Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Southern Ute Reservation
At the mouth of Canon del Espiritu
The golden eye closes softly . . . day's farewell is a sly wink on the horizon.
Now it begins.
Upon the crests of barren mesas, shadow-streams flow slowly over the amber sands. With all the stealth of serpents, these dismal currents slip silently over basalt boulders, slither among clusters of yucca spears . . . one darkling reaches out with velvet fingers to stroke the gaunt limbs of a dwarf oak; another paints ghostly images on a cracked wall of stone.
This is but a prelude to true night, when black tides spill over towering cliffs to flood the deep channels of meandering canyons. The oldest among the People whisper tales of serpentine creatures that swim in these ebony rivers—the elders chant guttural, monotone hymns to keep these dark spirits at bay.
A powdery blue mist swirls about the squat figures sitting on the summit of Three Sisters Mesa. The sandstone sisters bow their heads under the stars . . . and sigh . . . and sleep an eternal sleep.
But not everyone rests so well on this night. Sleep—if it can be called sleep—comes with shivers and groans. Dreams—if they can be called dreams envoke shifting, amorphous shapes . . . muttering, mocking voices . . . pale, gaunt hands that beckon. And on occasion—cold fingers caress the dreamers and bring them gasping from their almost-sleep.
These dreadful apparitions are, of course, delusions. Images inspired by unhealthy imaginations . . . by troublesome bits of food that lie undigested in the gut. They are twilight's lies . . . wicked tricks played by shadows . . . midnight's hollow deceptions. They are merefantasies.
Except . . . when they are not.
Daisy Perika has eaten a delicious bowl of greasy posole on this particular evening, and now a growling stomach interferes with her need for rest. While a tilted cusp of moon drifts across a crystalline sky, the Ute woman rolls over in her little bed, and groans. Daisy is not awake; neither does she sleep. The old shaman drifts in that chartless sea that separates this land of ordinary consciousness from that distant shore of honest slumber.
Though her eyes are closed, she can see her surroundings with a terrible clarity. Troubling apparitions flit before the weary woman. Dreams. Half dreams.
And visions.
She stands alone on a flat, lifeless plain of flinty pebbles . . . under a mottled gray sky that knows neither moon nor star. There is a sudden rolling, rumbling of dark clouds that live and breathe . . . a crackling snap of bluish flame as thin fingers of lightning reach for her.
But it is not electric fire that touches the dreamer . . . a warm, heavy liquid rains from the sky, pelting her upturned face with a crimson pox. She licks a drop from her lips; it tastes of salt . . . she shudders and spits it from her mouth. Now the scarlet deluge is hail . . . it hammers on her head . . . and hands . . . and feet.
A rapping-tapping . . . a ringing-pinging . . .
She pleads to the Great Mysterious One to make it stop . . . the repellent shower subsides.
But now an abominable thing approaches the shaman . . . floating, twisting, tumbling in the tortured eddies of the night—like a rotten log caught in the current of a swift stream. It slows . . . hangs above her . . . suspended as if from invisible wires for the dreamer's close inspection. It is a dead thing. A blackened, frozen carcass . . . an eyeless corpse.
And this is only the beginning.
Copyright ) 1997 by James D. Doss
