Southern Belle (13 page)

Like a twisted Romeo and Juliet, Tucker Hull had seduced a young Moravian woman and kept her amongst the Brotherhood for as long as he could manage. She was his spy.

Max shook his head. "No way could this end well."

Most of the other sources Max uncovered were not so direct, but diaries that on the surface appeared innocuous, actually held enough clues for Max to identify as members of Hulls growing cult. One in particular, the diary of Peter Cottonwall, mentioned a beautiful set of thirteen handbells which his leader, the beloved T, found joy in having his lady play. Apparently Tucker's Juliet played quite well and charmed many the few times she slipped away from the Brotherhood.

Tucker might have been planning to use his spy for many years, but she had other expectations. In another partial letter with the same handwriting, one that the library did not recognize belonged to the same author (but then, most libraries were so poorly funded that they may not have yet gotten to the letter for classification), she wrote:

Please do not be cross. To have both you and Father forsake me would be more than I dare consider. If not for Mother, I suspect I would be thrown from the house this very night. As it is, though, I have been given a fortnight and no more to make arrangements for my removal from the house and the Brotherhood.

Whether this naive girl's father discovered the truth or she outright told him in a fit of defiance, Max could not tell. Regardless, the end result remained the same. She left her home and went to her lover's arms.

Except according to Cottonwall's diary, her arrival brought only trouble. She appeared unexpectedly (as far as Cottonwall knew) during a group meditation session, and Tucker would not embrace her. She had failed him, and he ordered her to leave. The scene that occurred involved plenty of crying, pleading, and begging but in the end, Tucker refused even to look at her. Cottonwall wrote:

The strangest sight of it all occurred next. For as I attempted to shut out this annoyance, per T's instructions, I could not but help myself and I snatched a glimpse of this once-prized witch who had now fallen from T's graces. T had his back to her and though she continued to say the words of begging for forgiveness, her eyes told a uniquely alternative story. She looked upon T with a fire that bespoke of the demons of old. An ancient, horrifying glare that has caused me no amount of a good night's rest since I laid eyes upon it. I fear what she has planned for T. I fear for all of us.

The next few years progressed without incident, but Max felt confident that during that night of betrayal, this brokenhearted witch cursed the thing that Tucker loved about her most — the handbells. The name, the Bells of the Damned, cropped up later, once the bodies began to fall. And a lot of them fell.

On March 29, 1858, the body of a slave named Eli was discovered in a pond in Bethania, North Carolina. Suspicions fast turned to Eli's wife, Lucy Hine, a freewoman, and a slave named Frank. While searching Lucy's home, authorities discovered the floor still wet from being washed yet traces of blood were visible. Once the floor dried, a blood trail clearly led from the house to the pond. More blood was found on Frank's clothing. The two were convicted of the murder and, by 1859, executed.

But nobody ever could figure out the motive. Lucy and Frank denied being lovers. And Eli was not known for being abusive or in any manner cruel to his wife.

"Why he even bought her a beautiful set of handbells," one woman was quoted in a newspaper article.

In November 1873, according to a report in the
People's Press,
Sarah Tilkey attended her regular music class at Salem Female Academy. The Academy for girls had been founded by the Moravians in 1772, a unique step in the South, and had built a solid reputation for excellence. In fact, girls from all over the country sought a position at the school.

While practicing her music, young Sarah sat close to one of the stoves. It had been a particularly cold winter, so she may have sat closer than normal. That was when an ember popped and landed on her dress.

As she dashed through the school screaming, flames engulfed her body. Physicians rushed to the school, but the burns were too extensive. After a few prayers were read for her, she passed away.

While Max could not learn what instrument she played, he did know that the Bells had been donated to the school two years earlier by the family of Thomas Lash — owner of the murdered slave, Eli.

There were other cases that might have been attributable to the Bells, but Max could not find the primary sources to confirm. For his own purposes, he considered them valid cases because it let him continue to follow the trail of bodies. This included a few suspicious deaths at the Salem Hotel, a double murder, and a lynching.

Then came the case of Ellen Smith. There was a relatively enormous amount of information available about the case since it made headlines in almost every local and surrounding paper. Even the
Union Republican,
one of the larger presses, wrote numerous articles throughout the years following the case.

In the early 1890s, Ellen Smith had been employed as a maid. She was a poor, portly girl who worked diligently but was considered to be "an idiot" — a term which Max knew back then meant she had some form of mental disability. Most people liked her and thought of her as a good worker. She was fifteen.

Then she met Peter DeGraff, a good-looking ladies' man, slim and fit, smooth tongued, and a bit unpredictable. He met Ellen in January 1890 and began courting her soon after. He was twenty-one.

DeGraff showered Ellen with trips to buy clothes, visits to the local barrooms, and plenty of food. The money, the handsome man, and the attention stole her heart. She became madly in love with him. She also became pregnant.

Unmarried and expecting, she was sent to live and work for a man named Captain Stagg. Max could not find any more about this man, but he did discover another Union Republican article (this one from 1894 looking back at the case) in which the reporter stated that though Ellen Smith delivered her child, it was either stillborn or died within days of birth. Shortly after, Ellen returned to Winston and looked up her lover, Peter. But DeGraff wanted nothing to do with her.

Ellen began stalking DeGraff, and his refusals intensified. On several occasions, people overheard him threatening to kill her. But then suddenly, he behaved nicely to her and sent her a note. The note professed his love for her and asked that she meet him on an upcoming evening by the spring at the new Zinzendorf Hotel.

