Sheriff Jedediah Spade’s Catalog of Netherworld Monstrosities
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Copyright © 2019 Eric Muss-Barnes. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved under the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention For The Protection Of Literary And Artistic Works. The author of this book, Eric Muss-Barnes, secures all rights to this book, including the right to reproduce this book in whole or in part, in any form whatsoever, and extends such privileges to absolutely no other parties, individuals or companies. With the exception of historical text, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, by any electronic, mechanical, or other means including, but not limited to, all existing and yet to be invented information duplicating, storage or retrieval systems, without specific permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages.

Published by Eric Muss-Barnes at Dubh Sith Ink

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Hardcover, paperback, and ebook editions of this story contain the complete and identical text. Not one word has been altered or omitted.

Address all correspondence and order inquiries to:

www.DubhSithInk.com

Cover designed and created by Eric Muss-Barnes

PRINTED AND MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

First International Printing: 20 July 2019

Table Of Contents

Sheriff Jedediah Spade’s Catalog of Netherworld Monstrosities

by Eric Muss-Barnes

Title
Copyright
Dedication
Books by Eric Muss-Barnes
Proem
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Biography
Other books by Eric Muss-Barnes
Colophon
Back Cover

Dedication

my eleventh book and sixth novel

Sheriff Jedediah Spade’s Catalog of Netherworld Monstrosities

is dedicated to those childhood friends

with whom I shared endless adventures

with broomhandle swords & trashcan lid shields

with horseback rides & BMX races

with Dungeons & Dragons

with BB gunfights

in woods of Ohio

§

Garrett Neumarker

Ronnie Rodriguez

Stephanie Hollan

Jerry Jarzabek Jr.

Mike Rozack Jr.

Chip Reynolds

Heather Lyttle

Jackie Hollan

Kenny Rohr

Keith Riggs

Matt Nawal

Chris Smith

Ted Smith

&

my little sister and brother

Nicole Knight

Aaron Knight

when Nelson’s Ledges was our kingdom

Books by Eric Muss-Barnes

Speculative Fiction & Novels

The Gothic Rainbow: Beginning Volume of The Vampire Noctuaries

Annwn’s Maelstrom Festival: Concluding Volume of The Vampire Noctuaries

The Page of Wands

Voodoo & Loveshadow

Grandpa Steiner Saves the World (from Illegal Aliens (from Space))

Sheriff Jedediah Spade's Catalog of Netherworld Monstrosities

Non-Fiction & Memoirs

How You Can Get a Job at Walt Disney Studios Without a College Degree

Schooling Your Boss to not Suck

InkShard: A Compendium of Essays

The United States of America Founding Documents

Short Story Anthologies

Tales from The Dark Tower: “Born of the Night”

The Skateboarder’s Journal - Lives on Board 1949-2009: “Origins”

Horrible Poetry He Wrote As A Teenager

Forever Loving You

Proem

Here it is, kids. My sixth novel, and the one I am most proud of. Officially published on 20 July 2019, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

When I was about 12 years old, back in 1983 or so, my friends and I were complete Advanced Dungeons & Dragons geeks. That was the time in my life when I became truly obsessed with writing and storytelling. That was the age when I first began to dream about being a novelist. My mind was consumed by fantasy and adventure, by science fiction and other worlds. I was convinced there were alternate realities out there. There had to be! If the Pevensie kids could discover Narnia in The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, surely I could find such a portal too. The magic can’t be all makebelieve. One of these books has to be a real story. How to find it? There must be a way...

Then... One day... More than thirty years ago...

I was hiking in the woods of Brecksville, and stumbled across a spectacular circular carving, in a gigantic monolithic stone. The etching was 10 feet in diameter, and the bottom edge was 10 feet above the water. Resting in the bed of a creek, on the floor of a deep ravine, I was certain this had to mark a passageway into another realm. What else could it be? Who would carve such a thing? It would take ladders and tools and a massive quantity of effort to carry all that equipment down there. Surely, no one would undertake such a task on a lark. The stone was faded and mossy. Clearly, it had been carved long, long ago. Maybe 50 years or more. This was a sign! This had to mean something!

What if...

Just... What... If...

Eric Muss-Barnes

6 October 2018

Somewhere in the United States of America...

Sometime during the 1970’s or 1980’s...

Before mollycoddling parents ruined childhood for everyone...

Chapter 1: The Dream & The Monolith

A polite dollop of lightning strobed through billowing lace curtains of young Charlotte Holloway’s bedroom. Lightning is usually a boisterous hooligan, but this particular flash crept tenderly on tiptoes, illuminating her face, just shortly after midnight, as Charlotte startled from her dream.

That’s the answer!, she thought.

Thunder grumbled over the hiss of rain, a gentle grandpa bidding Charlotte to return to slumber. Ordinarily, a warm summer thunderstorm, enshrouding her cozy suburban home, would have been too relaxing to resist. But Charlotte was inspired. At long last, after weeks of painstaking work, she was certain the solution was close at hand!

Casting aside her sheets, they billowed in the dark, fluttering like the joyous canvas of pirate ship sails, bound for a grand adventure.

Charlotte dashed to her drawing table, excited fingers tickling the dark for her antique reading lamp.

As the soft yellow glow sparked to illuminate the paperwork, hands rummaging over her copious notes and sketches, she repeated, aloud this time, “That’s the answer.”

Grinning with both delight and mischief, she located the drawing she had been searching for, inspired from her slumbering vision. “It’s not a portal.” she whispered. “It’s a map.”

Although her cheeks had not seen ten summers, Charlotte stroked them in thought, as though she were a bearded old man. Bathed in the perfume of petrichor, and the delightful vanilla coffee scent of elderly books, Charlotte read and wrote through the night. Now and then, she would jump from her chair to reference a map in her library, or spin a coordinate on her globe. Quietly, she moved, so as to not wake her father or brother, asleep in their respective bedrooms. Her old cat, Miss Emily, was not impressed by all the commotion, and mostly tried to sleep. With a defiant meow, Miss Emily took solace in a dark corner. At least someone would obey the wisdom of thunder, and get some rest that evening.

§

Seven weeks earlier...

Stanley Holloway could barely keep up with his little sister.

While most swift little girls might berate her big brother for being a slowpoke, Charlotte was too preoccupied with the adventures ahead to even notice Stanley was falling behind.

“Jeez! Slow down!” Stanley called out.

The day was cheerful and bright, sun scintillating through the green stained glass of the canopy above. Painting dark shadows and dazzling fireworks across the rich brown twigs and leaves underfoot. White cotton candy clouds billowed in deep blue skies of a June morning. There is no other month for children quite like the early days of June. When the shackles of schoolwork are a memory and a hundred stones wait to be unturned in the creekbed. When swimming holes whisper your name, first thing in the morning, calling you to the deep woods. When bicycles jitter in musty garages, eager as stallions, to ride fast as locomotives down mountain fireroads. June is the only time when 100 days of summer feel like 1000 lifetimes of lightning bugs and lemonade. June is when all the freedom of youth is in your fingertips, and every girl and boy, are kings and queens of their world.

Charlotte paused and looked back, pleased with herself. Stanley was way far behind her and she hadn’t even been trying to lose him. Charlotte almost lost sight of him in the trees. Like most big brothers, Stanley was better than her at just about everything. When she realized, inadvertently, she could move through the woods like a faerie, and he couldn’t, she wore her talent with a badge of genuine pride. At least she was better at something.

Although she was smug and proud of herself, she didn’t let on.

