by Jeff Dixon
Shaking his head, Hawk turned back toward the cemetery. Red letters sprawled across the white archway, confirming he had found the right place: PONCEANNAH. He traced them with his light a couple times, reading and rereading the name. Then he stepped forward below the arch and allowed his light to move into the inkiness of the cemetery. Another deep breath, and he took his first step along the mudded out pathway leading into the graveyard. His light jittered back and forth at the ground in front of him, then he cut the light beam to look at the grave markers. Just inside the gate, the beam came to rest on the statue of an angel.
A lighting flash with an explosion of thunder illuminated the angel brilliantly for a moment. The hair on his arms stood on end, and the air crackled with energy. He read the inscription. Shed A Tear But Do Not Cry. Safe With Lord, Above The Sky, To All Who Rest At Ponceannah. This marker served as a welcome to the cemetery. Standing in the rain, he wondered how you shed a tear but not cry. He thought that once a tear fell, you were officially crying. A quick shake of his head turned him back to the task at hand. Get busy, find what you came looking for . . . and then get out of here. On cue, the lightning danced across the blackened sky as thunder again rolled over his head.
At first glance, the cemetery appeared to be a typical rural Florida graveyard. Many small communities throughout the state of Florida were still off the beaten path despite heavy development elsewhere. They attempted to hold on to their identities, with some community members living there all their lives. Family heritage could be traced back for generations among the stronger family units. Many of these families would end up here.
Hawk began moving into the cemetery. Through the rain he could see a mixture of old tombstones and grave markers right next to newer, more ornate ones. His light flicked across a gazebo to his right, just off the path, perhaps erected in memory of someone. As he got closer, he could see it covered a picnic table and was lined with benches on each side—a place for people to rest and find relief from the Florida heat on a cemetery visit.
Stepping under the covering, Hawk found an instant break from the deluge. He was able to orient himself in the pitch-black graveyard. It appeared the cemetery was surrounded by woods on all sides, and there were shadowy clumps of thick trees scattered over the property. The rain did not appear to be letting up, so he knew if he was going to find anything he would either need to start looking now or come back at a later time. It had taken him well over an hour to get here, and he was determined not to waste the trip.
He decided to circle the perimeter of the graveyard, looking at the tombstones.With each trip around, he would tighten his spiral until he ended up back in the gazebo. Lunging back out into the rain, he wasn’t really sure he had a great plan for covering the entire cemetery because he wasn’t sure just how big it was. But at least it was a plan.
He moved from the gazebo, along a dirt path lined with tombstones, with the intent of staying on it until he hit the outer edge of the cemetery. He played the flashlight beam over each marker, looking for the name Call. He hoped the Call family from years ago had been prominent enough that a number of family members might be buried here. If that were the case, it might make Walt’s grandparents easier to find, especially if they were located in a family plot.
In a few minutes, he reached what must be one edge of the cemetery. Another dirt path broke off the one he was on, which had come to an end.
He could turn right or left. The right turn looked like it would take him back toward the front of the cemetery, where his car had tagged the iron fence. The left would take him deeper into the graveyard toward the back of the property. He chose left. Here, the plots were overgrown and weedy. The graves to his right backed up to a fence marking the edge of the cemetery. Unlike the iron fence that lined the highway, this was made of wire, draped between wooden poles. A dirt road just beyond the fence cut though the dense forest. The wire had been torn off the poles there, giving access to the cemetery from the dirt road. As Hawk moved along the path without a fence, he felt somehow vulnerable and exposed.
You are being silly, he thought as he continued to walk. He sensed that the rain was getting harder and the storm surrounding him was settling in for an even more intense soaking of Paisley, Florida. Reaching the back of the graveyard, he saw a huge pile of flowers, wreaths, and various other items used to decorate gravesites. Apparently, the old decorations and memorials were discarded unceremoniously in this pile of trash. Following the path to his left again, he made a sharp turn that placed him on the back side of the land.
There were fewer grave markers along this path, and the woods encroached on the property line. Hawk shivered as he continued to search the names. As a pastor, he had been in many cemeteries, conducted too many funeral services to remember, and had never found the places people were buried frightening. He knew what remained was just a shell of the person that once lived. He did not believe in or fear ghosts and found those that did amusing. Their fears were unfounded.
But in this moment, walking in the old cemetery in the rain, his senses were on heightened alert. Perhaps it was from being detained and threatened in the Hall of Presidents; it might have been the trouble with the pirates being found in the Magic Kingdom; it could have been his encounter with George, or the strange way Farren had described George Colmes. No matter the reason, he was amped. Keep it together and just keep looking.
Stopping and sweeping his light around him, he noticed something that seemed out of place. A white pillar rose from the ground like a naked tree trunk among the scattered tombstones. The pale white was the same color as the majority of the grave markers that decorated the cemetery, but it was unusual enough that he decided to explore it more closely.
Lightning flashed across the sky, lighting the entire cemetery for just a moment. Hawk froze in his tracks as he saw a shape dart behind a clump of trees across the graveyard. In the dark, he never would have seen the movement. The timing of the lightning had been so precise that he was looking right at the trees when he had seen whatever it was move.
