I'm going to lay this out. The way I tell it if we were
sitting at a diner after a long drive coffee cooling between us,
and you asked what finally, cured me of camping down in that
corner of Utah. I'm not trying to convince
anyone of anything. I'm giving you what we did, what
we saw and what we heard in the order, it happened.
And I'll point to the parts that still stick like Burrs when I
think about them. I know that stretch of the
desert better than most weekenders.
I've driven Valley of the Gods Road.
A half dozen times in good weather and bad in a Subaru in a
Tacoma and once on a borrowed dual sport when we were too
broke to buy gas for a truck. I've slept on that red, dirt
beneath, but I can name without looking at a map.
Rooster Butte, 7 Sailors. Watched lightning walk along
Cedar Mesa and I've had wind pushed the sound of a single
Raven so far across the valley. It seemed like a radio picking
up another station. If you know the place, you know,
there are no Services, no water, no official sights.
And the camping is dispersed, which is a polite way of saying
you're on your own. You pack out everything.
You don't bust the cryptobiotic soil, you keep your fire small
and in an existing ring and if you break down you either fix
it. Yourself or wait for someone
with a cell booster to pass. We knew the routine we went down
in late October, because we wanted the cool air in the
shoulder season emptiness. My girlfriend Emma had a day off
in the middle of the week and I had a flexible schedule.
The plan was simple slip off, 163 onto the dirt, bouncing
until a pull-off open with a clean line of sight.
Toward rooster Butte make Camp. Sit on tailgate chairs, watch
the colors drain out of The Buttes and go to sleep early in
the morning. We'd heat water for coffee on
the stove and do a slow drive out toward Monument Valley to
watch the sun, hit the Mittens, from the highway pull-outs.
We had a bed set up in the back of the truck for backup, but the
idea was a ground tent in an existing flat fire.
Kept small in an old ring one pot meal.
We logged the mile marker as we always do.
Makes it easy to tell anyone where you were if something goes
sideways and we made a habit of noting the nearest wash
Crossings the way you'd note exits on an unfamiliar freeway.
It was just before dusk when we aired down a little for the
washboard and picked a wide pull-off on the south side of
the road. No other rigs in sight.
In either direction. A ribbon of road behind us.
The flat spreading out, rooster but to our right, like a dark
Thumb in the last of the light. We set up fast.
Tent first before the ground, lost its heat.
I walked the area and found an old rock ring with Ash.
I don't mess with new rings. I cleaned it out pushed the
Rocks, back into a tight oval, and brought over a couple of
split logs. We'd bought in Mexican hat.
Wind was steady out of the West. Nothing dramatic enough to keep
the smoke low. Emma, set the chairs and sorted
dinner. we had that quiet Park, you get right after the gear is
square toe, when you can finally notice the place you're in, A
truck went by westbound Sloe. The driver lifting.
Two fingers off the wheel and then it was just wind and a
single Yip way out. Coyote nothing more.
I remember saying we're going to freeze watching that sunrise and
she said, it'll be worth it and we both started listing the
steps in order. So, we wouldn't be fumbling in
the dark stove, coffee Dash, heat Drive, pull out.
That call in response is how we work.
It's boring to anyone else, but that's how you don't forget a
headlamp or leave the food bin. Open.
I said, I'll grab the stove and she said, did you lock the
doors? And I said I'll do it now and we
talk like that while we ate. There's a wash about 100 yards
down from where we were. Not a real Canyon, just a
shallow Sandy, cut with Tamarisk and a few cottonwoods stunted by
the dry. That's where I walked with a
couple of gallon, jugs to rinse the pot and what the sand around
the fire ring. So we wouldn't blow Embers I
went down in the last Light because I didn't want to
Spotlight with a headlamp and wake up.
Whatever was roosting in the brush about halfway between camp
and the wash my shin hits. Something I thought was a twig
and then didn't It bit. And then sang, there was an
instant of pressure and then a sting and I lurched back on one
foot and heard the tink tink tink of empty cans rattling from
the next bush. Not loud.
Just enough for everything in the area to know something.
Had moved. I froze.
I felt the filament where it had bit my leg.
And this time, I knew it wasn't a twig.
It had that hair thin snap and cut.
You feel when you run your finger down a fishing leader, I
put a hand on it and it thrummed two steps forward tied, Shin-hye
between sage and a bleach. Juniper root was a second line
with three small beer cans strung on it.
My legs started to leak a little not bad, but the sting bloomed,
the way it does when you drag across monofilament.
I looked up toward the road to see if I could catch a glint of
more line when tugged cans clicked and then a single coyote
Yip twice somewhere out in the dark, be on the wash I said out
loud but low that's not a ranger thing because it isn't Ranger's.
Don't set trip lines with cans. You see, flagging tape for
surveys and string around sensitive areas but no one puts
monofilament shin-high with no sign.
I started to run my hand along the line to figure out where it
went. When I heard my own voice,
answer me from the dark down in the wash.
It said it flat. Like I said, it that's not a
ranger thing. I stood there.
If you've ever heard your echo in the desert, when the
conditions are perfect, you know, it doesn't come back like
a mirror. It comes back blurry and
delayed, and it never sounds like you.
This did it matched my timing. My little dry throat hitch, and
the way I dropped the G and thing when I'm tired, I didn't
say anything for a second. I just listened.
The wash breathed wind and then maybe 10 seconds.
Later, I heard Emma's voice from the same direction.
Carrying words, I had heard her say, two minutes early at the
truck. Did you lock the doors?
The phrasing was hers, even the way she pushes the last word
down, like she's already turning to do it herself.
I wasn't wearing a headlamp, I didn't want to swing light and
commit to that choice without thinking.
I backed up slow hand out in front of me to feel for any
other lines. And I found one lower knee-high
without cans. Looping back toward camp.
I pinched it and slid, along until the line ran into a knot
around a sage trunk. I broke it and the filament,
snapped clean and vanished into the sand like hair.
I got back to the truck and said, fishing line between the
bushes with bells and Emma said I heard us.
We both said it almost on top of each other.
She'd been at the tailgate and heard her own voice a minute.
After she said, the door thing, then she'd heard me in my exact
Cadence, say something about the stove that I had said a little
earlier. She turned down the radio
because she thought it was picking up a bleed from some
other car. There were no other cars.
I told her about the line in the cans, showed her the shin, and
we did the fast. Quiet scan you do when you
realize you're not alone after all.
Nothing moved. When pushed at the tent and the
little fire snapped, once out toward the wash, a coyote gave
that Rising wine and then a single bark.
The sound felt wrong, not because it was a coyote because
of the distance it carried like it was on a PA system, then
dropped dead, like someone closed the door on it.
We put the fire out to Kohl's with water.
We didn't dare about it. We tried the obvious test.
I said at an even pace and a normal volume, I'll grab the
stove. We waited.
About 8 seconds later loan from the wash a voice said, I'll grab
the stove and it was mine. Not a copy mine.
The same lazy way I say. Grab the same breath scrape by
getting dry air, when dust sits on my throat.
I can't get you to understand this, if you haven't heard it.
It's like hearing your own voicemail except it isn't
flattened by a microphone. It's you out of your own mouth
coming from a place you're not. I felt the skin on my arms
tighten as if a cold front had rolled through.
We killed the fire the rest of the way stirred, the Ash and
decided we were done with sitting outside.
We weren't going to start an argument about ghost stories or
pranks because the filaments were ghost stories and pranks in
the dark out there and badly. We loaded, what was loose?
Food bin in the cab stove in the back chairs folded and clipped.
We did it without opening and closing doors more than
necessary. I walked a wide circle with a
headlamp held down by my chest. So the beam wooden blind me the
road dust around. The truck had a scatter of
Prince from us and a few small knit tracks where something had
no an old scrap of rapper. I walked farther out to where
the dirt went to that powder that holds detail and I saw
human prints. Bear.
Not huge. Not baby small either.
The heel carried and the toes dug in which is what happens
when you walk Barefoot on Chile ground, you grab. 10 feet later,
the shape of the prince changed to something like a dog's pad.
I'm not a Tracker. I couldn't tell you which toe
corresponded to which claw and the wind had fuzzed the edges,
but it was a pad shape with two clear clause and no shoe tread.
Then six feet past that bear again.
I stood there a long time, the light was steady on my boots.
I put my hand to my neck without meaning to and felt my pulse.
When I came back to the truck, Emma watched my face and didn't
ask me to repeat anything. She said her jaw the way she
does when she is already made a decision.
We got in the cab and shut the doors at the same time.
I turned the dome light off. We weren't trying to be
stealthy. We were trying to be hard to
walk up on. the wind slipped around the mirrors, which
ticked, once again the glass We sat with our seatbelts on and in
the engine off and let the dark settle, the wash made that slow
empty breathing sound. It makes when the air moves
across it. Somewhere off to our left.
A low whistle sounded clean note.
Not musical, not a bird. It was the kind of whistle you
make when you're calling someone from inside a warehouse.
We both looked toward the road, the whistle came again, same
note, same length, but closer. Than the same note sounded from
behind us between us and the wash.
It didn't Echo it repeated. The hair on my arms, hadn't gone
back down. Since I'd heard myself from the
wash it, stayed up. I clicked the starter the engine
caught and went to that smooth idle.
And it felt like relief. I put the headlights on low so
we didn't wash the area to White.
The beam cut two tunnels and found nothing.
I put the truck in drive and let it roll.
We were 15 feet out of the pull off.
When something scuffed the passenger side mirror a soft
brush like Fabric and a voice spoke right outside Emma's
window. It said in my exact voice keys.
One word. It didn't sound like Keys, like
an exclamation. It sounded like I say it.
When I Pat my pockets and realized they're not where they
should be, that came out of my mouth with my throat, except I
was sitting in the driver's seat and my mouth was shut Emma
flinched and brought her elbow in like something had touched
her. I don't know if it did.
I saw nothing in the Side Glass, I hit the locks even though I
knew they were already down. The sound had weight.
It. Breathed.
The rasp was mine. We picked up speed.
I swung the nose toward the road and aimed West.
I figured we drive to the 261 Junction, climbed the Moki
dugway and pull off at the top where you get the view over, the
whole valley in Cedar Mesa. There's almost always someone up
there unless it's the dead of night.
And even if there's no one at least you've got gravity on your
side, the road was washed board and shallow ruts.
I didn't like the high beams until we hit the main track and
when I did a shape Squad in the road 30th when it hears
something, it didn't stand it scuttled.
I wish I had a more dignified word but that's the one.
It moved sideways like a crab fast low to the ground without
going all the way to four feet and disappeared into a patch of
creosote in Sage. I didn't drive at it to prove
anything, I put the truck where it wasn't and kept the wheels
straight. When we crossed the wash low
point, the right tire bumped. Something that rolled instead of
sinking and I saw the silhouette of a small stack of rocks,
tumble and Scatter. Someone had built that in the
road. Not a big cairn.
A trip. A bump to make you lift off the
gas, right? Where you'd be most vulnerable I
kept it at 30 then 40, which is too fast for that section if you
like your shocks, but I wasn't preserving a suspension.
The valley was a box of dark with those Butte shapes, cut out
of it. The wind built a little the
coyotes started up again, not in a chorus but in staggered Yips
that felt like they were moving with us, I tried to clock The
Distance by volume and Fail, some noises seemed miles off and
then landed like a hand on the window at the 200 and 61 junk
Junction. I didn't stop.
I didn't even do the little look both ways habit.
I turned, right? And started the climb.
If you don't know the Moki dugway, it's a steep set of
gravel. Switchbacks, cut into the face
of Cedar Mesa, There are guardrails in places and in
others. It's showy in daylight and a
series of tight turns and grades at night.
The truck pulled fine. I dropped into a lower gear to
keep from riding the brakes. Headlights through light on to
White Rock, then opened in to Black space, then caught the
next ramp. Halfway up I glanced out the
side window during a hairpin and saw something moving on.
The slope, not on the road. It was the right distance to be
level with us and it kept that level as we climbed, it didn't
run it rotated. It pastes I tried to lose it in
the turn, the way your reference point drops.
When you pivot around a bend and when I came out of the turn, the
shape was still there not closer, not farther.
Just keeping our elevation Emma saw too.
She didn't say. So I Knew by the way, her hand
closed around the grab handle a steady squeeze, and set of a
brace. The movement didn't match the
grade a person on that slope at that speed would slide and
stumble. This did, didn't it kept a line
with the truck like something? Conveyed along with us.
Keeping a consistent angle. The coyotes fell off.
When stepped in where The Yips dropped, and pressed at the cab
at the top, there's a pullout with a big view East even at
night, you know, you're on the Mesa.
By the way, the air sits. And by how the wind cuts I aimed
for it because I needed a place wide enough to spin and go.
If I had to there was a vehicle there already lights off a
spotlight bar glinting in the spill from our beams and a
reflective patch that resolved into the shield and stripe of a
Utah Highway Patrol SUV. I didn't think it was for us.
I was just glad it was there. I put the truck in park but left
it running and let the lights wash the front of the cruiser.
A trooper stepped out, had on jacket zipped, and did that calm
walk. They do when they're deciding if
you're a problem or a break in a boring shift.
He didn't put his hand on his side arm, he looked at the
truck, then it us, then at the direction, we'd come from.
He was in his 40s. Maybe he said evening and I
said, sir, I don't know how to say this without sounding crazy.
There's someone down in the valley setting, triple lines
with cans and someone whispered at my passenger mirror in my
voice. He didn't blink at the word
crazy. He said you can't be down there.
I said yes, two miles east of the junction, South Side near
the wash and gave him the mile marker.
He asked if anyone was hurt, I showed him.
The filament cut on my shin. He did a little nod.
He asked if we had any alcohol, I said no.
Not since dinner beer and Emma said, one for her.
He did the math and seemed satisfied that we weren't drunk
and trying to make a spooky story out of a deer.
He asked if we had a case of domestic trouble and I said, no,
he looked at the mirror where am I had flinched and put his
penlight on it? On the back edge of the
passenger mirror. There were fresh scrapes not
deep gouges the way a rock would do if you clipped a wall.
Find scrapes like something hard, but small had Dragged In
Parallel. He ran a gloved, finger over
them and looked at the way, the material had lifted.
He asked me to pop the hazard lights and walked around the
truck. Slow looking not at the body so
much as the ground line and the places where someone might have
crouched, He asked us to show exactly where we'd been.
We told him. We told him about the cans. he
made a face at that, the kind cops make when the shape of a
thing is familiar, even if the place is not He said I was
responding to a different call up here and tilted his head back
toward the Mesa top without explaining it and then he got on
his radio and called BLM dispatch.
He didn't say go ghost or monster.
He said triple lines possible, booby traps possible Prowler,
occupied campsite, and vehicle scraped.
He asked us if we wanted to go back down with him so he could
take a look and I said no. I wasn't proud of that, but I
meant it. He said you don't have to and
then he said, I can run by it. He asked if we had anything left
to Camp, besides rocks in a cold fire, We said just the tent he
said I'll drive through and take a look.
He wrote a case number on a small card, the kind you lose
unless you stick it in your wallet, right then and told us
to file a report at the sheriff's office in the morning,
or call it in when we had service.
He said. BLM will want to know where
exact and I gave him the mile marker twice to make sure it's
stuck. He looked at Emma and asked you,
okay? She said yes, she wasn't,
neither was I We didn't follow him down.
We took the long way to Blanding and paid too much for a motel
with a carpet that smelled like old smoke, and a heater that
came on in bursts. We slept in clothes, neither of
us turned on the TV. I wrote the case number again in
my notes app and in the page where we keep tire pressure and
oil change miles. In the morning, we made our call
and filed the report the person at the other end took it.
Like these calls come in more often than you'd guess.
She asked the questions you asked to make sure someone isn't
embellishing. She asked again about alcohol.
She asked if there had been an argument with anyone we knew.
She asked if we were familiar with coyotes. she asked about
whether she asked the direction of the wind, She asked if the
voice we heard, could have come from a device.
That stuck with me. I hadn't considered it.
I said, I didn't know, but the timing was precise and the
breath was my breath in the early afternoon.
A BLM Ranger called back, he had our names right?
The mile marker, right? And he described the pull-off
before I did, which told me the trooper had been down there.
He said, they found three lines of monofilament strung.
Shin-high between sage and low branches.
Two with cans one with Fish Hooks tied on at intervals, his
exact words were cheap trebles and a couple of singles.
He said the 10 weed left was collapsed and dragged about 15
feet. Not torn.
As if someone had tried to shake it out.
He said there were boot prints and bear prints and a mix of
animal tracks, which is not unusual down there, but the
layout bothered him. He said he followed one filament
line, 30 yards and found it. Looped back on itself in a way
that didn't make sense for anything but a snare He said
they found a cache about 50 yards down the wash under
Tamarisk, a plastic tote with a split lid, a folded, coyote pelt
with the ears, cut off a stinking bundle.
That was probably jerked meat and a cheap voice recorder the
size of my palm. He said, the recorder had a
Micro SD card and that he turned it over to the county.
He didn't make a movie of it. For me.
Over the phone. He stuck to facts.
He said, none of it was legal and none of it was a ranger
thing. Two days later he called again.
He didn't have to. He said the recorder had ambient
snippets on it. He said it that way like he was
using the words. Someone else had used to him.
He said, most of it was wind and distant engine and coyote and
then shortcuts of human voices, not full conversations.
Just the ends of sentences the pieces you say when you're
walking around a campsite and not thinking you're on mic, He
said he heard a woman say did you lock the doors?
And a man? Say I'll grab the stove and a
man say the word keys. He said there were other voices,
that didn't match Ours from other days.
He said some of the cuts clicked on and off so close to the
speaking that it felt like someone stood there with a
finger on the button waiting to press at the right time.
He did not say the word prank because that word belongs to
kids around Halloween and bad, YouTube channels.
And he didn't say the word Skinwalker because that belongs
to stories that get told for clicks by people who don't know
what their handling. Said we've got an active
investigation don't camp in that spot again for a while.
He told me to send him the photo of my leg which I did.
He said, he'd send me back an incident number for my insurance
if I needed to replace the tent. I know what I heard.
I'm not a mystical person. I work with my hands.
I troubleshoot by constraints first.
I know the Valley of the Gods carries sound strange.
We've heard a guitar from a pull-off so far away.
We couldn't see the fire. I know Coyote's can make shapes
with their voices. That don't sound like anyone
dog. I know people do stupid things
in the desert and people do mean things in the desert.
And if you find fishing line where it shouldn't be, you break
it and kick sand. So no one else gets bit.
I know you can record a voice and play it back at the right
moment. If you stand close and time it
and the wind helps you. I know, a person with a limp can
pace of vehicle along a bench if they know the terrain.
I also know what it felt like when my own breath.
Rasp came out of the dark at my passenger window and set a
single word in the way I say it. When I'm distracted, I know the
difference between Echo and repetition, call it whatever you
need. So the thoughts sits right in
your head and doesn't rattle. I call it a skinwalker because
the mimicry was dead on, and, because the prince in that
powder, did that ugly switch from bare human to pad and back.
And because a figure scuttled sideways like a bad idea and
kept its head cocked. Like a thing that had learned
how to act human without knowing why we didn't go back.
I deleted the pin, I had dropped on that pull off when we
stopped. I didn't delete the mile marker
from my notes because that's the kind of detail you keep when you
talk to people who take reports, I can draw the shape of The
Buttes from memory and put our truck in the dark and put the
cans on the line. So they make that dry little
tank when the winds them. I can see the small stack of
rocks, someone put in the road to make you lived.
I can put the hikers cliche of, we're not alone in my mouth and
spit it out, because of course we weren't alone.
There are coyotes and foxes and mice and owls.
And sometimes people without good reasons to be there, What I
can't put away is Howe sound moved that night and how the
voice matched my breath. It was my sense of self turned
and held up like a mask. For what it's worth.
The trooper gave us his card and told us to file and we did.
A month later. I called the ranger to ask if
there was any update and he said there was nothing he could
share. That's the shape of the ending.
No dramatic takedown. In a wash no newspaper.
Write up with a mugshot. No one.
Masked Scofflaw. Who admits he set?
Fish hooks that Shin height for a laugh?
Just a trip line in the Valley of the Gods and a voice
recorder, full of the ends of other people's sentences.
If you want a moral, you won't get one for me.
People go down there to feel small in a good way.
We did too. We got small in a bad way.
We packed smart, we paid attention and we left when
leaving was the right move. We didn't run our mouths to the
trooper about Legends. We let him see the scrapes and
the ground and the line and we gave him the mile marker. we
drank Motel coffee and Blanding instead of watching sunrise in
Monument Valley and counted that as the cost of doing business,
The tent aired out in our backyard and went back into the
bin. We replaced the monofilament cut
on my shin with a thin line of Scar that shows up when my legs
are cold. When people ask, I tell them, we
got spooked by a skinwalker. And then if they give me the
look, I tell them the part with the recorder and the Fish Hooks.
I don't go back to that pull-off.
I keep my windows up when we drive that road and when I say
the word Keys, now I hear myself twice and it still comes with
that little breath. Scrape that the dry air out.
There gives me that's as honest as I know how to be I know how
this is gonna sound. So I'll start with the part that
makes me look reasonable. I hike a lot.
I grew up in the desert. I've done long dirt approaches
where you bring extra fuel because you can't count on
anyone coming. If you shred a tire.
I respect the rules that keep people alive out there, tell
someone where you're going top off water at the last bigoted
sign the log. Even if it feels silly, I'm the
guy who checks headlamp battery at home and then again in the
parking lot I don't like scary stories.
I don't believe in curses if I had to describe myself, I would
say boring prepared and slightly too.
Proud of both. We picked Torah weep because of
the drop in the quiet. The overlooks sits right on the
north rim, where the canyon is narrow.
And the cliffs are clean, 3000 feet, straight down to the
river. The road in is long and mean
enough that most people don't try it in a rental sedan, its
National Parkland, but it feels like the end of a road.
Someone forgot to finish, lava Fields, great dust that climbs
your legs scattered Juniper and a view that eats sound.
There's a ranger on duty, a vault, toilet, designated sites,
and otherwise, nothing that was the point.
Sunset stars. And the sense that the noise of
everything electric was far behind us.
It was three of us me. My girlfriend live and my friend
Marco, two trucks with clearance real tires and shells on the
beds. We left early and took our time,
because a blown sidewall is a dumb way to ruin a weekend.
We stopped at the ranger station stepped inside and the man on
duty did what you'd expect, he slid, the clipboard over had a
sign, the back country law, confirmed our plate numbers and
ran the talk. He probably gives three times a
week. No water here.
Pack out, your trash don't drive past the Stones by the rim.
Fire rules posted on the board. Keep to the designated site.
He said he'd be around until about 9:00.
And then in and out after that on checks, He didn't try to
scare us. He did the job with the calm
that comes from watching people underestimate the desert and
getting tired of having to help them.
We rolled to the designated Zone, parked at the site with a
little Windbreak of rocks and shouldered the rest of our gear.
The plan was basic set up camp, eat early, watch sunset at the
Overlook then, do long, exposure photos.
Milky Way if we got lucky with Sky, I had a tripod in its bag.
A remote release, extra memory cards.
Live had the camp stove and was in charge of food.
Marco stashed, a cheap, handheld radio in his jacket because he
likes to Pretend We're a search and rescue team.
It was a clear late season evening that goes cold.
The second, the sun drops. We had layers hats and the kind
of headlamps, that throw a tight white cone.
You can trust, there's an all-clear signal.
We use when we split up, it's not a Boy Scout secret thing
over the years. We fell into it too quick Clacks
of a rock on Rock. Then one more it carries with
without yelling and doesn't broadcast.
I have food the way whistling sometimes does we don't
fetishize it. It's just our thing.
I'm telling you this because it matters later and because I want
you to believe me, when I say we didn't invite this.
We follow rules because the desert writes its own and
they're not negotiable. The sun went down with that
fast. Desert trick, where it's gold
and then Navy with nothing in between.
We stood shoulder to shoulder on the rim, stones, and watched the
river turned to a dark thread. I counted the seconds between
the last light on the far wall, and the first wind that found us
up top Coyotes went off somewhere behind us.
Not the yipping chaos. You hear near towns?
Just short calls spaced out. It was the sound of something
alive, checking in with itself. By the time we got back to the
site, the temperature had dropped 20 degrees lives.
Set the stove on a Flat Rock and started water for pasta.
Marko Doug for his radio and more layers.
I walked to the Vault toilet by the parking Stone's because I
had to go. And because I preferred to do
that in actual facilities, if they exist, the toilet is a dark
box you can smell before you see it.
The door faces away from the rim as if it's embarrassed.
I propped it open with my foot because headlamps make me
claustrophobic in small stale places.
On my way back I heard lives voice.
Hey can you bring the tripod? It came from past the parking
stones in the law of a field right?
Where the base all breaks into lumpy waves between the
junipers. It was her tone.
Exactly the way she hits tripod, like she's teasing me for
hauling too much gear. I turned with the bag already
sliding off my shoulder and said, what?
Because it was automatic because it was live because, of course,
I bring it. She was five feet to my left at
the stove holding the lid to keep it from rattling Steam on
her cheeks. Bring what she said.
I don't remember what face I made, but Marco noticed.
He looked up from his layers and scan the dark, where I turned my
head, because the instinct to look where someone else's
looking is old. My headlamp lit, the base all to
ridges in short runs. It lit the closest Juniper
trunk. It lit the dark between branches
like a curtain pulled away in strips.
The wind moved enough to scratch the needle's against each other.
I didn't see a person. I saw a shape step behind the
same. Juniper then do it again.
It felt staged like a signal meant for me, like watching
someone practicing and entering a door for a play.
Step out. Step back, repeat. the same
timing, the same side, like it wanted to be noticed and then
not I said, I must have misheard and went stiff the way you do
when your body wants to choose a plan before, you've looked at
the map. Live watched me and set the lid
down. Gently Marco slid, his radio in
to a pocket but didn't turn it on yet.
None of us said the word, you know, the one, we didn't give it
a name. Pasta is a comfort food, even
when you feel like you brought the wrong language to a
conversation. We ate standing up the coyotes
called again, farther away or closer.
I couldn't tell the canyon takes sound and hands it back.
However it wants. we cleaned as we cooked packed, as we ate, The
plan for long exposures started to feel aggressive, like a dare
against common sense. The stars were so loud and the
ground. So black that my good camera
felt like a toy while I was rinsing the pot with a splash
from our jug. The first rock clack Came From
Beyond the parking stones. Too quick.
One more our code. I turned so fast.
Water, ran down my sleeve. It came again.
Two quick. One more.
I had to force myself not to answer, it's like hearing your
name and not turning your head. The urge is physical.
Don't live said, without looking at me she said it to the are
more than to me to the idea of answering, okay?
I said and gave my hand something to do I set the pot
down wipe the water with a bandana and slid, the bandana
into the crate. Like, I'd plan that movement an
hour ago. We sat we didn't build a big
fire because that's not allowed at the Overlook.
We had a small legal, careful one, and then stamped it out
before we even finished eating because we decided we didn't
like the way the light flattened the foreground and pushed
everything else back We put on more layers, we turned off the
headlamps, one by one to see how the sky would land us.
In the dark, the noises came into Focus.
There's the small crunch of something lights stepping in
place for balance. There's wind in the needles.
There's the tiny shifting sounds of our own jackets.
When we breathe And then there's a smooth dragging noise along
the rim wall, like a body sliding on Grit.
It was too regular to be random. It paused and then continued
belly down moving, then a lift, and a stuttering, push to
Upright where no Trail exists and no sane person would stand.
You can read a rim the way you read a roof.
Some lines are walkable and some are absolute.
This was absolute. The sound moved in a way that
made me see it without seeing it.
Coyotes went up again, full chorus this time, and the hair
on the back of my neck, did what hair does when it would prefer
to be under a hat. The calls cut off mid yip.
In the quiet that followed something answered them.
It wasn't a howl. It was a single flat.
Ha like someone clearing a fogged up window with breath.
No, waving it. No animal trying to match
another, just an idea of a voice pushed through a human mouth
that hadn't practiced vowel sounds It came from the same
general direction, as The Rock Clacks, then from our right.
Then I swear to you from behind the Vault toilet in the time, it
would take to jog there only there were no footfalls in
between we did the reasonable thing.
We got in the trucks it wasn't a panic it was that coordinated.
Don't talk about it decision. You make when something crosses
your line and you don't want a debate where to redraw it We
closed the tailgates quietly, we climbed into the shells live in.
I took mine Marco took his. We cracked the shell Windows, a
half inch because stale air will make you miss judges a
situation, as well as anything We didn't slam doors, because
there's a difference between alerting the world and letting
the world know, you know, it's there.
Five minutes later. Something knocked on my shell.
Window Knuckles, not a branch knuckles.
Three, even Taps from a hand that had practiced knocking on
doors. Then the same three taps with a
different hand. You can tell the second set was
sharper and landed. Crooked like claws, clicking
into the plastic between the glass and the frame.
The Rhythm changed auditioning methods.
Knuckles Claus. Knuckles Clause.
As if the person on the other side was trying on bodies.
The way you try on tones of voice, from the other side of
the truck, where the cab meets the shell lives voice asked in a
normal conversational, volume is the Ranger home.
She was beside me, both hands on my sleeve fingers, tents enough,
that I could feel the half Moon's of her nails through
three layers and a glove. Her lips didn't move.
She shook her head once and the motion translated into me like a
shiver. The same question came again
from another spot, a few feet away like someone pacing and
making small talk at a front desk.
Is the Ranger home. The tone was so exactly hers
that my body tried to relax because that's what you do.
When someone you love asks you for help in the way they always
ask you. Marcos radio history in the
other truck. He hadn't heated, it was off
that hiss belongs to cheap electronics, waking up, not to
the sky, a low bump, travel traveled along his tailgate like
a heavy hand testing for a latch.
He clicked the light on in the cab and it threw a little
rectangle. Past his rear window.
The bump stopped, then started at our truck.
As if the idea had caught up late, we sat through two more
rounds of our all-clear clack clack, clack from the basalt and
didn't answer the thing. The person The Voice kept
trying, like it was paging through pages of a manual
written for a different model human.
Knox changed footsteps, reorganized into new loops.
The ha sound pushed out at the end of breaths.
As if whoever was making, it forgot, they were supposed to be
quiet. At some point.
This stops being an experiment. At some point you chose clerical
procedure over Pride. We made a call without saying
the words we would go to the ranger residence.
We would do the boring thing people do.
When an animal tears, a cooler and you want it logged.
So someone else doesn't lose a hand.
We didn't need to be heroes. We needed to not be the subject
of a talk, given to the next people who signed a log.
I moved first because the longer I waited, the more, the waiting
grew teeth. I opened the shell window enough
to get my hand out, caught it with my sleeve.