Charlotte was a kindhearted girl and didn’t want her brother to feel bad about his tardiness. Instead of an exasperated roll of her eyes, like most girls would give, Charlotte smiled and waved her hand at him.

“C’mon. Hurry!” Charlotte implored.

Stanley called back, “Yeah. I’m coming. I’m coming.”

Waiting for him to catch up, Charlotte took off again the moment he was by her side. Once more, she was darting over logs and bounding down boulders. Climbing, twirling and vanishing over a ditch, Charlotte was gone before Stanley could even process which path she had taken. Deeper and deeper into the ravine she flew, with the speed of a doe, which Stanley couldn’t hope to match.

“Darnit,” muttered Stanley as he struggled to find his footing on the muddy embankment. His jean jacket already had more mud on the sleeves than his parents would approve of, but he wouldn’t know that until later. He could hear the stream showering below, but the waterfalls were still hidden in the thick of greenwood.

Stanley loved these woods.

Even though he was only three years older than his baby sister, he felt like he had been here in Bradbury Creek a thousand times. These woods were his sanctuary. A church. A sacred place.

It was no wonder the leaves reminded him of stained glass.

Woods were holy to Stanley.

That was why he wasn’t too worried about losing Charlotte.

She may be far more sprightly than him, but he knew these woods better than his own bedroom. Every boulder to climb. Every bend in the creek and the swimmingholes they embraced. Every tree... Well, okay, maybe not every tree. But still. Even if she vanished out of sight, Stanley would find Charlotte again.

Finally reaching the creek, Charlotte was waiting for him.

“Come on. It’s just up above the swimming hole.” Charlotte began to scurry across the boulders and logs scattered among the valley floor.

Water poured cool and green over stones and gulleys, a chilly reprieve from the sweltering Summer sun atop the valley. As the kids climbed down into the creekbed, the temperature must have dropped a dozen degrees.

Birds occasionally spoke overhead, their songs a mere background accompaniment to the symphony of rushing waterfalls and bubbling rapids, which played all around Stanley and Charlotte.

Making their way upstream, traversing mossy stones and logs with the girth of hippos, they finally reached their destination. A calm plateau in the waters, big as their backyard, filled with a pleasant breeze and carpeted in a million gray pebbles, no bigger than marbles.

And there, on one side of the clearing, stood the monolith. A gigantic sandstone boulder, only ten feet wide, but tall as a house, that looked like it had been cut smooth from a quarry. But that was impossible. All the boulders and stones in this creek were natural and rounded and full of slopes and curves and arches. There were no rectangular stones anywhere upstream or down.

Where did this come from?

Stanley thought he knew every twist and turn of these woods. Every huge boulder. Every swimminghole you could jump into.

But this?

He had never seen this before.

How did he miss it?

The waters of the stream, percolating and bubbling over countless tiny rapids and waterfalls, ran smooth and serene in front of the monolith, forming a glassy, calm pool three feet wide at the base of the stone. As if the creek itself stood in silent vigil before the mystery of the rock.

Carved ten feet up the stone was the wonder Charlotte had wanted to share with her big brother.

A circular and old hieroglyph of unknown origins had been etched deep into the rock. Strange symbols encircled the circumference of the carving and odd lines and trajectories seemed to occupy the center. Upon initial glance, the image seemed to be some type of instructions or blueprints, but to what, you couldn’t tell. Moss and weathering had obviously taken a toll on the mysterious triptych and some of the etching was difficult to distinguish. Whomever, or whatever, had created this artifact, had obviously done so many, many years ago.

“Wow.” Stanley whispered in awe. “What is that?”

Quick to respond, Charlotte answered, “I have no idea. But I think it’s a portal.”

“A portal? To what?”

“Who knows?” Charlotte grinned with all the giddy enthusiasm of a child. She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She just had a feeling it went somewhere and that was exciting enough to keep her dreaming.

Scrambling in her satchel, Charlotte dug for the camera she brought. “I want to get some pictures. See if I can find it in the library or something.”

Stanley didn’t speak or look at his sister, but simply nodded in agreement, continuing to stare at the fine craftsmanship of the carving.

Could she be right?

Was this some kind of magical portal?

Who would carve such a thing?

The symbol was massive, and it was ten feet above the creekbed. You would need ladders and chisels and a way to measure everything. How could anyone carry all of those tools down into this gulley? It was hard enough to climb down here in jeans and sneakers.

And the geometry was so precise. A perfect circle. Razor-straight lines. How could anyone make something so perfect with only minimal tools? Most people can’t draw a perfect circle on paper, let alone carve one ten feet in diameter, ten feet up, on the face of a rock.

None of it made any sense.

Stanley snapped out of his trance hearing the snap of a shutter behind him. Looking back, Charlotte was halfway up the bank, perched on a log.

“What are you doing?”

“I told you. Taking pictures.” Charlotte replied.

“But you’re fifty feet away. Don’t you want to get closeups?”

“I need to a good picture straight-on. I can’t get one standing in front of the water. It’s too tall.”

Stanley shrugged, “Okay.”

As the shutter clicked behind him, Stanley began to fantasize about what might happen if they managed to open the portal. He pictured the carving glowing yellow and the face of the monolith opening like a giant door. And inside would be a magical kingdom, with rolling green hills and a majestic castle in the distance. A young warrior girl, right around his age, would suddenly appear on horseback, looking through the gateway. Seeing Stanley standing there, she would smile -

“- HEY!” Charlotte thwacked Stanley in the arm with a stick.

“Ow! What!?” Stanley yelped, rubbing his shoulder.

“I called you three times! Help me balance on the end of this log.”

“Ugh. Fine.”

As Charlotte climbed back up and extended herself out onto a more precarious position, Stanley, holding her hand, asked, “You really think it might be a portal?”

In the moment, Charlotte stopped. Squinting intently at the stone, she spoke in a deep and serious voice, far too precocious for a girl so young and said, “I don’t know. But it must mean something.”

The word “something” was spoken to the rock, almost as a challenge. Daring the monolith to reveal the great secrets hiding behind ages of moss and ivy.

The stone remained silent.

A diligent sentinel, quietly guarding it’s woodland post.

After a few more pictures, Charlotte clamored to the opposite side of the creek, hung off a precarious sapling, and began to try measuring markings on the rock.

Stanley, watching her acrobatics, frowned.

“Careful. Crack your head open, mom and dad will kill me.”

Crinkling her nose, Charlotte winced, “I won’t crack my head.”

Finishing up her survey, Charlotte bounded back down to the creek floor.

“Now what?” Stanley wondered.

“Race you back down to the swimming hole?”

Stanley rolled his eyes. “No. I don’t want - One, two, three, GO!”

Sprinting away from his sister, Stanley laughed.

“Jerk!” Charlotte tried putting her camera away before chasing after him. “That’s cheating! You - Hey! That doesn’t count!”

As the children abandoned the monolith in the afternoon sun, a gentle breeze twirled leaves across the face of the carving. The stone was both warm and cool in the scintillating waver of shadow and light peeking through the trees. A glimmer of sunlight off the water rippled silver waves around the lichen, sending a green dazzle of firework beauty across the quiet gulley.

In the distance, Stanley leapt off a giant boulder, and splashed with a loud - KERPLUNK! - into a brisk swimming hole of Bradbury Creek.

Charlotte’s delightful voice echoed through the trees. “Cheater!”

Chapter 2: Lera & The Shard

As the sun began to rise, the rain showed no sign of easing.