Standing and wishing the lightning would strike again, he could see nothing among the dark shapes of the trees barely visible in the rainy night. Thunder bounced through the sky, causing him to cringe. It must have been an animal. Probably more afraid of you than you are of it. But he’d been sent here for a reason. He had to know.
Hawk swallowed hard and began jogging toward the clump of trees.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
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THE HEADLIGHTS CAUGHT THE MUSTANG parked against the wrought-iron fence. The driver instantly cut them off. Easing the car to the side of the road and pulling to a stop at the corner of the fence, he clicked off the ignition switch, plunging the interior of the car into darkness. The heavy pummeling of the rain echoed inside the vehicle, as the passengers strained their eyes toward the car parked outside the cemetery.
“This is his car, right?” Kate Young leaned forward with both hands against the dash, trying to see from the passenger seat.
“Vintage Mustang with a vanity plate that says HAWK? It’s his car.” Kate’s assistant, Allie, answered matter-of-factly from the backseat.
“The question is, what is it doing here?” The driver, Punky Zane, wondered aloud. “Is he in it, did he wreck?”
“I can’t see anyone inside.” Kate pressed her face as closely to the window as possible, trying to see out of the window.
The three had followed Hawk from the moment he had pulled out of the Celebration Community Church parking lot. Kate Young was playing a hunch. She had listened outside the door before she made her unexpected appearance in the conference room at the church earlier in the evening. Her investigative nature made her curious, some would say nosy, but she had overheard a discussion about some kind of message that Walt Disney’s aunt was trying to get to Hawk and some concern about Hawk not being safe and the need to be careful. She had nearly been caught eavesdropping when the worship leader of the church had come down the hallway. She managed to slip
into the restroom as he passed by, and eventually made her entrance to introduce herself to Grayson Hawkes.
Total Access was not here to do a scandal piece of gotcha journalism about Grayson Hawkes and his mysterious rise to power in the Walt Disney Company. From all indications, the new leader of the company was a genuinely good man. The things he had said earlier in the evening about striving to follow Jesus had been a positive affirmation of that. Kate was already planning on using some of the footage from the sermon in the special when it aired. But, as often happened to her when she got a piece of information, her curiosity kicked in and she instructed Punky to follow the preacher when he left. The farther they had gotten away from the Disney Resort, the more she knew her instincts had been correct. Something was going on.
When Hawk began his journey down this country road, they had dropped way back and fallen off the pace, out of sight, and pulled off the road so he wouldn’t spot them. Trusting they would find him by coming along behind him later, they took a chance that there were places to stop along the deserted roadway. They had assumed they had lost him and were getting ready to turn around and go back to Walt Disney World when they happened to spot his car. Kate Young had learned a long time ago that to be successful in business took a mixture of sheer determination, a curiosity that never stopped asking questions, and a good dose of dumb blind luck to get a story everyone else would miss. Once again, her instincts and luck appeared to be leading her to that kind of story.
“Are we sitting next to a graveyard?” Allie asked from the backseat.
Kate and Punky both turned and looked into the cemetery, not having noticed where they had parked until this moment. The rain streaked the windows, making it nearly impossible to see anything. Kate leaned back in her seat and turned again to the front window, looking out toward Hawk’s car.
“So what do we do, Kate?” Punky watched her as she peered through the rain.
“We’re not getting out of the car . . . here . . . are we?” Allie shifted nervously in the backseat.
“Kate?” Punky asked again.
“Let’s get out and take a look.” Kate reached for the car door. “Punky, do you have your mini-cam in case there’s something to see?”
“Always.” Punky reached into his pocket for the small surveillance camera he usually carried. The quality wasn’t great, but the footage it captured had the hidden-camera style look that sometimes was needed to break a great story. It was encased and safe from the elements, had a night vision setting, and was designed to work perfectly in inclement weather.
Kate opened her door, then immediately closed it. “What kind of shoes are you wearing?” She glanced toward the backseat. Allie always dressed more casually than she did and would rather stay in the car anyway. “Let’s trade.”
“Heels, just like you. We just all went to church, remember?”
“Do you want me to take a look while you wait here?” Punky offered. “Neither one of you are dressed for a walk in the rain and mud.”
“Through a cemetery,” Allie added for emphasis.
“Nope, I’m going.” Kate opened the door, slid her shoes off, and got out. The soles of her feet sank into the soft, muddy ground. “But I’m not going to ruin my Jimmy Choos.” Walking barefoot, she headed toward Grayson Hawkes’s car parked some twenty yards in front of them.
Punky handed the key ring to Allie. “Crawl over the seat and be ready to crank it up if we need to get out of here.”
“Do you think there’s going to be a problem?” Allie’s hand shook as she took the keys.
“We’re with Kate, following one of her hunches, in the middle of Nowhere, Florida.” Punky smiled. “Not only is it pouring down rain, but we’re getting ready to check out what looks like an abandoned car next to a cemetery. Only Kate could turn a trip to Disney World into a night of fright.” He opened the door and hustled to catch up with the investigative journalist, who was now standing next to Hawk’s car, peeping in the windows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
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HAWK JOGGED TOWARD THE TREES, trying to create enough noise to scare away any animal that might have sought a break from the storm under the branches. Lightning ripped across the heavens, causing him to slow his pace for a moment. Trees were a horrible place to be in a lightning storm, and he tried to decide whether or not to keep heading toward them. Good idea or bad, he was sure he had seen something moving in them, so he accelerated.