So it didn't slap the glass and thumbed the latch inside, I slid
light, over the rear handle, nothing close enough to catch in
the beam and popped it, we climbed out fast and in sequence
the way you do, when you've slept in truck beds enough to
know the choreography live, had the keys she got in the driver's
seat. I moved around to the passenger
side and never once looked at the spot where I felled eyes,
Marco had the same thought at the same time, he threw his
tailgate up and was in his driver's seat with the engine
turning over before, I had my Buckle clicked.
My truck wouldn't start. I know that sound.
The click that isn't a click so much as a hollow denial, the way
an engine coughs. Once when it wants to try and
then refuses to even do that, the dash lit.
The battery wasn't dead. The starter didn't even try
lives swore and reached for the hood release.
I was out in the hood was up before the word finished.
I know enough to check, what isn't technical first is a
cable, loose is a connector jostled, is there a reason a
line is draped where it shouldn't be?
I reached in with my light and that's when I touched it,
someone had tied something around the ignition Cable Bundle
like twine. It was wet and stiff at the same
time, like, old leather soaked and dried wrong.
When I pulled my fingers back, they were tacky.
It wasn't planned fiber, it wasn't rope.
It had knots the way a butcher knots cord before a roast.
I didn't need the light to smell it.
Wrote with iron under it sinew I tore it with a force.
I didn't plan and it came apart with a fiber tearing sound that
made my stomach lurch. The strands stuck to my glove
Like Glue, and then let go as if they were deciding who to
prefer. Leave it live said, leave it get
in. I know trucks, I wanted to fix
it. I wanted to be a person who saw
a mechanical problem in drives out, there is a version of me.
Who does that? That version didn't live there.
I dropped the hood hard enough to make the light bounce and ran
around to the passenger door by then Marko had pulled up nose,
to nose with us and leaned across to pop his locks.
We piled into his truck without counting seats.
Buckles, snapped keys, turned engine caught, as we rolled
between the stones, something ran along the road shoulder,
parallel to us. You see Deer Run.
You see people run, you know, how weight looks when it lands.
This didn't land it. Skimmed like the ground had a
layer of oil poured onto it. It matched our speed even as
Marco accelerated in a way. He didn't like to I turned to
watch it and couldn't make out a hole only pieces as they entered
the headlamp cones and left again.
Tall Too Tall and one phase and then wrong short in the next
like a person, wearing a frame under their clothes, and
forgetting, which joint bent, which way.
It ran with without tiring and every time I thought I had the
distance, figured it had adjusted like it was listening
to our tires and setting Cadence to the stones.
They hit The road out is a series of small bad decisions
attached to each other. Washboard embedded slabs.
You could file a knife on dips that look shallow until you put
weight into them. Marko knows how to drive it.
He hates to hit anything. He can avoid, he drove like he
was back in a city. He didn't like rolling yellow
lights and cutting Lanes. He shouldn't Shape kept pace
outside the beam. And when it fell back, I wished
it would come forward so I could watch it again because not
seeing something as sometimes worse.
Our horn sounded ridiculous in all that space, But we leaned on
it, when the beam of the Ranger residents, came into view,
someone had put a porch light on a pole behind the main structure
and it glowed a clean featureless white.
We pulled up, crooked and close the door opened before we
breaked the Rangers stepped out with a spotlight in a two-way
clip to his shoulder. He didn't ask questions. he
swept the beam through the basalt, like he was washing a
floor at the edge of the lights, something paused halfway between
the idea of a Crouch and the shape of a dog Then it decided
dropped to all fours in a way that inverted, the mechanics of
a spine and moved with its weight wrong joints, folding
toward the midline instead of away.
Spotlight didn't catch a face. It caught texture.
Great, that wasn't fur and wasn't naked skin either.
It threaded into the lava. Like it had been born there and
learned bustle the way a toddler, learns stairs.
Inside the ranger said he didn't shout.
He said it quick, and normal and step back like he was leaving
space for us to pass him in a hallway.
We did, he locked the door in a practice order.
I wouldn't be able to reproduce Deadbolt a slide.
Then a key latch. I didn't see from where I stood.
The office smelled like paper and coffee from a pot that had
been allowed to cook down too far.
He keyed His Radio and gave dispatch words that sounded like
a list. He'd been told to stick to visit
her report possible person of interest near residences.
No visual confirmation. He didn't say creature or animal
or any word that would invite a story.
He described it like a problem with a water line.
He asked for a welfare. Check call out in a note in the
log. He asked for the other staff are
on the south end to be notified. Then he posted himself by the
door with the spotlight in his hands like a contractor holding
a tool, he knew better than the thing at pointed at We sat on
plastic chairs meant for permit talks and let our bodies Shake
inside our layers. When people tell you, they
didn't realize they were cold until they were in side.
Believe them. If it felt like the air had been
scraped off of us, The ranger didn't ask us to retell
anything, right? Then he asked our names and
rechecked. Our plate numbers against the
law. Like our existence could be
verified by paperwork. It helped a thing with a
reference number can eat you. The ha sound came once from
outside right against the office wall, like breathe on glass and
then it didn't come again. The radio hissed and crackled
enough to give me something to hate in a small steady way.
We sat through hours in a room that wasn't designed for that
much time. The ranger took notes.
I never saw He walked the light along the window frame with his
wrist, the way you do to make sure you have a drifted into a
blind spot. The building creaked once and I
saw him Flinch and then pretend he'd meant to shift his weight.
It was a long dark and then it was a gray that turned to a pale
yellow and the color in the office changed from scrubbed to
Human. He poured new coffee and it
smelled like something alive, again.
He told us, we could follow him back to the sights, to grab what
we needed and then go straight out.
Please don't stop. He said, he didn't say what for,
he didn't explain, he asked us, not to we said yes, outside.
The world looked dull and innocent.
The rim was exactly as it had been yesterday, which was almost
rude. He walked us to the spots where
we'd heard the Clacks and the breath.
He stepped carefully and then pointed and once I saw it, I
couldn't stop seeing it. Footprints, human Barefoot, heel
and ball, clear, and dust that had settled on the basalt like
flower. They sat down along the rim,
where nobody puts weight. They moved in a line and then
shifted mid-stride to something else pads and toenails.
The digits long and set at an ODS play, the tracks ran where
there was no dissent route, right, beside the drop.
And at a jog, the shape, of the foots, split and recombined,
like a hand, trying on a glove, a size too, small farther on.
They returned to human then repeated the change back as if a
mind couldn't decide on an outfit.
I saw Prince where our parking Stones had been last night and a
place where something had leaned a palm against the Vault toilet
door. The Mark was wide.
The fingers were too long. The ranger didn't speculate.
He didn't shrug, he didn't tell us a story to make the moment
neat. He said he'd log, the prince in
that, he'd take photos, he asked us if we truly had everything we
needed. We did, we did before he asked.
He looked at the sinus, smeared on my ignition cable with his
face set at neutral and said, he wouldn't touch it until someone
else had seen it. It had dried darker and pulled
tight around the bundle like attendant reattaching itself.
We drove out in a convoy of two and didn't look in the mirrors,
more than we had to the desert. In daylight, is beautiful in a
way that asks, the price, I paid it.
I stared straight down the road and tried to focus on the way
the washboard lined up with the shadow under my side mirror I
counted Culverts for no reason. I stayed between the stones when
there were stones. When there weren't, I found the
old tracks and made mine, sit inside them like that meant,
something we stopped in Fredonia because that's where the road
gives you permission to Exhale. We didn't talk about it then
because talking Would Have Made It solid.
We pumped gas and washed our hands with that hard station
soap that smells like orange and mechanics Bay.
I scrubbed until the web of my glove print was gone for my
skin. Lives stood with her back to me
as if she couldn't decide whether to keep me in sight or
the door. Markle, put his forehead against
the top of the steering wheel. Before he realized people at the
pumps could see him and lifted it again, as if he'd only leaned
forward to check a gauge. I've tried out different words
since coyote with Maine. Some guy on something a person
with a talent for throwing their voice.
Someone with a hook on their heel to make tracks I come back
to mimicry because that's the part that isn't human, even when
it is, In my head, when I replay it, the voice that asked, if the
ranger was home, isn't a voice produced by vocal chords.
It's a recording cut and arranged without understanding.
Have a word for that in this region.
I don't like to use it because I don't like to summon something
by its name but nothing else fits what it did with our sounds
and the shape of our attention skinwalker.
I know how this reads. I also know what a bundle of
sinew tied. Like butcher's twine, looks like
when you tear it from a live electrical system in the dark
and the smell sits in your nose for three days, like, you packed
it there. I know what, a single flat Hof
feels like when your bones agree.
It wasn't meant for you and it was meant only to test a
distance. I know the particular click of
Klaus on a shell window when someone is deciding what hands
to wear. The ranger didn't ask us to
write a statement. He said he had what he needed.
He said, please don't stop again on the way out.
We didn't, we went home the long way around a truth.
None of us wanted to name. I kept meaning to go back to
prove to myself that it was the dark and some sounds, I'd
stacked wrong. The idea of that rode makes my
hands sweat at red lights now. So that's what I have.
Three trucks worth of Tire dust in the driveway, a photo card,
Full of Stars. We never took and the certainty
that I have no business on the north rim.
Again, we drove that line to Fredonia without saying
anything, because there wasn't anything to say that would
change it. We were done.
I want to say up front that I respect the place and the people
who were there, long before I ever set foot in it, I don't
throw certain words around lightly if I use one later, it's
because I ran out of better explanations.
I'm writing this down the way, I remember it, the way it felt
with the dull details intact because the ordinary parts are
what make the rest impossible to shrug off.
This happened in Petrified Forest National Park In the
off-trail Zone, the park calls Devil's Playground.
It was a permitted day early spring and we did everything by
the book. Two of us.
Went in me and my friend, Jess. We've done a lot of desert
together. San Rafael, swell cedar Mesa a
couple of long sloths in the San Juan Badlands, where the wind
Combs? The Bentonite into these smooth
Elephant Back rolls. We Trust Maps encompasses, more
than phone apps. We overpack water and we turn
around when something feels wrong.
We're not Reckless. The permit is what put us there.
Devils Playground is one of those areas where the park caps
the human pressure by making you stop at the visitor center sign,
your name and listen to a ranger, tell you the rules.
Our Ranger was a compact guy in his 50s with a mustache that
belonged in a black and white photo.
He wasn't theatrical about it. He tapped the map and said
you'll pick this route up here. Drop into the clay head for
these named hoodoos. Keep your line of sight know
what that means. We nodded.
It means don't let your last Point disappear before you've
chosen your next one. In those Bentonite bowls.
Everything looks like everything else, make a breadcrumb trail
with your eyes and if it rains, you're done turn around that
clay will ice your booths. He looked at our gear Compass
paper map in a Ziploc extra layers and sign the permit back
at your vehicle. By dusk.
Don't move petrified wood. Don't step on crossed, it's all
common sense. We said where we plan to go the
cluster, the brochure calls the cathedrals, though on the top of
their just Contour rings. And we wrote a turnaround time
on our permit copy. We left the vehicle at the
designated pull-out while it was still night along I-40 red
lights of semi sliding past like a river out of phase with the
land. We started at first light, the
sky went from iron gray to a chalky, white Over the Horizon
and then that thin orange, seam opened up where the sun would
be. You step over the fence at the
boundary in the sound from the highway drops.
Not to silence, but to a background home that feels like
your own blood. Devil's Playground.
Looks like it. Got poured into bowls and then
the Bulls were tipped. The ground is pale gray and blue
with bentonite. Tamped, hard and places and soft
and others where your boots sinks, a half inch in leaves, a
clean stamp. The Petrified laws, sit like
broken pillars everywhere. The colors too loud to be
natural until your eyes, adjust rust-red cream black bands, like
somebody shot varnished through Stone Every direction is
hummocks and gullies and little ridges, the height of a person.
If you don't keep your line of sight, you could walk in giant,
lazy Circle all day and swear you were going straight.
We were careful. We took compass bearings between
the little high points. every time we crested a ridge, we
paused and picked a feature, we could actually reach Not a
mirage, Beyond three Bulls. we checked our watches, we drank
sparingly, we heard the first thing in a shallow, wash, may be
an hour in Jess was ahead by three steps picking our next
line, the wash was no more than a wrinkle of shadow in the clay.
I was making a mental note of the slant of a log.
That looked like a collapsed bridge.
When I heard her name not shouted, not even projected.
just said in the tone of someone calling you from another room,
Jess, Arise at the end familiar in a way that choke me for a
second. It was exactly how her older
brother says it. He calls her Jess in a way that
tags a question on the end. Always like he's about to tell a
joke. I've heard him do it 100 times
around campfires and at holidays.
The sound came from the wash dead center from a scatter of
Pebbles that showed no prints leading in or out.
We both stopped. Just turned eyebrows up.
Like, did you just? I said her brother's name out
loud to puncture it and headed down into the shallow for a look
because that's what you do, you ground, whatever you can ground.
The Bentonite was smooth. There were our prints crisp and
ugly, and nothing else. No rabbit hops.
No, coyote Claus, no human. The wash Twisted twice and was
back out in open roles. The wind had a trick to it.
That morning, clipping the edges of things and throwing sound.
So we told each other, that's what it was. we stood there 30
silent seconds longer than we needed to and then kept moving
the tracks started, not with a flourish, but with the kind of
accident, you only noticed after We were angling toward a hoodoo
with a waste. That looked pinched a line of
Impressions crossed our path at a diagonal.
Barfoot human straightforward, Heel To Toe, medium stride, a
little on the push-off the clay took them perfectly. off to the
right of those about two feet over in a little ahead, ran a
set of canine Prince Forte's round with the nail
indentations. Clear?
When the step hit a softer patch, It didn't ping the
Predator alarm for me, people, hike, Barefoot, sometimes,
Coyote's follow you in the desert because you kick up
things or because your pattern is interesting or because the
day is slow, they tolerate us. We tolerate them and mostly we
pass like lines on graph paper overlaying each other by
coincidence. Still the spacing was odd, the
human steps and the canine steps kept within the same narrow
ribbon a tandem trackway fit to a single body like one brain had
laid both down together. We took a photo, we took another
one from a different angle. We scanned a wider Arc to see
where they came from. They weren't old the edges.
Broke Sharp. The weight in the heel wasn't
exaggerated the way it gets, when the clay dries and cracks,
whatever made them had come through that mourning not long
ahead of us, it took another five minutes for the weird part.
The human Prince continued, they narrowed a little like the
person had tightened their stands or started placing their
feet in their own steps to reduce their footprint.
Then the shape of them shifted the heel, shortened and the
forefoot rounded until it looked like two shallow ovals tip.
Just a bit inward. The way Hooves would accept,
they were not paired as a true ungulate, would place them the
left and right, alternated like a person walking, but the
Impressions themselves were smooth blunt ovals two tidy for
natural hoof. You could see the edge of
something hard by biting the clay and the soft press where a
strap or a foot, flexed behind it.
I crouched until my jeans pulled tight at the knee and ran a
finger around the rim of one oval.
The texture was wrong for a shoe, it had that hand-carved
wobble a tiny asymmetry. Jess said flatly are we looking
at wooden hooves? Saying it out loud, made it feel
less like a joke. The canine Prince next, to them
continued steady as a metronome, the whole thing drifted into a
wider Bend circling always drifting to our left.
Like, whoever was making them wanted to stay in our peripheral
vision. We came up out of a little Gully
and saw a coyote on the opposite rim.
It wasn't skulking. It stood Square to us with the
front pads. Planted ears at the halfway
position. It's coat.
Had that peppered. Look, Coyote's get in late
winter before they shut out. What was wrong was its jaw?
The mouth worked slow and regular as if chewing something
that wasn't there. The tongue didn't flick to wet
the nose. No, breath steamed from it.
It was already warm enough for that.
But there was this steady motion a grind and release.
I've seen coyotes chew a grasshopper or a mouse the neat
crunch in the swallow. This was different.
We watched each other too long, the animal looked over our heads
left, right? And then back at us and then it
stepped out of sight in a casual way, like a person walking
behind a partition when we climbed to where it had stood,
the clay, showed the same round prints with clear nail marks,
but there was a second set, lighter as if something else had
Pace there and the wind had only half a race it I don't have a
better description than that. It bothered me in the way a word
on the tip of your tongue bothers.
You we cut our line to avoid a basin that looked like a trap
for ankles after a rain. Even though the sky was clean On
the far, side up on a ridge, a petrified.
Log made a bridge over a small v-shaped Gulley, that's where we
saw the Raven. It was laid out on the log.
Like someone had put it there with care.
Wingspread to the exact same angle on both sides feet,
tucked, head turned to quarter inch.
So the beak pointed along the logs access around the bird in a
circle that would fit under a dinner plate.
Someone had set Cholla spine, and down in the clay, all at the
same height. You could say it was Art, you
could say it was some kid doing a ritual because his friends
dared him. Jess and I stood and looked at
it and experienced the same human flaw.
The inability to walk past a little circle.
Made by hands without feeling invited or warned.
We didn't touch it. We took a photo.
I wanted to nudge one spine out of the circle with my boot, just
to break the intention of it. I didn't.
As we stepped down to skirt it I realized what else about it
pressed on me. There were no approach tracks,
none. And this was Clay that keeps
Secrets only a short time we kept moving because that's what
you do. We kept to the rule, never let
your previous Point, drop out of sight without picking the next
one. The highway sound came and went
drone in the thin, depending on the shape of the bowls.
Our conversation, shrank when we did talk it was the head down
Kindle left of that torch looking hoodoo. 10 to 10 degrees
more North. That low saddle with the shade
line. We were discussing whether the
small Haze on the horizon was high cloud or lingering wood,
smoke from somewhere. When a new voice joined the
discussion. It came out of a side, Gully to
our right. It wasn't a murmur like before
it was a replay. The timing was wrong in a way
that made my skin feel thin. The words we had just spoken
were thrown back at us with the same mispronunciation I had used
because my mouth was dry the same clipped laughed just does
when she's conserving breath. Then a sound like somebody
clicked, their tongue fast against their teeth, a cicada
burst of noise that didn't match anything, a person making a
joke, would add. We both pivoted toward the Gully
headlamps off daylight. Nothing for a long, three count.
I can't emphasize this enough. There were no prints in to that
Gully other than coyote and what, I am calling the hoof
blocks and a faint scuffle. I will get to the world was
arranged like a stage and no stage hands were visible.
I was the one who decided to go down into that Gully because
false bravery feels like a solid thing until the ground under
your boots. Says otherwise, My pack tugged.
Not like a snag on a brand. The first pull was as light as a
friend, catching your shoulder to get your attention.
I turned with the reflex that says.
We are two people. And one of us has stopped.
Jess was in front of me. Not behind her eyes already
wide. The second pull was a real one.
It dragged me half a step back and pivoted me to the side so
that my trekking pole jabbed into the clay with that Halo
Thoth sound. I yelled without meaning to
Jess's hand was on the back panel of my pack, in an instant
because that's who she is in a crisis grabbing and leaning her
weight to counter it. Nothing was there.
The only thrash marks were ours, my boot gouge, her hurried half
set that smears. The edges, we stripped the pack
off me and checked the webbing like we were going to find
fishing line tied to it. Nothing.
We stood in the open for a long minute.
Both breathing, too loud, telling ourselves the same
story. You tell a child who's had a
nightmare because it's the only story of available the wind.
Did it the wind? We agreed without making a
ceremony of it. That the hutus we had planned to
visit could wait. We would wake a straight line
for the highway fence. The ranger had said know where
your fence is. And even if he had meant that
metaphorically, I wanted metal in front of me.
We put the sun on our right shoulder I set the compass to a
number that would take us where the little pencil.
Mark, on our Maps said, we'd hit the fence within a reasonable
Ark. We chose the features that would
carry us there and jumps Ridge. Hoodoo shallow, duck of a pass
Ridge. We didn't look back because
looking back, waste, time and feeds, whatever Panic is not
helpful. And because once we decided to
treat the place like a straight line exercise, introducing Side
Stories felt like making room for those stories to grow.
That lasted 20 minutes, then just made a sound under her
breath. That was not fear.
Exactly, but the kind of disappointment you hear when
someone realizes the test, they studied for has changed its
questions. On a knob, 20 yards, left of our
line, a figure stood. I don't know how to make this
less dramatic because the simple description is the worst.
It was the height of a person. The width of a person, the
clothes were wrong for the day too.
Dark like nylon that doesn't reflect it had a hood or a cap.
Something that rounded the head. The Stance was the part that hit
me in a clean surgical way. The wait was on one hip.
The way I stand when I am thinking and my lower back is
tired, hip kicked out one knee, slightly bent in the shoulders,
on a different angle than the pelvis.
If you asked my friends, how I stand when I'm staring at a map,
too long, they'd show you that angle without thinking about it.
The figure tipped its head to the side.
In the exact degree, I do half unconsciously when I'm trying to
remember a name. Then it whistled three soft
notes. The ones I used to get just as
attention, if I don't want to raise my voice, not a parody.
Correct in pitch. And in the way the breath cuts,
at the end of the second note, when I'm not warmed up, then
came the clicking tongue sound again.
Fast insectile mechanical and its exactness like a phone on
vibrate set on hard plastic that sound carried through.
The clay bowls like it had a string attached to our bones.
Just said, very calmly, don't engage I nodded as if she'd give
an a normal instruction about turning off a stove, We stepped
off our line, only enough to go around a small drop.
We could have downed on a different day.
The figure didn't follow in the direct sense.
When we topped the next Ridge, something was standing on the
ridge after that. And then when we made that one,
a shape was on the right where our route required us to Veer
left. Every time we reached a place
where the ground held Prince, the same alternating trackway
had been there in the half hour since we first saw it the human
to oval shift the canine. In one softer patch, you could
see where the oval had rocked a hair as weight transferred
leaving a crescent of deeper compression at the front edge.
I don't know why that hurt my brain. maybe because it placed a
human foot inside the trick with the Hooves and made The Duality
real We kept the sun where we wanted it.
We took sips of water, the sky played that desert game where
there's no Cloud, but you feel shade, and then you realize it's
your own adrenaline constricting and dilating your vision.
I checked the compass too often and then forced myself to check
it on a schedule. So I wouldn't be checking it for
comfort. The last base in before the
fence was the kind of gently cut landscape that can hide 100
steps. We had one more who do to pass
and then a broad open Shale fan to cross where the fence would
be visible. If you climbed even a foot
higher, On the back, slope of that hoodoo in the only patch of
clay that wasn't stippled. By Pebbles, we found the thing
that took this out of the category of stories you laugh
off later lying on its side in a shallow Depression was a wooden
block carved into an oval. It was the size of my hand from
wrist to fingertips. A leather strap was riveted
across the top and another ran at a diagonal.
The strap had a buckle that would fit around a foot and
cinch tight. The bottom of the block had been
sanded, smooth, and then I swear to you, it had been rubbed with
something to seal it oil animal fat, I don't know.
The sighted half mashed into the clay.
Like someone dropped it and stepped on.
It was a second block. The strap on that one had torn
through at the hole from Force. There was a strip of Pelt, maybe
rabbit or coyote, the size of a wallet matted in stiff with a
line of stitching. Like someone had used it as trim
or a wrap and then yanked, it loose.
The tracks around the blocks were messy in a way that only
the end of a planet is messy. The careful alternating pattern
devolved into a scuffle of heel toe oval oval clause and one
long gouge where something slid, you could see where the person
had stepped out of the block and left an honest, human footprint
Arch Toes. That soft pad below the big toe
that doesn't show in shoes. I felt nausea that had nothing
to do with heat. We didn't talk about it there.
He took the photos. You take, when you won an
argument later to have evidence. We both looked at the Horizon
like the highway would arrive faster.
If we watched for it, we made the fence in a straight line,
topped, the last rise. And there it was the long wire
boundary running East-West the dull posts the little square
Shadows. They cast you can hear I-40 from
a mile away and then as you get within hundreds of yards, it
goes mute because of the weird troughs in the Earth.
We kept an even paste to the fence because sprinting makes
you stupid. I put my hand on the medal in
the sun's heat in it. And the grounding effect you get
when your body meets an object that has nothing to do with your
fear. I waved my orange bandana and we
both scanned West and East. The park truck we flagged down
was one of the maintenance rigs white with a light bar dust on
the tires. The driver rolled the window
down and took our condition. In at a glance, the way
professionals, do skin tone breathing, whether our speech
matched, our faces. We didn't spill everything out
in a jumbled. We told it in order.
He parked in came to the fence and looked at our map and at our
bearing notes. And at the little grease pencil
marks, we'd made on the plastic over the top of to keep us on
us. Then he said you're going to
walk me back to where you were comfortable last and will work
forward from there. He moved with that practice
quiet. That makes you want to be quiet
too. He asked the questions that put
you back in your body. Water left, any headaches, any
metal taste in your mouth. He had us point of talk when we
could when we got to the first alternating Prince, he crouched
and set a finger on the canine track gently like it might
break. And then on the human one, he
didn't editorialize. He took a dozen photos on his
work, phone stepping around shooting from low from high with
a little tape measure trapped under a rocks.
So the numbers showed in the frame when we reached the blocks
he said, okay? In a flat way that meant not
surprised but not exactly pleased.
He took more photos each with a case number in frame.
He had a little card that he slid into the corner like a
slate. He set the blocks on a plastic
sheet like a painter's drop cloth and photograph The
Impressions underneath them. He didn't pick up the strip of
Pelt with his hands, he slid a piece of cardboard under it
until it lay on the sheet then he folded the plastic over
everything and taped it. He wrote two numbers on the back
of a business card and gave it to me.
His mustache didn't move when he spoke.
This is a human, he said not dramatic just as a datum.
Someone trying to be something else.
He held our permit copy between two fingers and said, I don't
want you off Trail in this zone for a while, that's not an order
that's advice. You did right?
With your line of sight, you did right coming to the fence.
He looked out at the bowls like they had personalities.
He knew sometimes the way people act out here, invites them to
keep acting. He didn't give us a lecture
about culture, or Superstition or Scare stories.
He didn't dismiss anything. He also didn't humor, Us.
Back at the truck, he made sure. We were not medically
compromised and asked us where our vehicle was.
And when we said he drove the Perimeter Road and met us at the
pull out where Highway noise makes talk feel private.
He asked for our phone numbers. So the chief Ranger could follow
up. He asked us to email our photos
with the date and time stamps intact.
He told us not to post anything until the report was filed.
He gave us lukewarm water from a case and a shade line to sit in
while he wrote his notes. When we left he said the kind of
thing that can sound like a platitude.
If you didn't just see him, do the detail work, the park is the
park, it doesn't control people. I think about the official
explanation a lot because it is the explanation that fits the
tangible evidence. A person carved hoof blocks, a
person strapped them on to lay a false Trail and to unsettle
whoever read it. a person, staged The Raven in the choleah
spines and learned how to throw a voice in hard country where
sound ricochets A person walked with a dog or had the dog
follow. A person followed us closely
enough to tug my pack and then got sloppy when they needed to
move fast, tore the strap and abandoned the props.
A person stood where we could see them and copy to whistle
because they had heard me do it, because that's an easy stunts.
If you stop at that line, the story is a story about a person
and the way Landscapes like this makes some people want to wear a
mask. But that line Skips a thing.
I don't know how to file. It skips the way Jesse's name
was said in the exact Cadence her brother uses when he wants
her attention without worrying, her that upward tilt that is his
and not mine and not any strangers.
It skips the echo of our own conversation playing back.
Five minutes. Late from a gully.
We had just read like a book and found blank.
It skips the coyote making the mouth shape of a chew with no
swallow and no blink and the way it paste with a second set of
steps that faded like a rubbed pencil line.
It skips the simple unfun fact that someone had been inside of
my little mannerisms enough to tilt their head.
The way I do without seeing me do it that day, unless they knew
me from somewhere else, which they don't.
Or unless the desert teaches certain postures to all bodies,
which it does sometimes, but the coincidence sits raw in the
mind. When I try to talk myself out of
the other word, the one I said, I don't use lightly.
I get quiet because I can feel how the rational account fails
to cover certain edges. There's a little ring of facts
that can't close. After the incident, the chief
Ranger did call, he was professional and he was clear.
Someone has been playing games out there, and on this year and
you were not the first to see stage to things. he said, they'd
appreciate us reporting back, if anyone contacted us or if we saw
a posts on line, that matched our photos, He said law
enforcement would make a pass or two through the Zone in the next
week not because they expected to catch someone standing on a
knob but because attention sometimes shortens these phases.
He didn't tell us not to come back to the park.
He told us to pick on trail routes for a while if the
experience stuck in our throat, it did.
We still hike. The desert is still the only
place. My head goes, the speed it
should, but the Bentonite bowls live under the top layer of my
thoughts like something buried shallow At home in the trivial
safety of a kitchen. I scrolled the photos again on a
bigger screen. The blocks are playing the
straps are hardware store cheap. You can see where a person with
no real craft rubbed, the bottom with something that darkened,
the Grain and made it shine. You can see the edges of the
ovals, dinged by small rocks. There's nothing magical in them.
When I look at the image of the wash where Jess is named came
out of nothing, I see only a wrinkle of shade in our prince
side by side. I can reproduce the tongue
clicking sound with my mouth. If I try and I hate that I can
When I hear a coyote, now, in country closer to home, the Yip
is always a dog's and my brain puts it in the dog category and
moves on. And yet, I type this and pause
because the one detail that doesn't belong to the person
category keeps me from sealing It Off.
You don't have to know a family to get an echo.
Write an uncle can pick up a voice in a day a prankster with
an ear can mimic a tone but that particular call a Brother's call
tucked in a lifetime that little private rise at the end, hit
like a knuckle on bone. The desert knows ways to carry
and Ben sound. Maybe that's all.
Maybe everything I can't meet head on Ben's like that under
the wind. We haven't gone back off Trail
and Devil's Playground. It's not a vow.
Exactly. It's just the way the map of my
head sits. Now we talked about going back,
the proper way on marked routes where we'll meet people every
hour and Nod and pass. When I fill out permits now, I
still listen, when the ranger at the desk, gives me the advice.
I already know because sometimes the advice is about a fence in
more than one sense. When people ask what we saw.
I say a person trying to be something else because that's
true, and I say the park rangers have it because that's all so,
true. And when I'm alone in August, I
add one word in the quiet, the way I'm adding it here, not to
sensationalize not to feed a thing, but because the label
matches the part of the day, no other label fits.
Skinwalker. I say it in a voice that doesn't
invite a story back, then, I put the word away and I think again
like I was told to about line of sight, what you keep in View and
what you let drop behind you so you can move forward.
I'm not asking anyone to believe me.
I'm just setting the details where I can see them.
The way we do with tracks one after another, Until there's a
line, you can follow out. I left Idaho Falls at 6:15 in
the morning because I wanted to be on the trail with the first
clean light. The drive to Swan.
Valley was empty and quiet the whole way down us. 26 the river
off to my right pale and flat, under a thin band of fog that
hadn't burned off yet. I'd picked Palisades Creek
because it's straightforward. Followed the water up to the
Lower Lake. Keep going.