Adorable in her pajamas, little Charlotte Holloway began to find her eyelids growing heavy at her desk.

Another grumble of thunder roiled across the sky. Only this time, it seemed to contain all the magic of a sleeping spell. As though the sound itself were an incantation, irresistibly calling Charlotte to the balloon weightlessness of slumber.

Shuffling two steps back to her bed, Charlotte collapsed in a bliss of quilts and contentment. Satisfied with her work, she lay in a room painted by the dark gray of a thunderstorm dawn, promising to leave her sanctuary heavy with the dim shades of dreaming.

Had her mother and father seen Charlotte sleeping there in that moment, they may have given their marriage another try. They may have remembered the precious love they once shared, and their mutual joy at bringing this wondrous child into the world. For parents can often forget such things. Jobs and worries and silly fights over silly things can often make parents absent-minded over what matters most in the world. When that happens, and grown-ups start to forget important things, they can stop protecting the people whom they love most.

Children don’t understand this.

Neither do adults, who always remember love and magic.

But the grown-ups who forget, sadly forget everything.

If her parents had seen Charlotte, just then, in that moment, looking so peaceful and happy, they may have remembered.

But they were not there in that moment.

And they were not staying together.

Charlotte’s father was still sleeping.

Charlotte’s mother was still in New York.

And Charlotte’s mother would be there to pick her up the next day.

And Stanley would not see his beloved sister until Thanksgiving.

§

“Stanley.” Charlotte whispered at the foot of her brother’s bed.

Stanley moaned, still sound asleep.

“Stanley... Stan... Stanleeey.”

“Mrrrro-mm.”

“STAN!”

“What!? Jeez! I’m sleeping! Go away!” The moment Stanley said those words, he regretted them. Charlotte would be gone tomorrow and he wouldn’t see her for months.

Charlotte was too excited to be thinking about that.

Tomorrow morning was 1000 years away.

They had a mission that day and nothing was going to stop her.

Before Stanley could even apologize, his sister announced, “The monolith isn’t a portal. I think it’s a map.”

Stanley’s eyes sprung open.

He sat up, and stared sleepy-eyed at Charlotte.

“A map? To where?”

§

After breakfast, with breath that still smelled of pancakes and syrup, Stanley poured over her notes and photos. Library books swam among atlases and scraps of scrawled sketches.

As he tried to take it all in, Charlotte attempted to explain what she discovered.

“See here? These points seem to line up with this old cartographer drawing I found of Juniper Hills, from like 1930.”

“Uh, huh.”

“But here’s the weird part. Look at this.” Charlotte spun the photograph around and pointed at coordinates on the grid. “This whole part isn’t on any maps at all. Like, all of these places line up, but there’s a whole valley and a mountain range and stuff that’s not supposed to be there.”

Stanley was skeptical. “So, it has to be wrong. This can’t be a map. How can a whole area that big be missing?”

“I know. I know it’s weird. But everything else lines up!”

“And what is this?”

Charlotte nodded, “Oh, that. That’s the only text I could figure out. Calico something. I think. I can’t figure out the lettering. I think I have this part right.”

CALICO ---C-IO-

-A--L--AC- CO----

“Lot of our towns around here were founded by Irish. Might be old Gaelic, but I think it’s written in Nordic runes. I’m not sure.”

“So, you got the word ‘calico’ then just a jumble of letters? Yeah. That doesn’t mean much.” Stanley frowned. Moments like this reminded him why his sister skipped two grades. She may be three years younger, but she was only a year behind him in school.

Charlotte could tell she was losing him.

Before he doubted her too deeply, she sprung her plan on him. “We can test it out.”

“Test what out?”

“I think there are other monoliths out there too. And if I’m right, these lines might show the way into this Calico place.”

“Okay. I still don’t follow.” Stanley said.

“Here. This point. This point. This point. They are all monolith locations. This one too.”

“Oh, man.”

“What?”

“Well, if those points in the carving are all other monoliths, and these are points on the map, those are all really far away.”

Charlotte smiled, “No! Not this one! Look! There should be one on Brookside Mountain.”

Stanley was familiar with Brookside. He had been there a few times, racing his BMX bike out in the woods. He didn’t go there much, because there were better tracks closer to home, but Charlotte was right; Brookside was only about five miles away.

This whole thing was silly.

Stanley didn’t want to go.

It had been raining all night.

Brookside would be muddy as heck.

Those hills were tough to ride when they were dry. With how slick they would be now, it would be a huge pain to get up the mountain.

But...

His sister would be gone tomorrow.

And she was so excited. So happy. He couldn’t say no. Not on her last day at home.

If Charlotte wanted to spend her last day in Juniper Hills looking for silly stones up the side of a mountain, Stanley would take her. Fine. Or, more accurately, he would go with her, because Stanley got the feeling she was going, no matter what.

§

As they hefted their GT and Haro bicycles out of the exercise room and wheeled them through the garage, Stanley couldn’t help but think this might be the last time in a long time they get to do this.

He found himself feeling constantly nostalgic, which he knew was kind of weird to feel, since he was only 12 years old. But, he thought, maybe that is why people grow up at different speeds. People who have a lot of sad or difficult things happen to them when they are kids will see life a little differently. There is nothing really good or bad about that. It’s just the way things are. Some children get to hold onto innocence longer than others.

Mounting their bicycles, Stanley savored every inch he rode with his sister by his side. Stanley assumed she was too young to be thinking these types of thoughts, so he didn’t share any of them with her. Little did he know, she was trying just as hard to remember these moments too.

Charlotte listened to the chatter ticking freewheel of her bicycle and noticed how it accompanied the cicada songs in the trees. Each inhale of her breath was almost the same sound as the whir of her tires on the concrete. After awhile, Charlotte began to deliberately pedal in time with her breathing, toying with the symphony of sound.

The boy-smells of her brother by her side reminded her of pine trees and the wet of mossy creekbeds. Just being around that smell made her feel safe, and she wondered in that moment, if any other boy would ever smell quite like Stanley. Was that how teenage girls fall in love with boys, she wondered? Do the boys need to smell right? Maybe like leather saddles and fresh cut wood? Or something? Charlotte couldn’t be sure, but she got the feeling that might have something to do with it.

The sun blazed warm in the afternoon air, as the storm had subsided, and the streets still shimmered from a morning of fog and rain. Wet tires zipped into puddles and sent ten thousand diamonds into the sky around them. Charlotte screamed in delight as her whole body braced from the potential cold shower that never quite hit her.

“Hey!” A young girl shouted behind the Holloway siblings.

“You hear that?” Stanley asked.

“Stan!” The voice called again.

In the distance, a spirited child raced up the street on her Redline BMX bike, legs pumping furiously to catch up to Stanley and Charlotte. Her red hair, lit from behind by the early morning sun, left her looking almost like a warrior on horseback.

“Lera!” Stanley called back.

Glancing to the horizon, Lera panted, “Wait up!”

“Hey, Lera!” Charlotte yelled back.

Catching up to them, Lera asked, “Where you guys headed?”

Every now and then in life, if you are very, very lucky, you will meet magical children, who trail delight in their wake, like dolphin laughter. In your whole life, you won’t meet many of them. Magical children are a rare blessing to discover. And magical children don’t need to be kids, of course. Some magical children are 30 or 50 or even 70 years old, but they are people whose souls never grow weary. Anytime a person with a luminous spirit shows up in your life, the day gets a little better. Even if they aren’t trying to make you laugh or smile, somehow, just being near them, makes you a little happier to be alive.

