Smoky Mist: The Legend of the Ghost Train

Smoky Mist

Copyright © 2020 C.J. Baty

First Edition January 27, 2020

Published in the United States

Cover Art by Kelly D. Abell

Editing by Edits with a Touch of Grace

https://www.facebook.com/editswithatouchofgrace/

Cover content used for illustrative purposes only, and any person depicted is a model.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to an actual person, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental: unless stated otherwise and credit given to the appropriate entity.

The following story is set in the USA and therefore has been written in US English. The spelling and usage reflect that.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Owner, except where permitted by law. To request permission and for all other inquires, contact C.J. Baty by email.

Cbaty27@gmail.com

DEDICATION

This book, and the others in this series, is dedicated to the ladies who encouraged me to reach outside the box and write something new. You know who you are. Thank you for your guidance, patience, and friendship.

Author’s Note and Acknowledgement

A good deal of the information in this story will be new to you, the readers. Here are some things that might help the reading along.

*Though Tredown Camp is a fictional name, there were many such logging camps in what we now call the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. At one point in the 1920’s, the forest was nearly decimated. The trees you see now are not indigenous, meaning original tree growth. Some are replants and others grew after the logging was completed.

*Townsend, Tennessee, a small town that refers to itself as the Quiet Side of the Smokies, has a long and rich history.

*The two museums mentioned in this story, The Little River Lumber and Train Museum and The Townsend Historical Museum actually exist and were a great source of information for writing this story. The men who owned these businesses built a train engine that could climb high up into the mountains so the lumber could be carried down to the sawmills, where they were made into planks that would be used in building materials.

*Setoff houses, as referred to by the lumber companies, existed. You can see one at the Historical Museum.

*I’ve referenced cocaine in this story. Knoxville, Tennessee was famous for selling cocaine, whiskey, moon shine, and other drugs. Most importantly, people referred to the drug as George.

The Legend of the Ghost Train

Today, people say that on a quiet night in the mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, you can hear the far off shriek of a locomotive whistle and the rumble of the train’s cars as they clamor across the tracks. The legend claims the train moves through the valleys and mountains searching for lost souls that need a lift to the other side.

In the early Twentieth Century, railroads were not only a way to transport people, they also carried all types of goods across the country. Lumber from the forests of Tennessee, coal from the mines of Kentucky, and tobacco from the fields of Virginia were just a few of the industries that depended heavily on the railroad system. Even the Vanderbilt’s built a train system to carry the products needed to construct the great Biltmore Estate.

The Legend of the Ghost Train series will carry you off to a simpler time before WWII and the Great Depression. It’s about the love between two men that wasn’t spoken of and ghosts of past loves that still linger in the mountains. Some haunt the living looking for a loved one. Some want revenge for wrong doings. And, others are evil and will stop at nothing to repeat the past and kill again.

Family Lineage

Thompson      

Great Great Grandfather - Walter Thompson

Great Uncle – George Carter Thompson

Great Grandfather – William Thompson

Father – Daniel Thompson

Main Character – Carter Thompson

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Douglas

Great Grandfather – Jackson Douglas

Grandfather – Jesse Douglas

Father – Howard Lawson

Main Character – Jesse Lawson

Chapter One - Carter

Present Day

George ‘Carter’ Thompson pushed his way through the under foliage in the dense forest of the Smoky Mountains. He loved the pristine parts of the forest where tourists didn’t travel. This place was on the maps but there were no marked trails, so few inexperienced hikers came this far up in the mountains.

Spring had come early this year. New bright green grass poked up through the ground in random spots along the trail. Dogwood trees and rhododendron bushes had buds waiting for a stray beam of sunlight to reach them and draw them open. There were fresh bear scratching’s on a few trees, announcing to any human who strayed this far that they were awake from their winter slumber. It was the perfect place to walk, think, or plan for the future.

Carter bought an old restaurant on the main road leading into Townsend, spent a year remodeling and redecorating the building, and made it into the kind of place he would love to hang out in.

The Train Stop Bar and Grill opened with a quiet crowd in the fall of last year. Tonight, people would be standing outside, sometimes waiting an hour, just to get a table. Carter didn’t advertise. He didn’t even have a web page. He meant it to be a local place and if anyone knew about it, it was because someone had told them. Word of mouth was the best kind of advertising as far as he was concerned. The Train Stop was his baby and it would never be a tourist spot. 

He loved it in Townsend. This was his home. His family had lived here for generations. Carter knew all the stories. It was sad to think he was the last of the Thompson clan.

Arriving in America from Ireland in the early 1920’s, his great grandfather, William Thompson, and his younger brother, George, came to the Townsend Valley in Tennessee to work in the lumber yards. The two men worked for three seasons cutting down and processing the trees for shipment all across America.

Carter’s great great grandfather actually worked in the sawmill in town. His great Uncle George was athletic and somewhat of a loner, perfect for the solitary life lumberjacks lived. There wasn’t much information about the man accept what Carter had discovered in the Railroad Museum in town.