If you feel good turn around before dark, I've hiked it a few
times and always told myself I'd finally push past the Lower Lake
and see the upper I had a day pack with the basics, headlamp
filter, a space blanket, a cheap Compass a paper map.
That showed the general Basin plenty of calories, a first aid,
pouch bear, spray clip to the shoulder strap.
I signed the trail register at the kiosk wrote my plate.
Number on a scrap of paper and tucked it under the windshield
wiper like I always do when I'm solo.
The air smelled like wet wood and cold Granite.
It was late. September, Aspen along the
Creeks were already turning coins of yellow.
Against the darker fur on the slopes The first couple miles
are easy, the path is wide loping, alongside Palisades
Creek, the water pushing fast, over bedrock and fall and limbs
loud enough. You have to raise your voice if
you're close to someone. I passed a dad with two kids in
hoodies in a woman in waiters working, a run below, an Old Log
Jam. There's a spot where the canyon
Narrows and the trail is shaved into the wall with a decent drop
on your left and The Creeks chewing away below Everyone
gives each other space there without talking about it.
Ask that it opens and you can walk without thinking.
I kept a comfortable Pace breathing easy, my plan was
simple Lower Lake by late morning.
Snack, check the time, see what the sky looked like and decide
if I would go farther. I always tell myself I don't
have anything to prove but I also don't like turning around
when I still feel strong by 10:30, I hit the outlet of lower
Palisades Lake. The water was low enough to show
a collar of Grey Rock all the way around a little wind
Rippling from west to east. Two tents were tucked in the
trees, near a flat Meadow and I could smell someone's coffee a
guy. In a faded ball cap and a woman
in a puffy jacket were packing up.
We traded a hello. He said they'd heard something
circling, the camp, the previous night, probably a deer, maybe a
black bear, didn't see anything. Just Footsteps in the brush?
He grinned when he said it, but he kept glancing at the timber,
like the joke, didn't sit right with him.
I laughed at off, wished them a good hike out and walked along
the North Shore on a narrower path that stayed above the
waterline. Passed the far end.
You pick up the main tread again, as it funnels into the
upper Canyon. There were bits of orange,
flagging, tied to Willows along the way, not forest service
standard, just loose knots on thin branches.
Outfitters do that sometimes volunteers, do it when the brush
gets bad. The tape looked fresh edges,
still crisp, not frayed by wind. I noticed it in that way.
You noticed something that may matter later but doesn't mean
anything yet. The trail steeped after a
tributary and a stretch of slick, angled rock, where the
Creeks crowding, the trail forced me to step carefully on
wet Blackstone. when that ended the canyon relaxed again and the
trees got taller, the shade heavier I didn't see anyone else
after the couple at the lake. No Birdsong for a long stretch
either, which isn't strange in the middle of the day, but felt
noticeable because the Creak noise softened there and left a
quiet that made every Shuffle of my shoes sound too loud.
Just before noon, I reached a fork that isn't on the printed
map. I brought the main trail went
straight climbing into Timber. The other was narrower dropping
left toward a shallow side drainage before curling up
again. Someone had tied, newer looking
blue flagging on that smaller Trail, a single ribbon that
snapped in the breeze. In the hard dirt at the
junction, I could see the round Prince of horses.
They came from the way I had come and turned up the smaller
Trail fresh enough that the edges of the prince hadn't
rounded off yet. I crouched and touched one out
of habit, feeling the soft crumble.
Pax strings. Go to the upper Basin late
season. I figured there might be a
faster line that cuts some switchbacks.
I took the left without thinking very hard because it looked
traveled in my legs, felt good, the cutoff walked clean and then
after five or six minutes then to softer tread through tall
grass. More blue tape.
But now it was tied low at knee height.
As if someone had been walking and fastening it without pausing
a single strand here, another, their little flashes of color in
green shadow. It was the kind you can buy at a
hardware store. No writing on it.
No, bent Staples, no printed FS. The upper Canyon opened into a
shallow bench with Meadow grass and old stumps Were Trees had
fallen years before the tape led me across at a slight diagonal
and then into a patch of younger Furs where the ground turned to
Needles. That's where I stopped not
because I was tired but because I felled all at once, aware of
every inch of skin on my back the way you do, when someone
steps into a room behind you and doesn't talk.
I turned slowly nothing, grass bending in the breeze to my
right, the edge of the meadow behind me shadows in the trees
ahead. The quiet pressed hard enough
that I found myself holding my breath, to listen.
The creek was distant now. A muffled hiss, like a road
heard through a window. I told myself I was being jumpy.
I looked down to make sure the last ribbon was still in view.
It was tied to a sapling, two twists and a knot.
I moved forward. The trees closed a little
another ribbon on the left. Then one low on the right,
almost hidden my calves prickled again.
And I told my legs to keep going because stopping was worse.
What I heard first were running steps in the brush somewhere
behind and Uphill. Not heavy, not dear.
Two or three quick footfalls, then nothing.
I Stood Still again longer this time turning until I had a full
circle of Stillness around me doing the slow scan Hunters.
Do looking for a curve that shouldn't be there or a straight
line in all the chaos, nothing. When I started walking again, I
did it. As quietly as I could rolling my
feet in set of slapping the ground.
Trying not to let a branch flick back and make noise.
It's hard to move that way with a pack, even a small one.
It throws your balance a little 30 feet later, I heard the
footsteps again. Same Kayden, same distance, as
if whatever was moving, had matched.
My pace and only broke silence. When I did, there's a point
where you drop the polite explanations, You go from
probably a deer to something as following me.
I didn't call out, I didn't want to tell it anything about me,
even the sound of my voice. I pushed on cutting between two
Furs and stepping over an old log on to Red sponge inside,
When my foot pressed into it, the wood gave way and the smell
of rot and cold sap. Came up, sweet and sharp.
I watched My Feet Again. The ground ahead was churned and
soft hoof prints. Yes.
But wrong somehow Broad and round.
Like they should be, but the spacing was off too tight for a
horse. The prince doubled back on
themselves in tight Loops. Maybe stock tied here and
pacing, I kept moving and the blue tape.
Led me past the Warren Place in deeper into the trees.
The next ribbon was different. the tale of it had an extra
twist, like someone had tied it, and then changed their mind
about where to put the knot and fumbled a second time, It hung
too low brushing, my thigh as I passed, and I flinched harder
than that, small touch desert. the feeling of eyes on the back
of my neck had turned to await I couldn't shake the sense that if
I looked at the exact right spot at the exact right.
Second. I would catch something standing
to still I stopped again and listened for my breathing to
quiet. The steps came again, three
quick touches through brush, and then silence closer.
I didn't think I spun and blue bear spray in a hard Orange fan
into the trees. The propellant boomed in the
still air in the Mist hung and drifted in droplets that caught
tiny flashes of light What answered was a sound.
I have not heard before or since and have no good word for it was
like hearing an animal cough and a person, cleared their throat,
at the same time except the person part was wrong like
someone trying to make the shape of a human sound without knowing
how the brush shuddered. I saw nothing move, except the
fog of spray thinning between trunks.
Sap dripped from a wounded spot on a nearby tree where something
had rigged bark off in parallel, grooves long and neat.
I backed away from it and almost stepped off a small ledge
because the ground dropped where an old Route had lifted and left
a shallow trend. I caught myself and cursed out
loud. A short ugly word that made the
silence heavier the way dropping, a rock into a Still
Pond shows you how still it was. I wanted out of the trees and
into open where I could see the blue tape pointed left toward
Mortimer. But a line of light, showed
through the right hand side, I pushed through and came into a
wet flat Place fed by a trickle from a spring.
The mud took my shoe, a half inch deep in held it.
A dozen hoof prints pulled with water here, more loops and
figure-eights and stops and starts as if an animal had
circled the same patch for a long time, with no destination
in mind. In the center of those prints
was a single bar of a footprint that did not belong there, and I
still see it when I close my eyes.
It wasn't a full print, it was the impression of a pad and the
suggestion of toes. But the length was wrong for any
bare human foot and the angle was wrong, too set, as if
whatever put it there, had leaned heavily on the outside
edge. I knew then I had taken a line.
I shouldn't have. I looked back into the trees and
there for one second. Only I saw something pale where
pale didn't belong. Not white like bone or the
inside of bark? Not animal, not clothing.
A face or the idea of one at torso height, behind a screen of
young, branches, half turned and low as if it had been crouching
and lifting at the same time. The mouth, if that's what it
was, didn't move? The branches whispered, as the
light shifted, when I blinked it was gone.
I didn't spray again. I stepped backward out of the
wet spot. Careful not to slide every hair
on my arms was standing. My body had decided for me.
I was going back the way I came. I turned found the last ribbon
and headed toward it at a pace that was too fast to be quiet
and too slow to call a run. The ribbons that had led me in,
didn't lead me out. I don't know if I missed one or
if there wasn't one to miss. I hit a pocket of trees where I
expected to see a tale of blue and found nothing.
I turned twice three times, and nothing looked exactly like it
had. Though, that's what heavy Timber
does. When you're rattled every tree,
is a copy of the last, I took a line that felt right.
Following the slight downhill that should aim me toward the
creek. The steps in the brush to my
right. Kept pace showing up every 30 or
40 feet like a presence in a mirror.
You won't look at the spell broke when a voice called my
name from somewhere ahead. Caleb, it was my name and it
came through the trees with the soft edges.
You get under canopy, not loud but clear enough that it reached
me clean. I've been on this Earth.
Long enough to know how my own name sounds when someone says
it. I heard it in every part of me
braced because whoever said, it shouldn't have known it.
I hadn't seen anyone since the couple at the lake and I hadn't
told them who I was. I hadn't called anything out.
I didn't see Martin in the register and left a plate
number. But those were back at the
trailhead. There is a reasonable line of
thought, where you say a hunter could have seen me and read the
name stitched of the chest pocket of a shirt and used it,
but my shirt didn't have a name. And whoever said, it said it
like they didn't understand the shape of the word like their
tongue was too big. Like someone pronouncing
letters. They'd only seen on a page.
I took a step backward. The Voice came again, closer the
exact same tone and Rhythm the exact same length between
syllables like a recording. Every Instinct I have told me to
get into open ground. I turned toward the downhill
again, and pushed hard, until I found the edge of the bench and
the slope broke. And I could see a gray slide of
Talus with the dark stripe of the creek in trees below.
It wasn't near a long way down through brush and Broken Ground
and rock. And the kind of blowdown that
eats an hour, 100 yards at a time.
I didn't have a choice. I didn't want to stay in that
Timber with a voice that could say my name the same wrong way
twice. I started down and learned fast
that the slope hit little shelves and drops I tried to
pick the cleanest line. The thing in the brush came to
slower when I was slow faster, when I was fast, I slipped once
and caught myself on a young Aspen that bent and slapped back
and hit me in the face. As it righted popping me across
the lip hard enough to taste iron.
I spit and kept moving The trees thinned a little and I could see
the creek better now, slick and slate and fast through Boulders
that look like wet backs. The light had gone gray without
a cloud in the sky. That happens in Canyons, when
your angle to the sun changes and the walls steal the light.
I checked my watch for no good reason, 158.
I wanted to know where the sun would be at 6 at 7.
I didn't like those numbers halfway down the slope.
Broke clean into a jumble of charred logs laid, like Jack
straws. There must have been a lightning
strike here years ago. Thick black bowls fall in Every
Witch Way, the bark bubbled in cracked and Frozen mid blister.
I had to go over around under picking a route where an awkward
misstep. Could break an ankle and keep me
there overnight. That's when I heard the voice
again, only it wasn't my name. It was my voice and it said,
hold up from 10 feet to my right where a black stump went to
cinders. I don't talk to myself when I'm
alone. I don't announce what I'm doing.
I don't narrate my day. I heard my voice, say those two
words and I didn't look I pushed between two logs that pinched.
The pack hard enough to wedge me.
And I ripped free, like, an animal in a snare hearing fabric
tear, and I took the slope in the clumsy.
Fast way you do, when speed is the only thing you have going
for you. Behind me.
Something climbed over the same logs, I had just gone through
The Cadence of steps rows into a short run and then stopped
again. When I did.
Like, it didn't want to be heard except when it chose to be.
I hit the creek lower down than I aimed for it.
Wasn't a lazy braid here. It was a boulder garden with
slick, cobbles between the water.
Even in September was cold enough to knife my shins numb.
The second I stepped in. I picked a line across because
the opposite Bank looked flatter and more open.
It's stupid to trust open ground in a canyon like that, but the
trees on my side pressed hard against the slope and I wanted
space. Halfway across with water.
Swirling at my knees, my pole jammed between two stones and my
wrist strap held me to it. And I had to wrench hard to pull
free. And I almost sat down in the
current when I reached the Far Side not thinking, I stepped out
onto a slick Rock and went to one knee and my hand landed in
something that wasn't mud. I looked down and saw my palm
had pressed into a smear that looked like rust, a handprint
laid there before me the stained thin and even and somehow not
dried, I pulled my hand away fast and wiped it on the grass.
The smell that came up wasn't wrote or iron it smelled like
wet dog and hot hair. A head in the open, the blue
tape hung on a willow. There was no reason for it to be
there. I had broken off the cut off
gotten lost dropped to the creek crossed where there was no Trail
and here was another ribbon with the same fresh Square edges and
the same knot. It moved in the minor Breeze
that always runs along water and pointed Upstream like a finger.
I Stood Still and watched it and counted my breaths out of some
need to make the moment into a fixed object.
One, two, three. Four somewhere behind me in a
cross. The creek a twig popped once and
then the same pops sounded behind my left shoulder without
the footsteps to carry it there. I didn't follow the tape.
I found the most obvious line of human foot tread and stayed with
that instead, even when it peeled away from the creek and
cut back toward thicker trees. The light degraded in the canyon
faster than it should have for the hour.
And when I check time again, it was 339 and the sky above the
walls, had gone, the color of a bruise.
There's a subtle point in a Day hike where I'm making good time
becomes. I have to keep this up to be
okay. I made myself eat then even
though my throat had gone dry because Cal change, how you
think? Chewed slowly drank swallowed
drank again. A guy alone in Timber Crossing
through hours where he doesn't want to be anymore, is a
different kind of animal than the guy who walked in.
That's just a fact. The human Trail I found was
human in the sense that people had passed there, but it wasn't
good. Deadfall had piled, where
Winters had laid trees across the path and no one had cut them
out game. Slide marks showed where things
smaller than me had gone under A stretch of old Switchback had
slumped where the hill had let go like, a bad tooth.
At a flat in, I came across a pile of stones.
Built up about knee high. Five of them stacked carefully
in a column, A Paddle of bleached bones laid on top, The
bone was too flat and Broad for a deer.
It was from a cow or an elk. It had a notch worked into the
narrow end, not a break, but a tidy little cut and black hair
hung from the notch like someone had threaded it through and tied
at all. I didn't touch it, I stepped
around, giving it more space than it needed.
The steps in the brush returned, not close, but always, where the
sound took advantage of the Wind.
Sometimes up wind. So I caught with it wet hair
dirt. The sour Tang of something that
had slept in the same patches of grass until the grass took the
smell. Once on a short rise, I heard a
branch Creek in a tree and the sound of weight, shifting and a
soft rasp on bark, as, if something was hanging where it
didn't belong and making small adjustments, it could not help,
but make I let the bear spray hang in my hand and walked with
it in front of me, like a bad talisman.
Sunset came early because the canyon took it.
The trees flattened the light until my eyes wanted to make
shape out of every shadow. I stopped and pulled out my
headlamp checked battery clicked it off.
I didn't want to shine it yet. A light draws attention and I
already had enough of that. At the next been.
The trail started. A steady climb.
I recognized none of it. The map folded in my pocket was
a useless sketch for the level of detail.
I wanted my phone had no service, the little compass on
my sternum strap told me West was behind my right shoulder,
which fit the shape of the canyon, but the way the trail
switch back to the way, the creek, meandered made Direction
into a joke. The only number that mattered
were the ones on my watch 4:58, 527. 549 when the dark fully
set, it was like putting a lid on a pot.
Heet left, the air and I felt the switch on my skin.
I clicked my headlamp on low and the bean made a tight tunnel
ahead. The world outside that tunnel
was Merck and suggestion and things just beyond its Edge
looked like they were moving even when they were not.
Bugs came to the light. My breath became a white line
that curved away on the exhale and folded away out of the beam.
I stayed on the footing I could feel through my shoes as much as
sea. The Footsteps in the brush
stopped. In their place, came the soft
tearing sound of something moving through grass, behind and
above. And then it exactly in front of
me half revealed in my life. A man stepped onto the path from
the right and raised his hand in a lazy wave.
That is what my eyes told me before the rest caught up.
The shape had the size and the outline of a man.
It wore a brown jacket that could have been Canvas OR hide
and hung wrong on the frame beneath.
The wave was slow and late like a signal arriving through a long
wire. The face was facing me but it
wasn't. Looking at me, the alignment was
off as if it hadn't solved, where eyes should land?
The headlamp painted its front flat.
I did not think. I put my thumb down on the bear
spray before my brain could say the word spray and the orange
cone blew across its chest and face and Beyond filling the
space between us with a fog. I could smell as it drifted back
toward me the thing made no human sound at first.
It simply went down in a folding way like joints had been put
together for a different purpose and then asked to do this, it
hit the ground on a hand and the back of one elbow pushed and
slid back in a way across needles so quickly.
And so fluidly that the distance between us doubled in a breath,
without the normal steps that belong in a movement like that.
The jacket had no zipper and no buttons, it was a single piece
as it moved it turned into brush and then into darkness and the
only sound at made then was the new noise of something breathing
with the wrong rhythm. I never truly ran before, that
night. I jogged and sprinted and done
all the normal human speeds because of sports or the fun of
it. Running in the dark on a narrow
path with a pack on while you don't know where your next foot
is going is not like those things, it's a controlled fall.
A series of fractions of an inch where luck holds you up.
I did it because standing there and thinking about what I'd seen
was not an option. The trail pitched up then down
then into a shallow saddle. That held cold air like a bowl
and a smell of water nearby? Somewhere in that black Timber.
I heard it call out again with my voice a single.
Hey, Followed by another that sounded like a man trying to
speak. While his mouth was full of
cotton. The second one went wrong at the
end and made a click, I fell more than heard.
I blew through a stand of Aspen where the trunks stood white and
clean and the bark took the headlamp in a way that made them
look like cut polls. On the far side, the soil turned
Sandy and then soft and I sank ankle deep into a cold Marsh.
Winter dark grass, hid the water I stepped and pulled and stepped
and pulled and made myself not look back because I didn't want
to see it standing there at the edge.
Watching me Shoulder Through the slope part.
When I hit firmer ground, again, I stumbled into an opening where
a ruined cabin, lay collapsed in a low Heap.
Three walls sunk to knee height. One still upright and holding
the shape of a window. Everything was Gray.
The window opening showed a strip of stars and a wedge of
Hill inside the remaining wall. Someone had built a circle of
stones and burned a fire recently enough that when I put
my hand above where coals would have been the are captured there
by Rock, was warmer than the rest beside the circle.
Someone had a range, three piece of wood leaning against each
other into a tidy, little tripod, and a string of black
hair was wrapped around one leg of it.
The knot was clean like the one in the bone Groove beyond the
far wall of the ruin. I heard the sound of something
stepping around a rock and then stepping around it again.
I put my back to the upright wall and brought the spray up
and I held it there until my arm shook from the effort of not
letting it fall. I don't know how long I stood
like that. The watch said 6:22 when I
checked, then, 7-Eleven the next time between those numbers.
The are thin and thickened in my ears with my pulse and at one
point a coyote called on the ridge above and three second
later. The same call came from 50 feet
to my left with without the kind of echo a canyon makes I kept
telling myself to move, but feet, rude.
When they want to. I finally made myself leave when
a small Stone trotted across the packed dirt, just inside the
wall and came to rest against my boot.
I hadn't heard it fall. I hadn't seen it, come in, it
had been thrown or rolled with purpose.
I took one step then another and when I reached the edge of the
ruin, I saw movement inside the square of the window, two hands
gripped. The silk from the outside
fingers, splayed Nails, dark wrists thin They held their long
second and then released and slid down the outside wall with
a dry Whisperer. I went North because North was
downhill there. And downhill meant water and
water meant the creek and the creek meant the main trail
somewhere, the path I was on if it was a path then to game runs
and disappeared into small Flats, where the ground did what
ground does in mountains? It looked promising and then
tricked you into thinking lines that were their continued.
The headlamp was too bright and too narrow all at once picking
out details and lying about contacts.
I kept it on low and covered it with my hand.
When I could letting light leak through my fingers so I could
see where to put my feet but not advertise.
The trees pressed in the sound of the creek, grew louder, and
then disappeared. When a stand of fur blocked the
line of noise and then came back again closer.
I stopped twice to listen and found listening worse than
moving, because the moment I held still The Sounds crept in.
I came to the Water by accident. The ground simply ended and the
beam, hit the Slick slope of a boulder and beyond that black.
And moving was the creek. I didn't want to cross again in
the dark. I didn't want to stay on that
side either. I looked Downstream and saw a
log spanning a narrow Place, thin and worn, and gray with
striped bark and the look of something that had been there
too long. I didn't trust it.
I put my foot up anyway, because standing there felt like waiting
the log dipped, under my weight, and The Creeks through foam
sideways, where it struck a rock.
I shuffled one foot and then the other the way you do when, you
know, the worst thing you can do is Rush Three steps in the log
twitched, as if something touched it from below, my
stomach, went cold and tight. I went to a knee grabbed with my
left hand for balance, and something on the downstream Bank
laughed, once short and perfect, in my own laugh and then the
sound dragged, like a tape. I got off that log.
Any way I could, and went downstream on my side, scraping,
knees, and shins, and cutting the side of my hand on Stone
when I slipped again. 10 yards later, I found a set of rocks.
I could hop between and did it badly.
Almost sitting down in the water.
Again, cursing out loud, like a man who thinks volume equals
control. On the far Bank, the ground Rose
in a slope of small trash rocks and then settled into larger
ones that held the slope in place.
I climbed into the trees in the hill, ease and there like a
stupid miracle was a piece of cut log with the end, chopped
Square, laid across a muddy patch the center warned from
boots humans maintained by some buddy I followed the where until
it showed me a path that had been walked enough time to keep
brush from closing it. The first sign, I was truly back
on a real Trail was a song. Cut in a downed tree where
someone had to section out and rolled it down, slope I put my
hand on that bright saw wood and felt how smooth it was and told
myself I was going the right way.
The second sign was a little place scar on a tree, the
rectangle of old cut and New Growth framing it.
The third sign was a smell. I didn't know I'd been missing
until it hit me the faint sour of animal that isn't wild the
mix of leather and salt and horse so light I thought I'd
imagined it until the trail cut onto a small shelf and I saw
hoof prints stamped deep in the dust wet at the bottom like
they'd been made recently enough that water from the Animals
still fell in after it pulled away.
I rounded a bend and headlamps hit me in the face.
Two bright circles at chest height and a voice said woe
their real and wrong. In the way all voices were
wronged by then, too human to trust, I stopped and lifted my
free hand and dropped the bear spray hand to my thigh.
Two writers sat there on calm, big hypp horses.
Mules behind them on short, leads, packs, swaying.
The front horse stamped once and shook a fly off steel shank and
leather rigging jingling. You're out late.
The lead writer said, he was an older man with a brimmed hat,
pulled low, and a face. That didn't give much away
beside him. The other Rider younger, kept
his light on me like he was trying to decide if I could
scare his animals. I got turned around.
I said my voice sounded like it, belonged to somebody else you on
the Palisades Trail. Yes, headed out.
Yes, he looked passed me over my shoulder into the dark.
I had come from and I turned despite myself, Nothing moved
there. Nothing sounded The younger
writer cleared his throat and the sound of it was ordinary and
miraculous in a way that felt stupid to think.
We heard something dogging us up higher.
He said, Figured it was a cat at first.
Didn't commit stayed in the dark.
Timber been a quiet night for talking He said the last part
like he regretted saying it out loud.
The older man, clicked his tongue and moved his horse
forward and off to the side. So I could slide passed.
You can walk behind me. He said, you can talk if you
want or you don't have to, we're headed down. we walked like that
for a long time, the horse's feet placing carefully, the
mules stepping, where the horses, stepped the sound of
their breath, steady, and calming in a way that almost put
me to sleep as I walked The men didn't ask questions and I
didn't tell them anything. Once above us on a slanted face
of broken rock, something dislodged, a stone and it
skittered until it hit and bounced and skipped again.
And every animal in the line pause and lifted their heads and
stared ears forward. And we all waited while dust
drifted down and the sound bellied into the dark and died.
Keep moving the older man said to the string and we did.
Lower near where the canyon widens and The Creeks splits
around islands of gravel you can walk on in July, we passed a
sign. I recognized and then a turn I
knew and things I had seen in daylight came back in the beam
and turned into landmarks, I could trust the are warmed.
The smell of cold Rock when away.
At a Bend far ahead, I saw the glow a parking area makes when
someone pulls in with headlights and then turns them off and the
interior lights. Stay on as they dig for
something. The men told me their names then
too fast and soft for me to hold and I told them mine and they
tip their chins like they'd known it already and it didn't
mean much to them. I thanked them once and then
felt like I should do it again and the older man said you're
out that's what matters without turning.
At the trailhead, The Vault toilet in the bare board in the
depot post. All stood in their right places
like actors at ease. A truck.
Idled a woman sat on the open tailgate, eating something
wrapped in foil. Her headlamp on red and her
hands moving carefully. she looked at me and then looked
away in a way that meant she'd learned to give strangers space
in the night and held to the rule, I walked to my car and put
my palm against the hood for no good reason and felt that it was
cold metal and not a living thing.
My windshield. Wiper still held the scrap of
paper with my plate, written on it.
I could see my name in the trail register under a piece of
plexiglass my scribble, crooked where I leaned the pain wrong
before I opened the door. The coyote called again this
time it came from down, Canyon not up.
The notes were right at first three Rising Two falling, the
same clean, sound the ridge dog's, make it dust and then it
broke and stumbled and somebody who had never made the noise
tried to fix it on the Fly and got it wrong.
It turned into the beginning of a laugh and stopped short like a
person who'd been told to be quiet at the last second.
I got in the car and shut the door.
In the funk of it. Closing took the air out of my
chest and gave it back I turned the key in the engine caught on
the second try and I pulled the seat belt across my shoulder,
like an old habit. In the rear view, I Saw 2 Points
of Light, moving down the trail, the Riders headlamps, as they
brought the string in and for a second I imagined one more light
following them lower than it should be steady as breathing.
The fear that lifted the hair on my arms, then was the same as
the fear that started in the timber.
When the Blue Ribbon brushed my leg.
It was not any bigger. It was the same animal math.
I put the car in gear and rolled out slow over potholes tires,
finding the shallow places the creek still loud.
Even here. At the highway I didn't look
left toward the reservoir. I looked right toward home and I
turned that way and I drove until the canyon fell behind and
the road straightened and the lights of Swan Valley laid out
simple and human under their own small Sky.
I won't go back up that trail. We went out to the swell because
it was the shoulder season and because I said, we could squeeze
one more trip in before the knights locked up.
Everyone else we knew was already talking skis and
Thanksgiving travel but the forecast for the San Rafael was
still showing highs in the 50s and lows just below freezing.
And the cottonwoods along, the washes would be yellow.
I had a route in mine that wasn't technical Temple Mountain
Road to a Spur. Then a few miles on foot along a
shallow drainage west of Thompson Butte where the Slick
rocks into benches. And the Juniper gets stunted in
Twisted by the wind. The plan was simple, four days,
four nights a loop that would keep us within a day of the
truck at all times. It was me my cousin Nate and his
friend Mara who had only camped in Utah once before but was fit
and game and had borrowed a good bag and pad.
We left Green River early with 10 gallons of water, distributed
between the bed and the cab a stack of wood for the first
night and enough calories to be bored of tortillas by the
second. No permit issues out there.
Just BLM land in the usual common sense.
Don't crush the crypto pack out your trash, keep your fire small
and in an existing ring. We stopped at the goblin Valley
turn off to air down the tires a little and drove until the
washboard fizzed in the steering wheel. cell service died before
the reef Rose to the west and that wrinkled line at always
makes you feel small against Our first Camp wasn't far from the
truck by Design. We pulled off on a faint
two-track, that paralleled a Sandy wash and walked our gear
in 200 yards to a patch of hard pan, already scarred by old
tent, prince and a blackened ring.
There were the usual signs people leave foil torn from a
freeze-dried pouch flattened under a boot.
Print, a bit of cord. Somebody had snipped and thrown
down a rubber band, nothing, fresh the air smelled like sun
warmed, Stone and Juniper pitch and the breeze had a dry Edge.
Like it was coming off snow somewhere High.
We set the tents with the doors Facing East, so the sun would
hit them in the morning. Rolled the little Boulders, we
could find into a decent fire ring and made a first dinner.
That always tastes better than it should just because you're
out there. Coyotes kicked off about the
time the sky lost its color. Their sound has a way of
carrying across the flats so you can't tell how far they are and
a Pac can sound like they're in every direction at once.
We sat around our small fire and traded the first night stories
that people always tell. Nate talked about a cougar, he
thought he saw in Capitol Reef one winter that turned out to be
a German Shepherd. I told the one about a falling
star over the Henry's that burned green and broke into
three pieces. Mara had a story about getting
turned around in Foggy, Bottom in DC and ending up on the wrong
Metro platform for an hour. No one said anything heavy.
It was just the first night and the sound of the coyotes
threaded under everything until we zipped the tents, some nights
in the desert, feel empty and clean and you sleep like you
shut a door on the world. That first one wasn't like that.
I woke around what felt like, too to a sound, I know too.
Well, out there small rocks, ticking against other rocks,
like something a stepped, where people have piled, the flat
pieces into little Cairns. It's not on common rabbits, do
it foxes, do it. But it had a rhythm that felt
like a footfall instead of a skitter I listened to it, come
up out of the wash and then stopped short of Camp, maybe 15
yards off the Juniper Shadows were black holes between the
paler slick Rock shoulders. I was on my side with my bag,
zipped almost all the way up and I stared at the tent ceiling
where my breath had left a faint Frost.
When I sat up the Lycra of the sleeping pad covers squeaked and
the Sound Outside cut off, like, somebody had turned down a
radio. Than something exhaled once just
one slow breath. And I could hear coyotes again
way off to the South I thought about unzipping shining my
headlamp saying something, but I stayed quiet, counting out 200
beats, and then another 200 until I slept again.
In the morning, we found Prince, not paw prints on The Damp sand
at the wash Edge. We saw our three boot patterns
my left Vibram. Lugs wider at the heel, Nate's
narrower and deeper where he Stomps and Mars.
