The Raven Mocker (7 page)

“
What’s going on, Dad?” Tyler crept to the top of the stairs, with Ruth, Jillian, and Christopher right behind him on the staircase.

“
We’ve got it under control, son,” said David, softer this time as he didn’t wish to frighten his kids any worse. “Auntie…you might want to come up here, since it looks like everything took place in the guestroom you’re using.”

Her face immediately dropped and she gingerly moved up the stairs past the children. She gasped once she reached the guestroom’s doorway, looking past her nephew to the damage wrought to her belongings.

“
Oh, Lord…O-oh, Lord,
no!”
she stammered, stepping past David into the room.

He assumed she’d be most embarrassed and therefore concerned about her undergarments tossed about the room. Not so. Her focus on the open drawer, she peered inside, visibly upset to find it empty. Bending down, she ran her fingers carelessly through sharp mirror fragments on the floor beneath the drawer.

“
Auntie, what are you looking for?” he asked gently, kneeling down beside her. “Let me help you.”

She looked at him, tears welling in her eyes. Silent, she gathered the strewn bank papers and accepted his offered hand to help her stand back up.

“
I was hoping to surprise ya’ll at Christmas,” she told him, turning to look at Miriam as she held out the papers. Her lips quivered. “This is the trust for the proceeds from the farm that was sold some years back near Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Don’t you remember me telling you about it in October?”

David took the papers from her while Miriam came over and gently wrapped her arms around Ruth.

“
That farm sold for
this
much? Really??” He couldn’t believe it, his eyes growing wider once he saw the trust’s current seven figure value. When he showed it to Miriam, her reaction mimicked his, and as Ruth pulled away from her she nodded to confirm the trust figure’s accuracy. “Auntie… you need this money to get you through your later years—you keep it,” he said, handing the papers back to her.

“
Not without your signature, David,” she said, waiving him off. “I’ve got enough money set aside that I don’t need this. It’d be put to better use by ya’ll, especially with the kids getting older and Tyler just a few years away from college and all.”

She started to weep, and David moved to comfort her.

“
I just don’t understand why this happened?” she asked, to no one in particular. She then pointed back to the empty dresser drawer. “I brought some jewels that have been in the family for more than eighty years, maybe longer…. Now they’re
gone!”

She wept harder, which told David this loss especially upset her. He couldn’t picture the jewels in question being more valuable than the trust fund, but he understood the emotional value they might have for her, witnessing similar reactions many times in his CPA work. As his clients grew older, their prized physical assets often became hard to part with—even when the items were valuable enough to eradicate an outstanding debt. Preserving such heirlooms for their descendants had instead become the priority, regardless of any deepening detriment to themselves.

A glowing mist suddenly appeared above the dresser. The sulfuric odor became far more pungent and the mist grew denser, crackling with energy, until all at once a bright flash filled the room.

In a panicked rush David and the women ran out of the room, nearly toppling the kids, who murmured about the horrible stench. The sound of four glass-like objects hitting a wood top emanated from inside the room. Everyone hushed their voices and listened while the objects rolled from one end of the dresser to the other and then back again. David peered inside the room, with Miriam clinging to his sleeve. The mist began to dissipate, steadily weakening until they could see everything in the room clearly again. Ruth gasped in surprise.

The very diamonds and sapphires she brought with her had reappeared.

David approached the dresser warily, with Miriam and now Ruth holding on to the back of his shirt as they crept behind him They watched the jewels vibrate and move to form a line in the dresser’s center, upon a crumpled doily protecting the furniture’s original dark patina. Janice, meanwhile, tried to comfort the younger kids crying hysterical after all they’d witnessed during the past twenty minutes. Tyler vacillated between hanging back with his siblings and stealing a peek over his mom’s shoulder.

When David, his wife and aunt reached the dresser, the line of jewels shifted into a zigzag shape, with the clear diamond at the top and the shorter gems following from longest to shortest. It startled Miriam and Ruth enough to where they backed away from the dresser and almost tripped over Tyler, who also witnessed this phenomenon.

At first glance, it reminded David of what Zorro, the legendary Spanish hero, might leave behind. But something about it frightened him far more than what might lately be considered another typical Hobbs’ paranormal experience. He’d seen a similar symbol back in October when he desperately sought to appease Allie Mae’s ghost as she sought to kill him. The symbol represented the demon that inspired her heightened malice, according to Evelyn Sherman, John Running Deer’s granddaughter. He recalled Evelyn’s words, that the entity ‘enjoyed wickedness for its own sake, without cause or provocation’.

David believed that Allie Mae’s spirit was now at peace, her axe to grind against the heirs of his lecherous ancestor, Billy Ray Hobson, finally buried in Cades Cove. But the other entity, the one who fueled her wrath…a different story entirely. Didn’t John’s letter from a week ago say something about how he and Evelyn believed this spirit was highly agitated—awakened from its pseudo-rest by some careless desecration of its unearthed tomb within the once-hidden, sacred ravine in Cades Cove?

Despite Ruth’s pleas to pick up the jewels before they disappeared again, he ushered everyone out of the room, urging them to hurry downstairs while he closed the door behind him. The violent disturbance inside the room began anew as they raced downstairs, and both David and Ruth were witness to the door bending out against its hinges before they followed the rest of the family down the staircase. By the time they regrouped in the living room—with their coats gathered from the foyer’s hall tree, ready to flee the house at a moment’s notice—Miriam was already on the phone with Sara Palmer, seeking her counsel.

A promising start to the day had just been ruined.

Chapter Eight

“
Dinner’s ready, everyone!”

