Morrison lay on the ground, trembling for about 15 seconds, kicking his legs, scratching at the void. Then he froze. Isaiah watched from the tree, saw Morrison die, felt his hands tremble, not from fear, not from guilt, but from the adrenaline flooding his system. From the knowledge that he had just killed a man, that it had been easy, that Morrison had never expected this.
Isaiah waited another five minutes to make sure Morrison was truly dead and that the dogs weren’t returning. Then he climbed down from the tree, cautiously approached, and checked for a pulse. The rock was embedded in Morrison’s skull, driven into the bone by the force of the impact. Isaiah didn’t remove it.
Touching the body was too risky. He turned and disappeared into the woods, moving quickly but carefully, leaving no trace. The entire incident, from the shot to his departure, took less than three minutes. Morrison’s body was found three days later by another slaver who went searching when he failed to return. The cause of death was obvious.
A massive skull fracture in the left temple. But the mechanism was puzzling. No gunshot wound, no blade marks, only a circular depression in the skull, about an inch in diameter, with a smooth stone embedded in the bone. The local sheriff examined the body and concluded that Morrison had fallen and struck his head on a rock. Case closed.
An accident. Isaiah committed the perfect murder. The second murder occurred two weeks later, on November 18, 1851. Thomas Whitfield, 38, was another lone slaver working with dogs. Isaiah ambushed him on a trail near the Edeto River. He used the same method, striking Whitfield in the head with a stone from a height of 60 feet. Whitfield fell silently. His dogs fled.
Isaiah disappeared. The body was found four days later. Once again, it was determined to be an accident resulting from a fall. The third murder occurred in December 1851. Marcus Johnson, 45, was more cautious than the previous two, constantly scanning the woods and never stopping for long. But caution wasn’t enough. Isaiah waited in place for six hours before Johnson finally stopped in the right place.
A single rock, shot in the temple, killed him before it hit the ground. But this time, Johnson’s partner, Samuel Brooks, found the body within hours and noticed something disturbing. There were no rocks near Johnson’s body that could have caused a skull fracture. The injury was located on the top of the head, ruling out a fall unless he had fallen from a considerable height.
But there were no cliffs or ledges nearby. Brooks reported this to the sheriff, who conducted a more thorough examination and discovered something disturbing. Johnson, Whitfield, and Morrison died from almost identical injuries: circular skull fractures, all in the head or temple. All were approximately the same size.
Three slave hunters died in six weeks. All from mysterious head injuries. The sheriff declared the deaths murders, not accidents. But how? No bullets, no blades, no witnesses, no evidence, just three dead men with crushed skulls. The sheriff warned the remaining slave hunters in Cherokee County to travel in groups and be vigilant.
Someone or something was killing them in the woods. They came to call it the Mountain Curse. Some believed it was a bear attack. Others claimed a spirit or a forest spirit had taken revenge. A few suspected it was a runaway slave hiding in the mountains. This theory, however, seemed unlikely. No runaway slave could survive the months of a Georgia winter.
None of them understood what they were dealing with. None of them realized they were being pursued by a fifteen-year-old boy with a slingshot, who had already killed three times and was just getting started. From January to April 1852, he carried out four more killings. Isaiah was methodical. He never struck the same spot twice.
He varied the time between killings, sometimes waiting three weeks, sometimes just one. He carefully selected his targets, always slave hunters who worked alone or in pairs, always setting ambushes in places where their bodies wouldn’t be immediately discovered. Each victim was identical in their method: a stone to the head, usually the temple or the top of the skull. Instant death, silent, invisible.
Isaiah’s skills had developed to the point where he could accurately predict where the stone would land, taking into account distance, angle, and the target’s movement. He targeted the temple because the bone was thinnest there. A stone striking the temple from 60 meters away not only shattered the skull but also drove bone fragments into the brain, causing immediate, catastrophic damage.
Death was instantaneous. No suffering. Isaiah wasn’t a sadist. He was efficient. But each kill weighed on him differently than he expected. He thought revenge would give him satisfaction. It didn’t. Every time he watched someone fall dead from their stone,