New Souls still showing the manufacturers little X's Cutting
across them were flat ovals. That didn't belong to us toe
Impressions. So shallow, we couldn't name
them and to heal that was just a smooth Dent barefoot.
The Stride wasn't big, mid calf to knee height between steps and
the line of them drifted in and out of the Sandy parks and then
ghosted over Slickrock where we lost them completely.
You can convince yourself of a lot with partial prints.
We poked around backtracked, half the camps perimeter and
found two more impressions in Apache of dust behind a juniper
like someone had stood there a long time and shifted their
weight. Once, I didn't like it.
Coyotes. Leave delicate, paws.
People leave flat planes and wait, we didn't say what we were
all thinking, just that someone must have walked through
recently. The air had a metallic taste
when the wind swung North. We decided to move Camp up the
drainage It was the plan anyway, and we didn't talk about moving
because of the prince. We broke down smothered and
stirred, the coals until they were cold.
And brushed out what Trace we had made the best we could
without trampling the crust. On the way toward the head of
the drainage we passed the stub of a mine at it, cut into the
slope. Like somebody took a bite out of
the Hill decades ago. There were old Timbers, and
rusted cable, and a piece of sheet, metal half buried, that
might have been an oil pan. The Juniper's grew stockier,
there guarding pockets of shade where the ground stayed cool
enough that the soil never completely dry.
We stayed on slick Rock benches as much as possible.
By midday at warm, to the point where I took off my fleece and
tied it to the top of my pack and the winds slid down off the
reef, like a hand on the back of your neck.
We kept seeing old sign boot prints that the wind had
softened and rounded the rim print from a five-gallon bucket
that had made a perfect circle in a place where somebody must
have siphoned water from a pothole.
No more bare feet. Second Camp sat on a shelf above
a bend in the wash, where a cottonwood grew and made its own
season, with its color. It was bright and Loud against
the sandstone in the pale sky. We found a rock Alcove that
would block wind and we set our tents under its lip like teeth.
I gathered dead, Juniper the good kind that breaks with that
dry, snap and burns hot and stacked.
It in a cradle of larger sticks to get a coal bed.
We ate early so we wouldn't burn headlamps making dinner.
The coyotes did their thing right on time and then went
quiet. Marauder, beanie down over her
ears and said, sometimes she forgets the desert isn't the
beach, That everything is sharp and louder than you expected at
night. And even the silent shows up
with weight. We sat a little closer to the
fire that night because the cold settled faster and there was a
feeling of attention around us which is the only way I can say
it. The wash curve made a natural
Amphitheater and sound came back to us off the walls in a way
that made you second guess the direction.
After we had checked the guidelines, and crawled into the
tents. I lay there and watched my
breath again until it thinned. Out in the wash of voice said my
name. It said it wrong.
It was my name, flattened and pitched.
Like somebody had heard me say it once a single time from too
far away and then tried it out of the dark.
Evan it said but the e was crushed so it sounded like Aven
and it came from down in the wash not up the slope where our
fire had been. I pushed my face to the mesh and
saw nothing but the power of the Rock.
If I had been alone, I might have curled into my bag until
morning and told myself, it was just the weird way, sound
carries, but Mars zipper slit halfway down and stopped and she
hissed a question without using our names.
Then from the other side, the voice that had tried.
Mine tried Nate's and got it even worse.
Broken into two, clean syllables like a student reading off a
role sheet. Nah.
The wash Amplified it? I didn't say anything.
I reached for my headlamp, thumbed it without clicking it
on. And lifted the zipper two teeth
at a time. When the flap cracked open, just
enough. I took the light in my palm and
did a low sweep. You can see 20 yards like that
with outing your night vision. The beam hit the Cottonwood
trunk, a dark stripe, like a river in the bark where the sap
had run, and in the next sweep, it caught two points that
reflected in the dropped. Some animals eyes throw back,
silver. What I saw was duller more
yellow and weak and set too far. Apart for anything, I could
name. I lifted the lamp again and
whatever had been there had moved, not away but lower like
it. Had folded down a Rock skipped
once in the wash, then twice after that.
Nothing spoke. We lay there?
Listening to all the small sounds.
We had decided not to hear and slept in fits again, In the
morning, the prints were closer, we found them coming up out of
the wash on a diagonal that would have taken the Walker
straight past our tents. If we hadn't been where we were,
The line bent just shy of where our shadows spread from The
Alcove and skirted at the edge, then dropped back down into the
sand. We paced it out.
The Stride hadn't changed, the feet were still bear in one
place. A heel, had pushed deep and
brought up wet sand. Like the water table was
surprised by weight. And then this bothered me more
than I can explain. We found an extra Mark next to
one of the prints that looked like the edge of a hand, where
someone had set it down flat to steady themselves.
It didn't show all the fingers, just the heel of the palm and
something that could have been a little finger and ring finger
blurred together. For a second, I told myself it
could have been a raven wing tip.
It wasn't We stood there and ran out of ordinary explanations in
a quiet way. And no one said the word that
sits at the edge of Utah. Stories out there.
The one people laugh at until they don't.
He hiked a loop that day to move and to make daylight, do some
work for us. The sky stayed, a high Thin Blue
and the breeze never quit. The swell bends light in a way
that makes distances slippery and it's easy to think a
Promontory as a 10 minute walk. When it lives in our away.
We climb to a saddle where the Slick Rock tilted up and broke.
And from there, we could see North toward the reef, like a
scaly back and the Henry's farther snow set into their
gullies, like chalk lines on a patch of clay that hadn't fully
dried since the last storm, something had pressed in a
knuckle line that made no sense. If you were looking for of
hooves or pause it was wrong as soon as I saw it.
We walked more quietly after that.
In a shallow Alcove we found a dead rabbit hung through the
tendons of its back legs on a little Fork of juniper that
happens people trap and tie off their catches coyotes stash
things but the cut was a jack of stone not a blade and the trail
of blood below it. When three feet and stopped like
somebody had been careful On the way back.
We stayed on the high benches and watched our own Camp from a
rise for a while before we went down to it because I didn't want
to walk into anything. I didn't have to That night we
did a fire not for warmth though it helped but for the way fire
gives you something to look at. So you're not staring out into
the negative spaces, waiting for them to fill.
We agreed to a watch without making it official.
I said I'd take first then, Mara Nate said he'd go last because
he claimed, he could fall asleep anywhere and wake up fast.
The wind dropped sometime after midnight and the silence went
hard. I could hear my pulse in my
ears. Coyote sparked up again far
away, and then shut down. And that's when something
clicked its teeth behind the Alcove wall.
Not a chittor, not a scrape. Teeth.
It went once twice like a dog giving the barest warning and I
got up as quietly as I could and walked to the edge of the
Alcove. And stepped around it with the
headlamp off. The stars were strong enough
that the Slick Rock showed pale. When I filmed the light, the
beam washed over a patch of ground that looked like it had
been brushed with something dance.
Scanned. In the near distance between two
squat junipers. I saw the silhouette of somebody
standing with their shoulders, hunched up high, and their head
pushed forward. You know, how a person's posture
tells you, their cold or hurt, or about to move?
This posture told me nothing except that.
It wasn't right. The light, hit the plane of its
chest and slid off because something dark covered it that
drank the light. A hide.
I thought without wanting to think it.
The head if it was a human head was covered too bearing long
strings that could have been hair or strips.
It didn't Flinch or throw up a hand, it didn't turn it, just
dipped slowly. Like whatever was inside that
shape was deciding whether it could fold itself to the ground
without breaking. I took one step back which made
a scrape and the figure smooth down out of sight.
Like a person laying into a bed very carefully.
I held the light there until my hand Shook and there was nothing
left to show, but pale Rock and two black, Juniper Trunks and a
smear of shadow that wouldn't resolve.
I went back to the fire and woke Morrow with a hand on her
shoulder. I told her to listen.
We didn't say the word. We just used our eyes until we
could see the perimeter as a line, we were willing to defend
without drawing anything to us by name.
We made the decision to move early on day three.
We didn't pack immediately because running doesn't make
sense. If you can't outrun the ground
and out there, the ground goes on.
But we loaded bear cans and stoves and anything that clinked
into our packs and rolled the tents.
And we shouldered everything and went South East toward a Spur.
That would bring us down near an old mining track.
It wasn't the direction we had planned.
It was the direction that put us nearer to the truck.
And at that point, the plan wasn't worth much because the
situation had changed from a nice Loop to not wanting to be
where we were after Dark. Our path traced to slots upper
lip for a while and the drop on our right.
Kept my eyes on us. On a flat between two shallow
domes of slick. Rock we found a structure that I
have no better word for than a ranged.
Broken Twigs of black brush laid in a shape.
You could talk yourself into seeing as a body, two branches
for legs for arms and a shorter piece for the head.
People do that kids do that. But the ends of the branches
were singed, like they'd been passed through a flame and there
was no Ash stationed anywhere nearby to explain it.
Nate kicked the shape apart hard.
Made a mess of it like he was stamping out, a nest of ants and
I was glad he did because it broke the spell of seeing it.
We didn't take a long break or sit for snacks.
We ate walking and didn't talk about anything other than water
and distance and whether that cloud Bank building over the
reef meant the forecast had been wrong. we dropped into the next
drainage slower than we needed to because of the way, the
bentonite clay looked When it's dry, it's just dirt.
When it's damp, it turns into Greece.
That will laugh at your boots and send you down on your hips
so fast. You won't know you fell.
At the bottom, the cottonwoods grew thicker, and we found a
series of prints. We all agreed were from a person
in trail Runners knot boots They were older than ours shallow and
wind sanded. I wanted them to make sense of
the other prints and erase them. They didn't.
The bare feet. We had seen before were not
there. What was there?
Instead were scuffed spots at the base of cottonwoods where
something had knelt and then stood and then knelt again near
where a bit of matted hair had snagged on a twig.
The hair was not ours. It had a smell like wet iron and
old dog. I didn't want to touch it.
I didn't. Mara was quiet in a way I
couldn't argue with. And when we climbed the far side
and looked back, the lines are bodies made in the October light
felt too sharp and obvious on the stone.
I kept thinking about our names, pulled wrong in the dark, and
how sound had come from the place.
Where water flows when it exists and not from the hard wall where
it would carry better. Little things like that put a
hook in you. Our third Camp because we had to
stop somewhere and there wasn't enough day left to reach the
truck and less we wanted a night.
Walk along a two-track with light obvious from a mile away.
Sat in a cup of sandstone with a big sky above it and good angles
of firelight to make shadows stay where they belonged.
We built the fire early in big enough to matter, then kicked it
down to Kohl's and fed it steadily instead of letting it
flare and die. We set a real watch this time
and set it like orders. So the words would make us
follow through. I took first again, I didn't
sit, I stood and walked, slow circles for an hour and a half.
Coyotes barked once and then were gone.
The wind ran a hand across the tent, flies and took it away
again. My lamp stayed off because I
wanted my eyes full dark. When the our turned I shook
Nate's Boot and he rolled and sat up and took my place.
I went into the tent and lay on my side again and listened.
I must have slept because I woke to the sound of someone easing,
my tent zipper down tooth by tooth as if they were counting.
I lifted myself on an elbow and put two fingers against the
zipper track, without making it obvious and the pressure on the
other side. Stilled, like the person doing
it was listening for me too. It reversed that tooth by tooth
patient precise and when it closed it clicked, the metal
pull against the stops softly like a person done doing
something well. My mouth filled with a sour
taste. I did not say anything.
I didn't switch on the lamp. When the world outside moved
again, it moved to Nate's tent. I heard his hand, find the
handle first, heard the thump, as he grabbed the zipper pole
and jerked it up fast, and then I heard the sound of something
scrambling and sand without claws.
He came out with the lamp on, and did a full sweep, like a
lighthouse, hard and bright and unafraid.
And I hate that beam because you can only see what it shows.
But I loved it then because it took whatever was closed and
pushed it back in the near distance, the light caught
something hunched behind a juniper that uncoiled up and up
until it was taller than it should have been and then it
dropped to all fours and went sideways in a way.
No deer goes and no dog does either.
It had a strip of something over its shoulders that shivered as
it moved. Nate said a word.
I won't put here, because it makes me feel like I'm dragging
something back to us, and he threw a rock with his off hand,
like a bad idea. It hit a trunk and bounced and
caught a whine from whatever was there that wasn't.
An animal and wasn't not one after that.
It kept its distance. And by morning, there were
tracks around our tents in a deliberate double circle, like,
someone had pasted off a perimeter.
We hadn't set at dawn, we made coffee like it mattered, because
it did The sun came on slow and pale and the ice.
We had made in our bottles, melted away from the plastic and
curls. We found on top of one of our
bear cans. Something that made me sit down
on the nearest rock. Someone had braided three pieces
of Yucca, fiber together badly unevenly and pushed a single
Long human hair through the braid.
The hair was lighter than ours and longer than morass and the
end had a slick to it. Like it had been covered in
something, then dried. A joke is a thing with a
direction and a goal and even a malicious one, has a kind of
grin on it. This wasn't a joke, it was an
object made by hands in the dark.
That wanted us to know the hands could do it.
I took it and put it under a rock and then changed my mind
and burned it in the last of the coals and stirred.
The ash like I was burying. Something that could still
breathe. No one had slept.
We didn't need to say that out loud.
I said what we all wanted to say, without using the exact
word for it. That somebody out there had a
problem with us being where we were and that we needed to be
done. We're out.
I said we're going straight for the road and we're not stopping
to take pretty pictures. The day we left, did not make
itself easy. The sky kept getting brighter
and then not like the sun was rubbing.
Its eyes behind High thin clouds.
We stayed on hardstone in the spines of ridges because the
sand sucks you down and the clay will take your legs out if the
wind brings you any damp at all. We made time we lost time in one
place. The wash cut down suddenly and
offered a choice between a sketchy slab and a slide into a
cold pool, we slithered, and then made jokes with voices.
That sounded like we were reading lines.
The strange thing was, how often we'd come to a place where our
own tracks from two days ago, appeared like a message, we had
left ourselves They were not alone.
The barefooted Prince had stepped inside the edges of ours
in two long runs where the sand held shape heal over heel toe
over toe. The wait set deliberately on top
of our weight as if to show how completely we were inside
whatever game. This was I tried to imagine a
person doing that at night without leaving extra marks
without a headlamp without a stumble.
I failed and I have a good imagination for ordinary things.
At a bend in the wash where the sand was clean and Windswept,
something had written an arc of parallel lines with the tip of a
stick. The lines were in clusters two
lines, then three, then five, then three again, I wanted it to
be nothing. I wanted it to be wined, it
wasn't the stick. Lay at the end of the lines,
with its tip Dart, we walked around at wide, we saw the
trucks track before we saw the truck.
The faint two track had been our guide in.
And when the drainage we followed intersected at a
shallow angle, I felt relief in my shoulders, like I had been
wearing somebody else's packed the whole time.
We climbed the last little rise and the Tacoma showed its tan
shell in its black tires with a dust crust, that I knew like a
friend. I have never liked the way
trucks look in Wild places like a wrong colored animal that
wandered in but I loved it then like a house on fire loves a
door. The driver's door was closed.
The bed was as we left it. The gas can had a new Scuf near
the handle that I couldn't swear wasn't there before.
I hit the fob in the lights blinked.
We started tossing packs into the bed.
Without any of the usual order. I went to grab the last water
jug from the shade of a boulder where we'd cashed it and found
the cap off and set beside it on the Rock, like someone had
poured and then remembered to replace the cap, but put it down
instead. A little circle of dark damp had
dried around the mouth. I don't know why that detail
made me angrier than any of the rest.
Maybe because it meant hands and hands mean a person and that
made me want to understand and understanding was the one thing
that wasn't going to help. We decided to Camp the last
night near the truck and leave in the morning light.
It was the wrong decision and I own it.
It was late afternoon and the road out has washouts in a
couple of spots where you want a little light to place a tire.
We told ourselves, we were being smart and safe and not rattled.
We picked a flat 15 yards from the truck on ground that had
been used 100 times and built a fire in a ring made by people
who had done the same thing we were doing and had not had
whatever we had for company. The sky cleared completely and
the temperature dropped hard, the way it does in October, when
the heat just leaves the air, like it found a door, we ate
quickly and didn't pretend to be hungry.
We did our watch again and I took first and for a little
while, I believed we were going to win just by staying put and
not giving it anything to push against.
The desert can be like that you can Outlast it by recognizing
your small and making that work for you.
Then the wind shifted and the smell came.
I've smelled dead things in the desert.
You come across a house sometimes or a deer and there is
a sweetness that rides above the rot like sugar dissolved in bad
water. This wasn't that this had the
iron of blood and the musk of a dog that hasn't been washed and
something earthy like a wet hide pulled out of storage.
It came up slope against the wind which is not how smell
should work. And it arrived with a silence
that felt like the world had been turned down a notch.
So that whatever wanted to make a sound, could be the only thing
we heard. The coyotes did not sing that
night. They left the stage like they
were making room. I stood up with my lamp and my
hand but didn't switch it on. I didn't want to give that beam
away until I had to the smell thickened until I could taste
it. And then the voice came again
from the wrong angle. From the place where the truck
sat with its tired plastic smell and it scuffed floor.
Mats and the metal that felt like safety.
Avon. It said getting closer to my
name. Nah, Tay, there was a new sound
in it, not quite a laugh, not quite anything, human ma ra, it
said and got that one wrong too. Pressing the r like it was
testing how it felt in a throat. I lit the lamp and swept it hard
at the truck. The beam caught, the rear
quarter panel and lit dust, and then it slid across the
tailgate, and struck a shape crouched under.
It that unfolded fast and smooth until it was standing as high as
the bed rail and then a little higher.
The hide over its head was tight against the skull underneath.
Whether that was a skull, I recognized or not and the face
under, it looked back and didn't shine with eyes, but with a
wetness like cartilage. Its limbs were lean and long and
its hands stayed low. With the fingers crooked in a
way that made them look like they were waiting to touch
something without leaving a print.
Evan. It said again better closer and
I realized with a shock I felt in my spine that it had heard my
name the way Morris said it when she was worried and it was using
her tone and I hated that more than anything.
Nate came out of the tent already moving, not running at
it, but moving toward the truck, like he knew the truck was the
one thing that could add certain to this Mara was behind him with
the keys in her hand. The figure steps sideways, one
foot Crossing in front of the other in a past that was too
practiced to be an accident and then it moved with the speed
that did not show in any of the Motions we had seen before it
went from under the tailgate to 10 feet away from us in a smooth
line and then turned and dropped and ran on all fours with out,
planting the heel of its hands. And if that sounds like, I'm
making it dramatic, I'm not. That is what it did.
I did the thing you do when you have nothing else, I yelled loud
and flat to take the human back from it.
I yelled Nate's, last name like a coach.
I yelled truck. I yelled now.
It was enough to get us into motion that we owned, Nate, hit
the fob and the lights flashed and the horn, gave that thin
chirp. And the thing did not flinch.
It pulled its head to the side and interests like a coyote,
hearing a new squeak. I love and hate that.
I noticed that. We ran the ten yards that felt
like a 100 the keys, didn't fumble?
The doors unlocked. We got in When the interior
lights came up that soft yellow. I almost cried with relief that
felt stupid. The second it washed through me.
The thing came up to the driver's side window and put a
hand on the glass. It didn't slap or scratch it set
the heel of its Palm there. Like a person about to knock
would, if they were being polite, the glass made a sound a
little croak that windows make when they're pushed, but not
cracked. I started the engine and the
truck came to life with the sound.
I have heard every day for years.
And that sound felt like a line thrown to me.
I put it in drive and rolled and the figure moved alongside with
two steps and then three, and then kept pace for four, like it
wanted to see how the game would play.
If it didn't end yet. Then it peeled off and let us go
and I don't know why. Except that sometimes a thing
that has had you long enough wants to feel, it could still
take you if it chose The two track back to Temple Mountain
Road is simple in daylight. At night, it's a ribbon with two
pale rails and a dark ditch on either side that will take you.
If you look at the wrong thing for too long.
I kept my hands light in my eyes up and I didn't say anything.
No one did. We hit the first wash out and
took it slow. Then the second, then, the
Shallow Ridge, where the wind had draped a little tongue of
sand that grabbed the front tires before they found the
firmer ground. the truck fishtail and corrected and then
when call him again, In the rear view in the wash of our own dust
something long and low crossed behind us, and then stopped and
stood taller and the brake lights, threw it red.
And for a second I saw the hide that had been on its head from
the inside light diffusing through the thin places, I
accelerated like a coward or like a person who wants his
people alive. Whichever you want to call it
and the truck made the small complaining sounds a Tacoma
makes when you ask it to do more than you said you would.
We hit Temple Mountain Road and the surface made a new noise
under the tires, more regular less personal and the desert
opened out in front of us in a way that made me feel like we
had stepped out of a room that had no corners and finally found
a square to stand in. We drove to ut-24 without
turning our heads. When we hit pavement, the noise
of the tires turned to that steady hiss and it felt like a
hand on your shoulder. That doesn't belong to anything
but physics We didn't stop at the turnouts where we had
stopped on the way, in to look for Big Horn, on the cliff
bands. we didn't stop in Hanksville for gas even though
we should have We took the Road North.
Like it would take care of us. And eventually, the cell phone's
woke up and made their little noises.
And none of those noises meant anything to what we had left
behind. We kept checking the mirrors
without thinking about it. The first time I looked and
didn't see dust or shape or anything, not us my chest hurt
because I had been holding my breath at some level, I couldn't
name. The Henry, stood black with out
detail ahead of the sunset and the world that has lines painted
on it. Excepted us back without
comment, we did not file a report with anyone because there
is no report for what we would have said.
If we had tried, we would have pulled out the wrong words and
made them do work. They can't.
We did the things we could do, we washed the truck, even though
it was just dust. We put the tents up in a
backyard for a night and left the zippers open and close them
and open them again, until that. Sound felt like ours, we threw
away a water jug. We didn't have to throw away
because the cap had been off. We did not keep the Yucca braids
because we burned it. We told the same story to each
other twice and then stopped telling it because it didn't
change and we didn't want it to. I went on a map app and traced
the line of the drainage we had followed and put a finger down
where I thought the camps had been and then I deleted the pins
because I didn't want them to exist.
I've heard that people used the word Skinwalker for a thing in
these parts without knowing what they're saying or who it belongs
to. I don't know what word fits,
What followed us for four nights, learning our names.
And stepping where we stepped and standing, where we slept I
only know we went there as three people with a simple plan to
stretch a little more fall out of the year and we came out
because the road existed and that's the only reason We don't
go back to that bend in that wash west of Tom sick.
Butte We don't Camp under that Alcove again.
We don't use the little two track that leaves Temple
Mountain Road and Fades past the Cottonwood with the dark stripe
where the sap ran. There are a thousand square
miles of desert. You can love without being
greedy. and we can do that now, without going to the one spot,
that let us leave because it chose to If anyone asks why we
changed our fall plan, I say the weather turned on us early in
the nights were rough and that's the truth.
I'll put on it, the rest is ours and the three of us agree
without needing to say it that there is a place there that
knows Us by name. And we owe at the courtesy of
never hearing ours again. I should have trusted my gut.
That's the thought that circle's.
My mind, every time I replay that night if I had maybe I
wouldn't have set foot in those woods, wouldn't have pitched my
tent under trees, that Benton, unnatural silence, Wouldn't have
woken up to find eyes watching me from the tree line, but I was
too stubborn, two arrogant. And by the time I realized I
wasn't alone, it was already too late.
I'd always been the type who prided myself on roughing it.
No campgrounds with clean bathrooms or family.
Friendly fire pits for me. I wanted isolation, the pure
Wilderness, the kind of Stillness where the only sound
is the wind pushing through needles overhead and the snap of
your own firewood. That October evening, I parked
my truck on the side of a service road that was so
overgrown. I almost missed it.
The map said it cut five miles into the forest before it dead
ended. And beyond that, there was
nothing but green swaths of trees.
No houses, no cabins, no trails. That was exactly what I wanted.
I swung my pack over my shoulder tightened.
The straps and started walking, the sun was already bleeding.
Out of the sky, staining it orange, then violent.
By the time I had made Camp beside a Dry Creek, bed night,
had fallen, thick and heavy, and the cold had teeth.
The forest was different here. I'd hiked plenty of places where
the woods hummed with life. Owls calling insects buzzing,
the occasional Russell of deer. But here.
It was too quiet. my boots crunched on brittle leaves and
the sound seemed to fall flat as though the air itself swallowed
it I Shrugged it off. Isolation was what I'd come for,
wasn't it? I set up my tent gathered enough
wood for a fire and struck a match.
Flames curled upward. Throwing a Halo of light that
didn't seem to reach as far as it should have.
The trees stood tall and rigid just beyond the glow.
Their trunks forming a dark wall.
I roasted a hot dog on a stick, washed it down with a swig of
Cheap whiskey from my flask and leaned back against a log, the
fire popped and hissed Embers. Snapping upward that was when I
heard it, a sound that didn't belong at first.
I thought it was just branches shifting in the breeze.
But the air was still not a leaf moved.
The noise was deliberate slow, like footsteps pressing down on
the dry carpet of leaves, just outside the fires.
Reach crunch pause crunch, my head snapped toward the dark,
nothing just trees in the smothering, black between them
probably a deer. I muttered allowed trying to
convince myself. The sound of my own voice helped
though. It came out shakier than I'd
like, but then it stopped completely and the silence that
followed was worse than the noise itself.
I kept my eyes locked on that wall of trees until my vision's
swam after a while the fire burned, lower and exhaustion,
pulled out me. Finally, I told myself I was
imagining things first night Jitters.
I crawled into the tent zip, the flap tight, and lay in my
sleeping bag. Sleep didn't come easy.
Every time I close my eyes, I swore I heard faint movement
outside leaves shifting, Twigs, snapping underweight at one
point. I thought I even heard something
breathe long low, almost matching my own, but each time I
sat up and listened, there was nothing.
At Last, I drifted into a shallow Restless sleep.
I don't know what time it was when I woke again.
The fire had burned down to dull Coles.
My tent was filled with icy Darkness, the kind that presses
against your skin. What woke me wasn't to sound.
It was the feeling. Prickle along the back of your
neck. When, you know, you're being
watched, my mouth went dry, slowly carefully.
I sat up and strained, my ears there, something shifted
outside, not random, Forest noise.
A deliberate movement, I reached for the flash light beside my
bag, clicked it on, and pointed it at the tent wall.
Shadows warped and stretched against the thin Fabric and then
I froze a silhouette moved across the nylon.
A shape taller than any man broad shouldered but crooked,
its head cocked at an unnatural angle.
Paused right outside the tent as if listening.
I held my breath. Gripping the flashlight so hard.
My hand ached then softly too. Softly.
I heard it a voice. Hey, you awake.
I nearly screamed. Because the voice wasn't right.
It wasn't close enough to be a whisper, but it wasn't distant
either. It was flat Hollow and the worst
part. It was my own voice.
Hey, you awake it repeated, the intonation.
Wrong the Cadence off. Like someone practicing human
speech in almost getting it. I bit down hard on my tongue to
stop myself from answering. The silhouette lingered for a
moment longer then it slowly slid out of sight, I sat there
rigid every muscle screaming until the cold seeped.
Through my clothes hours might have passed before.
Exhaustion forced me back down. I didn't sleep.
I just lay there listening. At dawn, the forest looked
normal. Blue Sky through high branches,
birds chirping, Frost melting into do.
For a moment. I convinced myself.
I dreamed it. Whiskey fueled.
Paranoia. Nothing more.
But when I stepped outside the tent, I saw them Footprints.
Not boot prints, not deer tracks.
Bear humans, long narrow feet pressed deep into the soil,
circling my campfire, and leading off into the woods.
I swallowed hard, who the hell walks barefoot in the forest at
night? I told myself I should pack up
and leave. Just go.
But something made me hesitate some stubbornness, some reckless
curiosity. Instead, I stayed the day passed
uneventfully. I hiked gathered more firewood
tried to shake the unease, but the whole time, I felt it.
The eyes. From somewhere in the trees.
Always just beyond sight. Always waiting.
That night when the fire burned low, I heard it again.
The crunch of steps, the low deliberate breathing and then a
voice this time, not mine. It was my brother's except my
brother had been dead for two years.
Come on man, it said from the trees, the sound garbled, two
deep as those spoken through a broken throat.
It's me don't be scared. My chest tightened every
Instinct screaming to run the new.
Then without a doubt, I wasn't alone in those woods and
whatever was out there wasn't human, I didn't sleep.
The second night not a wink. I sat rigid in my tent,
clutching the flash light like a weapon waiting for the first
gray hints of dawn. Every sound made my skin crawl.
The grown of Shifting would the pop of cooling, Stones?
The distant Creek of branches that sounded too much like
footsteps. And then there was the voice.
It came sometime after midnight, cutting through the silence,
Like a Knife. Hey man it's me my brother's
voice clear familiar but wrong I froze my heart hammering.
You okay? In there you look cold.
Come on out. I shut my eyes tight biting, the
inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.
He'd been gone, two years, two years since the accident and yet
the Cadence was spot on the lazy draw.
The way he dragged out certain words I wanted to answer God, I
wanted to believe it but every Instinct scream that if I so
much as whispered back I wouldn't live to regret it.
The voice circled my tent slow patient.
I found more wood for the fire. It said I'll keep you warm.
There was a pause then laughter. My brother's laugh except Halo
tinny like a recording on Loop. It stuttered stopped abruptly
then repeated two loud. I pressed my Palms to my ears
not real. I whispered not real but it was
it was right outside the laughter died.
Then silence. I didn't breathe until the first
smear of dawn lightened the fabric of the tent.
I stumbled out at Daybreak my nerves.
Raw, my eyes gritty. I scan the tree line expecting
dreading to see something standing there.
Nothing. Just endless trunks fading into
mist but when I turned toward the fire pit I saw it a stack of
logs freshly cut neatly piled right beside the black and
Stones my stomach turned to ice. I hadn't gathered them something
had I should have left, then should have packed up and driven
until the woods were nothing but a smear in my rearview mirror.
but fear has a strange way of shackling you It tells you to
stay still to not draw attention to wait until you're sure the
danger is passed. So I stayed The third day
crawled by the sun was weak. Barely warming, the frost bitten
ground. I kept busy anything to distract
myself. Boiled water, checked gear
scribbled in my notebook, but always, always, I felt it.
That's stare like invisible fingers, trailing down my spine.
Once I swore, I saw movement a pale shape between the trees
gone. When I blinked another time I
heard my name whispered low and breathy, my own voice By evening
dread pressed. So heavy on me, it was hard to
breathe. Still I built the fire higher
ringed it with stones as though flame alone could ward off what
stalked me. I sat with my Hatchet in my lap
eyes glued to the dark. It came again, when the moon was
high, This time it wasn't pretending to be my brother.
Helped me the voice was cracked. Hoarse as though forced through
Broken Lungs. It came from just beyond the
glow of the fire. Please I'm hurt something.
