Cades Cove 01 - Cades Cove: A Novel of Terror (49 page)

In the past he would’ve refused the item. But sensing how badly she wanted him to have it, he smiled weakly and took it from her. Several page markers stuck out from the album, and she explained they were for photographs of particular note. She stood up and leaned over the table while opening the album’s clasp, and David turned to the first page she had marked. Filled with an assortment of black and white pictures, it contained several yellowed ones as well. Most images clear, the older photos looked as if someone had wadded and torn them up and then threw them in a musty box many years ago. One of these had been taped back together, and he recognized the image of the young man in the picture.

“
Who’s this?” His voice dropped to a whisper. He already knew, but needed her confirmation.

“
That’s my great uncle Zach,” she said. “I thought of him when you showed me Tyler’s school picture the other night.”

The image was identical to the ‘Zachariah’ he saw last night, including what appeared to be the same suit and tie.

“
From what my pa told me many years ago, the picture was taken shortly before he went to Europe back in the summer of 1916, to fight the Germans in World War I.”

“
I didn’t know we had anyone from our family participate in either world war,” said David, surprised and still staring at the picture. John’s speculation turned out true.

“
Your great, great uncle was one of the most decorated veterans from the First World War,” said Ruth. “Pa once told us he received several Purple Hearts and other medals for valor. There was a published story some years back from another Tennessee veteran that served with Uncle Zach who said he’d never known a braver man. He said it was almost like he dared the German troops to kill him if they could. But he survived the war with only a minor wound to his arm.”

She grew thoughtful while David moved to the next marked page, featuring photographs from a farm.

“
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 serious 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.