Chapter 68

After making a deal with Bryant about getting an exclusive, Annie caved in and stayed at home, next to the computer and phone. She slept off and on while lying on the couch, until Sam and Ben got up and her day began with fixing breakfast for her boys. She made pancakes, feeling the need to start the day with a sturdy meal.

When the phone rang, she jumped, but it was Beatrice. When Beatrice heard the news, she called the others. By noon, Annie’s house was filled with food and people. She still had no word from Bryant.

“It seems like there’s something we could be doing,” Sheila said, waving her arms around.

“That’s foolish. You need to leave these matters to the police,” Beatrice said.

“Humph,” Vera said, shoving a spoon of sweet potato baby food into Elizabeth’s mouth. “I don’t know about these Cumberland Creek Police.”

When the phone rang at 2:30, the boys were playing outside. It was unusually warm for November.

“We found her,” Bryant said. “She’s not right, but she’s alive.”

“What do you mean, she’s not right?” Annie asked.

A hush came over Annie’s kitchen. All the women were looking at her, as if they could hear the entire conversation if they stared hard enough.

“She’s either on drugs or has had some kind of mental collapse. Maybe both.” His voice was strained.

“Who did this to her?”

“Zeb McClain.”

“Jesus,” Annie said.

“Look, I promised you an exclusive. I should be back at the station in about twenty minutes. Can you be there? This is going to be one hell of a story.”

“Yes, I’ll be there,” she said.

“They found her. She’s still alive,” Annie announced after hanging up the phone.

“Thank God,” someone said among the sighs of relief.

Annie’s husband wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, Annie,” he said. “My Annie.”

She wanted to stay there in his arms forever at that moment.

Beatrice came up behind them and circled her arms around them. Soon Vera, Sheila, DeeAnn, and Paige were surrounding them.

GURU OF JENKINS MOUNTAIN

By Annie Chamovitz

Zeb McClain had a vision. In his vision, a ghostly specter came to him and told him he had been “chosen” to lead his people. He could rebuild the economy of his mountains with the money he’d earn by selling methamphetamines. Only the weak took drugs, and for the “race” to strengthen, drugs were necessary to help “weed” them out.

“The voices came to him only during certain times. Other times he received messages in runic patterns,” said Detective Bryant of the Cumberland Creek police force.

“We often see delusions of grandeur, hear about voices in these cases where a person sets him or herself up as a spiritual leader,” said Dr. Jane Ivan, consulting psychiatrist. “This man also suffers from a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He still relives his parents’ brutal murder.”

Whether as a victim, a misguided spiritual teacher, or simply a drug trafficker, McClain was not stupid. He set up a complicated system of trafficking drugs in and out of Jenkins Mountain and Jenkins Hollow, using cutting-edge technology, such as calcite. Only a few people are actually skilled enough to configure calcite in such a way that it would render their stash and lab invisible. Because of his money, he was able to attract and pay brilliant young scientists—like Luther Vandergrift—to experiment with the calcite, which Jenkins Mountain is filled with.

Invisibility? Isn’t that the stuff of fairy tales and Harry Potter?

Not according to researchers at the University of Birmingham, England. Using a paperweight-size lump of calcite, researchers were able to hide a paper clip or pin from view. The lead researcher, Shuang Zhang, noted that hiding a large dog would be possible with a crystal twenty feet long and around six feet thick.

The basic premise is that calcite is naturally birefringent, which means it sends light waves along different paths depending on their polarizations. Once polarized light is shone on the prism of calcite, the object within becomes invisible to those looking at it from outside.

Take a brilliant but misguided young scientist, like Luther Vandergrift, and now Jenkins Mountain has the largest “invisible” calcite compound in the world.

“Vandergrift’s DNA was all over the crime scenes,” Bryant confirmed. “But so was McClain’s. Vandergrift, of course, confessed to save McClain because he thought he was doing important work as a messenger of God. This is also why he carved messages into the body parts of the women who were killed, and tried to kill a baby, who was a product of one of these women and therefore could not be allowed to live.”

But the child, left to die of exposure, did survive and is now happily with its mother’s parents. Despite the shunning of their daughter, they accepted her baby into their home.

The New Mountain Order (NMO) group had 113 members living in an area just outside what is known as the “Nest” in Jenkins Hollow. They live in a dorm near the compound that housed the calcite and the drug lab. Many of its members claim no knowledge of the methamphetamine lab, the trafficking, or the murders. They claim they have come from far and wide just to learn the spiritual secrets Zeb McClain offered. Of course, the “secrets” McClain offered were in actuality old concepts, dusted off and placed in his own book—a mishmash of Eastern philosophy, Norse paganism, and Mennonite beliefs.

A search on the background of his followers reveals a group of drifters and outcasts. Whether they call themselves artists, healers, or scientists, they believed they found a home on Jenkins Mountain and a leader in Zeb McClain.

Hannah Bowman was a good friend of both of McClain’s earlier victims. Sarah, the mother of his child, had been shunned by her own community because of her association with him. She was adrift, staying with him for a while, then staying at Rebecca’s home. The two of them sometimes chatted with Hannah about NMO and Zeb’s visions and, chillingly enough, about the need for sacrifices.

“The term sacrifice was used like a metaphor—or so I thought. People gave their money to the organization. Women gave themselves to Zeb. All of this was done in the name of sacrifice. His spirit needed to be fed in order to maintain clear contact with God,” Hannah said.

But soon, she explained, the terminology became violent, and the next thing she knew, they were sacrificing animals.

The last time Hannah saw Sarah alive, Sarah was so frightened that she could barely speak. Though Hannah was able to calm her down, she still made no sense, muttering words about seeing Zeb with another woman and something about meth.

“I’m finished,” Sarah said to her. “I’m taking the baby and going to Pennsylvania to stay with my cousin. I want nothing to do with drugs.”

When Hannah read about the body of a red-haired young woman washing ashore in Cumberland Creek, she knew it was Sarah. When Rebecca’s body was found, Hannah grew even more frightened. Who to turn to? Who would believe her?

She knew she was in trouble the day Zeb McClain walked into the bakery with Luther Vandergrift.

“It was just the way they looked at me. I can’t explain it.”

Little did they know, she was expecting them and had already left a note asking for help.

Annie’s editor was pleased with the first article. Their paper was the first to break this story—of national significance because of the cult slant and the millions of dollars in illegal drugs that were found, in a cave in Jenkins Mountain, in a huge crevice that was covered with the “invisible” calcite crystal, which was discovered by complete accident. An officer tripped over it. She promised her editor more interviews and write-ups on this case. But after she was finished, she told him, she wanted to take an extended vacation. What she didn’t tell him was the rest of the story.