Lera McKinney was just that sort of magical child.

“Brookside.” Stanley answered.

“Brookside? Why you going this way?” Lera asked.

Charlotte replied, “What do you mean? This is the way to Brookside.”

“Yeah, if you take main streets. That’s too far. You know you can cut through the backyards on, um, oh, what’s that street? I don’t remember the name. It’s like, one of the streets right before you get to the staircase. I don’t know what it’s called. But it’s a shortcut. I use it all the time. Cut through the backyards and it takes like a mile off instead of going up Fulton Road the whole way.”

“Really?” Charlotte asked.

“Which street by the staircase? You mean by the cemetery?”

“Kind of.” Lera replied to Stanley.

“Show us?” Stanley smiled with a nod.

Lera grinned, “Sure! Follow me!”

Pointing her bicycle back in the opposite direction, the three set out down the road, as suburban sprinklers on timers tick-tick-ticked too much water on lawns already doused from rain.

Lera’s blue flannel shirt flapped lightly in the breeze, and as Charlotte rode behind her, she noticed Lera smelled like chaparral and something you couldn’t quite remember, something faded, yet still beautiful, like a flower vase in your grandparent’s attic. Charlotte didn’t say anything about it, but she realized Lera smelled good next to her brother, and she hoped they would remain friends for a long time.

§

Three years earlier...

“PEDAL! PEDAL! PEDAL! C’mon, Tony! PEDAL!”

Charlotte took a big swig of water as she sat down next to her brother on the clubhouse porch at Antelope Valley BMX track. They both rolled their eyes at the father who was telling his son, apparently named “Tony”, to pedal faster around the track.

“Jeez, it’s still practice.” Charlotte mumbled.

“I know.” Stanley groaned. “I think his son knows he needs to pedal. Those dads are idiots.”

“Did you see that new girl? She’s freakin’ fast!”

“No. What new girl?”

“She’s got red hair and a yellow jersey.”

“Maddie? She’s not new.”

“No, you goof. Maddie is blonde. This girl is like your age. I just did a gate with her. She’s really good. I’ve never seen her before.”

As they were speaking about her, Lera circled the track and headed back toward the starting line. Charlotte pointed her out, “There! That girl.”

Stanley squinted, “No idea. Never saw her before either.”

“I bet she’s as fast as Kuylee Pettit. Or maybe Annabella.”

“Hammonds? No way. Bella is like 3 years older.”

“Think she’s faster than Danica Anderson?” Charlotte wondered.

“Duh. No way. Danica is one of the fastest girls in the country!”

“She faster than Liberty Dalton at Hesperia?” Charlotte pouted.

“Name one more girl and I’m mailing Miss Emily to Istanbul.”

Charlotte ignored the idle threat. “C’mon do a gate with me.”

“Okay.”

Charlotte could never hope to beat her brother. He always won. But she loved to race with him anyway, just because it pushed her to do better. Besides, they weren’t that far apart in age. Once they both got bigger, there was a good chance she might be able to beat him someday. She just had to be patient.

As sister and brother entered staging, Charlotte rolled up to Lera. “I like your bike.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Lera said. “I like yours too.”

Lera had barely looked at Charlotte’s bike, but returning the compliment was the polite thing to do. Happily, Lera realized Charlotte did have a genuinely neat bike, so at least it wasn’t a lie.

“I’m Charlotte.”

“Lera.”

They didn’t shake hands, because only grownups do that. For children their age, an introduction is simply sealed with a warm smile.

“How long have you been racing?” Charlotte wondered.

“About 6 months. I’ve been riding bikes since I was your age.”

“Same with my brother.” Charlotte answered.

Lera wasn’t sure what Charlotte meant by that. Had her brother been racing for 6 months or started racing at her age? Lera didn’t ask, she just said, “Oh. That’s cool. This is my first time here. I’m usually at Whittier or Apple Valley. I love it though. Antelope Valley is a fun track!”

“Yeah, it’s our favorite. My brother Stanley and I come here all the time.”

“Cool. Yeah, I should come more. I live right over on Wichita. I had no idea this track was here. It’s a lot closer.”

“Wichita?” Charlotte asked. “That’s right by us. We live like three blocks away from you!”

“No way!”

With a familiar hiss and a metallic clank, the pneumatic piston raised the gate for their lap, and the children took their positions. As they rolled toward the steel grate, their front tries nuzzled into the mesh. Pedals were set and six kids all stood up, raring to sprint down the start hill. No matter how many times she had done this, Lera still felt a thrill each time. Even though this lap was only practice, not a race, she had the same excitement as always.

Stanley felt the same way, although they would never learn they shared that identical nervous thrill, until years later.

“Who’s getting the holeshot?” Stanley asked his sister.

Charlotte looked down the line, judging other riders. “You.”

The recorded voice came over the loudspeakers. “Okay, riders. Random start... Riders ready. Watch the gate.”

Three seconds later, the electronic beeps signaled the drop and the children blasted from their lanes. As Charlotte predicted, Stanley gained the holeshot and grabbed the lead by the first jump.

Tearing over a stepup into the first berm, Stanley ripped low across the curve, gaining even more distance from the pack.

Firing toward the first tabletop, as Stanley reached the top of the transition, he lofted slightly too hard on his bars and his right foot slipped from his pedal.

“Dang it!” Struggling to regain his balance, Lera blasted past him on the left.

Lera grinned to herself as she took the lead, but her joy was interrupted by hearing a voice from the grandstand shouting, “PEDAL! PEDAL! PEDAL! C’mon, Tony! PEDAL!”

Ugh. Lera couldn’t stand parents like that.

As his foot planted solid on his pedal again, Stanley pumped like mad to regain the ground he had lost. For a moment, he pretended his name was Tony as he told himself, Pedal! Pedal! Pedal!

Flying down the next tabletop into the second turn, Stanley tried to cut high and drop low, which always worked to pass little younger kids, but it didn’t work on Lera. She did the same thing, shut the door on him, and maintained her lead.

Stanley figured he could pass her as they hit the rhythm section. Since Lera said she had never been here before, and those jumps were tighter than tracks she usually rode, he could definitely regain some ground. Much to his surprise, she held strong and even managed to manual one of the doubles at the end.

Exiting turn three, Lera didn’t have the confidence to enter the second rhythm section at that speed and tapped her brakes. Stanley managed to slip past Lera in that moment, but not by much. She stayed right next to him the whole time. Not knowing him, Lera didn’t want to be too aggressive. Besides, this was just practice after all. She kept her distance, out of respect, but she was still hoping she might catch up on the penultimate turn.

As he dropped into the berm, Stanley came in too fast and too tight. He had been so distracted trying to stay ahead of Lera in the last straightway, he didn’t set himself up properly for the turn.

Stanley grunted in frustration as his speed forced him higher than he wanted and Lera managed to drop underneath him. With only one turn left to go, Stanley stayed right on her tail, but never did manage to catch up.

Lera won.

She was the first girl his age who ever beat Stanley at Antelope Valley, his favorite BMX track. He beat her the rest of that evening, and although she wasn’t the type to remind him, Lera certainly wouldn’t forget that she won once.

As Stanley was panting for breath past the finish line, Charlotte caught up, coming in fourth, behind Tony.

Impressed with Lera’s performance, Charlotte simply looked at her brother and said, “Told you she was fast!”