Shuffled closer leaves, crunched branches snapped.
I stood Hatchet raised. Light swinging.
Wildly a figure stepped into The Fringe of the firelight.
For one wild desperate second. I thought it really was a man, a
hike or lost injured his arms, hung at his side's, his posture
hunched, but then he moved closer, And I saw his skin was
too tight stretched wrong over long limbs.
His face was pale expression, slacked eyes wide, and glassy
like a dolls, his mouth hung Open Jaw unhinged too far.
Helped me. He croaked again, but the words
didn't match the movement of his lips.
I stumbled back bile rising in my throat.
Stay away tilted, its head bird-like, Then it smiled.
The smile was too wide, too. Full of teeth.
It stepped forward. I swung the hatchet not to hit
it, not just to keep it back. The blade whistled through the
air. The thing jerked to a stop it
cocked its head again. Watching me studying me then in
one swift unnatural lunge, it retreated back into the trees
swallowed by Shadow, the forest was silent again.
I collapsed beside the fire shaking so hard my teeth rattled
the next morning, I found something waiting at the edge of
Camp, a rabbit dead, its body. Flayed open skin peeled neatly
back, organs missing its glassy eyes stared at me and its mouth.
Had been pulled into a grotesque smile lips, slice to the cheek.
It was a gift or a warning. Either way it was meant for me
by then my resided cracked. I stuffed my gear back into my
pack, douse the fire and bolted. The forest seemed different in
daylight brighter safer. I almost believed I'd make it
but the tracks followed me everywhere.
I went I saw them. Bear human feet pressed into mud
in to leave. Always alongside my trail.
Sometimes behind me sometimes ahead like it was circling
hurting me by after noon I was lost the map might as well have
been blank every direction, looked the same towering Pines,
endless undergrowth Shadows crawling long as the sun dipped
low, that's when I heard it again.
My name at first faint then louder.
Hey The Voice called over here. It sounded exactly like me.
I broke into a run branches whipped my face, Thorns tore at
my clothes, The Voice echoed between the trees mocking
repeating my words from nights before.
Not real, stay away, not real. Each phrase was my voice.
Thrown back at me twisted and cruel.
Finally, I burst into a small clearing and stopped dead
Because their across the space, stood me.
It was like looking into a broken mirror.
Same clothes. Same face, but the details were
wrong. The shoulders were hunched too
far. Forward arms hanging slack, like
they didn't belong to it. The grin.
Split its face ear to ear teeth too sharp.
Too many it didn't move just watched I raise the hatchet
hands. Trembling What do you want it
tilted its head, then it spoke. Hey, you awake, the exact word
that had used the first night in my voice, something inside me
snapped. I screamed and charged the thing
didn't Flinch. But before I reached it the
Shadows closed in it dissolved into the tree line faster than
anything human. Gone.
I was alone in the clearing chest heaving, the echo of my
own scream hanging in the air. I didn't stop running after
that, didn't care. Where I went, just ran until my
lungs burned, and my legs shook. When I finally collapsed night
was already falling the cold seeped in fast, I was too
exhausted to make a fire too scared to sleep.
I sat in the dark clutching, my Hatchet listening to the forest,
breathe. Somewhere out there.
It was waiting and I knew it wouldn't stop until I broke.
I don't know how long I sat there in the dark.
Every second stretch, like an hour.
Every sound felt sharp enough to cut my eyes burned from trying
to pierce the Shadows. But all I could see were endless
trees. The silence wasn't empty
anymore. It waited.
Something was out there. Just passed the black wall of
Pine's listening watching. I clutched the hatchet so hard
my Knuckles cracked. My breath came shallow ragged
each inhaled too loud in my own ears.
I told myself if I survive until dawn, I'll find my way out.
I'll leave everything just run but the night wasn't done with
me. It started with the snapping of
a branch close too close. My head jerked up, muscles
coiled, the sound had come from, maybe 10 feet away.
Then another snap circling behind me.
I turned flashlight beam sweeping across bark and shadows
nothing. The beam caught on something
pale, a flash of white between two.
Trunks my chest seized. It was gone when I blinked that
a Whisperer not from one place from everywhere.
Here come here over here. Em all in different voices.
My brother's my own stranger's men women.
They overlapped Blended growing faster louder until the trees
themselves seem to speak. Hey man, one voice barked in my
ear. My own voice too close I spun
and swung the hatchet, it meant nothing but are my scream echoed
through the forest The Whispers cut off and the silence that
followed was worse. That was when I realized
something chilling. It wasn't just toying with me
anymore. It was hurting me.
Every sound came from the edge of the dark pushing me one way.
Every glimpse of movement. Drove me forward.
Step by step, I was being guided Panic, surged hot in my chest.
I bolted in the opposite direction, crashing through
brush, the hatchet still in my hand.
The forest wasn't natural anymore.
Branches seemed to grab at me, routes caught my boots, brambles
raked my skin. Behind me came the sound of
pursuit. Not running gliding, smooth
effortless. I didn't look back.
I don't know how long I ran before, I stumbled into another
clearing. I collapsed to my knees chest
heaving Vision swimming at first, I thought I had found
salvation. There was a Structure, a cabin,
it sat crooked in the clearing, its roof sagging, Windows, dark
old abandoned. But to me, it was hope four
walls adore, a barrier between me and the thing in the trees, I
scrambled to my feet and rushed inside the air reeked of mildew
and rot floorboard sagged, under my weight but it was shelter.
I slammed the door, shut slid, the rusted bolt and pressed my
back to it silence. My ears rang with it, my heart
pounding, against my ribs, I stayed there clutching the
hatchet staring into the Gloom. Dust floated in the flashlight
beam. Cobwebs draped from beams
Furniture, lay broken nod by time.
But for the first time in days, I felt safe until I saw the
walls scratches everywhere. Deep gouges carved into the wood
long and violent. As though made by Klaus they
covered every surface, jagged lines, crisscrossing and words
scrawled in frantic uneven handwriting.
Don't look at it. Don't listen, not a voice run.
My stomach turned, this wasn't safety.
This was a grave. The first thud against the wall.
Nearly stopped my heart. Something hit the cabin from
outside hard. The boards rattled dust raining
down another thud on the other side.
Then the roof creaked, as the wait pressed down, I held my
breath eyes wide, The Whispers came again louder.
Now, right outside, the thin walls.
Please help me so cold knocking, slow!
Deliberate from the window frame.
From the door from behind me. I pressed my back to the wall,
Hatchet raised my entire body, trembling then silence a pause
that stretched so long at almost felt safe.
And then from directly behind the wall at my ear.
Let me in in my brother's voice. I screamed and stumbled away
from the wall, the cabin shuddered boards, groaned
something heavy scraped across the roof.
I backed into the corner. My flashlight beam, darting
wildly The Whispers rows into a cacophony Every voice I'd heard
in the woods, overlapping filling the cabin until it was
deafening. My own voice.
Screamed. Back at me phrases, I'd muttered
in fear, not real stay away, not real.
I clamped my hands over my ears. My vision blurred, my skull felt
like it was splitting and then silence.
Again, the door creaked slowly painfully slow the boat slid
back as though unseen hands pushed it.
I stumbled forward Hatchet, raised screaming, no, The door
stopped hung half open. Nothing stood there.
Just the forest dark and endless but I knew it was waiting
watching. I didn't last much longer in the
cabin, the weight of those scratches on the walls, the
words of whoever had come before me.
They pressed to heavy. I ran again into the forest into
the dark. I don't know where I went didn't
matter. Every direction was the same
trees and shadows, but the Whispers followed the laughter.
And sometimes worse. I'd catch glimpses in the beam
of my light limbs bending backward.
Eyes glowing pale mouths too. Wide never fully seen just
enough to remind me. It was closed.
Always closed. Eventually, exhaustion.
Dragged me down. I collapsed at the base of a
pine lungs burning. Body shaking.
That was when I heard it. Not a whisper, not a mimic.
Footsteps, is slow, heavy deliberate.
Coming straight toward me. I aimed the flash light hands
trembling. And, for the first time I saw
it, it stood between the trees half and Shadow tall Too Tall.
It's limbs were long and crooked joints.
Bending wrong. Its skin was pale stretched too.
Thin veins. Black beneath its face God.
It's face shifted like wet. Clay one moment, my brother's
then mine, then a stranger's always smiling, always wrong.
Its eyes glowed, faint and animal like reflecting the beam.
It didn't move, just watched me, I couldn't breathe, couldn't
think. Then slowly it lifted its hand,
long. Crooked fingers pointed at me
and in my own voice. It said you can't leave.
I should have run the moment I saw it.
Instead I froze the thing stood there between the Pines taller
than any man, its body warped and wrong limbs too.
Long joints, bending like a spiders.
Its face rippled flickering between mine, my brothers
strangers. I didn't know always, smiling,
always wrong. You can't leave it set again.
My own voice too. Clear to hollow the hatchet
shook in my hand. My flash light beam wavered
catching its pale skin. It's stretched jaw.
It took one step closer, the ground seemed to groan beneath
it. I stumbled backwards slamming
into the trunk of a pine. My throat was dry, my breath
shallow, every Instinct screamed that running was useless, but
staying meant death. So I did the only thing I could
I fought With a ragged scream, I swung the hatchet.
The blade caught empty are as the creature.
Darted back, a naturally, fast almost liquid in its Retreat.
Then it laughed my laugh. Shaky desperate Halo, the sound
echoed from every tree bouncing around me until I couldn't tell
where it stood. I spun wildly slashing at
Shadows my lungs heaving. Stop it.
I screamed my voice cracking. The forest answered in perfect
Unison, dozens of voices, all mine, all mocking.
Stop it, stop it. Stop it.
I dropped to my knees clutching my head, the hatchet slipping
from numb fingers, the laughter cut off, and the silence
swallowed me when I opened my eyes again, the thing was gone
or so, I thought, I staggered to my feet, clutching the hatchet
and ran branches, tore, at my skin, Roots, Tangled my boots,
but I didn't stop. I couldn't somewhere in the
distance. I swore I saw light a faint glow
pale and steady salvation. I barreled toward it, lungs
screaming legs, on fire, the light, grew stronger, warm,
golden like the beam of a lantern.
My heart leaped, maybe a Ranger, a hiker a way out.
I burst into a clearing and froze.
The lantern sat in the dirt alone.
Burning steady. No one held it.
The clearing was empty, silent. And when I turned back, the
trees had closed behind me trapped.
Hey a voice said, I spun the lanterns light, flickered,
casting Long Shadows. And from those Shadows, It
stepped forward the skinwalker, but this time, it didn't wear my
face, it wore hers, my mother's her eyes, her smile, her voice,
soft and broken. It's okay, honey, you're safe
now. My chest collapsed my grip
faltered the hatchet nearly slipped know.
I whispered she stepped closer arms outstretched her face
flickering in and out of shape. Yes she said you're so tired.
Just come with me rest. I wanted to God, I wanted to,
but I saw it then. Just for a second.
In the flicker of the lantern, her eyes black shining animal,
not her. I screamed and swung the hatchet
with everything left. In me, the blades sank, deep
into flesh, the thing shrieked, not my mother's voice, not mine,
but something raw and inhuman, the sound rattled, the trees
shook, the are split, my skull, I yanked the hatchet free, and
swung again. And again, screaming with every
strike its body convulsed, limbs bending face.
Twisting between 1000 identities blood, if that's what it was,
poured black and thick. Finally, it staggered back
shrieking and dissolved into the Shadows gone.
The lantern winked out and I was alone.
I don't remember how I made it out.
The next thing I knew I was stumbling onto the dirt road
where I parked my truck days before.
My clothes were shredded my skin torn, my mind, a blur.
The truck was still there somehow I drove until the sun
rose until the forest was nothing, but a distant smear in
the rearview mirror. That was months ago.
I haven't gone back. I never will.
But some nights when the world is quiet.
I hear it. My brother's voice.
My own voice. Hey, you awake.
And I know it's still out there waiting.
We spent a lot of weekends at my grandparents place outside.
Tyler Texas, just off a Sandy County Road, North of Highway,
69 and not far from Lake, Tyler. Their house, sat on concrete
blocks appear and beam place with loose skirting, you could
slide aside to reach the crawl space. it wasn't remote, but
once the sun went down, you could hear a truck on 69 long
before headlights showed I was eight that fall.
My brother was about 12. My sister was five or six.
Our dog Lexie lived for those trips.
She'd pick up her leash with her mouth and stand by the back
steps Nails, ticking on the kitchen floor, as soon as anyone
touched her collar, I had read a little bit of folklore by then
in library books. I thought it was interesting but
separate from real life. I was wrong.
The second night after dinner my grandfather fixed the back
screen so it wouldn't slap and my grandmother took a couple
sheets off. The clothesline that smelled
like sun and soap the evening sounded normal crickets.
One barred owl way out and the low hum from a window unit that
cooled the living room. Lexi.
Paste. The back steps with the leash in
her mouth. Tail up.
We said we were taking her for a short Loop down the service
road. My grandmother said don't go
past the bend where the moon can't find you.
He said it while folding towels like a house rule, not a
warning. We nodded rolled our eyes a
little and went anyway. We cut down the shell and Sand
Drive and turned left onto the rutted road.
That ran parallel to the highway screened by tal Loblolly.
In sweet gum My brother carried a flash light and kept it off to
see the stars. I had a rustling bag of dog
treats my sister wore Light Up sneakers that blinked red when
she walked, which she loved and I hated because it gave away our
position. The air was warm and still.
You could smell resin damp leaves and a faint iron smell
from, where my grandfather had sprayed?
Well, water earlier in the afternoon, Lexi moved loose and
happy nosed down. Where armadillos had churned up
the sand, we were about 20 minutes out when everything went
wrong at once. The night sound didn't fade.
It went to zero. No crickets, no owl.
Even the Drone of the AC back at the house, felt thinner, like
distance had changed. The Moonlight turned flat, not
dim like a cloud crossed, it just dull as if a film was laid
over our eyes. Lexi stops so hard.
The leash tugged, my wrist, her tail dropped a Tremor.
Ran down her side. She didn't bark or whine.
She looked at 1 Point ahead of us and locked there.
A deer shapes. Stood just inside the trees
before the bend. At first, that's what I thought
it was. Then the details landed, one by
one. One antler bent the wrong way
with the tine mashed back toward the skull.
The coat didn't fit, right? Like it had been pulled on and
stretched. I could see ribs through hair,
not the way a thin dear looks but like the structure
underneath it shifted, The breathing was wrong.
It wasn't fast. It was counted.
The chest Rose and held for a beat, then fell in a timed.
Drop the smell arrived. Last sweet and rotten the way a
bag of meat, turns in a closed car on a warm day, its eyes were
a flat yellow. Not reflection, the flashlight
was still off the color, didn't move with us.
My brother said very low back up.
Slow my sister started to cry because Lexi wouldn't look away
and wouldn't move. I knew just enough from these
books. To be stupid.
I said the word. I didn't say it loud.
I said it cleared. Lucie The thing didn't breathe
for almost a full second. Then it made a sound that
pretended to be a dear and failed.
It screeched lifted to two feet with a jerky motion and a
shoulder set under the hide. With a hard, click the front
limb turned and became an arm that hung too long.
Teeth showed in a way that didn't match the head.
That was enough. My brother picked up my sister,
I scooped Lexi. We ran it pasted us inside the
trees, and never stepped fully onto the road.
It wasn't crashing through branches.
The noise was a dry rasp like cloth dragging across bark.
When we sprinted, it eased, when we slowed, it closed, it kept us
in a straight line, toward the open, I realized, then it was
hurting us. And I realized it without
wanting to When the house roofline came into view, the
sound fell back. As if it hit a boundary, we hit
the back steps and shouldered the screen door so hard, the
latch bit, the jam My grandmother was already in the
hallway because she felt the pressure change in the house
when the outer door opened. My grandfather stood up from his
chair without saying anything. My grandmother asked, what did
you see? I tried to say the word and it
stuck in my throat. I wrote it on a narrow Steno,
she kept by the phone, she read it, then turned off the porch,
lights through the deadbolt hooked, the little Hass on the
crawl. Hatch at the back steps and
said, don't say it out loud names carry The layout of the
house mattered that night pier and beam Plank Floors event.
Register in every room, mismatched skirting around the
base. Some panels loose My grandfather
set a hammer in the umbrella. Stand by the front door, to fix
a nail in the morning. He switched off the television.
So the house is own sound. Sat clear. my brother and
sister, and I shared a room, Lexi lay across the doorway like
a living. Stop head up eyes fixed on the
floor? The window unit cycled off.
The house settled, the way old houses, do small ticks and would
a fridge motor coming on and off.
No one said a word we listened to each other, breathe and tried
to make it quiet. A little after 127, by the green
digits of the clock. We heard the first sound A soft
pass along the skirting, like a flat hand on canvas, then the
faint careful shuffling of something sliding under the
house where the skirting was loose near the hatch.
Sound changed when it moved from are to structure.
A joist took weight with a low. Wooden knock, you could track
it. By the way, the floor answered.
Scrape, pause scrape. Pause, it didn't wander.
It worked in a grid, like it knew to test and measure it came
under our room. We heard tips of claws tick
between floorboards. One, two, three.
Then a thin drag as if learning what made noise and what stayed
quiet. The vent register in our room
popped once against the floor and dropped back into place.
Lexi didn't bark. She showed teeth and held her
breath. So long, she shook I slid a
kitchen knife from under my pillow and held it with both
hands. The metal felt cold and wet for
my own Palms. I didn't have any plan but I
needed something that wasn't my hands while we heard it under
us. Another near identical shifting,
past beneath the living room too fast for one body to move
between spots. Either, there were two or one
could move in a way that didn't match steps.
My grandmother stepped into the Hall in bare feet and put a hand
on the wall. She didn't turn on a light, she
just stood and listened. My grandfather gave one plane
cough from the living room, a human sound.
That said people lived here in were awake.
The weight under a shifted back, too slow scrapes.
And when still the worst moment came a few minutes later, the
floorboards by my sister's bed, flexed, a fraction, and then
stopped Are against my face changed, like pressure on a tiny
Gap changed. The flow.
It was the kind of change. You feel on your eyelids, when
someone opens a door on a windy day, not a breeze, just a
difference. It felt like something pressed,
an eye or nostrils against a crack and Drew are from our
room. The knife handle clicked against
my tooth when I swallowed because my hand shook.
My grandfather coughed again. Somewhere under the kitchen,
something thin and hard stick or claw.
I couldn't tell scraped between two boards, under the vent,
testing the seam, then nothing ten long minutes of nothing.
Normal house sounds crept back one by one.
The fridge relay a night truck on 69.
A dog barking far off like in a different County.
We didn't sleep so much as run out of strength with our eyes
open. Mourning, light made the fear
feel stupid while it still sat there.
The kitchen smelled like butter and pepper.
Nobody wanted to be the first to bring it up.
Lexie refused the back steps. She whined and sat down at the
threshold. My grandfather got a flat bar
and lifted the loose skirting at the hatch.
He put a flash light in and swept the beam along the beams
in the sand. The evidence will plain.
On one of the big beams 5 gouges ran together in parallel.
Deep enough to curl bright, slivers of fresh wood.
The spacing between lines was wrong for any animal, we knew.
In the sand, there was a straight line of heel-and-toe
prints that looked human for the first few steps.
Then lengthened and narrowed. Halfway along the toes split
into pads. By the last three, the gate
moved up onto the toes like a dog.
The line angled toward the trees and disappeared where needles
were thick. The sweet rot smell still hung
in a pocket under their weaker, but real, the way heavy or are
pools in a low space. My grandfather, measured the
distance between the gouges with a tape and wrote it down.
Two and a half to 2.6 inches between tracks.
He took two quick Polaroids. He washed his hands twice with
dish soap, once with vinegar and open the windows, to let the
house. Breathe.
We told our parents later that week they smiled at down.
They said night makes Shadows do strange things and that
imagination adds to it. They said, coyotes with mange
look odd. They said tracks to form in soft
sand. We didn't argue because there
was no point My grandmother didn't argue either.
She put the Polaroids in the Steno page with the written word
in an envelope and tucked it into a cookbook.
On the high shelf, my grandfather replaced the
mismatched skirting with tighter panels and screwed the hatch
shut with a lock hasp. Sprinkled a line of cleansed
sand around the perimeter for ants, but it would also show any
new tracks. He kept the Hammer by the front
door and never mentioned why they sold the house within two
months. The reason was downsizing to be
closer to us. Places like that go faster
around, Tyler. On the last day, my grandmother
handed me the green steno pad and said, if you have to write
that word again, right at small, we drove away with the old place
shrinking, in the rear view, ordinary trees and flat light.
At the view, we told ourselves distance would be enough.
Time passed. We moved to a newer neighborhood
on the south side of Tyler closer to schools and stores.
We didn't bring up that night. My brother, my sister and I made
a rule without saying it out loud.
We didn't speak the name, we called it that night and changed
the subject. We kept normal habits that
weren't Superstition so much as procedure.
Shut doors. Check, latches, bring the dog
in, at dusk. Keep tools where you can reach
them in the dark. None of it took effort after a
while. It was just how we lived.
One, humid, August evening. A few years later, the power
flickered after a storm and the yard went very quiet between
waves of cicadas. For one second.
I caught a faint trace of that. Sweet rotten smell near the
fence. It passed fast, like a car's,
exhaust, drifting and gone. I didn't say anything.
I did the same three things we always did.
I shut the doors? I checked, the latches.
I called the dog inside and kept the lights low nothing.
Followed the night chorus, came back and filled in the spaces.
The smell didn't return the next weekend.
At my grandmother's new kitchen table.
She pulled down the old cookbook, and slid, the envelope
across to me, Inside where the two Polaroids of the claw marks,
and a small list of numbers in my grandfather's careful block
letters. She added a note in blue ink.
Names carry doors. Hold We looked at the photos
together. We didn't try to talk each other
into or out of anything. We just agreed on what we would
do, if anything like it knocked at our life again.
I don't go back to that old road after dark.
I don't tell the story for attention.
I tell it because I learned to set of rules that night, and
they work for me, don't speak it, don't invite it.
Keep thresholds, solid, keep evidence when you have it.
When people ask online, if things like this are real, I
tell them the truth. I have some things don't care if
you believe them. The gouges were there, the
tracks changed shape the air under the floor moved when it
breathed in, we shut the door and its stage shut.
That's the end I wanted. And that's the end we got I
still scan tree lines without thinking.
I still notice when a house goes too quiet.
It isn't drama. It's just How I Live Now.
I took a summer job at a camp so I wouldn't have to go home.
That's the plain truth. I'm 20.
My friend, Trevor told me Camp. Dry Mesa was easy.
Money. Kids hikes Pond Duty, a few
campfires. The place sits off NM 117 near
Grant's New Mexico where the Black Rock fields of Elmo.
Pies run to the Horizon and cold air leaks out of holes in the
ground like a basement. You can't see.
I figured I'd watch kids during the day and sleep hard at night.
I didn't go there looking for anything strange.
What happened? Felt practical in the moment and
ugly afterward, and I'm writing it down because I keep seeing
advice online. That turns simple problems into
ghost stories. This wasn't a ghost.
It was something that uses our habits against us and we handled
it like you handle a mean animal near a ranch Trevor, and I
rolled in two days before the campers, we passed the El
malpas. Ranger Station took a caliche
Spur Road to a cattle gate and met the director Marla.
She had that counselor energy that keeps things moving without
raising her voice. She walked us passed Basalt
Ridge, three, long bunk houses on cinder blocks, then the South
tank Pond, the archery burn, and the trail, to two legal
viewpoints, the camp used Sandstone, Bluffs Overlook and
the Lava Falls flow. She was precise about boundaries
The Park Service marked. What was allowed?
And what wasnt anything below grade without signage was off
limits? No arguments.
That suited me fine. My cabin assignment was silver
Badgers ages. 12 to 13. Another first year named, Noah
got orange Coyote's 10 to 11 our porches faced the same footpath.
That first night after the pizza and plastic egg orientation.
I lay down on a thin mattress and listened to would settle The
night had that dry High Desert feel Big Empty, Sky low shrubs
dust. Around one in the morning.
A smell moved through the cabin, vents not strong at first wet.
Creosote like the air after a Sprinkle.
Then a copper Tang under it and something like old cooking fat.
I got up taped a blanket, over the window because the overhead
security bulb was bouncing glare off the glass and it made me
feel like there was a face there.
And I went back to bed. I sleep fine in new places.
I didnt that night. The second day, we did staff
training a senior counselor named Crispin and his partner,
Lila gave the standard Legend, talk they do for kids about an
outlaw, who hid in the tubes and punished rule Breakers.
It's theater to keep children from sneaking into lava holes.
Everyone laughed. Later a small group of us hiked
Sandstone. Bluffs overlooks.
So we could learn the route to lead on the way back.
No appointed at a run of tracks and grit that stopped me cold.
You could see goat Prince well-defined.
In the same path, they switched to bare feet.
The toes pointed the wrong way. The stride didn't change.
I wanted a normal explanation. So I said prank.
Noah Shrugged, we walked on. A quarter mile from their tucked
under a flat stone. We found a cloven hoof that
looked cut clean, and then placed no blood, just the copper
smell again. We didn't bring it back.
We didn't tell anyone because new staff already asked enough
dumb questions. That night, something tapped
under the bunks, not scratching, not a shuffle.
Just a steady pop from the crawl space.
I checked the vent the next morning and found a string of
small goat Knuckles tied, like beads looped through with a
strip of our camp t-shirts. I took it to Marla.
She didn't do the smile and distract thing, people do with
spooky objects. She walked me to the maintenance
shed opened a five gallon bucket of salt dropped.
The bead string inside and told me to get breakfast.
There was a box of orange cattle tags on the shelf, and three
dead trail cameras without their cards.
She didn't explain any of that, she didn't need to.
I understood that she'd handled things like this before and the
plan was to keep kids away from holes in the ground and not give
whatever it was easy, reasons to climb the porch steps.
After lunch, Noah, and I did a dry.
Run to the rim of big Skylight, we stayed on the legal side of
the monument signs and looked down into a wide shaft.
That breathed cold air, like a fan on low, on the rim.
Somebody had stacked flat basil, discs into a ring.
It looked like the things teenagers build when they smoke
and want to leave a mark. Thoughtless art.
The center was clean, dustless like a body, lay there.
Often enough to make a print and then was removed.
We didn't touch the ring, we agreed that, when our kids
arrived, they were going anywhere near below grade,
anything and we'd meet in the mornings to compare notes.
The smell had started to show up just before midnight and just
before Dawn, and it carried through the cabin's, like a
reminder, the monsoon built on day three.
Those quick sells stack, over the Zuni's and Roll Off The
Ridge Trails change from powder to slick in minutes Electronics.
Got banned after a kid on staff, nearly lost his phone between
two, slabs at Lava Falls during training, which meant no easy
proof hunting. We did paper, headcounts and
shouted checks, That limits, the kind of story I can tell and I
actually think it made us safer. People do dumb things with
cameras when they're scared without them you stand.
Still. And use your eyes.
Food bins by the pond began. Turning up opened with lids set
aside, raccoons make a mess. This looked careful at the
archery berm. I found my own frayed shoelace
tied in a bow around a Prickly Pear Pad goat hair threaded
through it. I cut that lace Jagged, the day
before the air went copyright again, nothing, you'd notice in
a city, but obvious on Black Rock where the only other smell
is dust and resin. Trevor was part of a group
sneaking near a shallow depression that pulled cold air
after sundown. I told him to knock it off.
He said he was moving Contraband so he wouldn't get busted with
it in a cabin. Everyone rolls the dice a little
before campers show up. He went anyway hours later, he
fell asleep sitting up on our porch, bench, his boots were on
the wrong feet. The skin across his knuckles was
scraped. Like he'd spent time moving on
hands and feet. He said, he fell on the cinder
path. I believe the parts I could
verify and kept the rest to myself.
At dawn, Noah and I walked to the Big Sky, light Rim, the
basalt discs had been restocked wider.
In the center, lay a silver. Tarp bundle about the size of a
hogtied person. Two fresh pinyon poles, were
lashed underneath it like a stretcher.
We didn't open the tarp. We picked it up together.
Carried at 100 yards to the service road.
Set it down and covered it with a spare blanket.
Then we found Marla. We wanted an adult present for
the unwrapping for a lot of reasons, legal medical moral She
brought two senior staff. We cut the tarp.
Inside lay a goat carcass legs folded tight, trust with new
paracord. The head was gone.
The throat had been cut clean. No insects.
Around the meets. Somebody had tied strips of
counselor's shirts in those same neat bows.
I recognized a strip of Trevor's tie-dye.
The smell hit hard copper and old fat Marla didn't talk about
coyotes or kids playing jokes. She took a field notebook from
her pocket, wrote down the date, the spot, and our names.
She called it a warning placement, then she told us how
we were going to stop giving a chances.
The plan wasn't magic. It was Ranch logic, weed salt,
the ground around the mouths that breathed onto our side of
the property line, Mark perimeters with stakes and
tapes. So no one crossed at Night by
accident, and beta Farmhouse passed Junction with butcher.
Awful bought and grants to pull it away from cabins.
We'd keep the campers busy topside, and leave below great
areas to the park service. if we could get through the next two
weeks of storms, it would settle I asked if she wanted me to
avoid a word. She said don't say it where Rock
can carry it? I said it anyway, because I
needed to feel like a grown man for five seconds, skinwalker.
She didn't blink, we moved to 40 pound bag of salt in a painter's
bucket. We laid a tight ring at The Rim,
Where cold air came up. It felt stupid, and then it felt
like building a fence. Near Junction.
We set a second ring while we did that something stepped out
across the law of a field. It didn't rush it was wrong,
then long arms. Bare legs caked gray with dust
hair. Matted, like, it had been burned
and came back. Patchy.
It didn't talk, and I'm grateful for that.
It angled down wind as if it had done that same Arc a thousand
times. When the copper smell thickened,
I felt my stomach pull the way it does.
When you walk into a butcher shop, we didn't run, we kept our
shoulders Square backed out slow and returned to the lights at
midnight, the steps went past the cabin's, You could feel the
board's, catch the weight on the porch posts.
It didn't try the stairs, it walked and stopped and walked
again the way a person does when he's checking windows for
movement. We stood with mag lights
pointing at our own feet to keep from blinding the kids inside
and we didn't wave them around or shout challenges.
Light made it back its path. That's all 15 minutes later, the
smell thinned. I looked over at Noah.
He nodded we checked the far line with binoculars from the
fence. The bait was gone hands, not
Hooves had scuffed the salt A heavy drag Mark went away from
Camp, we'd pulled it where we wanted at dawn, Lyla hadn't
slept in her bunk Crispin said she was with him earlier.
That told me nothing. Trevor stayed off to the side
like a dog that knows he's in trouble, but hasn't worked out
why it matters. Marla said we were closing the
loop. Now before heat and lightning
drove everybody inside, we did not enter a name to that would
have gotten a sighted by the Ranger and it all.
