The Raven Mocker: Evil Returns (Cades Cove Series #2)

by Aiden James

  “David, they’re coming in here!! Oh my God, this can’t be real!!”

  Miriam’s frightened cries erupted from the living room, and Evelyn shouted a series of incantations that sounded similar to what she used to help free him from Allie Mae’s deadly grip back in October. But she didn’t sound confident. Along with Shawn’s hysterical barks the combined hysterics distracted him enough to pull his frightened gaze away from the face. He turned to sprint back to the living room. But the bone chilling rumble from the voice that belonged to the face in the mirror forced him to hesitate long enough to pause and take another look.

  Somehow in that instant it had moved into the hallway to where it now hovered less than a foot away from his chest, still attached to the thin membrane of the mirror’s surface ready to fracture into a myriad of tiny pieces. The cellophane-stretch sound grew even more unnerving while the face leered contemptuously at him, bearing a mouth full of curved and pointed sharp teeth that reminded him of the Spawn character in the Spiderman comic books he collected years ago in Chattanooga.

  “What do you want with us??!!” David shouted at the face, stumbling as he tried to get away from it.

  Meanwhile, the screams and desperate calls to him from the living room grew more urgent. The only response he received from it was a deep, drawn-in breath. He only had a moment to bolt back down the hallway, to rescue Miriam and John’s granddaughter and then get the hell away from this place.

  “I’m coming Miriam—hold on!!”

  Before he even reached the living room and glimpsed the other shadowed figures stepping out from under the cloaked mirror and glassed family portrait upon the wall opposite the kitchen, the mirror behind him exploded into a shower of tiny chips that rained upon his back. The force from the blast sent him flying and then tumbling into the kitchen.

  Heavy footfalls pursued him from the guestroom, and yet whatever made them wasn’t visible to his eyes. The only thing he did see took place in the living room, where he had just enough time to glimpse two shadowy figures grab Evelyn and Miriam and drag them under the blanketed mirror and picture frame where they disappeared with their captors. Screaming his wife’s name, David scrambled over to the mirror where she’d been huddled, crying his name just seconds ago. As soon as he stood up again, two incredibly powerful hands grabbed him from behind. Before he drew his next breath, the hands dragged him all the way back into the guestroom, where he became airborne and flew through the mirror’s shattered frame. The echoes from his terrified screams followed him.

  Only Shawn remained behind, barking loudly as he chased after David and his invisible assailant. After waiting several minutes for him to reappear in the guestroom, the husky returned to the living room. For much of the next hour he pawed and whined anxiously beneath the portrait where Evelyn disappeared. He then paced restless throughout the cabin until the dawn’s light arrived, his plaintive barks outlasting the last glowing embers upon the hearth.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  John Running Deer hesitated before unlocking the front door to his cabin, listening as Shawn barked incessantly from the other side of the door. John couldn’t remember a time when he’d heard his prized husky this upset, which pulled on his heart while he forced himself to wait. Something wasn’t right…some sort of danger nearby, and the guides he had long kept secret told him now to be especially cautious before stepping inside his beloved home.

  “Maybe I should go in first.”

  Sheriff A. J. “Butch” Silva whispered this suggestion as he stood behind him. In his early-sixties and just a few years away from collecting full retirement benefits from the state of Tennessee, Butch used his tall, lanky frame to steal a peek over John’s shoulder. The wind that had recently picked up around them blew his salt and pepper bangs over his polarized lenses, forcing him to slide his sunglasses down his nose while he watched John’s hesitation with worried pale gray eyes.

  “No… I’m fine,” said John, exhausted after two nights of very little sleep.

  His voice soft and solemn, he cast a wary glance back toward the sheriff. A terrible event happened here last night…one that involved Evelyn. The heaviness in the pit of his gut told him this, and had done so long before his eldest granddaughter failed to show up at the jail as promised by 7:30 a.m. He sat through several criminal reviews at the courthouse while his stomach churned, until finally, the Honorable Benjamin Ashford dismissed his case. But this wasn’t the time to rehash the injustice done to him—a visit with an attorney after the holidays would take care of that.