§

Lera ran demure fingers through wind-tousled hair and ruffled waves of red over her shoulders. “So, let me get this straight. If there is another monolith rock on the mountain, that confirms they are map markers, not portals. And if they are map markers, it looks like there’s a whole other valley out in the desert, that’s not on any maps?”

“Yep.” Charlotte replied.

“Great,” Stanley remarked. “Where the heck do we start?”

As the trio rounded the corner near the base of Brookside Mountain, they saw what he meant. Brookside wasn’t a massive mountain range, but it was a massive mountain. All told, it must have been at least half a mile in diameter, with numerous ridges and valleys and half a dozen peaks.

While it was possible to explore the entire mountain, it wasn’t possible to do it in one afternoon. This was going to take at least two or three full days, and they just didn’t have enough time.

“Oh, wow.” Lera squinted. “I raced the track on the other side of the woods, but I never looked up here before. I didn’t know it was this big.”

“Me either.” Stanley agreed.

“So what do we do?” Charlotte looked disappointed.

Right that instant, Stanley got an idea. “Did you bring a map?”

Charlotte nodded, “Yeah, I told you. I brought the camera again too.”

“Okay. Gimmie the map. Where is the tallest peak? Let’s just start there. If we get on top of the tallest peak, that should let us look all over most of the mountain. We’ll spot the monolith anywhere, unless it’s in a valley we can’t see.”

“Hey, smart thinking!” Lera praised.

Lera hadn’t been to Bradbury Creek to see it for herself yet, but she had been excited about the monolith, ever since Charlotte and Stanley first told her about it, a couple of weeks ago, when they were all playing Dungeons & Dragons with the Sutherland brothers.

People often claim “girls mature faster than boys” but that was not the case with Lera. She was still filled with a childlike wonder that was far more youthful than her 12 years. That is not to imply Lera was foolish or naive in any way. While her peers were starting to concern themselves with boys and makeup, Lera educated herself with more important matters. Lera knew to avoid toadstool rings in the glens beneath the San Bernardino Mountains where she played. Leaving out some milk on Midsummer’s Eve was never even questioned. Everything her Irish grandmother had taught her was revered as truth and wisdom, not faerietales or myths. Some say her grandmother even had the Second Sight, and even though she hadn’t seen any of the gentry herself yet, family whispers said Lera might have The Gift too. Lera knew better than to doubt the mysterious and the unexplained. That didn’t mean she was ignorant to lies and deception. Lera watched the mysteries of the world through usually-green, but-sometimes-blue eyes that pierced right into the truth of everything.

Lera McKinney was no fool.

But, if you told her you found a portal to another world, Lera was the type to start packing her bags, before you even invited her to accompany you, or told her how far away it was to get there.

Pointing up the mountain, Stanley announced, “Okay, I think it’s that one. Or, just behind that one, I mean. It’s only like 2 o’clock. Should take us maybe an hour to get up there. We’ll still have plenty of daylight to get home before dark.”

§

The three kids skidded their bicycles to a stop on the dirt road, a cloud of dust wafting near their feet.

“Well, that’s not on the map.” Charlotte squinted as she looked up toward the sun which backlit a giant water tank.

A huge fence surrounded the perimeter of the water tank, riddled with intimidating orange-and-black and red-and-white signs.

NO TRESPASSING

KEEP OUT

CITY PROPERTY

VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

There didn’t seem to be any security cameras, but the children quickly decided jumping the fence was a bad idea. If any security or park rangers came by, they would never have enough time to scramble back over the fence and get to their bikes before they got caught.

“Well, this is still the highest spot, even though we can’t get all the way to the top.” Lera noted.

“Yeah.” Stanley assessed. “How about you two hike that way around the fence and I’ll go this way? And, I dunno, just... look for any big monoliths in the distance.”

“What about our bikes?” Lera asked.

Stanley answered, “I’m not carrying mine over all those rocks. Just leave them. Nobody will mess with them up here.”

Charlotte, still eager and excited by the whole endeavor, followed her brother’s suggestion without a word, and waited for Lera to catch up.

§

Rounding the bend along the fence-line, the girls paused at the first vantage point over the nearest peak. Carefully, they scanned the mountainside and the valley below. While there were tons of stones and chaparral, occasionally crisscrossed by a blur of bounding jackrabbit, there was no sign of anything unusual.

“See anything?”

“Nope.”

“Me either.”

They continued hiking.

As the two made their way up another ridge, a giant beige pipe sprouted out of the ground. Two feet in diameter, it ran horizontally for twenty feet before bending ninety degrees and vanishing back into the mountainside. Telltale gurgling, murmuring gremlins within the steel, suggested it was some kind of outlet for the water.

“Watch this.” Lera announced.

With a running leap, she grabbed the pipe and hoisted herself up. Looking down at the pipe and assessing the width, Lera proceeded into a cartwheel followed by a back walkover.

“Rad!” Charlotte immediately began to clap.

Charlotte was jealous. She always wanted to do gymnastics, but it was too expensive. Her parents couldn’t afford that. Lera was kind of rich. Well, maybe not super rich, but compared to the Holloway family, she was. But Lera never acted like she was rich, and never showed off about it.

Walking to the end of the pipe, where the ground was a little more level, Lera did a front tuck dismount and it completely blew Charlotte away.

“That’s so cool! I wish I could do that.”

“You can. I started when I was like 6 years old, but there are plenty of girls your age who start gymnastics at 9 or 10.”

“Lessons cost too much.”

“I can teach you.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.” Charlotte frowned.

Suddenly, Lera felt guilty. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

Charlotte shrugged, trying to play it off.

Lera tried to cheer her up, “Maybe New York won’t be so bad. At least you’ll be someplace nice up in the woods and stuff, instead of in the city.”

“Yeah. I guess. I’m going to miss everybody though.”

“You’ll make new friends.”

“That’s what mom said. But I love my old friends.”

In all the world, there might be one or two people who are so grumpy and angry, they would ridicule Charlotte for that statement. They would argue that a 9 year old girl is too young to have “old” friends and they would deride her lament as comical.

The rest of us know exactly what she means.

Even by the third grade, we are all wise enough to know, the friends we make then, won’t really be topped. Ever.

Lera stopped and reached down for a pebble on the ground. “Here.”

Charlotte held out her hand and Lera dropped the sunbaked stone in her palm. “What’s this for?”

“My grandma once told me, nothing in the world is worth anything, unless we give it to someone in love. Then it’s worth everything. So, I’m giving this to you in love. That way every time you see this rock on your dresser, or in a jewelery box, or wherever you put it, you’ll always remember your old friends.”

Grinning at the rock, Charlotte wasn’t sure what to say.

Lera continued, “Even a plain old rock can be a treasure. Just depends on where you get it and why.”

Charlotte could feel it.

Like magic, the rock changed in her hand. The warmth seemed to cool, then seemed to come back. As sun glittered on tiny bits of granite in the stone, Charlotte could tell, Lera was right. In an instant, the value of that little pebble became something entirely different. What was just a worthless rock a moment ago, littered among a million identical others, had suddenly become priceless.

“Thank you.” Charlotte kissed Lera on the cheek and slipped the rock into her pocket. Charlotte thought, maybe someday, she’d give a rock like that to her own kids. But she was never giving anybody this one.

“You’re welcome. Stan is going to miss you too.”

“I know. He’s the best big brother ever. None of my friends who have big brothers ever hang out with them. They never let little sisters tag along.”

Lera had no siblings, so she couldn’t relate, but it wasn’t hard for her to imagine older siblings not wanting younger ones around. “Yeah. Stan never treats you that way. But I think he respects how smart you are. In a way, you’re not that much younger.”