So would have put us at risk in a way we couldn't control.
On the ranch lease, there was a shallow, blowhole an opening in
the basal, the size of a truck hood that reached aside room
near Junction. Bright daylight hit the floor
and the drop was maybe 15 feet. The plan two down, two up.
Noah and I would descend on a short rope with helmets, to take
a quick look for a person in distress or signs of where they
went. Trevor and Crispin would belay
and hold positions at The Rim. Marla would stay with the radio
with the road rules were simple. We stayed within the daylight,
we didn't step across any salt and if the smell Spike we were
out. Inside was cold and quiet.
The way of basement is quiet. The air moved past.
My ears steady, not pulsing on the floor against the wall.
Lay opinion, poll with the clean knotch.
A length of paracord in that same bonot and a strip of Lila's
bandana. Someone had dragged something on
a lattice. You could see the rails had
scraped Basalt dust and left two clean lines that pointed to a
crawl, no bigger than a kitchen window.
We didn't stick our heads in. We didn't even bend at the
waist, we hooked the lattice with a loop of rope, kept our
boots. Inside the salt Ark, we'd poured
and pulled hard. Something on the other side,
grab the far end and tried to hold it, it let go.
When the lattice rake salt on the third yank, it slid over the
line and crashed into daylight Lila.
Lay on it bound at wrists and ankles gagged with a torn
t-shirt strip. Her forearms were gritted.
Like somebody had dragged her across sandpaper her eyes kept
going to the crawl. We didn't look where she looked
we cut her loose and kept her on our side of the line.
We had to make it stop using that wrote, you can lock windows
but you really sleep, only when you change the door, Noah
scrambled up the rope and set a come along with a strap around a
block, on the rim. I held the belay and refilled,
the salt. Trevor and Crispin levered a
Basalt slab. That looked like a good fit for
the crawl mouth. The smell came up again, heavy
and close. A shape pressed just to the edge
of light, it stopped at the bright powder like a dog at a
hot stove. On a three count, they flip the
slab, it slid dropped and wedged flush across the opening.
Dust came up in a sheet. The are pushed hard passed us
and then slowed the copper hung in the ease.
No footsteps. No testing the new seal.
Just the ordinary sound of air moving past Rock.
We hauled Lila up slow. She could stand with help.
We set cattle panels over the blowhole wired to rebar.
Marla called the county deputies, and a Park Service law
enforcement Ranger. We waited by the road in full
sun with salt rings at our feet, like flotation devices.
Nobody cracked jokes. When the patrol trucks rolled
in, we showed them what we had on the surface, The Salted Rim
lines on our side of the property line, the drag marks
the tarp bundle. We hadn't moved since the
morning, the blocked blowhole We didn't play expert, the ranger
took photographs of footprints noted, the Paracord, the cattle
panels, the goat parts, and wrote down human interference
with wildlife and illegal dumping.
It wasn't the whole story. It was enough to shut our
program down and bring in a formal sweep without turning it
into a circus for kids with YouTube channels.
Camp dry Mesa closed. That after noon, parents were
called buses came early. Nobody went missing.
Lilac kept watered down that night and most of her memory
came back as fragments that matched the scratches on her
arms and nothing else. Trevor, quit and left the state
a week later. He mailed me the braided hair
charm. He'd bought at a gas station on
the way in with a note yours worked.
Mine didn't I drove back to that same station and gave the kid
behind the counter, the braid and cash for his trouble.
He didn't ask questions and I didn't offer any the Park
Service. Put up more fencing around.
Big Sky lights. So you can still look down from
the legal side but not stand right on the rim.
The ranch amended its lease agreement to ban all-night
programs within a set distance of any blowholes on their side.
If you hike, Sandstone Bluffs overlook today, you won't see
anything special. That's how it should be.
On my last night before I left New Mexico.
I stood there with Noah as a small storm pushed across the
flats, the air smelled like wet Rock and resin, no copper, no
fat, We stacked three flat Stones by the interpretive sign
and walked back to the truck. If you camped near Elmo, pies
stay on signed Trails. Respect the boundaries and don't
follow Prince toward cold air after dark.
If you smell Kia. So, in Copper right in together,
around midnight, stand on your porch, with a light at your feet
and count to mourning. If someone you trust, says to
Salt, the mouths, do it without making it dramatic.
I used the word, you're not supposed to use because I'm not
standing on that rock as I write and because I know someone will
ask people like names. The name doesn't change the
work. We didn't beat anything out
there. We made choices that kept kids
alive. We blocked a door and left the
rest to the people who manage that land for a living.
That's a good ending. It's the only kind I can live
with. I came down off us 191 just
after the heat drained out of the day.
Headlights, taking the first slow, curve toward comb Ridge,
while the sky was stuck between orange and bruised colored.
If you know that country Blanding down to Bluff, you know
how the land folds into itself long, Sandstone waves
cottonwoods pulled tight around the washes and then that dark
spine of rock running north-south, like a mile, long
animal sleeping with its back out of the ground.
I wasn't there for sightseeing. I owed.
Mike a favor and favors are a simple math.
I try to keep, he helped me move out of Flagstaff when I couldn't
afford a second trip. So I said yes.
When he asked if I could meet him near Butler, Wash and helped
Mark offense line on an old permit, he was trying to sort
out. I don't say this to be dramatic,
I'm not built for it, but I grew up with certain stories in the
background. My uncle worked construction,
near Kayenta in the 90s and told me straight.
What not to do, where not to wander, and what words?
Not to throw around. He didn't say those things with
a grin, he said them like a man who'd made a mistake once and
learned the shape of respect the hard way.
So when I use the word Skinwalker here, I'm not
decorating anything. I'm saying the word for what we
both think it means. I'm saying it because I promised
myself, I'd keep the story honest.
I found Mike's truck at a cattle guard off.
A two-track, north of bluff. He had the bed down and a stack
of t-posts and a cooler. He was chewing sunflower seeds.
The way he did when he was focused counting the post left
versus Daylight like he could spend both.
If he was careful, we shook hands.
He looked thinner than the. Last time I had seen him more
winded in the shoulders. If that makes sense, you came.
He said I didn't think you would.
I said, I would, I told him what's the job?
He pointed across the flats toward the first rise of Comb.
Ridge owner says the old line got stomped out once fresh
markers before a survey crew comes.
I've got tags and caps. We just need to walk.
It find the old holes and make it visible.
Couple of hours if we don't daughter.
The air had that clean mineral taste.
You get after a dry wind, grasshoppers popping in the
bunch grass. Crickets starting, We took packs
and the first bundle of fiber flags and stepped off the two
track where a few cattle had torn up the edges.
Following a faint memory of a fence line that had been
something once regular gaps were posts, should have been a rust
stain in the dirt if you got down and looked We walked a
grid. I flagged.
He said, caps. The light got low in the ridge
turned into a cut off of shadow. That was when I noticed the
prince. I called him Prince, because
that's what they were. They weren't shoe tracks or deer
sign. If you've walked enough country,
you build a file cabinet in your head.
Mule deer elk coyote stray, dog, someone's Trail Runner with a
Vibram pattern. This wasn't in my cabinet.
It was a single line at first like something stepping
carefully toes. Pointed forward.
The front half was split like a hoof but the back ended in a
heel that looked Almost Human. Not in the theatrical way, not
like someone pressed, a Halloween prop in the sand, just
wrong like two IDs stuck together.
I called Mike over without saying anything, he crouched
squinted set his hand next to it.
He didn't touch it elk, he said, which was a joke and when I
didn't laugh, he didn't either They go anywhere.
I asked, he stood and followed the line with his eyes.
The prince angled parallel to the old fence cut, then crossed
it at one of the spots where a post should have stood.
We walked the direction. They pointed the ground turned
from Sand to a crusted patch and then to grass.
And I lost them then found one again in a softer pocket, near a
rabbit burrow. The front half the cloven look
was deeper than the heel. We went quiet.
We didn't say it out loud but our Pace changed.
We didn't linger at the post spots anymore.
We moved You get much traffic out here.
I asked to make a sound once a month.
A ranch hand comes through Torres, stick to the highway and
Butler Wash pull outs, the owner doesn't like people wandering on
these spurs. Why call you now he nodded at
the ridge? Owners kid had a scare camping
near a stock tank. Last week said, coyotes kept
circling. They sounded like people
arguing. Don't look at me like that.
That's what he told the owner. They got spooked and left a
mess. And now I'm the one who gets
asked to clean it up and make the line obvious again.
We worked until the last of the light burned flat.
He said there was a windmill tank, a quarter mile to the east
where we could crash. he had water in a camp stove and said
it wasn't worth parking the truck closer just to Spook
whatever grayed out here at night I agreed because the sky
was already showing stars and I didn't want to walk back to the
truck and drive a fresh set of tracks down into a place that
didn't want them. The windmill was the old kind
with the tail fin riddled by two decades of holes.
The head creaked once for every stray puff of wind.
The tank was a dark plate, and the frogs were loud.
We set our pads on the upwind side of the Windbreak built a
small burner flame for coffee and didn't talk much.
I kept thinking about the prince.
I kept thinking about the way they crossed that fence line
like they understood lines and didn't care.
First sign at Camp. Wasn't much something.
Moved the grass on the far side of the tank and made.
No sound. No, crickets stopped.
No rabbit. Exploded out just grass bent in
a smooth path, like a hand pressed.
It then the windmill tale, clicked, and swung and made the
same sound twice in a row, like something had knocked it.
I told myself it was the wind, I tell myself simple stories until
I can't anymore. We finished coffee and turned
off the stove. No fire.
I never do a fire when I'm sleeping.
Light fires, tell things where you are and how awake you are.
We lay back in our bags with our boots on and our headlamps
around our necks because I have learned not to waste time
reaching When I close my eyes, the Creak of the mill and the
Frog noise merged into a single sheet, I drifted fast and then
woke hard without a dream in between it was full dark.
The stars were as bright as they get in that part of Utah and I
could make out the silhouette of the ridge behind the blacker
line of cottonwoods along the wash.
What woke me was my name. I'll write that plane.
It was my name said clean and wrong From The Far Side of the
tank. Not a shout, not a whisper.
It was my name in the voice of someone who had learned it by
hearing it and wanted to try it on.
If you've ever heard your own name from a stranger's mouth?
Someone who says it, like a question when they're not sure.
They found the right person. That's what it was.
It came once then there was a pause and then the frogs got too
loud again. Like the sound had scared them
late. I kept still I felt Mike's elbow
nudge, the edge of my pad. He was awake, he didn't sit up
either. We waited The name didn't come
again instead. The windmill turned one, slow
notch in the tail flicked. Like something brushed it, I
rolled my head and looked at Mike.
He was already looking at me. His eyes were the only part that
moved. He mouthed, you heard it.
And I nodded I eased my hand into my pack the way you do when
you learned to move slow and keep your fingers working before
your shoulders. I found the headlamp then the
small flash light, I trust then the folding knife.
I keep not because I believe it will solve anything but because
the act of having it matters We didn't turn the lights on.
We gave it time. I counted 30 breaths.
There was nothing, but frogs in the mill, and the frogs were too
loud, in the way noises gets loud to hide something else.
I don't know what rule, I broke by clearing my throat, but the
moment I did the frogs cut off like a switch, The silence had
shape a footstep in Grass real. Measured another the sound
walked along the rim of the tank and stopped opposite us.
I could see the water shiver, that's how close it was.
I said we're not lost because that was the sentence that came
to me. I've used it before when coyotes
Circle close and when a stray dog thinks it can test a
campsite It tells a thing you are oriented.
It tells a person, you're not a mark.
The Stillness. After was a held breath, that
didn't return to the chest, it left from.
Then it made a new mistake. It tried my name a second time,
a little nearer and got the vowel wrong.
The wrongness is what scared me more than the boldness.
Like it was practicing. Like it wanted to be better at
it for later. Mike said, steady as I've ever
heard him you should go. The water rippled toward us like
something had leaned down to drink, then stopped without the
sound of a tongue or a muzzle. The heel of my right hand
started to sweat where it pressed on the ground.
I know how Coyote's move. I know their curiosity and their
Bluff. This wasn't a coyote, I'm not
going to guess at shapes in the dark but when a thing holds its
breath with you and tries your name on twice, you don't have to
see it to know your past, the normal edges of the map.
We didn't turn our lights on, we lay there with our boots on and
waited it out. The frogs began again in pieces.
A breeze, pushed the veins in the Mill Creek once twice.
You can believe what you like about what moved along the
tanks, far lip and then away into the grass.
I heard steps go light like it didn't want the grass to talk
for it. I heard them stop at the
cottonwoods and then nothing when the sky finally thinned.
I sat up and my back hurt. Like I had been bracing for an
hour Mike sat up at the same time, neither of us.
Said, good morning. We walked the far side of the
tank and looked for Prince. We wanted to find and didn't
grass doesn't keep a diary. The only Mark was a single place
where something set. Wait near the tanks rim and
dragged two, fingernails across algae and iron.
I say fingernails because that's what it looked like two narrow
tracks, side by side, shallow, a few inches long, and two clean
for a hoof or a paw we packed in 10 minutes, coffee didn't come
up. He said, will finish the line
and be done, I didn't argue, we walked farther east to stay away
from the cottonwoods and curved back to the faint fence cut that
led toward the ridge. We worked methodically because
work gives your hands something to do while your head unsat
itself. Half a mile on the world decided
to get smaller. Out in that open, you see
distances the way you see time, nothing sneaks, but something
had hung a strip of bright surveyors tape on a mosquito
head, fresh and clean, snapping just enough to catch a corner of
your eye. There hadn't been any tape on
our way in the night before I know because my mind had been
filing waypoints the way you do when you're deciding whether the
truck is close enough to matter. This tape was new or it had
waited for light to show us Mike walked to it.
He didn't touch it. There were hoof marks under the
bush fresh, a small herd had moved through after the breeze
picked up, that should have been ordinary.
It wasn't because the tape hung at human eye level, and
something about the knot was too neat.
We followed where it pointed, because that's what you do, even
when you shouldn't. You look at the things, someone
meant you to look at. Because not looking feels like
confessing fear the flagged line.
Let us off our fence cut by 20 yards, then 50.
We were still inside of our own caps and tags but farther than
felt smart. The ground here was Sandy again.
The sort that Prince won. We found them without trying the
same wrong hoof heal shapes deeper now, like whatever made
them had put weight down harder, The Stride changed too longer
for three steps then short the next two, like a person trying
on different ways to walk. I'm done with this Mike said and
that was the first time I heard the old tired Edge in him.
He bent to pull the tape free but stopped halfway like
something told him not to change the scene.
I said let's finish the posts we can and go you've got enough in
to show the line. The survey crew can have the
rest, he nodded. we backed out the way we came eyes on our own
tags, so we didn't drift It's funny how small 40 yards feels
when you've been called by name in the dark and then let us
aside by a bright strip of plastic in daylight.
The ridge looked closer than before, the wash looked deeper.
The land itself had changed its volume without moving.
We didn't talk for the next hour.
We set caps, we took bearings. We got it done.
At the last post, we plan to place, Mike, stood, and wiped
his hands on his jeans and looked toward the truck though.
It was too far to see. We can make the road in 20
minutes. He said, let's not cut across
the wash stick to the flat. I agreed and we turned back and
the first thing I saw was a prince that squarely over our
boot tracks from the morning, fresh clean, the same wrong
shape on top of ours. Like it had stepped, where we'd
stepped on purpose. It wasn't there.
When we walked out, it hadn't drifted in by wind, it was new.
I looked at Mike to make a joke and felt the joke die in my
throat. He wouldn't meet my eyes.
He was already scanning the open, not frantic just careful.
I realized then he'd seen this before. maybe not this exact
shape, but this feeling the feeling of a thing that knows
where lines are and what names are and how far it is to your
truck. The feeling of being studied by
something that doesn't need to rush.
We didn't run, we didn't even speed up enough to tell the
story later like we'd panicked. We walked out steady the sun
clean on our necks. And every 100 feet, I checked
our back Trail without turning my head using the corner of my
eye. The way I was taught when I was
young and wanted to see without giving away that I was looking.
I didn't see movement. I didn't want to.
And when the cattle guard, finally showed, and the silver
of the truck mirror flashed between the sage, my shoulders
dropped an inch on their own that mile between the last post
and the truck. That's where a person decides.
Who they are. You can look back.
You can pretend you're curious or you can admit what the ground
already told you and get in the cab and go.
We chose to go. We didn't slam the doors.
We didn't crank the engine hard, we just put ourselves and steal
and glass and rolled slow until the two track met the County
Road. When the tires touched asphalt,
I let out a breath. I'd been holding since the frogs
cut off. I thought the day had decided
its shape, I thought we'd leave it there, file it away in the
cabinet where you keep the stories that don't help anyone
to repeat. I thought that until we hit the
first Bend North and the voice that wasn't a voice came from
just outside my window at 40 miles per hour and said my name
a third time closer. Almost right like practice was
paying off hearing your name at highway speed.
Does something simple to you it strips off the idea as you have
about noise and distance and leaves.
Only the fact that something kept pace with a moving truck
long enough to speak and then vanished when you looked I
didn't jerk the wheel. I didn't break.
I kept the truck straight because the last thing I wanted
was to give whatever was outside a reason to enjoy the wreck I
handed it. Mike didn't ask if I heard it.
He reached over in the window switch up as if glass mattered
The sound. It made ceiling felt small.
We didn't talk until the road bent again, and the ridge slid
behind a hill. The cab smelled like dust and
the warm metal you get. When the sun has been on a
dashboard since morning, I watched the side mirror for
shape and saw only sky and my own shoulder.
We passed one of those County turnouts where greater sit
sometimes and I took it without announcing.
Gravel knocked the undercarriage.
I put the truck in park and left the engine running because
engines are the one sound that keeps.
You honest out here. You kill it and you find out
fast. What else wants to be the loud
thing? We should go into Blanding.
I said, get a room, come back in daylight and collect your posts.
And walk up to the clerk and say what he asked.
We heard our names near Butler. Wash and something paste.
The truck. You're not wrong.
I just don't think putting four walls around it changes.
What it is. We could call the owner, tell
him, the line's flagged enough Bill and be done.
We will, he said, but not tonight.
I'm not driving the highway dark, knowing whatever that is
can touch us at 40. I didn't like his logic because
it pulled us back toward the country, we just left.
But it made the kind of sense, a body makes when it picks the
threaded nose. I pulled us back out to the
blacktop and turned South toward a windmill.
We could see from the road, a different one from last night's.
The tanks sat 50 yards off the shoulder.
Cottonwoods spaced out like tired, men at a long fence line.
No houses in sight. No porch light's, the kind of
place cattle know. And people ignore, we parked
broadside to the tanks. So the cab faced it, I said the
emergency brake and angled the headlights on low.
I don't like bathing myself in light out of habit, but I
dislike not seeing more Mike got out first and I followed the
medal of the door felt hotter than the air late heat, still
held the ground Lantern. He asked, I've got one in back.
I keep a small but decent propane Lantern for work sites.
Not bright enough to announce from a mile steady enough to
draw a circle, you can manage. I set it in the bed, lit, it and
turned the valve, until the mantles glowed.
The trucks bed, put it above knee height, like clearing the
top of the grass and the tank lip.
We didn't climb up to sit with it.
We stood on the roadside of the truck doors open, the cab of
fallback. If the air turned wrong again, I
don't like saying the word just to say it but I need to say it
here. So you understand the frame, The
word Skinwalker was in my head and I kept it there, not on my
tongue. I thought about my uncle in the
way he never told long stories, only rules.
He said don't whistle at night, he said, don't answer if a voice
in the wrong place, uses your name.
He said keeps something iron on you because men like to keep
objects between themselves and fear.
He never said, Iron matter to anything else.
He said it mattered to us. I slid my knife into my pocket
and felt the weight, like a promise to stand up and not run.
The windmills head turned a fingers worth and clicked.
The tank water held a gray skin bugs.
Skated. Somewhere down the wash a
nightbird made its flat two-note, call.
I could see the dust on my hood in the lantern light clean
little crescents. Were my fingers had touched
early. I said, we're going to sit an
hour. If nothing happens, we take 163
to Bluff and sleep there. Deal.
He said, 10 minutes in the Crickets came in layers, not the
loud wall from last night. This was the sound to place
makes. When it's testing whether you
belong I kept my eyes on the Strip of dirt between the tank
and the grass. It's where anything coming out
of the trees would have to cross if it wanted to reach water
without showing itself early. I didn't try to see a shape
among shape's. That's how people talk
themselves into running at the wind.
I watched for breaks in the pattern where the grass didn't
move with the rest, where a shadow, didn't keep the same
Edge as the lanterns Humane changed.
What came first was a coyote, that wasn't a coyote because it
didn't make a coyote's decision. It came out on the far side of
the tank head, low tail, even lower the way desert coyotes.
Come when they've learned people won't share it stepped into the
Lantern's Edge and stopped. Normal coyotes, keep moving even
if they Circle, this one said, its front feet.
Then placed each back foot directly where the front had
been not offset. I have seen careful dogs, do
that on hot pavement. I haven't seen a coyote, do it
like it was trying out a rule. It's stood there.
A full 20 seconds, looking fixed at the hood.
Ornament, like, it had learned busy work to, keep still, don't
move. I said, even though Mike hadn't
moved, The animal turned its head, slow toward the lantern,
then toward us. The eyes didn't Flash the way
you get with a headlamp, they held the light steady like the
animal understood glare and said itself at the right angle.
Its ears, didn't rotate. It lets Sound Land on it.
Then it opened its mouth and made a noise that started like a
cough and ended like a man trying not to laugh.
I won't dress that up. It made a bad version of a human
sound and waited to see what we did.
We did nothing it closed its mouth and took two steps along
the tank Rim. Almost slipping on the Moss then
corrected mid. Slide without water noise.
Coyotes slip. This didn't it.
Moved like a plan correcting itself.
It stopped again aligned with our open doors.
It was far enough, we'd have to shout to change anything.
I didn't Shout. Don't say my name.
I told myself in my head like a man rehearsing in a mirror.
I didn't say, Mike's either, whatever was watching us had
learned one word and I wasn't offering it a second, the coyote
shaped lifted, its nose and made a soft sound.
I have only ever heard when a hunter's dog gets the scent on a
path and tells the Handler without barking.
Then it did something that took the last Choice out of this
being boredom or a tall story. I'm telling wrong.
It said it's at its right forefoot down in the dust inside
the lanterns Edge and the print. It left behind wasn't around pad
with claw marks. It was the wrong split and heel
shape from our fence line right there on the smooth dirt.
Where we could both see it. I felt the air gets smaller.
I'm not going to make this mystical.
I mean, the actual are you bring into your chest?
I took a shorter breath to make the same rise.
He said, clear and soft. You should go because I had
nothing better. It turned its head left and
opened its mouth in a way that read like a smile.
If you wanted it to read that way and then it stepped back out
of the ring of light and was not visible.
And the night swallowed, the spot like it had always been
empty. We didn't chase Shadows with the
lantern. We held our ground.
Five minutes passed, maybe 10. I tried not to check my watch
because I didn't want to break the line of my attention.
When the Crickets came back, they did it in a normal way
separate sources separate rhythms.
No switch Throne. I took that as good news that
reminded myself. I had no measure for good.
Let's button up and drive to Bluff.
Mike said his voice wasn't shaking it, had that small
scrape in it. That shows up.
When a person has spent too long in a tone, they don't use often
He killed the lantern. I shut the doors and locked them
without making a show of locking them.
We buckled like we were leaving a job site.
I put it in drive and rolled for the shoulder.
A shape moved parallel to the truck on the Cottonwood side.
A clean Pace, just outside the cone of the low beams.
I kept the speed slow then faster than slow again. the
shape held the same window position, like it wanted me to
keep noticing it When I sped up to 30 it angled away and
vanished, I didn't wait for the voice when it came.
Anyway, I took it like whether my name from the dark closer to
correct, still not right dragged across the last vowel, like,
rolling it around in a mouth that didn't have the right
teeth. We hit 1603 and took it East.
I chose Bluff overlanding because it was nearer and
because out here you sometimes pick the direction that points
you toward a river. Rivers are lines and Old Country
respects. The lights of town show small in
onus gas station Motel. A metal dinosaur out, front of a
rock shop. I pulled into the gravel lot
behind the Trading Post because the Main Street fell too much
like a place. Someone would expect us to
choose if they knew we were trying to be around people.
The lot was empty except for a road crews, flatbed with a
compressor chain down and four cones stacked at the tail.
We sat with the engine idling in the doors locked and the radio
off. The Voice didn't come nothing,
paced the truck. I felt foolish to be in a town
lot and still afraid and then I decided embarrassment as a
luxury. Mike leaned his head back and
closed his eyes a minute later. A door opened on the far side of
the building and a man, stepped into the square of light with a
paper cup and a vest that had silver tape on it.
He squinted into the lot and took two steps toward us, then
stopped at the edge of the light like his boots weren't allowed
to cross into the dark. He raised the couple little like
a hello in said, You boys lost like a man who keeps stock
phrases for night work. Mike rolled his window down two
inches. You working late.
Patching a bus pad before school starts tomorrow.
He said, you can park here, just don't block the flatbed.
You look wrong out. Coyote's.
I said, because it was easier to say, and not completely false.
He made a face that wasn't quite a smile.
Coyotes don't make you sit in a lit lot with the doors locked.
I didn't answer. He took a sip and set the cup on
the wall behind him and kept his feet in the building's glow.
Like someone had told him once and he listened You hear
anything answers to you by name? Don't answer back.
He said without looking at us. That's what my grandma said.
She wasn't the kind to talk just to fill up space.
He didn't say the word, I was keeping in my head and I
respected him for that. He picked up his cup again, if
you're leaving, leave if you're staying, stay in the light,
that's free advice. We'll head to the motel.
I said he nodded and didn't wish us a good night, he just watched
us go until our headlights swung out on the street and touched
the stop sign. We took a room with two beds and
a carpet that had once been blue, I locked the door and set
the chain and put my pack on the floor between my bed and the
wall, like that meant something. The AC unit made a sound like a
train, a mile off, and then settled.
I kept the bathroom light on because there's a difference
between fear and Superstition and I wasn't wasting sleep.
Looking at a black Square, the door couldn't fix.
When I lay down, I thought sleep would have to fight for a spot.
It didn't I fell into it hard and rose out of it, just as fast
at 2:13 a.m. because someone knocked on the motel door.
With my Knuckles, not just a copy of the rhythm of stranger
would use three soft one after hotel-style.
It was the exact way. I knock.
It takes living with yourself a long time to hear something
small and know it belongs to you.
I knew. The nox came again, same timing,
same pressure behind the last tap like I do when I'm not sure
anyone heard me. Mike sat up eyes wide and empty
with sleep. He didn't say my name.
He didn't even whisper. We stared at the door.
I made myself breathe quiet and slow because the body wants to
start thrashing. When it doesn't have work, the
people was there if we wanted it, neither of us stood to use
it. The nox.
Stopped a full minute passed, the AC clicked.
Someone outside the door, tried my name through the seam, near
the latch and the wrong. Almost right voice patient as a
person who believes they live here.
I waited it out and didn't gift it.
The sound back. After a while the Hulk carpet
made, no sound. And I knew that meant it had
learned more than my knock. It had learned something about
the way I wait. We made it to morning.
I say that flat because that's how it happened.
Night ended light showed in the crack onto the curtain.
A delivery truck did its backups across the street and I let the
sound all the way in like medicine.
We showered and didn't talk about leaving the light on.
We turned the key in and didn't mention the door chain.
We walked out to the truck and didn't find a mark on it.
That explained any of it that's worse in its own way over coffee
at the gas station, Mike opened the map app and put his finger
along the spine of Comb Ridge. I have to pick up the posts.
He said they are the owners. I'm not eating that cost.
We'll do it fast. I said hi bench, Road in and out
he nodded we keep elevation, we see more that way.
We bought extra water in a can of Fix-A-Flat because fear makes
you redundant. I paid for two cheap whistles at
the counter and threw them away in the trash outside because
some habits are for daytime courage, not for nights, like
last night, we headed back West, with the sun, doing its normal
honest, job of making objects, be what they are if it felt like
cheating to use that as hope. I used it anyway.
On the way out of town, we passed the Trading Post lot.
The flatbed was gone, a clean square of lighter dust showed
where it had been the spot where the man had stood was still in
shade. I didn't slow down to see if
there were prints. I already knew what the ones.
I didn't want to see would look like we climbed to the bench
Road and followed the top of the Ridge South truck, low tires,
touching the edge of old tracks and new We kept the valley to
our left, so, the wash and the tags were in sight.
You could see the windmills in daylight, like, silver
thumbtacks. We would drop down a Spur near,
the last post, load the caps and flags and climb back out.
The plan was good because it didn't ask us to believe the
world would behave. It asked us only to do three
jobs and leave. Before the spur, where the bench
Narrows and the truck has to choose, which rock to run a tire
over the cab filled with that quiet pressure again, the
feeling of being in a room that's too small for the air
inside it. The radio tried to pick up a
station in fail. Gravel popped under the tires.
The ridge gave us a full view of our flagged line, below bright
plastic squares where we'd left them.
And then one of them moved, not the tape.
The cap on the last post. Lifted clean and set itself down
two feet to the right without a hand, to do it.
I saw it because I was looking right at it.
Mike saw it because he said flat there and then didn't say
anything else because there wasn't anything useful after
that we stopped because stopping had become our language.
The truck. Idled the Caps didn't move
again. The wind did nothing.
The sun did. What it always does.
And then something tried the passenger door handle once
quick, like a friend running up late, the lock held the handle
returned to place. Nothing stood there, I put the
truck in park and told myself the truth of my life in that
second, I could take my hand off the key and make this longer, or
I could turn it and take us into a plan.
We still had time to keep I kept my hand where it was, we had a
job left and a line to choose. We took the Spur off the bench,
because that was the job. The track dropped in loose
shelves, where rain had carried Rock From The Ridge and the
Mesquite leaned in with that flat and look at gets from 100
mirrors, brushing it on the way down.
I kept the truck in first, let it crawl.
And watch the wash open up ahead, where our bright caps and
tags ran like a dotted line through Salt, Bush and rabbit
brush toward the cottonwoods. The plan was simple park with
the nose pointing uphill, throw the caps and flags in the bed,
don't wander and back out the same way.
If you stack enough, simple planes, you can sometimes pass
for smart. We rolled to a stop 50 yards
from the last cap. The air down off the ridge, felt
heavier like a room that hasn't been opened all summer.
I set the brake left the engine running and we both stepped out
with our eyes already on the ground for sine.
We didn't want The soil here took Prince clean when it wanted
to. Right away.
I saw our boot tracks from the day before the shallow triangles
a person leaves when they're trying not to sink.
