~~~
The pair had suited up in their coats, huddled under the hoods and made a dash for Daniel’s Truck. They were both feeling much more lightened of their depression and both were looking forward to a place with more people around and some friendlier conversation. That was not to be the case though.
As Daniel turned the key and idled his truck to warm it, Rachel found a piece of paper tucked into the console on the seat between them. It was the grocery list of names Dan had written at the museum the day before just before the tour.
“What is this?”
Daniel took the sheet from Rachel and when he saw what it was his heart jumped. It wasn’t the list that he’d created itself that spooked him. The lines of names he was quizzing himself over were still there as he’d written them.
Ghost
Wraith?
Demon
Spirit
Poltergeist?
Soul
The fright came from several rough marks made on the paper. “Ghost” and “Spirit” had been marked with a sort of check mark shape in what appeared to be almost artist’s charcoal medium. “Wraith” and “Poltergeist” has been crossed through and smeared almost as if a finger dirtied with that same charcoal had been run across the two words. Soul, the last word on the list, was circled twice.
Daniel shivered. He wasn’t sure who would have marked the sheet but he had a pretty good guess considering they’d unlocked both doors to get in.
In the light of the dash and the radio they’d made out the answers they’d seen so far. Rachel could tell something wasn’t quite right and so she inquired, her brow thoroughly furrowed yet again.
“What is that? Did you write it?”
“Yes…I wrote it,” Daniel replied holding two opposing corners lightly with one pinched forefinger and thumb at either. “But I didn’t mark it like this.”
“What?!” Rachel was not ready for another round. She started cussing under her breath as she fumbled with the door handle on her side. “Shit! Shit! Shit!!”
As she escaped from the truck and stomped inside the cabin again, Daniel quickly shut off the engine and palmed the key to head in after her. Once inside Rachel paced while he tried to console her somewhat.
“Look whoever did it…”
“Whoever!!?” She plopped down on her cot again and rubbed her temples with her hands on either side of her face. “You know who it was! This is ridiculous! Why is he doing this?”
Daniel sat down beside her and tried to wrap his arm around her again when she noticed he was still carrying the note.
“Ah!” she cried in hysterics. “Why did you bring that in here?!”
Quickly setting down the sheet, he stood to hold her and calm her down. To do so he had to turn her about and get her looking away from the cot as her eye kept drifting there and aided in continuing the sobs.
“Why?” she cried. “Why? Why?”
But Daniel couldn’t answer that just yet. A plan was forming in his head though that it was indeed time to figure out why. Neither one of them, together or apart, could possibly go on like this. He felt it was time to either prove or disprove this apparition and do something about it.
“Now…you okay?” He held her back at arms’ length to look at her eyes as she responded.
“Yes,” she nodded but stared at the sheet of paper on her cot. “Yes. I think so. Can you get rid of that paper?”
“Sure…but let’s first just take one more look at it.”
“Why?!” Tears had traced down her cheeks but there were none flowing at that moment. She sincerely wanted to understand what he was thinking. She thought she had an ally and he was acting like this was a curiosity.
“Calm down! Please. I want to just see if we can figure this thing out logically.”
“Logically!?” Dan had picked up the paper and she sat down on her cot, straight-backed and rigid. “How do you do that? We’re caught up in something I don’t think anyone can really understand.”
Her comments were a plea. She felt the best plan was to evacuate, just leave it all behind and get away to a new place and forget about it all.
“I think there’s something more here on the paper and I want to figure it out.”
“But why?” Her hands were once again held out pleading, searching for an answer. “Why can’t we just leave it alone?”
Daniel fixed her eyes and waited until she could stop glancing at the list in his hand and focus on his.
“This thing has been harassing me for more than a couple months now. And…I know this sounds weird…”
Rachel gave a sarcastic huff and cocked her head, but she didn’t interrupt otherwise.
“…but…I think this thing is controlling the rain.”