He also ran toward the tree because he lived with a philosophy of life that had always served him well. Never run from danger and difficulty; instead, run toward it. This credo had allowed him as a leader to tackle things head on, acquire a reputation of being tenacious, and it didn’t allow problems to fester and become worse than they needed to be. Usually it didn’t apply to graveyards, in a storm, at night. Nevertheless, he found himself arriving at the trees and yelling over the storm.
“Who’s there?” He cut behind the trees where he had seen the shape disappear.
There was nothing there. Just the sound of rain hitting the tree branches all around him. Playing his light over the ground, he saw no footprints in the mud, no trampled blades of grass, no broken twigs. He searched, ducking under tree branches, until he was satisfied his eyes had been playing tricks on him earlier in the blasting light of the storm. Then he stepped out from underneath the foliage and began retracing his steps to the white pillar.
As he approached it, he was still struck by how out of place this pole was in the midst of the gravestones around it. It was an oddity, and in all of the years in ministry, he had never seen anything like it in a cemetery. It was surrounded by a series of concrete markers that formed a large rectangle indicative of a boundary for a family plot. He walked past a double headstone as he approached this white tree-shaped object. Shining his light toward the ground, he saw a name on the tombstone by his feet. The marquee across the top of the stone read Perkins. The name on the left read Albert and the name on the right read Jessie.
Hawk’s mind locked back onto the information Shep had given them earlier in the evening. Aunt Jessie was Flora’s sister. Flora was Walt and Roy Disney’s mom. Their Aunt Jessie had become the postmaster in Paisley, Florida after the death of her husband, Albert Perkins. This was where Walt’s Aunt Jessie was buried. Stepping around to face the tombstone, he shone the light across both their names. Aunt Jessie has a special delivery. Walt’s grandparents are trying to Call you. Go back to the roots to find your way.
Hawk thought, OK, Aunt Jessie, I am here, what do you have to give me? The gravestone had some artificial flowers on it, which indicated it had been visited in the not-too-distant past. Hawk knelt at the grave marker and inspected the flowers to see if there might be a card attached to them. There was nothing.
Rising to one knee, he looked around on the wet ground. He still saw nothing. Over his shoulder, he glanced again at the unusual pole rising up from the ground. He turned his flashlight toward it and traced it in the beam. His eyes blinked against the rivulets of rain running down his face, and he noticed a vine and leaves engraved upon the pole. It not only looked like a tree, it was supposed to be a tree. A concrete tree.
The statue had been created to look like the branches had been cut off. What a strange . . . gravestone? Hawk stepped around and explored the front with his light. Halfway up the trunk, he found words carved on the marker.
Charles Call
Born March 22, 1823—Died January 6, 1890
Henrietta Call
Born July 23, 1837—Died February 21, 1910
This gravestone, the weirdest one he had ever seen, marked the final resting place of Walt Disney’s grandparents. With the last name of Call, they were trying to Call him. But what did that mean? Hawk looked back toward the tombstone of Aunt Jessie, just a few feet away, then at the tree-shaped tombstone of Walt’s grandparents. He thought back to eighteen months before when he’d solved the intricate clues that Farren Rales had left for him. Every word mattered and
was necessary to figure out the meaning. George Colmes was an Imagineer just like Farren, and their promise to the Disney Brothers had been the commitment of a lifetime. The words in the clue meant something. Now, standing in front of the gravestone, he had to know what.
Go back to the roots to find your way.
Hawk inhaled deeply. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled across the cemetery. He slowly walked to the back side of the tree-shaped tombstone. Go back. He now stood at the back of the grave marker, closer to where Aunt Jessie was buried, dissecting the next phrase of the clue, to the roots to find your way. Roots would be at the bottom of the tree. He dropped to his knees and examined the back of the tombstone. Around the base, he saw nothing that looked unusual or out of place. But neither did he see anything that looked like roots at the bottom of the tree-shaped marker. Again he turned back to the tombstone of Aunt Jessie and thought for a moment. He played out each segment in his mind. A special delivery from Aunt Jessie; he was here, and Aunt Jessie had something for him to find. Walt’s grandparents had Called him. He was at the grave marker of the Calls.
He was now at the back and had to go to the roots to find his way. He stared down at the ground. The thought crossing his mind sounded crazy, even as he thought it. It was reckless, it was dumb, it was foolish, and yet he was contemplating it. All for the sake of solving another puzzle that had something to do with Walt Disney and unlocking his kingdom.
He needed to start digging at the back of the tombstone. He reached down and grabbed a clump of grass and pulled. It tore away from the muddy ground easily. He reached down again and scooped up a handful of dirt from the base of the concrete and pulled it away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
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“WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HE DOING?” Punky zoomed in on Hawk digging at the base of a cemetery monument, through the lens of the camera.