  He braced himself for whatever awaited him and Butch inside his home and unlocked the door. Shawn’s barks ceased as he stepped through it. But an unpleasant mixture of odors threatened to overpower his and the sheriff’s heightened senses. Some came from synthetic cleaning supplies while others, like the lingering hickory and coffee scents, were natural. Underneath them all, however, lurked the faint smell of blood… human blood.

  “What in the hell happened here?” Butch wondered aloud, as he surveyed the living room.

  He grimaced when his gaze settled upon the overturned furniture lying in the middle of the room and then moved on to the mirror, still partially covered with a blanket. Most of the blanket hung loosely from the bottom of the mirror’s ornate brass frame. Shawn pawed at it, anxious, causing the frame to click noisily against the wall.

  “Evelyn?!... Evelyn, where are you??”

  John’s voice shook as he called out to her. No response, other than Shawn’s ears suddenly pointing upward. She wasn’t anywhere inside the cabin, but John couldn’t stop himself from calling again. Gone, just like Hanna. And the owner, or owners, of the minivan parked in the driveway next to Evelyn’s sports car were also gone…with Evelyn? He couldn’t say for sure. His guides quietly spoke to him, trying to relay some very important information. They talked about a trap and an act of deception.

  Notice all of the towels and blankets, Running Deer…. Your granddaughter put them there for a reason, but not to hide anything…. Think, Running Deer…Yes!… Evelyn put them there to keep the uninvited visitors out!….

  “Visitors?” he whispered to himself, worried as to what this meant and glancing at the mirror where Shawn continued to paw furiously. He called to the dog and the only response he got was a sharp whine before Shawn returned to his obsession.

  It’s as if I’m not even here…hell, he didn’t even bark at Butch this time.

  “‘Looks like Evelyn might’ve been working on something before she was interrupted,” observed Butch, moving over to the recliner.

  Her dormant laptop open, a large notepad with the top page filled with scribbled lines lay next to her half-full cocoa mug. Two similar mugs lay on the floor, where their congealed contents joined to form a sticky, muddy puddle around one side of the overturned coffee table. Butch bent down to examine the notepad, being careful to not touch anything. John’s living room had likely become a crime scene.

  “This could be important.”

  John walked over to him and confirmed Evelyn’s handwriting on the notepad. His brow furrowed, he scanned the page’s contents, having to pause at several points where the words and symbols she’d written were too blurred for his aged eyes to decipher. She’s in terrible danger!

  “Evelyn!!”

  Her name echoed beneath the ceiling’s arched apex above where they stood, and as before no answer. But the urge to call out her name continued to press him. He shouted her name again, even more forceful. This time, he ran down the hallway where the bedrooms sat with Butch following close behind him before the latest echoes died away.

  When he reached the guestroom, his eyes fell upon the spray of tiny glass fragments surrounding the doorway. Cautious, he stepped through the mess and peered inside the room, the exploded particles from the dresser mirror crunching beneath the soles of his shoes. Sunlight streamed in through a small gap above the closed curtains to the rooms only window, but not enough to see clearly. He turned on the overhead l
ight

  “What in God’s name is going on here?”

  Butch’s tone this time reflected his amazement. He stepped quietly around John, who remained in the doorway staring ahead in disbelief. Neither one seemed to notice that Shawn had finally shaken his fixation with the living room mirror, panting by John’s side. The floor in the guestroom covered in shiny glass chips, they formed a snow-like dust near the mirror’s frame on top of the dresser. All the dream catchers and spirit chasers had fallen to the floor. Even John’s prized warrior painting had been knocked from its perch high above the dresser.

  The worst damage to the room, though, had been wrought upon the wall behind the mirror’s empty frame. The pine logs burned away, a blackened, molten mass of mortar and copper wiring to the electrical outlet was left behind the dresser. Etched in red within the blackness appeared an image.

  “Gigv Inadv… Uktena?” mumbled John, incredulous, and yet at the same time reverent.