Built in Winston's West End, the Hotel had been the brainchild of R. J. Reynolds and other community leaders. It was an enormous structure, reminding Max of a Disney castle made of wood. As a gift to the Hotel, an anonymous source donated a beautiful set of thirteen handbells — white with a red stripe and curious markings on the inside lip. They were prominently displayed in the lobby entrance. It was hoped this resort hotel would help make Winston a business and vacation center for the region.

That night in 1892, however, the hopes were in Ellen's heart. She wore a dark calico skirt and a light-colored blouse, and she bought a new, yellow handkerchief, perhaps as a gift. She then headed off to the Hotel.

The following morning, a hotel employee came upon a gruesome scene. As reported in the
Union Republican
: "A white apron was found hanging upon a bush near the body, which was that of Ellen Smith, which was lying face downward, bloody, and the body swollen and disfigured and a prey to flies."

"The old journalists sure could paint a picture," Max said.

What followed went beyond the scope of Max's research but in the end, after much drama and several years, Peter DeGraff was convicted of the murder and hanged. This unfortunate and ghastly murder became one of the biggest stories and trials in all of Winston-Salem history. For Max, however, the most astonishing aspect to the tale came when he learned of the ill-fated hotel.

On Thanksgiving Day 1892, the same year as the Smith murder, a fire broke out in the wooden hotel. It spread fast, and in no time became uncontrollable. Guests and staff rushed to safety in the distance, bringing with them whatever possessions they could manage. A photographer took advantage of the tragedy and made a picture of the event.

Max's heart stopped as he stared at the familiar photo. The massive building awash in flames and smoke while a crowd of onlookers gawked from their chairs and boxes. It was the same photograph Joshua Leed had died trying to give him.

Max picked up the picture and stared at it. There had to be something more to see than just the fact that the hotel had a connection to the Bells of the Damned. Leed could have told him that much. Instead, the man risked and lost his life for the photo.

"What am I supposed to see?"

Using the magnifier on his smartphone, Max searched the image starting in the top left corner and working his way methodically across and down. There were strange images within the thick smoke pouring out of the hotel, but Max thought that might only be his imagination seeing things much like recognizing objects in the shapes of clouds. Whatever Leed wanted him to see had to be more substantial than that.

When he reached the crowds, he found that most of the people had their backs to the camera. A young child stared at the camera, the body blurred a bit but the eyes glowing bright. Was this it? Max couldn't be sure. The figure had a definite supernatural feel to it, but calling it as such made Max feel like he had found Big Foot in a shadow on blurry film.

Then he saw it, and he knew right away Leed had wanted to show him this. He knew it from the way his hands tingled and the way he had to remember to breathe. Sitting behind the blurred figure, clear as the fire itself, Max spotted a young woman, her profile showing enough detail that he knew the face. Without a doubt, he looked upon the same woman as in the photo Dr. Ernest had saved. The same photo Drummond hid from. Strangest of all, the woman in Ernest's photo was no older than the woman at the Zinzendorf Hotel fire — but they were taken almost fifty years apart.

Chapter 13

When Max entered his office, he found Sandra on her computer working on the code and Drummond floating around the ceiling humming the theme to the '80s television show Mike Hammer. The old ghost had tightened his face like a child throwing a tantrum. When he saw Max, he swooped down.

"It's not that great a life being a ghost, and your wife is making it worse."

Sandra ignored the commotion, so Max headed to his desk.

Drummond grabbed his hat and threw it on the ground, but it vanished and reappeared upon his head. "You know, you ought to be nicer to me. I do nothing but help you."

Max snapped his eyes upon Drummond, silencing the ghost. "Sandra." She didn't answer. Louder, Max called again. "Sandra!"

She jumped and whirled around, her eyes wide with fear. When she saw her husband, she relaxed and pulled her mp3 player's buds out of her ears. Despite his anger at Drummond, Max had to laugh.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Drummond wagged his finger at them both. "Some days, you two are in cahoots against me. It's not fair. I had to spend decades alone here and now that I've got some company, you guys keep trying to shut me out."

This brought Max right back to the problem. "You're the one shutting us out. You've been lying to us ever since you saw that article about Dr. Ernest's murder."

"You better watch it with the accusations."

Max opened his notebook and slapped down the photograph of the Zinzendorf Hotel fire.

"You're getting good at that," Drummond said.

"I'm not in a joking mood."

"Fine, fine. What's the big deal. It's a photo of the big Zinzendorf fire. Pretty famous photo, locally. Not exactly that big of a find."

Max pulled out his smartphone and brought up the snapshot he took of the magnified portion. "Look familiar?"

Drummond's sarcastic expression dropped away. His chin quivered a moment before he locked up his jaw in a tight clench. Narrowing his eyes, he flew to the back corner of the office.

"Come on," Max said. "I'm not an idiot. You've lied to us repeatedly, afraid we would find out about this woman. We've got murders and witch covens and these cursed handbells, and I know you have information for us."

"The handbells are cursed?"

"They're called the Bells of the Damned, and I'm pretty sure they had something to do with this fire as well as quite a lot of deaths for more than a century."

"They're cursed."

"That's right. I want to know how that's connected to your girl here."

With a bewildered gaze, Drummond looked across the room to Max. "And that's really her? Sitting there, watching the fire in 1892?"

"I think so."

"Then I was wrong." Drummond lowered his head and shuddered. Max swore Drummond sounded relieved. A moment later, the ghost returned to the desk, sniffling and dabbing at his eyes. "I'm truly sorry that I caused the two of you trouble and worry and all. I didn't know I was wrong all this time. I thought ..."