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“You know what I’ve been thinking ever since I heard about Meg disappearing?”
“No, what?” Cameron said.
Ray was still looking up at the drone as he spoke. “Aunt Ella said it in the meeting, and it got me tothinking. One of the old legends from the mountain that I grew up with was the one about the crying woman.”
Cameron nodded. “I thought the same thing when she said it. When I was a boy, I remember going hunting with my dad and uncles at night when they were running the hounds, and sitting around the campfire and hearing those stories.”
Ray was silent for a few moments, then glanced at Cameron.
“Did you ever hear her?” he asked.
Cameron shrugged. “I’ve heard all kinds of weird things up here. When a mountain lion screams, it sounds like a woman screaming. Heard that plenty of times. Have you heard the crying woman?”
Ray nodded. “More than once, but never in the daytime. Once I heard it when I was out in the pasture, looking for a cow and calf that didn’t come up. It was almost dark when I finally found them. The calf was caught in the fence, and of course the cow wasn’t about to leave it. Took me a bit to get the calf loose without getting stomped by the old mama. When the calf got loose, the old cow quit bawling, and the calf went straight to her to suck. So, as I sat waiting for the calf to feed before I headed them back to the house, I began hearing the sound of a woman crying…sobbing. I got my flashlight and climbed over the fence to check it out, but there was nothing there. And the farther I went into the woods, the farther away the crying became. Felt like I was being lured away. Got the chillsall over. If I’d kept walking in that direction, I would have wound up where we are right now, and I’m wondering if the crying woman was Meg’s ghost, trying to show me where she was at.”
Cameron shuddered. “Just because I’ve never seen something, doesn’t mean I don’t believe it exists. Ever since I read that last post in Brendan’s journal, I’ve had a feeling of obligation to right this wrong. Maybe part of it is my military training. Never leaving a soldier behind, but I want answers, you know?”
Ray nodded and looked up at the drone in the sky above them.
“Old Brendan would be hard pressed to believe what the world has come to,” he said.
“Not always for the better,” Cameron said. “But if we’re going to find any answers, it’s going to take modern technology to lead us to it.”
So, they sat, watching the drone overhead and the men running the GPR over the ground. One looking for structures hidden above ground, and the other looking for answers below.
The drone was in the air for almost three hours until the power pack began running low. They brought it down long enough to replace the battery, and sent it back up to finish the grid, while the crew running the GPR had moved away from the clearing and were pushingit through a narrow path through the woods that was encircling the cliff around the falls.
Every family on the mountain knew what was happening, and that a physical search would not take place until the area around the falls had been scanned. They needed a starting point and were hoping this technology would give them one.
It was midafternoon when it all came to a halt.
“I think we’ve gotten all the footage we need,” Brian said. “What about you, Eddie?”
Eddie Young nodded. “We’re good.”
They packed up their gear and headed back through the woods to where they’d parked, loaded up, and then turned to say goodbye.
“How long will it take before you can get back to us with footage?” Cameron asked.
“There’s a lot to go through. It will take at least a couple of days to view it and correlate the findings,” Brian said. “I’ll call you when we’re ready, and Eddie and I can come back and meet with you anywhere you say.”
Cameron nodded. “Then we’ll be in touch.”
They all got in their respective vehicles, turned around, and left the same way they’d come in. When Ray and Cameron stopped at the house, the two crews drove past the house to get back to the main road andhead back to the Serenity Inn, where they were staying during the trip.
“Thanks for this,” Ray said as Cameron got out.
Cameron shook his head. “I don’t need thanks for anything. I just want to find her.”
Ray’s shoulders slumped. “I know it’s a long shot, but so was Charlie’s survival. He made it, and I have a good feeling about this. Finding Brendan’s Meg will mean the world to all of us. Say hi to Rusty and give that giant dog of yours a good ear scratch from me.”
Cameron smiled. “I’ll do that. Take care and I’ll be in touch,” then he got in his SUV and headed home.
He felt good about today even though they still knew nothing. But it was a start, and that was something.
After what Annie Cauley had learned at the family meeting, she’d thought of little else. She’d heard the stories all her life of the crying woman on the mountain, but never to the point of relating to who it might be. But on the evening of the second day after the meeting, as soon as she got home from the bakery, she went straight to her bedroom and opened up an old trunk that once belonged to her granny.
She hadn’t looked in it in years and wasn’t certain what all was in it anymore, but she had a vague memory of being shown a piece of Native American jewelry when she was little and hearing her granny say it oncebelonged to a woman named Meg who’d been her great-great grandmother. But after what she’d learned, she couldn’t help but wonder now if the crying woman might be Meg, and, if the jewelry was in Granny’s trunk, she was going to take it to Aunt Ella to see what she could see.