  “John… now you know you’re going to have to talk straight with me—none of that mumbo-jumbo.”

  “It means ‘Blood Snake’,” John told him evenly, after shooting him a disdainful look. “Uktena is the Great Serpent that guards the Land of Darkness beyond the Three Blood Rivers… sort of like the dreaded place between your heaven and hell, the state you call ‘purgatory’.”

  He waited for Butch’s nod to acknowledge the Catholic concept taught to him as a boy. Certainly they both agreed the coiled image on the wall resembled a snake or serpent more than any other creature. But now the hard part was to figure out the connection between it and everything else going on. Perhaps the entity’s calling card, or maybe its sign, like the wax seal used in olden times to announce the completion of a transaction? John shuddered at the thought.

  “Leave it to me, buddy,” Butch told him, looking as if he silently called upon the aid from one of his cherished Catholic saints while patting John on the shoulder. He suggested they return to the living room. “I’ll call in some help so we can get to the bottom of what’s going on here—and find your granddaughters, of course.”

  Ready to follow his lead out of the guestroom, John noticed something lying on the bed next to the pillows. An overnight bag he recognized, when he moved over to the bed to get a closer look at the name tag attached to its handle, he shook his head in further disbelief.

  “‘Someone you know, John?”

  Sheriff Silva instinctively reached for his hand radio even before John told him the names written on the tag. David and Miriam Hobbs. It not only added to the mystery, but also confirmed that something really bad had taken place during his absence.

  Butch stepped back out into the hallway and placed a call to his dispatcher, issuing a command for every available deputy to come to the cabin. Grateful, John nodded approvingly when Butch added that they needed to bring extra search equipment with them, but then frowned at the sheriff’s next request.

  “I need you to call Knoxville and get a forensic team out here, Norma,” said Butch into his handset, sheltering the receiver while turning away from John. “No bodies, but yeah, the request is warranted.... Tell them to get here pronto. From the looks of things we might have something important...something related to the UT homicides earlier this week.”

  Chapter Thirty

  What the hell?... Where am I??

  David looked around anxious, surprised to find he’d been shackled to a cold stone floor. Darkness surrounded him, and the lone light source came from a fiery glow beyond a doorway, roughly two hundred feet from him. As dim objects grew easier to define when his eyes adjusted, he soon could make out the outline of a corridor leading up to the doorway. Enormous columns, each five to six feet thick and several stories high, stood on either side of the corridor. Jeweled mosaics featuring serpentine dragons covered each column, and the colorful reptiles appeared to crawl down the columns’ length, with the creatures’ angry, open mouths, full of sharp teeth, at the base.

  As frightful as the images appeared, none of them came close to the hideousness of a face he’d seen recently. He couldn’t remember exactly when and where…. His eyes continued to adjust, and he soon recognized the motionless forms of Miriam and Evelyn, maybe thirty feet away. Bound similar to him, but sitting up, they were chained to a pair of columns on the corridor’s other side, clothed in the sweaters and jeans they had on when he last saw them. Cold enough in this place for their steady breaths to be visible, David shivered in his sweats and T-shirt, since about to get ready for bed when all hell broke loose…in John’s cabin? For some reason, that notion felt right and at the same time filled him with terror.

  Could this be a dream? It didn’t seem likely. Memory brought a flood of images…images of terrifying phantoms with no eyes, and that goddamned repulsive face pursuing him from inside the stretched surface of the dresser mirror in the guestroom of John’s cabin. He recalled screaming Miriam’s name before two clammy hands grabbed his ankles and dragged him out of the living room, down the hall, and then carried him airborne through the guestroom into the mirror, where his chin banged painfully on the dresser’s edge. From there, things got even weirder and far more frightening. He watched helplessly as the wall closed up behind him, and he dropped into a deep dark chasm.

  Other evidence confirmed the reality of his experience, like the bumps and stinging scrapes he felt on his chest, legs, and face. Not to mention his clothes still carried a raw earth odor.