Hanna Sherman, John Running Deer’s youngest granddaughter stood proudly next to the oak dinner table in John’s cabin. The slender, leggy, auburn-haired coed who had just completed the first semester of her junior year at nearby King College in Bristol, Tennessee motioned for John and her older sister, Evelyn, to come join her without further delay. She’d spent the past two hours in the kitchen preparing a barbeque rib recipe she picked up from one of her sorority sisters at school, and could hardly wait for her grandpa and big sis to try it.

“
Well, don’t make me wait to find out what you think!” she scolded playfully as they took their places at the table, John and Evelyn seated at the opposite long ends of the table and Hanna in the middle.

The side of the table across from Hanna’s chair sat flush against the varnished log wall at the rear of John’s cabin, just below a portrait of her late grandmother, Sharon Running Deer. An old antique gas lantern, converted to electric long before either granddaughter’s birth, cast a soft glow upon the portrait and the table.

“
Don’t make
you
wait?” teased Evelyn. “What about our stomachs that have been growling since two o’clock this afternoon?”

Her lovely smile matched that of her younger sister’s. The only real difference between them, other than Evelyn being two years older and slightly taller than her twenty-one year-old sibling, was in the color of their shoulder length hair and of their eyes. Unlike Hanna, Evelyn’s hair flowed raven black, in line with her Cherokee heritage. Hanna’s eyes, though shaped the same as Evelyn’s, with a delicate slant that also pointed to their mutual Native American heritage, were hazel; while Evelyn’s eyes a soft deep brown.

“
Just for that, you can help bring the rolls and potatoes over to the table!” Hanna retorted, moving back into the kitchen.

She soon returned with a large ironstone serving platter stacked high with enough ribs to feed two or three more mouths than were gathered at John’s home this evening. Evelyn came right behind her with the potatoes, loaf of warm bread, and a green bean casserole that she somehow managed to balance between the other items without dropping anything. She whistled under her breath once she saw the horde of ribs on the table.

“
Unless you’re planning on your boyfriend, Guy, and his friends to join us tonight, I believe you’ve outdone yourself, little sister,” chided Evelyn, laughing. “Why on earth did you cook this much food when it’s just the three of us?”

“
Grandpa will eat what’s leftover this week, right?”

Hanna looked over at John, who just now took his seat at the head of the table. Though visibly tired, his strong features and warm eyes in the same color and shine as Evelyn belied his sixty-seventh year on Mother Earth. Only the deepening lines and spreading gray in his full head of black hair and traditional braids gave that truth away.

He smiled tenderly at her and Evelyn, and then smirked. His granddaughters mistook this reaction as his amusement over their play-fight, when in truth how different they were from one another.

Evelyn neared completion of her civil engineering degree with plans of using that knowledge to improve the lot of her Cherokee brethren living on the reservation in North Carolina. Hanna wanted to be a journalist in a big city like New York. Even their style of dress reflected diametrical tastes, with Evelyn wearing comfortable worn-out jeans and a flannel shirt today while Hanna opted for a designer sweater and matching thermal tights. Yet, they rarely fought about anything—each one tolerant and nonjudgmental of the other’s preferences. That especially made John proud.

“
The ribs should stay good until the end of the week,” he agreed. “At least I’ll have something healthy to snack on tomorrow afternoon instead of cake and cookies.”

“
Are you saying you don’t want me to make my traditional German chocolate cake for you tomorrow? You know Grandma wouldn’t be happy to hear that.” Evelyn feigned hurt feelings with a sorrowful pout.

“
I didn’t say I wouldn’t have
any
cake—just not as much this year,” he advised, his eyes twinkling impish. “I can’t let this get any bigger, or I won’t be able to outrun the momma black bears in spring.”

He patted his stomach, which his granddaughters readily agreed had grown a few inches since last Christmas. Much of the weight had been put on since October, after David Hobbs returned home to Colorado. Hanna especially worried about this, and he overheard Evelyn tell her it was because he missed the friend with whom he had forged a strong bond.

But it surprised him that neither one noticed he actually lost ten pounds since Thanksgiving. Then again, neither girl knew about the continued assaults he’d endured from the anisgina trying to breach the shaman spells he invoked to fortify his cabin. So far, the angry demon couldn’t find a way inside, and the only reason he agreed to share both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the girls at his Smoky Mountain home.

Up until now, during their weekly visits or telephone checkups with him, neither one had been exposed to the spirit’s cacophonous wrath as it bore down on the cabin. Determined to shelter his thoughts from Evelyn, she would otherwise figure everything out and then intervene. He didn’t want her involved this time—too dangerous—though a certainty that one or both girls would eventually witness the entity’s anger. Still, he held out hope it would leave them alone until after Christmas, when his granddaughters returned to Knoxville together.

“
All right, Grandpa…just as long as you enjoy yourself tomorrow and on Christmas Day, I can live with that,” said Evelyn, before turning her attention to Hanna again. “Well, sis, do you want me to say the grace or would you like to handle it tonight?”

“
You go ahead. The cook needs her rest after a hard day’s work.”

Hanna grinned mischievous and winked, and the three shared a good chuckle that lasted through the Cherokee blessing Evelyn recited. John’s worry about the apparent sacrilege coming back to haunt them was cheerfully disregarded by Hanna. Evelyn offered her assurance that the Great Spirit should be merciful during a time of such joyous celebration as Christmas.

Excellent ribs, all three indulged themselves much more than expected, leaving just enough leftovers to cover John through Christmas afternoon. Afterward, they retired to the living room, where he built a roaring fire in the great stone fireplace that dominated the room. Hot chocolate and an apple cobbler that Evelyn prepared earlier that morning when she and Hanna first arrived added the perfect finale to Hanna’s successful supper.

Outside the cabin, darkness shrouded the entire landscape, with the only light emitted from the porch and security lamps. The kitchen clock’s soft chime confirmed the time. 5:30 p.m. A sharp whine accompanied by urgent scratching resounded from the back door.