Overlaying them same as before were the wrong ones.
Split up front heel behind placed on top of our steps like
a lesson. The Stride walked past the last
post across the open and angled toward the cottonwoods, where
the wash cut Deeper Shade. We're not following that I said
we're not. He agreed were packing and
leaving We moved with the kind of care that looks like, calm.
If you film it with no sound. I pulled the caps and coiled the
tags, and he carried the bundle while I scan the edges.
The wind was doing that light left to right, push that keeps
bugs and dust moving, but doesn't carry a smell.
I wanted to smell any smell coyotes.
Cows mud the absence of it told its own story at the second to
last cap. A strip of new survey tape hung
on a Tamarisk Branch. We hadn't flagged bright clean
tied with a neat square knot. The tail ends were cut square
with a blade. They didn't have the torn Edge,
the old role leaves when you're moving it pointed, not just in
the sense that all tape points, but pointed in the way someone
marks a path on purpose for eyes like ours, it led toward the
cottonwoods and the cool Gap. Where the wash turned, I kept my
hands at my side. Leave it Mike said before, I
could say it, we're not here for that.
We finish stripping the line back to what, we'd promised the
owner enough to show Corridor. Nothing to invite attention and
set the last bundle in the bed. I wanted to be wheels up
already. But the tape did what bait does.
Even when you've decided not to bite it, made me feel watched
for how I refused it. I gave the wash mouth a long
look without moving my head. The shadow in there had the same
ordinary shape as a dozen. Other males in a dozen other dry
creeks. Nothing stepped out of it.
That didn't mean nothing used it two minutes.
I said, I want to check the trucks under Carriage.
Then we go. two minutes, he repeated not because he needed
the number, but because repeating makes a thing settle I
squatted at the front bumper and looked for lines leaks, anything
that could be pulled loose and my brain did the unhelpful
thing. It does.
When it's busy with tasks, it started listing objects that
could stop us from leaving valve stem caps, fuel lines, oil pan
bolts, and then, it stopped listing on its own because I saw
a small Cairn of river, Stones stacked under the passenger
door, like a gift. Five flat pieces, three in a
base, two on top laid, crosswise each rubbed clean of dust like
they'd been wet or handled with care.
We hadn't parked here yesterday, though, those stones were from
our tires, they came from the wash and they hadn't been there.
When we stepped out I didn't call Mike over like a kid.
I stood slow and pointed with two fingers without saying his
name, he saw them and didn't swear or make a face.
He just looked to the wash again and back to the stones and then
to the passenger handle like the three made a triangle, he could
solve by noticing it. I kicked the top two piece is
off with the side of my boot. The sound was small.
It bothered me that the action felt Petty like a person.
Swatting, a fly and pretending the gesture meant more than it
did. Enough, he said up, we go.
We climbed in and closed the doors, the locks clicked, the
engine red steady. I checked the mirrors and then
looked at the wash mouth one more time because my body wanted
to disrespect my own rules That's when I realized the tape
on the Tamarisk, didn't only point it lined up with a second
strip. 50 feet in just visible between two Trunks and a third
deep in the cottonwoods beyond that each at the same height
each cut Square. A run of markers set for someone
who needed help keeping a path at human eye level.
A path that didn't exist yesterday.
I don't like turning my life into a riddle to be solved by
something. That isn't me.
But I also don't like walking away from a sign that says
plainly. I can put this where I want.
I backed the truck around in a tight Arc knows uphill and we
started to climb the spur. We made 20 yards when the
steering went slack for a beat like we'd run from dirt to ice.
I eased off the throttle in the tires chewed are then bit again.
I didn't look at Mike, he didn't look at me in that one.
Soft second, I had the clear thought that something wanted us
stopped right here, right? Where the wash markers line with
the passenger window, We kept momentum and topped the first
shelf, the roads straightened and gave us another 100 yards of
shallow climb. The ridge above looked plain and
close. The cab pressure eased a hair.
Then just where the spur pinched between two Sandstone shoulders.
The right front tire. Dipped too far in a rut that
wasn't there on the way down. I felt the rim touch rock across
a thin layer of dirt. A bright metallic scrape under
the sound of gravel and the truck yawed.
Write a fraction I countered with without overcorrecting, the
yaw fell like a hand on the fender.
Keep it Mike said, the way you tell a horse to hold a line, we
regained the crown with inches to spare.
And after that, the climb gave us back what physics always
gives if you don't panic bite, roll bite, roll Ridge.
On top. The bench Road.
Lay in front of us like a plane. I didn't stop until we had two
truck lengths of flat and a clear run north Then I did stop
because something you can't see, trying your door handle on a
hillside itself. Another try, if your sloppy We
got out together and walked the right front tire.
The sidewall had a new scarf then, fresh to clean for a
desert rock, which I didn't like because it meant a sharp edge
had found us exactly where a person might get out to look
down into the wash. We stood there a minute, the
ridge wind touched our shirts and then quit.
The country below looked calm in that big lying way.
It has after you've been rattled Same trees.
Same tank, the last two caps, we'd left for the owner doing
their hot little blinks at the edge of the open.
And then I saw movement in the cottonwoods.
Not an animal coming out, not a person, one of the tapes farther
in Lifted and twisted a full turn against the still are then
relaxed like a handed. Let go, we're done.
I said we're not solving this. We weren't going to, he said, we
drove North on the bench with both of us watching the mirrors
like we could buy a second by catching something Foreman.
The truck rattled the way old trucks do when their telling you
their fine as long as you don't ask for a Sprint.
I kept it at 15 then 20 then back to 15 when the track got
chewed. You could see far from up there
across the Butler, Wash drainage and out to the flats that run to
191. And the distance did what I
needed for a mile or two. It made the last hour looks
small and containable. Then the distance.
Gave us something. We couldn't file as far away. 50
yards ahead where the bench narrowed again, around a
Sandstone knob someone had built another Cairn right in the ruts,
same five Stones. Same clean.
Rub on the surfaces topped with a strip of bright tape tucked
under the top rock so the Tails ran down opposite sides like a
marker in a book. The truck wasn't going around it
without a scratch on the paint. We rolled to a stop nose.
Close. I didn't put it in park right
away. I waited for the door handle to
jump on its own for the window voice.
For the heavy quiet. Nothing came on the cue, I had
said up in my head the wind blew normal a flight touched the side
mirror and retreated. I shut the truck off because
keeping it running felt like I was giving something too much
credit that was stupid. I turned it back on for me I'll
move it. Mike said, No, I said and I
heard the hard clip in my own voice.
We both move it. Doors open no names.
We stepped out with the engine idling in the door.
Swung the stones were heavy. They were just positioned like a
person who knows hands knows how to make small work matters.
We took the stack apart piece by piece and laid on the bench
Edge. I didn't like that.
It felt like we were cleaning up after someone who expected us
to. It made me feel like I would get
a grade when I was done. Back in the cab I rolled
forward. And that's when my eyes caught
the print at the base of the knob, half and dust half on
Rock. The front was the split, I'd
already learned the back the human heel and then behind that
one. Step back the heel was gone and
around pad with four small ovals for Claus had started like a
change in mid-stride when the ground switched.
The two shapes overlapped by a fingers width.
I have seen two animals step in the same place as second.
Apart this wasnt that, this looked like one thing deciding
how to be. I didn't point it out.
I didn't need both our heads full of the same image.
I rolled forward and the truck was happy to go forward and for
a few minutes, we had simple, good work, steer around slick,
Rock pick the tire line, keep the valley on the left and the
exposure on the right, a raven passed at our Hood height and
made two Wing beats and slid away.
I like that bird more than I should have.
We cut back toward the Highway by a two-track, that meets 191
north of the turnoff to the butler Washington pull-outs.
Civilization in this part of the map is just the habit of travel
dust Tire edges. A sign that's been shot twice
and replaced. Once I could see the long line
of blacktop down the slope and the Shimmer off it and the
little low Mirage that hangs over heat in the middle of the
day. It looked like the easiest thing
in the world to rejoin other people. 200 yards from the
cattle guard that would drop us to County maintenance.
We passed a rock art panel, I'd never noticed.
It sat back from the road 10 yards on a vertical face where
weather had cleaned desert varnish into a dark canvas.
Figures humans animals pecked in a lighter shade.
I don't pretend to be a scholar. I don't touch panels.
I keep my distance and my voice down but even from the driver's
seat, I could see one thing that made my fingers, go cold a fresh
pile of small stones stacked under the lowest figure just
like the Cairns in our path and a folded strip of bright tape
set under the top piece like a tongue.
The panel itself had no new marks, I could see whoever did
this new enough not to touch what, they couldn't put back,
they only set their little offering below.
Like they were leaving a note for anyone who knew where to
look, Keep going. Mike said, flat don't stop don't
even slow down. Don't give it a chance to put
you on your feet. I kept speed steady and let the
cattle guard knock the tires and watched for, any grab at the
doors just because my brain wanted to rehearse it.
Nothing tried us the highway showed and ran straight North
and South the way, a promise runs.
Plain unambiguous full of work. It can and can't do for you.
We turned South because Bluff was closer and because we still
had to put bodies in a place with walls before Sundown that
we can controlled. The day had turned hard bright,
the kind that gives you sharp edges on every object but not a
lot of Mercy. We didn't talk until the
speedometer settled in the engine.
Note evened out, you see the panel?
I asked finally. I saw the stones he said that
was enough. We made town in ate at the
counter of the place that does burgers and green chili and Pi.
The waitress was the kind of person who knows when to leave a
man and his food alone and went to ask.
If he wants more water, we ate like men just back from a job
that paid but didn't feel like paid neither of us ordered pie.
The waitress asked if we wanted a box.
We said no in the same non-voice.
What now I asked folding the bill into the check sleeve I
call the owner and tell him the line is marked enough to find.
He said I tell him we staged caps for his survey crew at the
top. He stopped because we hadn't
staged. Anything we'd hauled it all out.
I tell him the truth, that matters the rest.
He can hear if he wants to or not at all.
And after that we leave, he said.
We don't pick the ridge. Again, we don't test what it can
or can't do two days in a row. We leave. it was the best plan
on the table, and the only one I could stand behind without lying
We paid stepped into the bright and made for the motel to grab
the gear. We'd left.
The room smelled like cleaners and night sweat.
The door chain fell soft and my hand no new marks.
In the carpet near the threshold.
No. Taps on the door to say we'd
been great for choosing sunlight.
We were 20 minutes from pointing the hood, at the San Juan and
then the long ribbon of 160 when the day made one last
adjustment. The phone on Mike's Dash lit
with a call from a number with the owners area code.
He Taps speaker with a knuckle you get it done.
The owner asked by way of hello enough to guide your crew Mike
said caps and tags, retrieved lines visible where it matters
You didn't leave caps on the last run.
The owner asked confused. My guy just drove out to check
and said, someone's been putting them back up since this morning
says the last half mile looks freshly marked all the way to
the wash. We looked at each other.
Neither of us smiled. I pictured the bright plastic,
we'd pulled and coiled now, standing up out there, like we'd
never touched them pointing into the cottonwoods, in a new neat
line. We didn't do that.
Mike said, There was a short quiet on the line and then the
owner did what a practical man does.
When he hears something that doesn't fit, he ignored it.
Fine surveys out tomorrow. Send me your hours.
Were leaving town. Mike said we won't be around to
answer questions. Did ask you to be, the owner,
said, in hung up already living in a different story than the
one we were still inside. I put the truck in gear, we
pulled on to 191 and headed for the bridge, where the River
cuts, a green line through the red, and the highway makes a
promise again. I told myself that leaving is a
kind of respect, too. I told myself that if a thing
wants you to follow tape into cottonwoods the strongest thing
you can do is say no and make that no stick all the way to the
county line. We held that resolved until the
son sat low and the Ridgeline behind us went the color of Old
Iron and the road shoulder began to show dust tracks that were
not ours. Keeping Pace just at the edge of
view. That's how it started again
quiet patient. No tricks, just a pace beside us
that didn't burn out. And somewhere between Bluff and
Mexican hat where the highway goes lonely and the radio finds
nothing to argue with. The window dark next to me,
leaned in, with the shape of my name, a fourth time, nearly
right now, almost like a person, I hadn't met had practiced it in
front of a mirror. I didn't answer, I didn't look,
we drove into the shadow of the next Bluff and came out.
The other side still moving and that had to be enough for that.
Mile of road passed Mexican hat. The highway turns into long
honest miles. Where your thoughts get louder
the tires The thing, pacing us didn't crowd the glass, or knock
the door. It worked like a shadow does
when it knows your checking. The mirror kept the same place
at the edge of peripheral vision.
Let the center of the lane stay clean.
Didn't waste a trick. I don't scare easy, but I
respect technique. This was technique.
I put the map in my head on the dash.
South meant Monument Valley and more empty in the spaces between
the lights East meant Shiprock and a long commit, West would
eventually give us 95 in a way out, but a bigger climb between
here and there. North on 261 meant the Moki
dugway switchbacks carved out of the face of Cedar Mesa three
miles of dirt and gravity, no guardrails, plenty of Sky.
I wanted sky sky meant lines of sight and not much for something
to hide behind. We're taking the dugway, I said.
People die on that road. Mike said not arguing just
stating a fact. People also live on it.
I said and up top at muley, point will have Horizon in every
direction maybe service. He nodded once.
We cut right onto 261, the first miles are playing two lane and
then the sign warns you in three different ways.
What's coming steep grades, sharp curves, unpaved, The Cliff
face shows the road like a ribbon stapled to rock.
I downshift and let the truck feel heavy the way.
It's supposed to feel. I've climbed it before in
daylight with tourists cycling down in bright jerseys.
This was late day, only one other set of Lights appeared
behind us. Far back then turned off toward
Valley of the Gods and left us alone with the wind and the
drop. Halfway up.
The cab pressure returned, not the hush of a motel hallway and
not the Frog Silence from the tank.
More like a hand on your shoulder to see what you do with
it. The outside air was moving.
The dust off our own tires snaked away. but the feeling was
inside the truck with us and I didn't like that because it
meant sky and distance weren't a cure only a stage I kept eyes on
the uphill Edge. Not The Voice.
You don't stare into the drop on Mochi.
You treat it like whether the switchbacks Stacked above us in
to clean geometry, and then lost shape, when you got near.
In one of the hairpins Align of small rocks, sat across the
inner track, six or seven, Palm sized pieces, placed nose to
tail. It wasn't a rock fall.
The spacing was too neat. I ease to a stop short of them.
Doors locked by habit. Engines still running because I
wasn't giving away the one voice in the cab by controlled.
We stared at the line, the wind touched the side mirrors and
quit below us. The desert ran out to The Buttes
like a map, laid naked on a table.
I put it in park, we moved them together.
I said, doors open, we don't say names.
We stepped out gravel under boots brake, lights warming.
The rock. We kicked the line wide with the
sides of our souls and didn't turn our backs to open space.
Back in the cab, I put it into drive and clear the nose through
the Gap. We'd made, I told myself that
was just a test of how will be in.
We were to small instructions, we'd fail the test by not
stepping into the pattern. It set I liked failing that test
on the next ramp, The Voice came, not at the window, not
intimate. Carried by the wind From Below
like someone's standing two switchbacks down in the empty
are had perfect lungs. It said my name.
Almost right again. No, hurry.
And then tried Mike's. It wasn't a copy of my Cadence.
This time it was Mike's voice. Done back to him from outside
like someone had recorded him and was practicing the shapes.
I felt him stiff. And next to me, without moving,
don't let it inside. I said, Can it already be
inside? He asked soft.
It doesn't get a say I said, and I kept climbing because the road
only goes one way and it's up at the last big turn where the
switchbacks give you a wide shelf before topping out the
truck hiccuped, not a full stall, a hiccup power dropping a
half. Beat the way fuel starved
engines. Remind you there in the math.
My eyes went to the gauges out of reflex.
Temps were fine. Pressure was fine, the
alternator needle was where it should be.
The hiccup came again, like someone flicked a finger against
the fuel line to see. If we noticed I put us on the
shelf and stopped with the nose pointed at Sky.
Parking brake on neutral. I didn't shut the engine down.
I popped my door and stepped out hood release already pulled
because sometimes you say with your body, what you're going to
do, so the rest of you will follow The wind up their tastes
like the ocean without the water.
It came clean across the top of the Mesa and leaned on my shirt.
I lifted the hood. Everything was what?
It was no chewed Lines, no fresh leak.
The sound of the engine look like it sounded steady and not
sorry. I closed the hood and turned to
get back in. Four small Pebbles, sat on the
center of the hood. Now, in a straight row, dry and
clean. As if a hand had set them, while
I was looking away for a breath, I hadn't heard them touch.
I didn't reach to knock them off, I didn't hand the moment
anymore ritual than it already had.
From the passenger side, I heard the gentle plastic rattle of a
door handle trying once quick, the way a friend does, when he
wants you to hurry up in a parking lot.
I walked around the front, the wind flattening, my shirt and
saw nothing in the glass, but my own reflection and the bright
mess of the World Behind Me. Mike stared Straight Ahead.
He didn't look at me or the handle.
He said eyes foreword. It asked for my daughter by
name. You didn't give it anything
back. I said, I didn't say a thing.
He swallowed it sounded like her, only it didn't.
I don't like explaining that sentence to myself.
Don't get ready to roll. If I tell you, I dropped the
hood, the four Pebbles slid, a fraction with the metal thump
and then sat like they'd been glued there.
I got in. We buckled.
I put it in first and let the engine pull us.
The last 100 yards, past the carbs sign that says you're done
with the dugway. the asphalt came back under the tires, like
another country's rules up on Cedar Mesa the light tilts
different The junipers sits spaced like old men.
If the world is going to be normal again, it usually chooses
here to start, it didn't, we took the spur to muley point
because I wanted the horizon. Out there, the San Juan Cuts,
its tight loops and the cliffs Fall Away in steps that make
your stomach write new laws. I parked at the last pull-out,
not at the edge back by the low Rock.
Windbreak someone stacked, a decade ago for their tent.
No other vehicles, no voices. But ours, if we wanted them, The
plan was simple. Put air between us and the ridge
ring the truck, with what we trusted, light movement, common
sense and make a run after Sundown if we had to using the
dark like cover instead of letting it use us.
I hate bad plans dressed up with bravery.
This wasn't that this was pacing the work, we had left and
refusing to offer the thing inside timing.
I set the lantern in the bed again and left.
It cold for now, we had an hour of light.
We walked a slow Circle, 50 feet out picking up with the last
campers had left a rusted tent stake, two bottle caps, a flake
of church sharp enough to open skin.
We tossed the trash in the bed and left the church where it had
been. I'm not superstitious about
rocks. I just try not to move what's
older than my problems. The phone found a bar.
One bar is enough to text. I typed the obvious to a friend
who doesn't ask why when I send short sentences.
At muley Point, weird out since Butler.
Wash. If we go quiet tonight, call me
at 7, a.m. if I don't pick up call Highway Patrol and Blanding
and give them this pin. I hit send and the little
bubble, sat a beat then left no reply.
I didn't want one. I just wanted to have it of
leaving a trail that wasn't made of plastic tape tied at eye
height. We sat in the cab with the doors
open and watched the light even out.
The wind on us. A raven came up from the cliffs
and hung on the updraft like a kite, someone forgot to reel in.
I like that again, the normal things kept being normal.
That's the last place you check for trouble because you want it
so bad. The first odd was small, a new
Cairn, five flat Stones Style on the low Windbreak.
Top rock turned at a slight angle like a compass Arrow.
It hadn't been there. When we walked our Circle, it
pointed at the truck. I don't know who it was for us,
the thing or whatever rules, the thing keeps, but I broke it with
the back of my hand and Scattered the pieces in a way
that didn't look dramatic or ceremonial, just undone.
The second odd wasn't odd at all, if you like coincidences.
Two hikers headlamps lit up on the far lip, 300 yards away.
Bobbing as they picked their steps toward a Subaru, I hadn't
seen pull in They talked low got in started.
Drove off tail lights. Red dots that went steady and
then were gone. It helped to see other people
leave without anything tugging at their bumper, It didn't help
enough. Sundown made the big drop to the
river, go purple for a minute and then black with edges.
I lit the lantern to a low steady, white and closed the
doors. We locked them without looking
at the buttons. I set the truck in a position.
I could roll start if the battery chose that Hickok.
Again knows just a hair down, hill enough that neutral would
give me a Glide to pop the clutch.
If I had to you don't get to call this paranoid.
If you've heard your name. Correct itself.
Three times in one day. We kept our voices factual.
We drank water because men forget We made a short list out
loud of what we do, if a happened and what we'd refused
to do if B did. We agreed.
We wouldn't answer the door knock.
If it came again in any voice, We agreed not to give directions
or repeat each other's names. We agreed, we'd take 95 West,
then 100, and 191 north. Then find a town with more
people than reasons to stay. We didn't say what we do.
If it followed anyway. If it was going to, we were
already inside that version of the story.
Full dark at muli point is where a person?
Relearn the size of things in a way that doesn't comfort.
The Horizon Lines out so far, you can mistake it for a
promise. It isn't it just gives you more
room for the thing to move where you can't the lantern Circle
turned into our small country. And we stayed inside it because
a line is a line even when it's made by light. the knock came at
9:41 p.m. I looked at the dash because I
wanted to know, and because knowing makes the memory later,
sit in one place. Three soft knocks on Mike's
side, same Rhythm as the motel door.
Same skin level sound. That says a handmade, it not
clause or would we didn't move. Five minutes passed and I heard
the tiny scrap of fingernails or something.
Pretending to be drawn, slow down the paint from the window,
seal to the mid door, then stop. The lantern hissed and held when
the voice came. It didn't bother with my name.
It used his again even closer to true and then it added a word.
I hadn't heard it, try open, not a plea, not a shout, the flat
suggestion. You use on a dog that knows a
command Mike's jaw worked. Once he breathed out slow.
I said, no, not to the window, but to him and he nodded because
that's who we are the handle, ticked once returned to place,
ticked again, a little impatient now, and then stopped like
whatever was out there remembered another trick at
wanted to practice later. At 10:06, the engine did its
half stall again. I felted in the wheel, more than
heard it. I turned the headlights off.
One click to save what I could without giving us a way as a
target of our own fear. The lantern gave enough to keep
the glass from turning into a mirror.
We'd search for faces in At 10:09, the engine.
Quit all together. No chug, no cough, just a gan
sound. The dash stayed live.
Battery wasn't dead. Something had decided it wanted
to see if we'd step into the dark to fix what we couldn't see
neutral. I said on my count if it rolls
I'll drop to Second and pop it. Count.
He said, I killed the lantern to make the stars explode and to
give us the drop. If we had to move the Knight,
hit the cab like water, the temperature didn't change, just
our claim to it. I let the break go in the truck.
Ease. Gravel crunched.
We rolled three feet, six 10. I dropped the shifter into
second and let the clutch up the engine caught first.
Try that clean bark. You get when a machine still
wants to be on your side. I turn the lantern back up.
Just enough to own the circle. Again, I wanted to laugh and
didn't you don't laugh at luck when you still need it?
We sat another 40 minutes because Pride will get you
killed and patience is free. Nothing.
Tried the doors again. No, footsteps went around the
bed, the Pebbles on the hood were gone.
When I finally checked a small fact, I don't have a drawer for
at 10:53. We picked our run.
No, heroics, no testing. Just out to 95 left to 191 north
to Blanding, and then we keep driving until fatigue makes more
mistakes than staying put wood. We pulled away from the edge and
back through the junipers. The first mile off.
Muley point, always looks the same, even when you want it to
change dust Road low brush and the rear view a square of Darker
dark. The Voice didn't come with us on
the speakers or from the bed or out of the vents.
I want to say it stayed behind on the lip to watch and practice
new words on other people. That's not honest.
The honest version is we didn't hear it.
That mile, that's what I have. That and the print we found on
the center of the windshield in the morning, one wide Arc of
clean in the dust shaped like the front half of a split hoof
dragged an inch downward in a way as if something taller than
the cab had leaned in at some point in the night.
And then decided to let us go for reasons that don't belong to
us. We weren't at morning yet.
We still had the run to the highway and we still had to
decide if we were making a stand or making an exit.
We chose exit and when the road to 95 came up like a rule.
Someone else wrote and we slid onto it without missing a Beat.
I understood something, I don't love admitting sometimes,
surviving is just a series of decisions.
You may make not to be interesting.
We drove we didn't stop to see if the Cairns had followed We
didn't answer when the night leaned in near fry Canyon and
shape our names, one more time like it was practicing for
someone easier. We kept the cab warm and the
glass steady and the truck between the lines until the
first week orange showed Far East and made me believe we'd
stolen one hour back. Fry Canyon to Hanksville is the
kind of stretch where a person learns what their steering wheel
feels like at every position long empty honest.
The trucks whom steadied me, we'd outlasted the dugway and
muly point. The plan was simple now. 95,
West to 191 north Then a bigger town with mornings that start
before trouble wakes up. The sky got that thin pre-dawn
banned. Not enough to see by just enough
to remind you that the shape of the world is still under there.
Five miles past the fry. Canyon Crossing the right front
tire. Let go not a blowout.
A sag pressure leaving fast like someone had pulled a plug.
The truck settled on that corner and started to drift, right?
I kept it straight East speed down and got us onto a wide
gravel turnout, that looked like road crews had used it once.
I stopped where we could see both ways a long time before
headlights would surprise us. The dash tire light took its
time to admit what the body already knew.
We looked at each other because this was the exact moment we'd
been pacing for no Dramatics. Just the job.
I swung my door open crouched, and put my palm on the sidewall
warm. Soft enough to deform under a
thumb. The scar we'd noticed on the
bench Road had become a slit. No debris in the tread.
Nothing stuck. A clean mean.
Opening two sharp for rock unless the rock took a file to
itself. It didn't matter.
It was flat now. Two minute change.
I said no names. Keep eyes out.
No talking to anything that talks back.
Two minutes. He said, we'd practice this
Rhythm for years on bad roads. I got the Jack under the lower
control arm and started cranking.
He pulled the spare, he loosened lugs, while the weight was still
down, then lifted the wheel off, as soon as the rubber cleared
gravel. The are held normal.
The horizons. Stayed empty.
My heart made noise like work, not fear.
The spare one on lugs finger tight then wrench star pattern
drop retort 92 seconds. Maybe 100 I spun the dead tired
to check the inside sidewall. The slit ran clean.
Like a careful cut from heel to Arch not jagged.
I didn't show it to him, he didn't need a picture to go.
With the fact, we were throwing the Jack back in when something
moved in the Culvert 30 yards off.
The dry concrete kind with a square mouth under the turnout
and a rusted guardrail above. It wasn't a person standing up
or an animal hopping out. It was a change in light inside
the Culvert. Like someone had stepped just
far enough toward the mouth for Dawn to catch a cheekbone.
The sound, the air made changed with it, a small pressure
adjustment, like opening a fridge and feeling the room
shift. I stood without straightening
all the way Mike did the same. It was a reflex from the last 24
hours, finish the task own, the weight of it.
Then look a voice came from the Culvert mouth.
Not mine, this time not Mike's. It used a tone that would have
worked on most people, a border patrol kind of calm You boys all
set clean pronunciation, no accent, you'd spot.
If it had asked us for registration and proof of
insurance, I would have handed them through the window on
muscle memory. We're good.
I said even roadside change. Good to hear it.
Said and the two words, rode wrong on each other.
Like, the speaker had learned, the phrase and glued the pieces
together. You should check your other
front looks low. Our gauge says it's fine.
I said, I didn't have the gauge out.
I didn't have to. I heard Mike shift.
One shoe on gravel in a way that told me he wanted to stand
between me and the Culvert and was choosing not to copy.
The voice said that was new a radio word from a mouth and a
drain. I watched the darkness inside
the square for a shoulder, a sleeve, a hint of movement, The
not quite Dawn through poor angles.
All I got was the feeling that the Culvert had depth long
enough for a man to stand upright, a ways back without
crouching. I hadn't seen a culvert like
that here, we're rolling. I said appreciate the concern.
I walked to my door and got in. He did the same door locks fell
under our thumbs. The truck settled back into
itself. I put it in gear and eased us
out the Culvert said, friendly, as you please.
Hey, Mike. Don't forget the cooler in the
bed. And that was the point where
names were not an accident, it wasn't guessing it had learned
the truck, our Rhythm, what we carried and who we were in it.
I kept my eyes on the road and the mirror on the Culvert mouth.
And in that small glass, the dark shape, at the edge didn't
resolve into a head or a hat. It resolved into a gap.
That wasn't there when we pulled in and was again, when we left.
Like a mouth that preferred to be a mouth.
Were not stopping. Again, I said or not.
He said, we made three miles. The spare held the engine notes.
Stayed clean the dawn got traction.
That's when a pickup eased up behind us, no lights a white
work truck with an Amber beacon on the roof and a magnetic
County Square on the door. The kind of sign you can print.
If you own a printer it followed without crowding I sped to 60.
It did too. I slowed to 45 so did it?
I moved right to let it pass it held back like a polite driver
who doesn't want to spray you with gravel?
Don't break Mike said, which I wouldn't have.
Anyway, the truck pulled even with us inch by inch staying in
our blind spot longer than a driver with places to be.
Would I didn't glance at it full on, I kept the corner of my eye
there, when it finally eased forward enough, that I could see
the passenger window, the glass was up in the cab looked empty.
No driver silhouette. No Hands on the Wheel.
It might have been the angle and the early light.
It might have been that there wasn't anything seated where I
should be. The bed was clean.
No toolboxes, no ladder rack, just a white box with a sticker.
You could peel off and put on something else.
It floated ahead another car lengths and then tucked back in
front of us and set a speed. We didn't choose, we kept it.
I don't care how Brave you are. You don't tailgate a blank.
A mile later it slowed and signaled to a service pull out
that wasn't on the map. I knew that stretch there's a
scene to turn out farther west. Here there's nothing but sage in
the wind structures that keeps snow from drifting.
The white truck glided into a gap that didn't exist.
The last time I had been out here and stopped with its
tailgate toward us. The Amber Beacon flashed twice
with the spinning Hardware turning.
I kept going. It didn't follow.
I checked the mirror until the road crested and lost it.
Next town, we fuel. We don't linger.
I said he put the map away. Monticello's, the first honest
stop. We can reach it without talking
to the morning. We didn't make Monticello before
the last trick. It came simple as a stop sign.
A construction Flagger on 191 north of Blanding where the
shoulder drops and the crews set cones.
When they trim trees. An orange vest, a stop paddle.
A white hard hat with scuffs. He held the sign up high and
stepped out like a man who trusts the law more than he
trusts the people obeying it. Behind him, a skid steer, idled
with no operator in the seat. Cones ran the lane for 100 yards
and then just ended. No crew trucks.
No spools of caution tape, no human clutter, just the neat.
Minimum a brain needs to see to accept a story.
I stopped 10 feet, short of the paddle window up doors locked.
