The Foothill Spirits: Book Two - Shawnees & Runaway Slaves

By Betty Casbeer Carroll

Heather Jean's spirit merges with the ghost of Morning Glory after desecrating her burial mound and travels back to 1832, causing the same conditions in Morning Glory that afflicted Maggie Sue in a previous generation: nightmares, visions, reading without schooling, predicting the future, etc. Her mama becomes concerned and wonders what the connection is between Maggie Sue and Morning Glory, especially when she cries in the middle of the night for Nana. Who is Nana?

In the 29 years since Maggie Sue's untimely death at twelve, the accusations that she was a witch had become legend in the hill country of Southern Ohio, and for the settlers who remembered the child who healed them of typhoid fever, then died herself on Halloween. Even runaway slaves heard of Maggie Sue decades after her death and used her headstone as a guidepost as they crossed the Ohio River and followed the North Star to Canada, and freedom. It is said her tombstone still stands to this day, with the word "witch" carved on the back.

Morning Glory, with a Paleface papa and a Shawnee mama, struggles to find her true self as she helps her family hide runaway slaves while hiding from the militia themselves. However, the greatest danger are the bounty hunters who act like scavengers chasing prey as they trail escaping slaves across Ohio and the Great Lakes into Canada.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Betty Casbeer Carroll
• Release date: Aug 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465876003

Betty Casbeer Carroll

Retired from Wright-Patterson AFB, OH) as a computer specialist/programmer. Published two historical novels (of a planned six-book series called "The Foothill Spirits" for young adults and a book called "The Mystery of the Red-Brick House" for younger readers.Currently writing a memoir entitled "A Freethinker's Memoir of Bygone Days: [Ruminations, Observations, and Insights]" scheduled for publication in 2018.

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The Foothill Spirits Series

The Foothill Spirits – Book Two: Shawnees & Runaway Slaves

by Betty Casbeer Carroll

with illustrations by Jackie Carroll

Copyright 2001, 2005, 2011 by Betty Casbeer Carroll

Smashwords Edition 2011, License Notes:

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to Linda King of Portsmouth, Ohio, born and reared near the rolling foothills that overlook the beautiful Ohio River. Linda enjoys storytelling, loves people, understands their frailties, and demurs from passing judgment. Because of Linda, I know of people I never met, but wished I had.

Table of Contents

Part I: The Foothills in the Year 1997

Part II: The Foothills in the Year 1803

Part III: The Epilogue

Sources

Fact versus Fiction

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Other Books by the Author

About the Author

Connect with the Author

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Part I: The Foothills in the Year 1997

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Background

Heather Jean spends her summers in the rolling foothills of Southern Ohio with Nana, her great-grandmother, and Uncle Mike, Nana’s grown son. But in 1997, when she was twelve years old, she balked at coming, preferring to stay home near her friends. She lost that battle, leaving her a little on the rebellious side.

Synopsis of Book One: Frontier Life & the Shawnees

Bored and angry, Heather Jean dashes off into the forest behind Nana’s barn after a disagreement with Uncle Mike. An hour later, she finds herself on top of a foothill where she accidentally desecrates the grave of Maggie Sue. In the blink of an eye and one clang of Nana’s dinner bell at exactly 6:00 p.m., her spirit is transported back to the year 1803 when Maggie Sue was herself twelve years old.

Heather Jean’s spirit lives inside Maggie Sue for seven months, observing life on the Ohio frontier the year Ohio became a state. Her spirit can see and hear, and occasionally speak, through Maggie Sue’s eyes, ears, and tongue. Her presence inside Maggie Sue causes outward changes in Maggie Sue’s behavior which neither Maggie Sue nor her parents understand: she can read, even though she has had no schooling; she has visions of things she has never seen, such as TV sets, automobiles, and telephones; she predicts events that will happen, such as slaves being freed and women getting the vote; and she has nightmares, calling out in the night for Nana and Uncle Mike, whom neither she nor anyone else knows.

Maggie Sue is captured one night by a Shawnee tribe after she was bitten by a copperhead in her family’s cornfield. They adopted her, healed her snakebite and taught her their ways. When she learned her family and other squatters had been chased from their homes by the militia, she ran away from the Shawnees and leaving behind her best friend, twelve-year-old Fernleaf. She found her family sick with typhoid fever, and returned to the Shawnees to learn how to heal them.

Because of rumors that she could read and had healed folks of the typhoid, kids began to call her a witch. Then when she became ill herself and died on Halloween near the witching hour, other folks said that was proof, and the rumor spread across the rolling foothills, through its valleys and coves, and eventually crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky.

When Maggie Sue died, Heather Jean’s spirit is released and returns to her unconscious body, lying in wait on Maggie Sue’s grave. She awakens, and remembers nothing of her experience on the Ohio frontier. She reads the inscription on Maggie Sue’s tombstone. Who was Maggie Sue? Why did she feel like she knew her? She looked at her watch. It was nearly one minute past six. She felt like she’d been gone for weeks, maybe months. Yet not even a minute had passed. Why?

Chapter I of Book Two (next page) begins with Heather Jean awakening on the hilltop after her spirit returns.

