When sleep did return in the early morning, a new dream took the place of the friendly guide. He could see nothing but a shadow moving around him, never fully taking form. But it spoke to him. Stay here! it would say to him. Daniel sensed a vague threat behind it too and it chilled him. After what little morning light arose to wake him, he found himself in a cold sweat and quickly showered to pull himself out of the dream world.
December 4
Heading South
It took an extra day for Daniel to really make a determination about a trip to the south to tour some of the parks. As he searched the web for places to stay and things to visit he settled on two parks in particular that he wanted to see: Arches National Park in the south east corner of Utah; Mesa Verde in the south west corner of Colorado. If he felt there was time he’d drive around to a few other places as well including the scenic loop through Silverton and Durango, Colorado. Perhaps the Grand Canyon and some of the other parks and historical markers would make it into his digital camera as well. But the one place that caught his attention the most was Mesa Verde. It was almost the first place that came up in his searches for parks and an image of a cliff dwelling along the mesas had haunted him until he made the final decision he was going to go.
Camping supplies wouldn’t be hard for him to come by although he didn’t have a tent. When he looked into places to stay he decided to rent a cabin at a KOA in Cortez because he knew he would need some heat at night, even if the dreary weather had kept temperatures above normal. It was more expensive than he wanted to spend with his remaining severance pay savings but it had a wireless internet connection and electricity to each site and would serve him rather well as a base of operations.
Weather was not going to be a problem. The Mesa Verde National Park website indicated normal high temps for December were in the 40s and 50s, but when he'd called for information the answering ranger said they had had a lot of rain with daytime temperatures still in the 60s on the mesa top. The policies of the park required pre-arranged Ranger-escorted trips down into the cliff dwellings during the fall and winter, so he proceeded to book tours on the sixth, one to the spruce tree house dwelling and another to the cliff palace. The rest of the exhibits along the mesa top roads were all open for visits and even the museum had stayed open a little extra longer since they were still getting visitors in this unusual weather.
Cortez, Colorado should also have been in the 40s for highs in December but the KOA director said he'd seen nothing but 60s for highs, dipping into upper 30s at night. He indicated a heated camper trailer or a tent heater would be wise, but he had a few campers who had been doing fine without either. Dan figured the little kerosene heater he’d kept from his trips he spent with his late wife should be plenty.
A few preparations for the trip went a little askew as Daniel started preparing. The day before, December third, he’d ask a neighbor who lived on the cul-de-sac behind him if he had any fuel he could use for his heater and lamp. He knew David liked to camp a lot and always had half-filled “extras” of just about anything one could need while camping. But when David answered the door bell that evening something was not right. Daniel thought at first it may be that David was drunk, or perhaps drugged. The conversation had not gone well.
“Yes?” David inquired. …Unusual because when Dan visited the greetings were much less formal and David usually was pleased to see him.
“Uh, hi David,” Daniel started. “I was wondering if you happened to have a little left over kerosene I could use for the next couple weeks while I go on a little trip?”
David stared for a minute, seemingly trying to focus his eyes in the drizzly rain and early dusk of December. Finally, “Do I know you?”
Daniel’s reply was a somewhat startled blurt. “It’s me, Dan. …I…uh…I know I haven’t seen you for a little while because of the rain, but I was just hoping you might have some camping gear I could borrow.”
“Dan?” David stopped to ponder a moment, his eyes rolling around at their feet while he considered. “Dan Tremon…from the next street over?”
“Yes!” Daniel said with a bit of a laugh, but feeling no real humor. “Of course!”
“Oh.” David’s voice was rather listless and uninterested after that. “I don’t really remember you very well for some reason. But I guess you could borrow my kerosene bucket…that shouldn’t be a problem. Let me go open the garage.”
As the front door closed on Daniel, he stepped off the porch and moved around to the garage door. He attempted to stay as much under the protection of the eaves as he could to stay dry. The door didn’t open very soon. He had just about decided David got lost on his way through the house to open it and was going to give up when it finally started moving and the motor driving the belt made its buzz while it worked. In the rain and dark the motor itself sounded tired and straining to do the job.
Once the garage door was up and Daniel stepped in he found David standing mid-way down the steps from the house into the garage and his wife, Ruth, was holding the door into the kitchen slightly open above him. David looked about a little but never looked at Daniel directly as he gestured and explained to his wife.
“This is David…from around the corner. He just came to borrow something.”
Ruth replied quietly, “Oh, yes…I think I remember.”
Ruth and David had hosted Daniel and occasionally a female friend from work to a couple dinner parties in their home and once an all-day Saturday marathon and critique of the Lord of the Rings movies while they avoided the July heat just this past summer. Certainly Ruth should remember Daniel. He was, in fact, beginning to feel ill-at-ease with having visited the Normans at all that night when David finally brought the odd conversation to a quick close.
“What was it you wanted again?”
Dan smiled as best he could and asked, “The kerosene…if it’s not a problem.”
“Sure,” David replied, “it’s over in that front corner of the garage. Go ahead and take it.”
David’s only movement was a weak gesture with his arm to the location of the red 5 gallon kerosene bucket he had to offer. Not a muscle on his face moved or showed expression. Daniel moved quickly to snag the handle on the bucket and step outside the garage, and when he turned to express thanks David and Ruth both just nodded slowly without saying a word.
As Daniel walked down the driveway he pulled his coat up over the back of his neck and head to prevent it from getting wet in the rain, but he still felt something cold tickling the hairs there. Without looking directly back at them, he sensed and knew that they simply stared at him as he trudged past their lawn and down the street two houses before ducking between the second and third house to cut through the yards to his own home. He heard the garage motor start up about the second step he took out of view of the Normans and began to feel a little warmth returning to him.
Zombies, he thought with a smirk, although he couldn’t tell if he had thought it or one of his other selves had thought it to him rather loudly.
His coat was in fact getting uncomfortable in the 55 or 60 degree evening with all the moisture and he decided to let it drop back down to his shoulders. The hair on his head started dripping rain into his clothes by the time he made it onto his porch but he didn’t notice. His other selves were standing in the background of his mind murmuring, apparently trying to decide how to engage Daniel in a conversation about what just happened, but it never came to fruition. All the while the soft rain seemed to have a voice of its own pattering and echoing in his head. Stay. Must not leave. The more Daniel resisted the chilling resonance the more he was determined to go.
On the second morning, December fourth, the kerosene, a sleeping bag and some blankets, several changes of clothes, as well as his laptop and a few other personal items were tucked into the covered bed of his pickup and the space just behind the driver’s seat. The drive to Cortez was to be about 5 or 6 ho
urs and he felt like he had plenty of time to get started out. He decided he’d stop at the breakfast shop down in the valley below him before hitting the interstate.
With everything else prepared and the home locked up, Daniel stared at the gray of the valley and lake around him. Sometimes in a lush green spring the lake looked brilliantly blue. Under cloud cover it was often a more menacing but interesting green-gray. In those cases the lake reminded him of the coloring of clouds just before an impending tornado front was moving through when he lived in Iowa and then southern Michigan on the outskirts of the Detroit suburbs near the “thumb” of the Michigan mitten for a while. But today, and every day since late September, the mountain lake was deathly gray. The mountains across the way, the lake and even the hills of trees around him looked as though someone had washed them in a dirty watercolor rinse. To Dan, even the country about him seemed to be zombifying…just like David and Ruth, and everyone else willing to come out in the rain.