He walked over slowly no Swagger just the I'm at work.
Gate of a person who has got 10 hours of this ahead of him.
He leaned down to the passenger, window and taped once the way
workers do to ask for a crack of air.
I didn't give it. I watched his chin through the
glass, it was the wrong kind of clean.
Like a mannequin that had rolled in dust to pass as a man.
He didn't fog the glass when he breathed, maybe the seal was
better than I thought, maybe he didn't breathe.
He lifted the paddle. Spun it in his hands.
And when it faced us again, both sides said, stop.
He was trying to be funny or he didn't know the other side
should say slow. He pointed with the edge of the
sign toward a spot he wanted us to pull into there was no spot
just brush and a shallow drainage cut.
He made the gesture again like the confusion was ours, the sun
cleared, a little more of the Horizon and lit.
His ear edges, they didn't look right.
Ears have soft curves, these looked notched.
Like someone had copied the shape from memory and got bored.
One inch from finished. Were done playing.
I said, I put it in gear and rolled forward at one mile, an
hour until the bumper touched the paddles Edge.
He didn't step back, he raised his free hand, like he meant to
press his palm to the hood. The fingers didn't look like
fingers anymore. They looked like long narrow,
wrong joints, drafted in skin, that had learned, the idea of
Knuckles and hadn't Landed. It I kept creeping.
The signed bumped tilted and slipped from his grip.
When it hit the ground, it didn't clatter.
It fell like it was made of felt he leaned in so close to the
glass. That if he'd been a man, I could
have counted pores He opened his mouth.
The shape inside wasn't a tongue.
It was too long pale pieces that ended before the place a throat
should be. He tried my name and it finally
came out close enough to be mine.
He tried mics and got that right too.
Then he said not loud at all. Take me like a person at a bar
closing time who's done asking politely.
I don't pretend I know what that meant in its rules in mine, it
meant we were out of minutes to be careful.
I turned the wheel into him and rolled the truck over his boot.
There was no crunch. There was the sound of weed,
stems dragging under a skid plate.
He didn't fall, he steps sideways without stepping like
he'd been picked and set down. He raped his knuckles on the
glass small precise annoyed. The sound went through me.
I hit the horn long and hard a sound that doesn't ask anything
back. The long flat noise.
Cracked the quiet open a ranch dog.
A quarter mile off answered once.
The figure stepped back like a man.
Who'd remembered an appointment. The holes in the hard hat didn't
line up anymore. The vests Stripes, didn't sit
straight. He took two backwards steps.
Not smooth, not sure. And then turned and walked into
the brush at a speed that didn't match the distance.
He covered He was gone. By the time.
I killed the horn, the paddle lay face down both sides.
Still said stop, I drove. We didn't talk for five minutes.
When we did, it was only to say, what we already knew, this
wasn't going to tire out or make a big show.
It was going to keep setting small tests until we set one of
our own. If we kept waiting for it to
pick our spots, we would end up on foot answering to a window
voice. We couldn't Outlast So, we made
a plan that wasn't Brave or smart just hours.
We'd pick the ground on purpose. We'd use a place that put rules
back in our hands open hard packed with lines.
We could hold and a fall back. We could reach without guessing,
we'd make our own markers and our own timing and leave us a
thing behind that wasn't a game at had started.
That's how we ended up turning off 191 onto a County Road East
of Blanding that runs straight between two fence lines to an
old airstrip used. Now for crop dusters and small
charters. Flat ass fault.
A windsock chain link with a gate.
You can park in front of without trespassing.
No, houses against the fence enough Horizon to see a dog
coming for a minute before the Dog Saw you.
We pulled into the gravel apron short of the gate and killed the
engine on our terms. We set the lantern in the bed.
Unlit. We took the bright caps and
tags, we'd hauled all over this country and laid them in a
straight line. 20 feet out from the truck every six feet. 40
markers running, parallel to the fence like a Runway Centerline.
At the end, we stacked the river Stones we kept from the last
Cairn in A Low cross. On the asphalt seam, not because
we believed in symbols. But because this whole thing had
been a conversation in objects and we were tired of letting One
Voice place, all of them, we agreed on two rules one.
We don't step past our own line, unless a person in a marked,
normal car pulls in and uses our names the way people do with the
history behind it. Too, we leave the second.
We see the line count change with a hand to do it.
Son, edged up, light flat in the brush, the windsock moved once
and then hung we waited with the doors open in our feet on the
thresholds. Two magpies found defense and
complained at each other. Assessment far off, made a
light, sowing machine drone and went the direction of Moab.
We listened for footsteps and got only the kind the day makes
when it starts. Small cliques in the sheet
metal, a smell of warming dust. At 7:03 a.m. my phone buzzed
with the reply, my friend sent late but good enough.
Got your 7 a.m. check you good I texted back.
We're okay leaving soon and I let the simple lie stand as a
promise I meant to make true. We held until 7:10.
Then one of the caps at the far end of our line.
Lifted, two inches and set itself down.
Six inches to the left, knee is a chest move.
No, wind no bugs, no hand. It was the cleanest sign.
We were going to get that. Our rules had been read and
signed. We didn't speak to the air.
We didn't write a message in Stone's.
We got in doors, shut locks fell and engine turned and we rolled
out with the markers. Still on the ground, like a
receipt. On the way to Monticello The
Voice. Tried one last shape at the
window, my name and then his accurate.
Now, And then a word that wasn't English, short and hard-edged,
the kind of syllable. You could break a tooth on.
It didn't land anywhere in me because it didn't belong to me.
I let it pass. Like a truck in the oncoming
Lane big and loud and not mine to carry.
If we reach town with the sun making Shadows where Shadows
should be, we fueled we bought a new spare.
We used to pay host to wash dust off the windshield and that's
when we saw it, the single clean Arc in the grime from last night
pressed at the top center of the glass, two narrow tracks side by
side, down to where the wiper, couldn't reach ending just above
the hood line. Not a hand.
Not clause. The shape of cloven front could
make if it leaned and slid and inch and then let you go.
We didn't pose with it. We didn't take pictures.
We wiped the rest of the Dust so the ark didn't look like a
trophy. Then we pointed north and west
toward towns, where people mow Lawns and forget to bring in the
trash cans and wave out of habit.
We weren't done with the story but we picked the last chapter's
place in Pace. The rest would be daylight and
daylight has its own rules, even if it can't fix anything old.
We left Monticello Northbound because North felt like an
answer. Gas in the tank.
A new spare ratcheted down coffee hot enough to burn if my
hands slip. Son on the hood, made the truck
look like a truck again, instead of a container for mistakes.
I kept the speed just under the limit and stacked small, good
choices. Signals early Lane disciplined.
No sudden moves. as if the highway was, grating me and I
wanted a pass The first clean. Miele came between Monticello
and La, Salle, Junction, ordinary shoulder, ordinary
fence lines fields that had been cut weeks ago.
The cab stayed the size. It's supposed to be no pressure
on the Windows, no voice shaping itself to fit us.
I didn't trust it and I didn't talk about it.
Mike dosed in 10 minutes slices the kind where your jaw slack
and then you catch yourself. Each time he woke, he glanced at
the glass, then the side mirror, then the windshield and only
then at me, it wasn't dramatic, it was inventory.
South of Moab we fueled again, even though we didn't need to
Habit and because I wanted to stand in daylight with people
stepping around me asking for receipts and lottery tickets.
The cashier did the morning chatter that belongs to her, how
was your day so far? And I told the plain truth.
Better now. We didn't linger, we didn't look
for meaning, in the way, the automatic door dragged a second
on the bottom track, like something heavy had stood there.
Overnight, we just left. North of Crescent Junction.
We cut West for Green River, rolled past the melon stands,
then up through the blank miles. That make a person decide what
stories to keep. I kept the important ones short,
we didn't answer when our names were called.
We didn't follow tape into cottonwoods, we set our own line
at the end. Everything else.
I filed under not helpful. It's a drawer.
I've got more of as I get older price.
Schofield, turn off. Spanish Fork, Canyon with its
tidying angles, and signs that tell you.
What's next and are right, every time.
Traffic thickened and then turned into the normal noise of
a state that goes to work on a weekday that was its own.
Kind of blessing, we were two men in a truck with dust on the
floor mats and a new spare wearing in the rear, and that
single arc on the windshield weed washed once and then
decided not to wash again until we were home.
Passed, Provo. I called the owner because you
don't go ghost a job. Even when the job tried to go
ghost, you I told him the line was marked and the Caps were in
his possession by way of his survey crew, whether he meant to
put them there or not. He said his guy had found
everything he needed and chalked the neat new rose up to somebody
with time on their hands. He asked if we'd seen kids out
there. I told him there were prints.
I couldn't explain in a windmill tank.
I didn't care to sleep beside again.
He laughed, like he thought, I meant the frogs.
He paid the invoice within the hour on paper.
It was the cleanest job. We had all month, we didn't say
Skinwalker to him. I won't ask that word to do
work. It didn't agree to.
When we said yes to offense line, the word says, a specific
thing to specific people and I'm not one of them.
I used the word to be honest with you because you asked and
because my uncle's rules still have their shape in me.
But I don't use it to make a story bigger than its weight.
What we dealt with out there, learned our names, copied our
knocks wore a coyote wrong and tried to get a hand on a truck
door at 40. That's enough without dressing
it in something. I don't own, we split at the
belt route. Mic pointed West for two.
Well in the yard where he keeps his gear.
I headed north for home. We shook hands at a red light
like we were just changing lanes, because men, like us,
save the long goodbyes for funerals and doors.
We won't open. he said call me when you've slept, I said, text
me the second year in your driveway Said I will.
That's what we had at home. I parked on the curb instead of
the driveway, left the truck, facing the street, and sat in
the cab, until the AC in the house, cycled a sound.
I know through two walls and a door.
I carried my pack in by the straps, and set it down without
letting it thump. I showered until the water ran
cold, and then I stood there for a count of 30, I don't know who
that was for me, the day or something, listening for proof.
I still did normal things the way normal people do.
I dried off and put on clean clothes, the kind with wear
marks at the cuffs and then I slept in the afternoon because
sleep belongs to, whoever takes it.
I woke to my own door knock, not the same pattern as the motel.
My neighbor two houses down. Dropping off a misdelivered
package with my name on it. I let him handed it to me.
He joked about porch Pirates, I laughed.
Like people doing at that joke, even though both of us hate the
whole idea. I said the box on the table and
stood in the quiet. That comes after a house.
Remembers you? Nothing in it made the wrong
sound. I went out to the curb and
looked at the windshield Arc and told myself, I'd washed the
whole truck tomorrow not because I believed the Mark Mint,
something because I believe in not letting the day before
decide what I do today. The next week normal kept
showing up on time. I ate, I worked.
I didn't whistle after Dark. Twice walking out of a grocery
store in a hardware store. Somebody across the lot said, a
name loud to a friend and my shoulders tense with my brain
caught up. That it wasn't mine.
That faded. That's what nerves do when you
feed them? Decent food and don't test them
every hour. For a while, sleep came at odd
angles, not nightmares, just pauses.
I would wake it to 13 am because that was the time in the motel
when the knock learned. My rhythm, I had lied there
listening to the kind of quiet a neighborhood makes when it's
doing you a favor. No frogs no Mill, no voice.
I didn't answer anybody even in my head.
After a month. My body quit waking me then.
people overstate the permanent part of this kind of thing,
bodies want to heal, if you let them I saw my twice that first
month and a handful of times after.
First time was his yard returning, a post driver.
He'd left in my truck bed and didn't want back anymore.
He'd replaced it without saying that out loud.
We drank coffee outside the shop concrete, warm from the morning.
He said his daughter had started waking up asking if the dog
needed to go out and then she'd stand at the backslider with her
hand on the glass, like she was waiting for someone to knock
from the yard. they don't have a dog, he fixed it by moving
bedtime earlier and reading until she conked out heavy
Sometimes Solutions are that small.
Not everything has to be an exorcism.
Second time, we met at a diner off the interstate.
He looked better. I did too, if I'm honest.
We talked about other jobs. We didn't go back south That
season. There's a difference between
avoiding a place because you're scared and choosing not to give
a thing a second, try at your expense.
We chose the second thing he said, you think it's tied to
land or to us. I said, we left it places that
weren't allowed to come home with me.
That was enough answer for two men who already knew the rest.
One piece of cost. Alright here because it belongs
to the story and because I can't cut it out, just to make us look
clean. Three weeks.
After, at my place, I found a small neat stack of Riverstone
on the back. Step four, not five, and the top
one had a piece of bright plastic pinched under it.
Not survey tape, packaging, ribbon for the Mist delivered
box. My neighbor had dropped off, cut
Square, I didn't open the slider, I stood on the inside
and looked for a long time, then I called Mike and said, it
either came here or a person thought they were hilarious.
He said either way don't step out into the joke.
I swept the stones into a dustpan from inside with the
long handle and dumped them into the kitchen trash I took the
trash out at noon, not dusk. nothing knocked that night,
nothing since You can say coincidence, if that makes the
world sit better for you. I won't argue.
I'm not keeping a ledger to convince anybody, I know what I
heard what we saw and what kept its voice just wrong enough to
stand out. I also know we set terms near
that airstrip that held we walked away on our own cloth.
We didn't give up names or steps.
We couldn't afford in my math. That's a win.
Here's the line. I won't cross again and you can
call it Superstition or protocol, it doesn't matter.
I won't sleep at stock tanks, between Bluff and Blanding.
I won't answer if a voice in an empty Place uses my name better
the second time than the first. I won't follow tape, I didn't
tie even if it's the same brand I used.
I won't let someone I care about stand at a door after dark when
a knock sounds like mine. I won't let a friend work that
Ridge alone not because men are weak alone but because some
parts of the map are just honest about what they asked from you
and the debt comes due faster if you don't split it.
If you're looking for one neat ending there isn't one.
The survey got done the owner paid, the post stands straighter
than they need to and a country that eats straight lines.
The windmill Still Creek because when does what it wants?
Coyotes still test camps because coyotes are good at their jobs.
Somewhere down there. A line of bright tape probably
flutters and caught in woods where there isn't a marked
Trail. I'm not going to check.
That's not running. That's respect a month after I
drove South on 191 for a different job and passed the
Butler. Wash turn offs without slowing
the ridge looked like it always looks sleeping animal back
Shadow pool in its long, seams light clean on its top a raven
crossed. The road ahead of me, two Wing
beats and a slide. I took that as normal not a sign
Signs are for people who need them.
I had rules now and they were quiet when people ask.
I don't tell this one a campfires, I don't say,
Skinwalker to get the room to lean in.
I keep the story here in a place where someone asked for the
whole of it. In straight words.
If you wanted a lesson, I've only got the ones, my uncle gave
me. And one we added on an airstrip
at dawn, don't answer when the wrong mouth uses your name.
Don't follow what wants you under trees, you didn't choose.
And if a thing tests you with objects, set your own line and
keep it without apology. That last one is the only part
I'd call bravery. The rest is just living long
enough to know which miles to drive past and which jobs to
accept. And when a friend, you owe, says
he needs a hand, make sure the hand you give him knows how to
hold a door shut when the knock is perfect.
I'll tell you this straight because I don't want it to sound
like a Campfire story in late October.
Two years ago, I drove with my friend Lena to the bisti Dina's
in Wilderness, south of Farmington New Mexico.
It's BLM Badlands, no marked Trails.
No water, just bentonite, clay, and hoodoos.
And wind that can pick up grit like sandpaper.
We didn't go there to chase anything strange.
We went because Lina wanted Sunrise Photos of the cracked
eggs. Those football-sized mudstone
ovals that look like broken dinosaur shells.
And I was there to spot and keep track of bearings.
I do mapping in survey work for a living, and I'm conservative
about roots. We stopped at the field office
in Farmington the day before looked over the photocopied
handouts and listened to the guy at the desk.
Say the same thing twice. Keep your line of sight to your
exit. The place folds in on you.
We noted like the rule was obvious and then he said it
again. Slower we pulled off NM 371 an
hour before Civil Twilight and parked at the main access.
There's a cattle fence with a walk through and beyond that.
The Basin just slumps away into gray, the clay sticky when it's
wet like cake batter, but it had been dry for weeks.
I took a magnetic bearing off the power line poles on the
horizon and the notch where we'd stepped through the fence, we
both set offline pins in our phones and photographed, the car
from three angles, I say that because I want you to understand
how Square it away, we were Extra water in the trunk, a tiny
blister kit, mylar blankets in the bottom of the pack.
We each had a small radio and agreed on.
Time checks, we told a friend in Farmington, our plan, and the
time we text him that night, I'd call it careful but not
paranoid. The Basin started to show shape
as our eyes adjusted. Low ribs that looked flat from
the road became waves with drainages between them.
We passed a black rock spine that glinted lava I think and a
cluster of tiny white hoodoos stacked like plates.
The clay, their breaks into scales.
And if you're not paying attention it, tricks your feet.
The eggs sit in a shallow bowl, may be a mile and a half in we
reached them while the sky was still a uniformed dull blue.
Leanas set her tripod in swapped lenses.
Her breath showed in little Puffs.
She pretended not to see. I walked a slow Circle.
Not stepping near the formations, just trying to
understand the dips and what would be wet if it rained.
The place is quiet. In a way that isn't silents, you
hear your jacket, your knees, the soft rub of fabric that gets
swallowed 10 feet from you. The first odd thing was not
dramatic. I came around the southern rim
of the bowl and saw a line of prints leading across a bare
patch of clay. The clay their holds detail like
a casting. The prints were a little larger
than mine and barefoot. Deep heel slightly splayed toes,
no shoe pattern. They came in from nothing
crossed the clay with an even stride and disappeared into a
cobble patch where the mudstone crumbs were too coarse to show
anything that happens people pad out of sight or a wind gusts The
Edge and you can't follow it but the thing that stuck in my head
was how the toes pressed down like someone walking on the ball
of a foot for quiet and next to them with a weird regular
overlap. Every third step were coyote
tracks. Neat ovals, Claus showing
Coyote's are everywhere so that part didn't register as much.
It was the paired tidy Cadence that made me stop bear.
Human foot coyote bare human foot.
I didn't call out I took two photos for scale with my knife
late across one of the tracks and went back around the bowl.
When I reached Lena she was bent over her camera.
I waited for her to finish her shots. then I said, somebody was
out here, barefoot She didn't look up.
Today. I said they looked fresh.
She glanced at my boots then at the clay on them, then at the
Horizon which was getting a low pink seam.
Her mouth did that thin line thing.
That is not fear in her just calculation.
She said, kids run barefoot in summer sometimes.
I said, it's 26 degrees. She nodded once opened her bag
and added her windbreaker. I don't want to sell you cheap
suspense. Nothing jumped at us.
The light came up Lena got the frames.
She wanted from four angles, we kept the eggs, on our left, then
our backs and continue East to a small hoodoo Garden.
I'd marked on satellite The ground there was pebbled and
didn't hold sign. We saw one set of boot tracks in
a long Arc. That seemed to week, old
crumbled. Edges, when softened, We didn't
see more bare Footprints. We kept our bearing clean.
When the sun popped over the far, Flats it warmed fast.
And we took our first long drink.
We were on our way back when the voice called my name.
It came from somewhere down in the shallow channel, to our left
and the first two syllables were clipped like the person was
catching breath. It said my name in the same
Cadence my mother uses when she's trying to get me to answer
a text. I turned that way and Lena said,
yeah, in that automatic way you do, when you hear your name and
you're asked a question, you didn't catch, I looked at her
she was looking at me. The voice said my name again.
Same Cadence. Neena, na na.
I don't want to write my real name here but that's how it hit
my ear. Like the two halves were cut
apart and put back together with a delay.
We stood with our heads cocked like we were listening for a
train The channel was narrow and empty a tumbleweed.
Skeleton, lay across the far lip, I thought of a hunter or
some guy sleeping rough in the basement.
And my first feeling wasn't fear as much as that awkward Civic
thing where you wonder if it's about to be your job to help.
I called out you good and immediately felt like I'd said
the wrong thing, the channel gave a tiny Echo, back that made
the vowel, then the voice said, my name again and added.
Can you come here? It wasn't human bad.
It just arrived a fraction of a second late, like a phone call
with a lag. You have to adjust to I said
hold on and unzipped my jacket to get to the radio, I handed
Lena my maps, so she'd have both hands-free for her camera in
case, this turned into one of those Wildlife gotchas that she
loves I keyed the radio and said we're not coming down.
If you need help, walk up to us where we can see.
The channel stayed full of nothing.
A little win plucked at the tumbleweed.
We waited 20 seconds, then 40. No one walked up.
Lena kept her eyes moving because she is not a hero, she
smart. after another minute, she said in a low voice, Let's go.
And we kept to our bearing without changing pace.
We didn't talk for a while, we were less than 10 minutes from
the eggs. When we found the second thing,
it was a thin monofilament line, strung knee-high across a narrow
spot where the clay ribs came close and you had to squeeze
through. You wouldn't see it if you were
chatting or looking up at the horizon.
A son bleached twig was noted into it where it ran through a
crack in the clay and as the wind touched the line, a tiny
rattle ran across it. High reached out and plucked it.
The line saying for a second, a cheap guitar string noise.
Somebody had put it there on purpose.
It wasn't for cattle, it wasn't for art.
I bent to inspect the knots and saw a little Loops where
something had hung. Bells would have fit.
Maybe they had been there once and gotten taken by wind.
The clay next to it showed smudges toast smudges not
Prince. You could cast just pushes where
someone had stepped and the grain had held the pressure.
We could have cut it and left it, but I didn't like the idea
of turning my back on something. I didn't understand.
We stepped around and made the tight spot wider by taking the
next rib in Stead, it cost us five minutes, and put us into a
seam of soft Earth that took a perfect boot impression.
I stopped at the first and took a photo.
I stopped again at the third because the boot print had a
second pattern in it, like someone had stepped into his own
print, with something strapped to his shoe.
The second pattern looked like two rectangles, slightly offset
with a gap between them. I didn't get it.
Then I do. Now after the line, the feeling
changed before, it felt like a weird coincidence in a big open
place. After it felt like we were being
counted, not stocked counted like someone was keeping track
of how long it took us to notice things.
The Basin got that glare where edges vanish and everything
becomes identical. I focused down to the next 30
feet and the next Lena stayed, 10 feet off my right shoulder
and watched the long sight line for movement.
Every time I stole a glance at her, I caught her mouth chewing
the inside of her cheek, which she only does when she is
thinking through contingencies I told myself we were going to be
back at the fence in 40 minutes and I didn't have to be a hero
about anything on the ground between now.
And then the voice came again this time in Lena's tone.
It was behind us and off to the left.
Using my name in the way she uses it, when I'm about to miss
a photo she wants. Hold up a second like that.
You know how your ear recognizes someone, you know, better than
your eye. I don't even need to see Lena to
know when it's her on the phone across the room, that's how
exact it was. It said hold up and then
repeated it tacking a little Cog on the end.
It was wrong because Lina was right there next to me with her
mouth shut. It was wrong because it reused
the same breath. Sounds from earlier like, it had
recorded them. I didn't look back into the
Basin. I looked at Lena's hand where it
touched my sleeve it was steady her head barely shook a no
smaller than a pebble. We kept walking, we reached the
eggs and made a wide Loop so we didn't intersect our own track
line. I checked my phone the PIN for
the car, lay West, Northwest and the little compass needle.
Agreed. We kept the power line poles on
our right shoulder and the notch in the fence as our Target.
We cut across a shallow drainage that looked like all the others
until I saw the piles. Not Karen's Karen's are stacked.
These were paired Stones, set, 10 feet, apart, like low, Runway
lights. They were two regular.
They ran in a line that paralleled our Heading by 20
degrees, then turned then turned again, making a box.
It wasn't skillful. It was quick.
The idea was obvious. Once you saw the full shape, a
Chorale of stones that led to a narrow point where the rib walls
pressed closed and the dirt went soft.
I didn't step into it. I walked outside the line and
looked into the point, the ground there was packed with
coyote prints. You see that?
Sometimes where a den is but there was no den.
The prince alternated from clean to smudged, like something had
pressed down over them and lifted again.
I took a photo and then didn't want to be there.
From that point forward, I counted minutes nine to the
little white, hoodoos ate to the black spine, 12 to the pale rib,
with the crack that looked like a smile, The Voice came three
more times in different places. The third time at used Lena's
voice to say my name and then Trail off.
Like she had seen something rare and didn't want to scare it the
fourth time, it got lazy and clipped the vowels, too short.
The 5th time was very close. It came from a depression to our
left that you could reach in five steps.
You could have jumped across it. The words weren't words anymore.
It said, hey, like Lena would say, hey when a hawk passed
over, it said it twice, Chris like someone tapping a glass
with a fork. Lena's hand found my sleeve
again. We didn't turn the light was
bright and flat. Our shadows were short.
For a second. I wondered.
If the trick was something simple, like a portable speaker
and someone lying in the Halo. I told myself that would be good
speakers. Don't get up and run the last
odd thing inside the Basin came just before the fence.
There's a slope of packed pale clay that keeps 100 foot prints
like a guest book. You step onto it and the world
writes you down. I stepped.
And then stopped because what wrote itself before me didn't
make sense. A row of hoof prints cut across
at a slight diagonal. They were not cow.
They were cloven and light like a goat or a small deer.
But the spacing was long and the depth came and went like wait
rising and falling where it shouldn't a coyote track crossed
the met two points then aligned for three full stride.
Like the animal had decided to step in each clove and print on
purpose. An inside, one of those clean
cloven marks, the clay held a negative where a bolt head had
dug in and left a six-sided impression.
I crouched because the rational, part of me, got loud, it said,
someone made a hoof and strapped it to a shoe.
People do stupid things for videos and clicks people mess
with visitors. The hoof itself wasn't deep like
a wooden block. It was hard, like rubber or
resin. I could see the sharp edges
where sand had scoured. Leading each hoof, pair was a
faint ghost of a waffle pattern, like the soul of a running shoe.
The hex bolt Mark, sat near the inner Edge as if the strap had
rotated under load. I slid my fingers into the
indentation and felt The Ridges of the clay.
My kneecaps smarted with that, too much light feeling and the
skin. At the back of my neck went
cold, I remember that physical detail because it's the only
normal way to say I understood what I was looking at and hated
it. We crossed the slope and aimed
straight for the fence knotch. I didn't hurry until I heard
something run behind us. The sound wasn't loud.
It wasn't Thunder. It was as light as a Barefoot
person. Trying not to be heard.
The ticks of grit Under Foot came in bursts. 3 light steps a
pause for light steps. A pause like someone matching,
our starts and stops and using my breath to choose when to
move. I didn't look back.
I wanted to but I didn't trust what I do with what I saw.
I kept the notch on line and didn't blink.
When we reached the fence Lena went through first, then turned
and put both hands on the wire to hold it steady.
I stepped through and she let it go.
The wire side. We didn't run to the car.
We walked only when I had my hand on the door handle.
Did I look back? I expected a clean Horizon.
What I saw was a human shape at the lip of the last low Ridge
before the slope. It was too far to see a face and
that's probably good. It's stood and didn't move.
That said more than anything, it could have done if it had waived
I could have called it a prank. If it had ducked, I could have
called it a trespasser who didn't want to be caught.
Standing still reads as confident like the thing on two
legs, knew the rules here, better than I did, and knew I
didn't want to come back across the wire to test them.
I lifted my camera out of habit, but the frame would have been a
silhouette between two power line, poles, with a heat Shimmer
running. I didn't press the shutter, we
got in the car and shut the doors.
And it was only then that the noise of the road returned like
a switch flipped You don't realize how far you've taken
yourself out of the world until a seatbelt real clicks and you
want to cry because it sounds normal.
Lena didn't start the car. She sat with both hands on the
wheel and looked at the Horizon and said, what did you see on
that slope? I told her about the bolt Mark
she didn't ask me to repeat it. She turned the key and we drove
North in Farmington we pulled into a gas station.
And while I was washing the dust off my face in the bathroom
Lena, came back to the car with a white paper bag.
She had bought pecan sandies in a bottle of water, even though
we had water. Neither of us ate.
We just held the cookies like something we could do with our
hands. That night, we sent our all good
text to the friend we'd promise. We didn't mention anything else.
I lay in the dark on the motel bed and played the voice back in
my head. You'd think it would get scary
or when you let it out to grow in the dark.
But it flattened the real fear isn't in the voice.
It's in the planning. It's in the monofilament line
and the paired stones. And the fact that someone spent
time out their dressing, the land to make it move you around
like livestock. I kept seeing that hex bolt
impression, the idea of a person strapping Hooves to shoes isn't
Supernatural, you can buy them, you can make them from Cut
blocks, and resin and glue. It's as human as a mask.
That pushes it into Skinwalker territory.
For me is not the hooves. It's the mimicry.
It's my name said in Lena's voice from a hole that held
nothing. It's the timing that was always
almost, right? Like something was learning in
the gap between calls and practicing mid-sentence.
When we were changing out of our boots behind the car, I found a
small hex nut in the dust that hadn't been there.
When we parked, it was clean. It was the right size for the
bolt head. I'd seen printed in the clay.
I picked it up and turned it over and it stuck to my finger a
little from oil. I almost tossed it.
Instead, I dropped it into the door pocket, it rattled their on
the drive home and I kept telling myself to flick it out
the window. I didnt.
It's in the box under my sink. Now with trekking pole, tips and
a headlamp I hate. I take the box down sometimes
when I'm looking for something else and my hand finds the nut.
And I know the thread count as well, as I know the thread count
of the sheets on my bed. there are people who would say we met
a person with a sixth sense of humor and cheap props, There are
people who would say you hear your name sometimes in the wind
and your brain does the rest. Here's what I can tell you
without decoration. We heard my name and then Lena's
voice in places, where no one stood.
And we found obstacles set at our height in our path.
Strong with line that would sing if you touched it.
We saw prints that layered human and animal and Hardware in a way
that required intention. We were moved around a map that
had been drawn for us. and we left with without looking back
because whatever counted us had finished Counting, A year later,
we drove past the bisti. Turn off, on our way to Chaco.
We didn't stop. The Basin lay there with its
same fake flatness and the little brown BLM sign. the power
line poles leaned with the same mild tilt, I didn't look long, I
don't think it knows me, but some places feel like they hold
a copy of your choices, like a receipt.
People call things like that skinwalkers.
I don't know what's behind the name and I won't pretend to I
just know that voice hit the same Center in me.
That Lena's does when she's closed and the hum in my bones,
didn't care about odds or explanations.
I keep the hex nut because it's a piece of something I can hold.
That does not breathe. When I touch it, I remember the
rule, the field office guy said twice and how you can obey it
and still be led. I go hiking other places.
I drink water at trailheads and tie my boots and check my pins
like all ways. When a friend says my name from
around a corner I wait a second and make sure their mouth is
moving. Then I answer and when I hear
the wind say hey in a clip little tap I don't I let it go
by