McCormick, a feeling of serenity followed him home. One that lasted until it suddenly ebbed away this past week.

  “Don’t worry darlin’. I seriously doubt it’s her.” He smiled confident. Miriam shot him an imploring look that begged him to be right.

  “I just want things to be peaceful...at least through Christmas,” she sighed, and then turned the radio up, signaling she was done talking about the issue for now.

  Late afternoon snow flurries intensified their assault on the minivan. Watching the swirling stream of snowflakes while listening to holiday melodies served as a soothing distraction—at least until they reached the airport exit ramps on I-70. She picked up the conversation again.

  “Did you happen to mention anything about Allie Mae’s ghost to Ruth when you visited her in Chattanooga?” Miriam sounded more worried, which let him know what she’d been thinking about for much of the past half hour.

  “No, I didn’t,” he replied, reflecting back to the parting conversation he had with his aunt back in October, when they met for lunch at a steakhouse just outside the Chattanooga airport.

  At the time, she mentioned a ghostly encounter, and not him. A ghost from her childhood, it involved her great uncle—David’s great, great uncle—Zachariah Hobbs. He realized from what the mysterious entity foretold to his aunt as a child, about Zachariah’s impending death, that the very same entity came back sixty years later to wage war with David and his family. He only hoped Aunt Ruth didn’t notice how the encounter she described chilled him—other than spraying his iced tea through his nose when she related the entity’s promise of revenge upon ‘Uncle Zach’ for his part in her murder.

  “I just hope Ruth has a good time while she’s here with us,” said Miriam, letting out a slow deep breath before looking out her window at the swirling snow again. “I want it to be so…so special.”

  “Everything will be fine, babe,” he assured her, reaching over to gently pat her thigh just above the knee. “Auntie’s going to have a great time. A really great time—I promise!”

  If they started his aunt’s visit on the right foot, he reasoned it could buy him some time to figure out what to do about the situation at home. She nodded her head and began to relax, until Christopher spoke up behind them.

  “Where’s Auntie Ruth going to sleep?” he asked.

  They both whirled their heads in his direction, fearful of what he might’ve overheard. He had his headphones pulled down and the PSP resting in his lap, turned off.

  “Is she going to sleep on the sofa in the living room, or in one of the guestrooms upstairs?”

  “Honey, she’ll be staying in the guestroom next to your bedroom and Jill’s,” said Miriam. “I’ve already prepared the room for her since she
told me at Thanksgiving that she wanted the one closest to you kids.”

  Christopher nodded, thoughtful, casting a cautious glance toward Jillian, who sat in the seat to his left. She, like Tyler sprawled out in the bench seat behind her, jammed to the music in her Ipod. Christopher leaned closer to his mom.

  “I’m glad Auntie Ruth won’t be sleeping on the sofa, Mommy.” The look on his face confirmed his relief. “I don’t think the old tree man would like it if someone slept in the living room.” He lowered his tone to emphasize his seriousness.

  “Old tree man? What are you talking about, Chris?” asked David, playful, though the solemn look on his youngest son’s face worried him a little.

  “The man in our house,” replied Christopher. As if realizing he might be in trouble for not sharing this information sooner, he began to fidget, casting his eyes downward to avoid his mother’s stunned look and his father’s probing gaze in the rearview mirror.

  “What man in our house??”

  Miriam’s alarm drew a curious look from Jillian, who might’ve removed her headphones if not for her dad’s mouthed assurance that everything was okay. She looked over at Christopher and then searched her mom’s face for confirmation of what her dad said. Miriam forced a warm smile and repeated David’s assurance, and Jillian again grooved to the Beyonce tune in her Ipod.

  “Can you describe the man you’re talking about, son?” David posed the question tenderly, keeping his eyes on the road while studying his son through the mirror.

  “Yes,” said Christopher, hesitating until he received another assuring look from his mom. “He’s a thin, really old man, and a lot taller than you, Daddy. He has lots of deep lines in his face and body that look like the bark on scary trees in Halloween pictures. He’s got no clothes. His hair is gray and real long, with black feathers stuck in it. His fingernails and toenails are real, real long, too, with the tips curled in. Oh, and his eyes are yellow, like the Patterson’s tiger cat Sonya…. I’ve only seen him a few times.”