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Chapter I: The Burial Mound -Summer 1997- 6:01 PM

Heather Jean felt a jolt. Her body jerked, and she opened her eyes, trying to focus. But the sky above was spinning, and her hands were flailing in all directions. She was lying on the ground, and the fading echo from Nana’s dinner bell was ricocheting off the distant foothills. She felt groggy and disoriented. Had she been asleep?

She laid like that until the whirling stopped. Then she glanced around, still flat on her back. A tall rock at her feet jutted up from the ground and towered overhead. She had seen it before, but when? A strawberry vine, ripe with fruit, circled the rock as it wound itself upward. Her mouth watered. She was hungry and her stomach growled so loud that squirrels stopped their chasing and woodpeckers ceased their incessant pecking just to gawk.

Her mind was blank, not comprehending nor even caring, that she was staring at the sky and listening to the echo from Nana’s dinner bell bouncing off the foothills. She looked at her Mickey Mouse watch. It was nearly one minute past six, almost time for the second clang. Why did she feel like she’d been gone for weeks, even months, when not even a minute had passed.?

She didn’t get up right away, but watched the clouds overhead stretch into thin lace patterns and mesh into fluffs of cotton candy. When she heard the second clang of Nana’s dinner bell, loud and demanding, it startled her and jerked her memory open like a scabbed sore.

Images trapped inside her brain flowed out as scrambled and meaningless pictures until she shuffled them in her head like a deck of cards, and put them in logical order:

She was bored listening to Nana talk about the olden days and complained to Uncle Mike, who called her a whiner.

She got angry and ran into the woods, past the centuries-old barn where water trickled beneath its rotting floorboards.

When a thick white substance rolled down and covered the hillside where she had stopped to rest, she scrambled to the top of the hill and grabbed a tall stone for support. She heard the distant clang of Nana‘s dinner bell calling her home to eat and as she started to leave, a cool breeze blew across her face and a girl with flowing blonde hair appeared out of nowhere.

She couldn’t remember what happened next. Was the girl with the flowing hair a ghost? Had she fainted? Is that why she woke up on the ground? She raised up on one elbow and looked closer at the tall rock looming overhead. Yikes! It was a tombstone. She was lying on a grave.

She rolled off immediately, hoping she hadn’t desecrated the spirit lying beneath the dry weeds. Heather Jean, never stand, sit, or lie on a grave, Grandma had warned her time and again whenever they visited cemeteries. Never disturb the dead. She never told her why, and it sounded so ominous Heather Jean was afraid to ask.

She stood up and saw a name carved in the rock, and rolled it silently across her tongue, then whispered out loud, Maggie Sue. A vague memory, a feeling of déjà vu , washed over her. She felt like she knew her. But who was she?

Being curious like she was, Heather Jean peered closer at the inscription. Here lies Maggie Sue Douglas. Born in the Year of our Lord on January 2, 1791. Passed to her Heavenly Reward on October 31, 1803.

Goosebumps ran up her spine and down her arms. She was twelve years old. Her very same age. She even died on Halloween. Ohmygosh! How spooky!

If her grandma was here, they’d make up a story about her. They took outings to cemeteries the way other people go to the lake, and make up stories about the people buried there. Her favorite graves are babies, with angels and cherubs carved on their headstones, even if they do make her cry.

She began to slide, and looked around for something to grab. Uncle Mike taught her to be real careful on the foothills. They were so steep, you could tumble right down to the bottom without even stopping. There was no end of terrible things that could happen. Poisonous snake bites from copperheads, broken bones from jagged rocks, and deep scratches from thorn-covered thistles and underbrush.

To get a better footing, she inched around to the other side of the tombstone, keeping an eye out for copperheads. The word ‘witch’ was scrawled across the back.

She began to shake, and let go of the rock like it was defiled. She grabbed a nearby wisteria vine and pulled herself on to a small knoll covered with moss and strewn with morning glory vines and trumpets of blue, purple, pink and white blossoms. It was shaded by a weeping willow that brushed the ground like a broom with its long fronds, sweeping the mound and Maggie Sue’s grave each time the wind blew.

She caught her breath and turned toward the west. The sun still glowed through the trees, not yet ready to splash the blue sky and the white clouds with its magic brush. She wanted to watch the trumpets close and wait for the evening sunset, but felt too unsettled. A weird feeling was gnawing inside, like she was trying to recall something that kept eluding her.

Her mind was full of sounds that wouldn’t let go, like a melody that stays in your head for days and you can’t get rid of it no matter what. Even when you listen to other songs, it just stays there like a broken record, going around and around, over and over, until it finally stops on its own. But it wasn’t music Heather Jean heard. It was the sound of mothers and children moaning and groaning in agony and the muffled war cries of their fathers with the rhythmic boom, boom of drums in the background.

She placed both hands over her ears, but the noise only became louder. She dropped her hands, one at a time, and listened impatiently until the moans of the past slowly ebbed away. Then she sighed with relief and sat on the edge of the mound, rubbing her fingers across its thick texture.

She pulled off her tennis shoes, shook out the gritty dirt, stood up in her bare feet, and bounced on the green moss like a trampoline. But she barely started when she sensed something nearby and stopped. Was she being watched? The woods were full of bobcats and packs of coyotes. Sometimes at night she could hear them wailing, like a woman crying.

She shuddered, and glanced down at the valley. A thick fog was rolling around the bend toward Nana’s barn like a