“How would it do that?” Again, sarcasm, but the nervousness hadn’t left either.
“I don’t know…but like you said…this thing isn’t really behaving like reality anyway. Maybe we need to figure out what’s real about it and then work on that.”
After a long pause, Rachel folded her arms and replied. “Okay.”
Daniel took out of a small nightstand sack he’d had tucked under his cot an old pair of reading glasses he’d inherited from his grandfather. He normally didn’t have an occasion to use them but in this case he wanted to magnify the paper just under the list. There were extremely faint smudges and the paper had been slightly deformed, as if a wet finger had been run across there in a pattern. An idea came to life in his mind about the responses, dimly at first. But in the end he was resolved that it was a wet finger that wrote on the paper after his notes. Because it was dry now, even after following him inside in the heavier rain, he realized these markings could have been made any time since he wrote the list. Perhaps it had been marked earlier just after he wrote it and joined the group for the tours. He explained all this to Rachel suggesting that perhaps the truck had been unlocked at that time. Not being a particularly good salesman, and not being sold on the idea himself he could not convince Rachel either.
“I don’t think this proves that someone did it…everything else we’ve seen and had happened does not make this seem like it’s just a joke or…that someone real is stalking us.”
“That’s true…” Daniel had to concede.
He dropped his eyes back to the paper and started tracing the shapes in the paper and light smudges just below his list. By starting from the left going right like he was writing in English the wide distortions in the paper didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but as he completed the word he realized it seemed he was forming English letters…it was just mirrored!
On a hunch he flipped the paper over and tried tracing it again. The letters appeared to be capitalized printing though strung together by extra swipes. S-H-A-M-A-N he spelled out. Daniel didn’t recognize the name and stared at it a moment trying to sound it out, his lips silently moving.
“What is it?” Rachel asked, her brow still deeply furrowed.
“I think it says, ‘Shaman’.”
“Shaman? What says ‘shaman’?”
“There seems to be a word added at the bottom. It’s very big and very faint, like someone used their finger to try to write it on the paper. Anyway, I think it says S-H-A-“
“Yes, I know how it’s spelled,” Rachel interrupted testily.
“You know what that means?”
“Of course,” she looked away while responding. Her face relaxed for a second and then the deep lines in her forehead returned. “I’m part Hopi, remember?”
“Oh. It’s Hopi?”
“No…” she flapped her arms frustrated at her sides and stood up. Pressing her right hand to her forehead and her left sitting akimbo on her hip she paced while she explained. “Shaman isn’t a Hopi word specifically. Many tribes use the word. It means a medicine man basically. Well…at least it does nowadays.”
She stopped pacing and dropped both arms in a show of de
feat. “Why would he write shaman on the list?”
“Who do you mean by ‘he’?” Dan pressed. He knew what she meant but he wanted to approach it logically and determine what they were dealing with in as scientific a manner as possible. His tone was that of a lab coat, stark and bland, although not very sincere in its questioning either.
“Oh, Daniel! Please don’t over analyze. I’m tired. This thing is trying to communicate to us…only…”
“Only…?”
“Only we should ignore it!”
Lightning struck outside and the thunder arrived less than two seconds away. By the lesson Daniel had in his youth that meant it was within about two miles. And it seemed the strikes were coming more frequently now as well while the storm passed over them.
Rachel sat on her cot and Daniel sat on his. Neither spoke for a few moments. Then with her head down, weary, Rachel determined to make a better situation out of it.
“Daniel…”
“Yes?”
“I would like to sleep here tonight. …Do you mind?”
“No! Of course not. Uh…let’s see. I have a few extra blankets and things. And we can keep this heater going.”
“Good. I don’t want to go outside again at all, and all my stuff is in my truck in my lot next door.”
“Not a problem. You can use my pillow and just go right to sleep.”
Rachel asked, “I know this seems a little childish, but…could we leave the one light on at the entrance?”