“I’m not that smart.” Charlotte blushed.

“You skipped two grades! That’s smart. Most smart kids only skip one.” Lera giggled, and the summer sky itself seemed grateful to hear the sound.

Charlotte wasn’t as impressed with herself as everyone else seemed to be. She just shrugged and said, “I guess.”

The two girls started walking again.

The next peak produced no results either.

“I don’t see a thing.” Lera frowned, exasperated at the futility of their quest.

“Me either. This was a good idea. But, the other peaks are too far away. I mean look at that one.” Charlotte pointed to a ridgeline and a outcropping in the distance. “It’s only, like 1000 feet away, but I can’t tell from here if any of those rocks have carvings on them.”

Nodding in agreement, Lera noted, “Yeah. Totally. Should have brought binoculars.”

§

“Should have brought binoculars.” Stanley murmured to himself.

Climbing over the stones and trying not to fall down the steep incline, Stanley wiped his brow under the sweltering sun. He had a great vantage point, but there was no way he could make out any details on the peaks that were even a few hundred feet away. Time and again, he would squint at a funny stone, thinking it might be rectangular, only to discover it was an illusion created by the break of a strata line, or an odd shadow.

Closing his eyes in a slight breeze, Stanley tried to hear the mountain. Was it there? What could he feel?

Gingerly caressing a boulder by his side, his fingertips barely tickled the granite. He sensed the heat emanating from the sundrenched rock. Stanley imagined the heat energy radiating out from his hand, soaring over every stone on the mountain, reverberating back like pond ripples, resonating over his skin, and guiding him to the right direction.

He dreamed of ancestors.

Of elders.

Of ancient ways.

Squinting at shimmers of color and darkness, he tried to tune his consciousness to the murmur of stone.

And slowly...

Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

He sighed.

Well...

That didn’t work.

He stuck out his tongue at the sky, defiant of the Gods who failed to grant him the superpowers he was hoping to conjure. Opening his eyes, he continued hiking along the fence.

In the distance, he could hear the girls talking. They had almost met back up. They would be there any minute.

Stanley really had to pee.

He decided to scramble down the side of the hill and over by a bigger stone. That way, if the girls got there before he was done, they couldn’t see him.

Just as he was finishing, Charlotte yelled, “Stop!”

“What!?” Stanley glanced over his shoulder up the hill. “Go away!”

“You’re peeing on it!”

“What is wrong with you? Go away!” Stanley quickly turned his hips away from the girls.

Charlotte was already skiing down the dusty gravel toward Stanley, pointing at the rock, now wet with urine. “Look at the stone, dummy! It’s right there!”

Stanley hastily zipped up his pants. “Can you wait a second!?”

Ignoring his pleas, Charlotte pointed out the etchings in the broken stone. “These match the carvings!”

Rummaging in her satchel, Charlotte produced some of the 4x6 photos she had taken in Bradbury Creek.

Sure enough, the back portion of the stone Stanley had urinated on, now steaming dry in the hot desert sun, seemed to contain a sideways piece of the carving.

“I think this was all bulldozed.” Lera announced from above.

Stanley looked up at her, “What?”

At least Lera had the decency to keep away while Stanley was doing his business.

Lera motioned from the water tank to the tiny gulley the Holloway siblings were standing in. As she spoke, Lera began to climb down toward them and motion around the landscape. “Look at the coloring of the stones. These are all a different color. All the stones around it are darker. I bet when they leveled the mountain top to install the water tank, they just shoved a lot of the stone down here.”

Stanley followed her gaze and nodded. “She’s right.”

No wonder they couldn’t find it.

They had all been looking for a huge stone with the carvings. None of them had ever thought it might be broken in pieces.

“That means the rest of it has to be here.” Charlotte began to scan the area, looking for other large hunks of rock. Sure enough, only a few feet away, she discovered a much bigger shard of a broken monolith. “LOOK! I FOUND IT!”

The carvings were badly damaged, and only about a quarter intact compared to the monolith in Bradbury Creek, but there could be no mistaking the unique geometric shapes and strange lettering of the design.

Stanley and Lera looked at each other, and both smiled.

“No way.” Lera crouched at foot of the rock, gently reaching out and touching it, as though it were a sacred thing. Since she hadn’t seen the stone in Bradbury Creek, except in Charlotte’s pictures, this was all the more thrilling. Like touching a legend.

Some of the spirals and curves reminded Lera of carvings her grandmother had spoken of back in Ireland. Lera didn’t mention this aloud, but it made her happy to know an Irish connection might legitimize this whole mystery as something real, dating back many centuries.

Charlotte was nearly jumping out of her sneakers. “I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I was right! Ha! See? What did I tell you!? I knew I was right! Another monolith on top of Brookside Mountain. See? I told you! I told you!”

Stanley chuckled, happy for his sister, “Yeah. Yeah, you told me. I believed you. I wouldn’t have come along if I didn’t believe you. I’m just happy we found it.”

Charlotte conceded, “You found it. You peed all over it!”

Lera started laughing.

Lera couldn’t help but imagine, if the stone was a portal to another world, and what a faerie king might say if some mortal boy was peeing all over his front door.

Later that night, in gymnastics class, that thought made Lera laugh again, but she never told any of her fellow gymnasts what was so funny.

§

The Holloway siblings had spent a long time with their dad that evening. He was a good man, and he was trying desperately to hide his sorrow that this was the last night he would see his daughter for a long while. He tried to reassure himself with the reminder that their mother would be away from her son for equally long, but that knowledge gave him little comfort.

Nevertheless, the three of them managed a wonderful evening together, playing board games and talking about movies and futures among a feast of ice cream and pizza. The joy of parents on summer vacation is that they never talk about school.

After Charlotte heard her father head to sleep, she crept into Stanley’s room, with a curious Miss Emily following in her footsteps.

“You have to look for Calico when I’m gone.” Charlotte whispered to her brother very plainly.

Looking up from his book of Harlan Ellison stories, Stanley whispered back, “Why are you so into this? I mean, what if it’s nothing. What if it’s just a silly carving in some rocks?”

“I’ve been thinking about that a lot, Stan.” Charlotte looked out the window, staring into the trees, but gazing far beyond them.

Stanley seemed to be about to speak, but he respectfully waited for her to keep talking.

“You know, it’s like all those stories we love. Kids are always finding a portal to another world. There is always some magical doorway that leads someplace special. We dream about that. Secret gardens and old wardrobes and magic board games.” Charlotte turned back to Stanley, “But... what if there is something right here in our world? We just have to find it? And it doesn’t take magic or portals to get there. Just the sense to go look.”

Stanley questioned, “But if that was true, then everyone would know about it.”

“Maybe they do, Stan!” Charlotte spoke a little too loudly and catching herself, went back to a soft voice just above a whisper. “Maybe they do know about it. There’s always those places grown ups tell kids to never go. ‘You can’t go past this part in the woods. You can’t go down that street. Never go too far up the creek. Don’t go near that house.’ But why? Why not? Parents always tell us where we can’t go, but never why we can’t go. Don’t you ever wonder about that?”

“Duh. Don’t be silly. It’s because they don’t want us to get lost.”

“Lost where though? Huh? See, that’s the part grown ups never talk about and kids never ask. Where will you be lost? You think grown ups don’t know what is in the woods or down that road? Maybe grown ups know exactly where those places go, and they just aren’t telling us.”

Whoa.

Stanley never looked at it that way before. Could she be right?