Carter volunteered at the Little River Railroad and Lumber Museum in Townsend to keep the history alive. He was named after his great uncle, George.  He preferred people called him by his middle name, Carter.  

He only knew snippets about his great uncle. He felt there was so much more to the man.  Carter knew that a train accident left his great-uncle’s left arm broken and that after that happened he’d moved high up into the mountains away from any civilization.

He lived in his setoff house while he built a cabin nearby. It was years before he finished the cabin. Carter owned it now but didn’t live there year round. There was no paved road and no electricity. He was truly roughing it when he went there. Fortunately, George had planned the location well. There were plenty of trees to keep the area shaded and an off shoot of the Little Pigeon River flowed nearby, providing clean water year round.

Carter continued to walk until he came to his favorite thinking spot. He stretched out, leaning his back against one of the few remaining indigenous trees. It was nearly thirty feet tall. There was a cool breeze blowing under its shady leaves.

Few tourists knew that most of the forest was harvested in the late 1920’s and what now grew were second generation replanted trees. At the museum, there were pictures of those majestic trees that had once stood hundreds of feet in the air. One photo showed more than a dozen men with outstretched arms trying to circle around the girth of one of those trees.

There was a part of him that longed to live back then. Life was simpler. People were simpler. No rushing madness or jobs in office buildings with windows you couldn’t open. Carter had hated working in those buildings.

Fresh out of college, he really thought being an accountant was the way he wanted to go. Life in Atlanta had been stifling, and not for him. It must have been the same for those gay men back in the 1920’s who were living a solitary, lonely existence. At least today, if the right man ever came along, he did have the opportunity to settle down, raise a family... live. Like that was going to happen while he hid away in these mountains.

Carter laughed at his inner drama queen. He’d been to the clubs in Knoxville and Atlanta. Sometimes the need to touch and be touched outweighed everything else, but there had never been anyone who had struck a deep cord in him. He’d even tried dating women. That had been another huge mistake. Luckily his life changed when he inherited enough money to start over. Through the years George’s property and money was left to one family member who then passed it down to another. Until, Carter’s Grandpa William passed away and left everything to Carter. The setoff house, the cabin and land they set on, and more money than he could ever spend. That’s when he came home.

The longer Carter sat under the tree, the more his mind drifted. Mr. Pillar had contacted him about finding another engine part in a remote section of the Tredown Camp area. He’d go check it out tomorrow. There’d been an email from Mark Winslow that he should answer. The guy was nice enough and the night they’d spent together had been good, but Carter just didn’t think it could become anything more. Then, he remembered that damned letter was still sitting on his desk at the museum. He refused to give it any of his free time today. A framed photo flashed briefly across his mind.

The picture hung at the museum. It was dated September 1923. Two men stood side by side in front of a train car loaded down with thirty foot logs. The older of the two, the more grizzled one, had his arm draped across the other younger man who glanced up at the older man with fondness in his eyes. Even in the old and faded photo it was clear to see. Carter wondered how they’d gotten away with that. It was evident that they were more than friends. He knew that they had lived together in the setoff house during the days when the camp was at its busiest. Could they have been lovers?

The older man was George Thompson, Carter’s great, great uncle. His grandpa William saw George a few times when he was a boy and remarked that Carter looked just like him. It was hard to tell with the bushy beard that covered his lower face in the photo. He also wore a wide brimmed hat covering the top of his head. There were no pictures of him without the beard. Something else his grandfather had said floated through his sleepy mind.

We never found his journals. Your dad and I searched the setoff house and the cabin but never found them. My pa was sure he kept journals and thought they would make a good book about the times.

If George had kept journals, Carter wondered where they could have been hidden and why. His eyes closed and he thought of the picture hanging in the museum again.

The younger man was Jackson Douglas. There was little information known about him, accept for the fact that he died in a train accident. He married a girl who lived on a farm close to Maryville. Her name was Rose, and she was carrying his unborn child, a child that he never saw.

Carter closed his eyes and drifted off to the sounds of the forest that surrounded him. He had time for a nap before he had to be back at the bar.

Good evening, Carter, Tracy said, as he walked through the door. So glad you decided to join us.

Sorry, Tracy. I fell asleep on the mountain again. Carter stepped behind the bar. Looks like a good crowd tonight. Everybody else show up?

Yep, even the new kid, Bucko.

His name is Butler. Carter reminded her, though he knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Yeah. I’ll keep that in mind. She laughed as she poured two drafts from the tap in front of her.

Every table was full and so was every seat at the bar. Carter knew the majority of faces. Local people who worked in the area were home from a day of work in Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg and stopped for a drink. The music was on the low side, but it was early yet.

Any problems I need to check out? he asked Tracy when she came back from delivering the two beers at the other end of the bar.

Nope. Been really quiet so far, she nodded to a man sitting at a table near the kitchen door. He’s been asking for you.

Carter turned to see Brady Howard drinking from a bottle of Coors© Light. Mentally he rolled his eyes. Brady’s reappearance in The Train Stop wasn’t an ideal situation.