“Tell you what…I’ll put this little LED lamp I’ve got on. It’s not quite so bright it will keep us awake…but I think it will do the job.”
Daniel knew what she was feeling as he felt it too. It was hard now to not picture the shadowed creature standing behind him or watching him in a mirror. Nevertheless, light did keep him awake, so a dimmed luminescence would be the better option. And he was determined to let both Rachel and himself get a good night’s sleep. He did not want to let the thing hounding them to win in as many battles as Daniel could manage to keep in his control, no matter how tiny.
The fear driving Rachel through the evening had clearly both worn off and taken its toll: she’d fallen fast asleep still in her coat. As Daniel lay down he thought he could smell her pleasant pine and earthen oak smell mixed in with the damp rain smell of the air and her coat. He wondered if a ranger became permanently infused with the smell of the parks, and amused himself falling to sleep imagining bottling a perfume like that.
As the storm raged and then passed on both slept with troubled and dark dreams that neither could remember later. Both awoke several times in a haze and watched and listened closely for something in the darkness outside the tent. But nothing further happened. Finally, in the early morning hours, Rachel reached over to Dan’s cot to clasp his hand in hers. They held until morning and received the rest they needed.
December 7
Homebound
Two shadows sat in the early morning as the December 7th slow-rising sun peaked over the very northern tip of the mesa. The mood was subdued but Rachel had smiled once or twice while they made coffee and got a fire going.
“Kinda wished I’d gotten drunk last night after all,” Rachel teased.
Dan gave her a smile but replied that he felt better not having been the one that started her.
The Smiths awoke before too late and greeted them and then went about cleaning up their supplies and loading their vehicle. Early in the process Dan caught out of the corner of his eye a worrisome stare Ted gave them. He looked as though he were concerned, but a racket Janine caused loading the pots and pans into the car brought him back to attention to the task at hand.
In parting, both Ted and Janine came over and wished them well. Janine smiled a lot and gave them both a hug, but if she suspected anything such as the conversation Daniel and Rachel had had the previous night she didn’t show it. Ted on the other hand continued to gauge Dan with a parental eye. As they stepped away from lot 98 and headed to their own car, Ted raised his hand one more time and mentioned his friend that should be calling Daniel with a job within the week.
Daniel had almost forgotten with all the excitement, both of touring the Luminaria with Rachel and then the dark soul trying to work his way into their thoughts. A new job when he returned might be just the thing to get him back on track and forget all his fears. But a large piece of him wanted to understand what was happening as well, and he knew he would not be able to just let it go.
Once the coffee was drained, Rachel asked, “Daniel…I’m assuming your home has more than one bedroom. Is that right?”
From his chair Daniel tried to guess at what Rachel meant and even in a morning mental state figured it out pretty quickly.
“Rachel, would you like to come stay at my house in Woodland Hills?”
“Now…no relationship, right? I just need a place to go and I’d like to spend a little more time with you to see if I can get this thing off my back.”
“Of course. I have two other rooms. I’ve got a spare full sized bed and a separate bathroom downstairs. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need,” he replied. Dan felt a little like the fatherly figure again, but he liked that. He wanted to make sure Rachel was safe and he felt he had invested some time with her. He was also hoping he might learn more about the dwellings, the Hopis and perhaps the shadow while she stayed with him as well.
“Deal. I will be a model house guest. I’m not even sure what to think about a full sized bed instead of the bunks we have in the ranger’s cabins I usually stay in.”
Her relief and her smile both cheered Daniel tenfold.
“I want to just do a couple things down here first and might spend one more night. Are you going back pretty quick?”
“Actually,” Dan said, “I think I’m going to go ahead and head back today. I will probably stop and look at another park or two on my way home, if the rain holds light like it is now. Maybe go up from Durango and do part of the loop through the San Juan?”
“Ya, that’s a really pretty area. Alright, give me some directions and I’ll see you tomorrow night. I really appreciate this, especially since we haven’t known each other long.”