When she put it that way, it didn’t seem crazy at all.

Were adults hiding something from kids?

Maybe. Maybe they were!

What if she was right?

Jeez, Charlotte seems to be right about everything lately.

Maybe she was right about this too!

Maybe adults weren’t scared of kids getting hurt or kidnapped in the woods. Maybe there was something else parents were afraid their kids might discover. But what? Some roads leading to places that children were not supposed to learn about?

“Look,” Stanley remarked, trying his best to shake the uneasy feeling rising in his heart, “even if you’re right, maybe they have a good reason. Did you ever think of that? Maybe they don’t want us to find those places because they are dangerous places to find.”

“Sissy.” Charlotte fluttered her lips and marched back into her room. Miss Emily acted equally indignant and followed.

Stanley sat there in shock. He wasn’t expecting that! Charlotte was a scrappy little girl. Always a fighter. Wasn’t like her to have a passionate idea and just give up on it. He figured this would be a long discussion. Stanley was perplexed by why their debate ended so abruptly. He stroked his chin, imagining he was an old wizard caressing a thought-assisting beard.

Realizing, a few moments later, she wasn’t coming back, Stanley went to her room to apologize.

By the time Stanley reached her doorway, Charlotte spoke to him as if nothing had happened. Charlotte just picked the conversation right back up. Curling her feet under her body, she sat up on the side of her bed.

“Just please promise me you’ll look,” Charlotte asked, still whispering. “That’s all I’m asking. Promise you’ll look. You’re still little enough to believe. You’re still young enough to try. Promise me you’ll try. If you wait too long, you won’t believe anymore, and you won’t even try.”

As she finished her plea, Charlotte looked terribly sad.

She was worried. Charlotte knew her big brother was growing up. Sure, he was still a little boy. But he would be a teenager in a year. What would happen then? What would happen when he started to notice the way Lera’s flannel shirt smelled and how her freckles lit her cheeks when she smiled? For now, Stanley was still a boy with mud in his hair and creekwater squishing in his sneakers. He needed to look for magic in the world, while it was still in his soul to find.

Charlotte shouldn’t have been worried though. Stanley was a long way from forgetting magic. There are two kinds of fathers in the world; the ones who read bedtime stories to their children, and the kind Stanley would grown up to be, who make up the stories as they go. Only parents who hold onto magic can do that.

Stanley didn’t know these things made him special. But they did.

Stanley looked at Charlotte, and all he could think about, was how he wasn’t going to see her again for months. He couldn’t let her down. Not now. Not when this was the last thing she was asking him to do.

He nodded. “Okay. Okay. I promise.”

“Pinky swear?” Charlotte grinned sidelong.

Stanley kissed his pinky and locked it with his sister. “Pinky swear.”

Satisfied with his promise, Charlotte bubbled, “Promise me you’ll write down everything you find. Tell me all about it.”

“I promise I’ll look. But, remember, that doesn’t mean I’ll find something. Maybe there isn’t anything to find.”

“There is.”

“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

Energized by his promise, Charlotte spoke a little too loud again. “But, what if, Stan? What. If? There might be maps to all kinds of secret places in the world!”

There would be many times later in her life when Charlotte would find herself in bedrooms, having conversations that changed her life forever. There would be wonderful conversations. There would be tragic conversations. And so many of those moments would happen just like now. Just like this night with her brother. When they were both safe and joyous. When the sorrow of the next morning painted a wistful shade in the corner of the room they were both trying desperately to ignore. This was the first of those nights. And as she grew older, and experienced the vast prism of blessings and curses all people have during a lifetime, she would always compare them to this moment. This moment when her brother made her a promise. When he would start an adventure that would change their lives forever and open them to a world they never imagined could be real.

Stanley put a finger over his lips to hush her quieter.

“I hope you’re right.” He said.

“I am. Just be sure to write it all down.”

Stanley agreed. “Okay. I’ll write stuff down. If I find anything. I promise.”

Charlotte kissed Stanley on the cheek as he left her room.

“G’night, sissy.”

“G’night, dummy.”

Stanley closed her door behind him and Charlotte snuggled under her covers. She smiled in the dark, thinking about how hard Lera hugged her goodbye in the driveway. Charlotte fell into a restful slumber, veins fueled with desert dust and mountain air, with summer sweat and skinned knees, with the love of brothers and freckled gymnast princesses. Miss Emily snored at her feet.

Chapter 3: The Valley of the Sutherland Boys

“Hi, Lera. Stan. Looking for the boys?” Naomi Sutherland asked, opening the majestic front doors of her house.

“Hi, Mrs. Sutherland. Yeah.” Stanley confirmed as Lera nodded.

“Hello, Mrs. Sutherland.”

Naomi smiled, but not as wide as she usually would. Naomi knew Charlotte had left that morning, and she could see the red in Stanley’s eyes. Lera didn’t see it, but as a mother, Naomi knew how to catch hidden tears on the faces of young boys. Naomi didn’t want to comment upon it, but she wanted to speak a little softer than usual, just to show Stanley some kindness and sympathy.

“They’re down The Valley.”

“Oh. Cool. Okay. I thought they were going to wait for us. Thanks, Mrs. Sutherland.” Stanley waved farewell, as did Lera. Hopping back on their bicycles, the two kids rode around the corner, to the dead end street above The Valley.

As the bright and cheerful concrete of the suburban sidestreet neared The Valley, it slowly grew more decrepit. Leaves cluttered the curbs and cracks formed in the pavement. Just before the the street plummeted into the gloom of the woods, a huge gray guardrail blocked the road. As if the street itself were afraid of going any further.

When he was much younger, Stanley once asked his father about the road which was afraid to enter The Valley.

Why was it there?

Why did it stop?

Of all the odd questions a son can ask a father, that was the first time Stanley remembered his dad looking uneasy, as though he shouldn’t speak of these things to a child.

Mr. Holloway explained, long ago, back when his grandfather was a boy, the road was meant to cross The Valley. Until one night, bad things began to happen along that street. People who would walk that path would often get attacked in the deep black of the woods. Young women especially. They would get dragged off into the dark and terrible things would happen to them. Sometimes, they were never seen again.

In that moment, when Stanley heard those words, he understood that many of the alleged “haunted” places in the world were not steaming with ghosts, but rather the memories of primal fear. Our souls can leave scars in the air itself, when we scream in places where terrible things happen.

These days, those old stories were forgotten.

Few people knew why the road didn’t dare venture into The Valley.

Only fragmented memories, imagined terrors, and vague explanations from fathers remained.

These days, it was just a road, ending by the woods.

Adults never approached The Valley, because they instinctively knew they shouldn’t.

Children were drawn to The Valley, because they instinctively knew their spirits strengthened, when they battled countryside nightmares.

Leaning their bikes on the galvanized guardrail, Lera and Stanley walked to the edge of the precipice.

The dark scars of The Valley past had begun to fade.

Today, The Valley was a wondrous place.

Most folks around town didn’t know that.

You had to be a child to appreciate the wonderment, because only the eyes of children could see The Valley in the proper light.