  But now they were here, wherever ‘here’ was…. He looked worriedly around him, casting another nervous look back to where Evelyn and Miriam sat motionless. Are they still breathing?? It took a moment to discern misty tendrils rising into the air above their faces. What kind of place is this, anyway? Shackles and chains belonged in a prison or dungeon, but this ostentatious place looked like a palace or temple. The massive ornate columns pointed to some grand design.

  That looks like real gold inlays along the base of the pillars, and probably the same stuff that’s glistening inside the cornices up above…. Something about the eyes of the dragon face. If I can just get a little closer to the face….

  The eyes looked just like the ruby his aunt brought with her from Chattanooga…only bigger.

  “This shit can’t be real,” he mumbled.

  Denial, despite the smooth, cold surface that greeted his fingers as he reached up and grazed the ruby ‘eye’ closest to where he lay.

  A menacing moan resounded from behind him. The murmur faded, and when he glanced over his shoulder he couldn’t see anything. Beyond the reach of the faint illumination in front of him, everything lay shrouded in impenetrable darkness.

  While debating whether or not he should say anything, to call out to the presence or try to waken Miriam or Evelyn, the moan erupted again, only this time it rumbled through the cold stone floor below him. His immediate response to pull desperately on the heavy shackles secured tight to his wrists and ankles, he prayed for some way to free himself. Now that he had a better look at his bonds in the dimness, they appeared quite crude with a rudimentary lock. Forged, cold, heavy iron. He wasn’t going anywhere without a key to unlock them.

  Something snorted from within the darkness. Moisture formed in huge, twin mists that drifted toward the floor, only glimpsed as he again looked behind him.

  If that shit came from the nose or snout of whatever is back there, then it’s very, very big! ‘Jurassic Park’ big…. Gotta get these mothers off somehow… better do it quick before I become lunch!!

  Miriam uttered her own soft moan, and Evelyn stirred as well. The unseen menace lurking in the darkness answered his wife’s whimper with a meaner groan than before, which quickened David’s fear for her safety.

  “Miriam!” he whispered, harsh, trying to get her attention without creating further agitation for the monstrous creature—surely it had to be enormous, with its deep rumbling groans and additional snout mists nearly as big as he. “If you can hear me, see if you can slide out of your chains.”

  “Uh-h-
h…,” was her initial response. But then she awoke with a start and found that she couldn’t move, held fast by the heavy chains. She panicked. “David?? What’s going on?”

  “Keep your voice down!” he whispered again, this time less forceful. “There’s something in here with us and it…”

  An angry roar suddenly cut through the air above them, silencing him. He instinctively flinched and pushed himself against the base of the nearest column. An immense black shadow flew swiftly through the air above, just beneath the ceiling.

  Evelyn fully awake, she looked around herself in disbelief while Miriam cowered in terror, listening to the leathery flapping of giant wings while the mysterious creature passed over them as it moved toward the doorway. Its angry screeches echoed throughout the immense room and drew amazed expressions from all three, transformed into looks of terror when the flying menace sped back toward them, diving much lower on its return trip.

  It flew past them again, a reddish blur in its wake as it climbed back into the air before circling high above. Hovering again in darkness, David hated trying to figure out what it would do next.

  Evelyn joined Miriam in a frantic effort to free themselves, frantically pulling at the chains around their torsos. Scarcely able to move her bonds, she chanted incantations in a nervous tone that matched the whimpering pitch of Miriam’s cursed misgivings. Listening, David teetered ever closer to the edge of despair, since Evelyn had seemed so confident and sure of herself and her magic in his previous dealing with her. That definitely wasn’t the case now.

  Other noises echoed toward them from beyond the lighted doorway in the distance. Unlike the chilling screeches and roars from the menace lurking somewhere above, these noises were definitely human in origin. Blood-curdling screams and pleas for mercy from a middle-aged man and a young girl cut shrilly through the air, drifting down the corridor to them. Another voice also present, this one resonated deeply in a strange language. The owner of this voice, a male by the sound of it, seemed delighted by the man and girl’s cries from obvious suffering.