Daniel smiled and nodded agreement.
“You’re not some weirdo that’s going to lock me up or anything, are you? Just fooling me? Maybe trying to spook me a bit?”
They both laughed as well as they could but the accidental mention of the thing following them dissettled both again.
“No, no. Besides, you asked me if you could stay, remember?”
“Ya. But keep in mind I’m telling my family where I’m going, so they’ll be waiting to hear from me.”
“Gotcha. No tricks. You stay as long as you need or until you go to the next park.”
Daniel detailed how to get to his home and warned her it’d been very rainy up there as well for the last couple months…probably more so. She acknowledged the information and promised to bring all her rain and winter gear. Then she returned to her camp while Daniel packed up and got ready to go.
December 8
Arrival
While Daniel did get some great photos, despite the rain, on the way home during the afternoon of the seventh, the rain did limit how long he spent making his way back to Woodland Hills. He thought he’d stay in a hotel in Telluride after all since Rachel wouldn’t be to his house until late the following day. The Gold and Silver Train tours seemed like a fun thing to do as well, but this late in the season they were significantly less appealing and the mountains in the San Juan had definitely received some snow at the higher elevations. The warmth and familiarity of his own home held such attraction for his tired and rain-soaked body that he called it early and didn’t stop anywhere else on the way.
On the morning of the 8th Daniel awoke and made himself some eggs. He opened the heater vents in the downstairs bathroom and bedroom since they’d been shut with all the doors closed to reduce h
ow much of the home he’d been heating. Cleaning supplies from his master bedroom bathroom were brought down and the place shined like it hadn’t since he bought it. Flowers seemed like a bit too much, but he thought if he would be hosting the home should have a bit of a woman’s touch, so he laid out the dining table with placements and a full setting for four like his mother used to with regularity even if no one would be dining there for a few days. He spent a little time trying to organize how his utensils, kitchen tools and dinnerware were arranged in the cabinet but realized he didn’t know if there was an order things generally should be in, or if that was up to an owner’s preference. Most pieces just ended up neatly stacked where they were usually stored anyway.
In the same vein, a trip to the store yielded a few more supplies than he would regularly stock. He tried to make sure soaps and shampoos were available in the bathrooms and he bought a holiday no-flame candle that he’d hoped would make the place seem a little more cozy. The downstairs gas fireplace was turned on and he set the thermostat that controlled it a little higher so it would come on and help give a little more comfort. Lastly, he went to the lots down the hill in Springton and looked for a nice, chubby spruce Christmas tree. But in that effort he came up blank. Both lots had a few trees out, muted in the sprinkling rain and gray clouds, but there was no one on the lots to sell them.
Springton itself, with the gas and grill and a few shops, seemed almost dead. There were indeed a couple cars driving about, tires making their sticky noise as the moist tarmac sloshed water around them. At the station, a pair of trucks was parked out front and one car with a loan woman wrapped up in coats stood in the middle island of pumps trying to stay warm while fueling. The red neon trim lights that decorated the entire rim of the eves around the building were still on in mid-day and the lights over the pumps were also full aglow. It wasn’t as if the temperatures were really any lower than they had been when he left on vacation, but the gloom seemed to be seeping into those few souls interested in coming out on a rainy day. Looking for some signs of life, Daniel decided to pull into the station and order a lunch.
Once he’d sat down with his pastrami burger and fries the only other local club member of the gripe patrol in the place turned around in his booth to say hello.
“Been away for a while, eh?” Turner asked. It didn’t seem a very friendly greeting but the man was genuinely trying to include Daniel…perhaps because there was no one else.
Daniel, being somewhat refreshed with the idea of having Rachel visit and having escaped the Springton and Woodland Hills environments for a while, put forth some effort to be friendly. He stood from his table and joined Turner at his.
“Ya. Did a little vacation.”
“Oh ya? Seems like a novel idea…maybe I should get away from all this wet cow shit and mud…” the man replied.
“Well…it was pretty wet where I was too,” Daniel answered, taking a bite of his sandwich.
“Ya? Really?...after all these years of droughts and we just keep getting rain this fall.”
After swallowing Daniel asked, “So where’s all your buddies? Get their boots stuck in the mud?”
“Ya…” Turner’ eyes dropped and he crossed his arms on his chest.
Not the way to start a conversation today, I guess, thought Daniel.
“Actually, there’s been fewer and fewer coming these past few days.”
A little at unease with how to proceed, Daniel was content to stuff a few more fries in his mouth and just listen casually. He poured out some catsup on the fry carton while Turner continued.
“I’m sure some of it’s got to do with the attacks lately.”
Daniel’s hands lowered. He looked to Turner to read a reaction but the gentleman turned to look out the window.
“Attacks?”
“Ya. I’m not sure what’s going on. I’ve heard people with that…what do you call it? Seasonal Disorder?”
Nodding, Daniel kept him going and tried to remain casual by stirring his catsup onto a fry or two. None of them made it to his mouth right away though. He’d suddenly lost his appetite as well.
“…Seasonal Affective Disorder! That’s it!” Proud of his knowledge Turner turned back to engage Daniel and to steal a fry, but still with lowered eyes and countenance. “SAD I think they call it.”
“Ya? So…what’s happened, though?
“Well…first there was Mrs. McCatney…you know…who owns that apple orchard that don’t grow nuthin anymore. She apparently pointed her husband’s old Greenwing he’d left her at the mailman.”
“Really?” Dan stopped chewing his latest mouthful. He was beginning to regret coming home. “Why’d she do something like that? She finally go senile?”
“No. No,” replied Turner. “Well, at least I don’t think so. It’s the same story everywhere. She accused him of stalking her and coming around her house and getting in the barn and stuff. So…I guess after she’d had a rough night one night with all them storms she goes out and meets him at her box when he pulls up.”
“No shit?”
“No shit, sir,” Turner drawled. “Of course, Sam denied he’d ever been around except to deliver mail, but she was sure of it. Said he was using some little red lights to look around and was peering in her wind’r at night an stuff.”
“Wow. That doesn’t sound like her.”
“No, not really. So I suppose you could say she’s finally going a little crazy there by herself. But then how do you explain everyone else?”
Turner clearly was warming up a bit to conversation now that he’d received the bounty of a fresh audience for all the town gossip. They talked of probably nearly ten incidents in Springton, Woodland Hills and the farms around them before Turner excused himself to go bring in the dairy. The one that really turned Daniel’s appetite was the explanation of Ruth and David.
From the explanation Turner gave, Ruth had used an axe to sever David’s left arm. David was still in serious condition and they had not been able to reattach the arm at all. It had been completely separated and it had taken several whacks, mutilating the arm. Ruth remained in custody at the prison down in Green Fork. The only explanation she’d given, as it had been represented to the gossipers and the little local bi-weekly newspaper, was that David had “turned evil and was trying to kill her.” David hadn’t been quoted at all, either too ill to talk or unwilling to make a statement, Dan couldn’t be sure which.
Ruth, and David for that matter, had seemed the nicest people in all of Woodland Hills earlier in the summer. It was hard for Dan to think that even in the poor state in which he’d left them that either would actually resort to violence. Guilt played against his revulsion and he couldn’t decide what he wished for more, having stayed at home and kept something from happening or deciding to stay on vacation longer. Perhaps he could go away and just never come back?
But then, he knew he couldn’t. The rains and the shadow had followed him where he went and started making matters worse for Rachel. He determined then that none of the craziness going on near his home was going to penetrate it. He would protect Rachel and try to reduce the news of such horrible behaviors from getting to her ears as well.
Half of the sandwich was gone, but Daniel didn’t even want to save the rest when he decided to leave. It was time, he felt, to go await Rachel’s arrival.