He didn’t really understand why, until he was much older, but one day, Stanley would reflect upon these times, and realize it was the mystery of The Valley which made it an irresistible playground. Unlike most places where children could play, there was no way for adults to accidentally stumble into The Valley and ruin their spell of makebelieve. A massive ravine running behind the homes in the Sutherland’s neighborhood, getting into The Valley was nearly impossible. There were no roads leading into it. No walkways. No paths. The Valley was not home to a park, or swingsets, or barbecue pits. There was no mention of it on any maps. The region didn’t even have a name. All the neighborhood kids simply called it “The Valley”, and every kid knew where to find it. The arena was an ancient, untouched woodland, hundreds of feet wide, a hundred feet deep, and nearly a mile long. Filled with such a multitude of verdurous hues, even God had forgotten He created so many shades of emerald. Nothing had ever been built in The Valley. None of the trees had ever been cut down. Everything in The Valley was as it had been two hundred years ago, when Indian braves probably hunted deer and worshiped earthen spirits among the woods. No one outside the neighborhood knew it was there. No one knew it existed. Except for the neighborhood children, who were old enough, and brave enough, to climb down the green thickets of the hillside, and discover what The Valley was hiding.

On a summer day like that one, The Valley was a jungle of humid haze, which hung in the air like Albion mists. With a little imagination, you were easily hiking through rainforests instead of woods. Crows became macaws, and dead tree limbs were poisonous vipers, slithering among the canopy of the Amazon. Leaping squirrels, shaking branches in the distance, were the stealthy hunt of lethal cannibal tribes.

Be on your guard, children. The Valley calls.

As Lera and Stanley stood upon the rim of The Valley, Stanley yelled out, “OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE!”

His voice echoed quietly across the greenwood.

Lera cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted the same, “OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE!”

As foliage moved in the breeze, Lera imagined the trees were moving to create the wind, instead of the other way around.

No sign of the Sutherland boys could be seen from above. However, from deep below, buried somewhere behind two billion twigs and leaves, Colton Sutherland called back, “But, room, fairy! Here comes Oberon!”

The younger voice of his brother Maximilian Sutherland followed, “And here my mistress! Would that he were gone!”

Armed with a homemade bow and a makeshift ninja sword, Stanley motioned down the hillside toward their voices. Bearing her own sapling staff and plywood shield, Lera followed Stanley into the leafy veil, quickly disappearing into their very own Sherwood Forest.

§

Cautiously, the young boy and girl crept through the underbrush.

As dry leaves chortled and twigs snapped, Stanley cursed himself. Lera wasn’t happy with her lack of stealth either.

But, now and then, they were able to walk a path that had been a little more wet from the recent rains. Muddied ground and moistened leaves muffled their gait.

They were not sure if the Sutherland boys had been on the move or if they were still in the location their voices had originated.

Stanley stopped and motioned to his ear. Lera listened intently.

Wind rustled treetops.

Cars hushed on a road in the distance.

Birds chirped.

But there wasn’t a sound of their enemy friends.

Then, for a moment, Stanley caught the nearby murmur of voices. He grinned and looked back at Lera. The mischievous smirk on her face revealed she had heard them too.

Pointing to his right, over a tiny ridge, Stanley nodded.

Lera nodded in agreement, gripping her staff harder.

As they neared the top, they found their prey.

Looking up at Lera and Stanley, Colton was startled and reached for his mop-handle sword. Pointing the tip at Stanley, he said, “You are that shrewd and knavish sprite call’d Robin Goodfellow!”

Stanley jumped off his perch, ninja sword drawn. “Thou speak’st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night!”

Pulling two wooden daggers on Lera, Maximilian asked, “How now, spirit! Whither wander you?”

Lera grinned, “Over hill, over dale. Thorough bush, thorough brier. Over park, over pale. Thorough flood, thorough fire. I do wander everywhere. Swifter than the moon’s sphere; And I serve the faerie queen!”

With those final words, Stanley and Lera charged their quarry.

Colton blocked Stanley’s initial blow and swung low back at him. Stanley jumped and avoided losing his footing.

Maximilian surprised Lera by turning away and running. Before he made it ten feet, he grabbed a rope hidden behind a tree. Jumping and tugging his full weight upon it, a leaf-covered sheet of plywood slid out from under Lera’s feet and she tumbled down the embankment.

Startled by her fall, Stanley turned to look at her, and Colton jabbed his sword into Stanley’s side.

At the same time, Maximilian jumped at Lera and placed his daggers at her throat. “Ha! Surrender or your friend will perish!”

Stanley melodramatically clutched his imaginary wound and groaned in feigned anguish.

Lera smacked Maximilian aside, her hip bruised. “You can’t do that. That’s cheating! There’s no booby traps! Since when do you get to set up booby traps!?”

“Since we got to the woods first.” Colton giggled.

“But you live here. Of course you got here first. That’s not fair!”

Maximilian laughed, “All is fair in love and war.”

“You’ve never been in love or a war!”

Stanley noticed Lera rubbing her hip. “You okay, Lera?”

The truth was, Lera was just upset because she got hurt. Not wanting to admit it, she told Stanley, “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Snarling at Maximilian, she added, “Thanks for asking!”

Lera would have loved to set up booby traps. She was just annoyed she didn’t get the chance to do it herself. “Ugh. Fine. You got us.”

“Woohoo!” Colton cheered and started to disarm his prisoners.

§

The Sutherland boys began to march Lera and Stanley up The Valley floor.

“Where are you taking us?” Lera demanded.

Colton announced, “You will be sacrificed to the River Styx.”

Immediately jumping out of playful character, Stanley remarked, “You better not throw my weapons in the sewer. I’ll kill you.”

Maximilian reassured them, “Of course not. We’re just pretending.”

“You better be!”

The sky almost seemed to darken as they marched. Pine and maple and birch flexed muscular limbs, dense with the shag of leaves. The foliage itself seemed to be taunting, boasting the strength of wood and earth, yet warning of the dire presence ahead.

For all the pristine natural wonder of The Valley, there was one strange and sacrilegious thing, hidden far at one end. Spanning across The Valley floor, a hundred feet long and piercing each hillside, was a huge concrete culvert, ten feet high.

Like all evil places, the mere propinquity of the culvert seemed to have it’s own gravity, threatening to draw your soul from the very marrow of your bones.

Nothing had ever been built in The Valley, and once you saw the culvert, you were sure it wasn’t built either. Someone must have conjured it from infant blood and the death rattle of cruel grandparents. The sloped walls stood covered in lichen, ivy and water stains. Rusted rebar ladders sprouted from the cement, brown stains coloring their eternal tomb. On either side of the culvert, those two ladders were the only way to climb over the structure. A low hiss emanated from the top of the wall, the fury of angry water, moving with rattlesnake rage beneath the stone.

Once atop the weathered cement, the slither of water grew louder. Only five feet wide, there was a giant hole, rimmed with rusty steel, in the dead center. As you approached the opening, it was clearly a manhole into the sewer pipe entombed within the concrete. But, unlike normal manholes, this opening was gigantic. At least three feet in diameter, the cover was long missing. How anyone could have had the strength to lift and remove such an enormous steel cover, the children had no idea. Maybe, just maybe, some kind of hideous beast had removed it from within. The opening was far too large for normal humans to create. Two grown men could fall into that horrific abyss at the same time. And if you were courageous or foolish enough to get near the gaping hole, it was like staring into an artery spilling blood into Hell itself. Even on the hottest summer day, a cold and rank wind blew up from the pit. Peering over the edge, there was a six foot plummet to a gurgling river of black sewage moving faster than you could imagine.

§

Years ago...

The first time Colton and Maximilian had found it, they never really wanted to come back. The culvert was terrifying. There is something horrifying about places like that, buried deep in the woods.

How long had it been there?

What kind of men could build such a monstrous thing?

The blasphemy of the culvert seemed all the more cursed, because it felt unholy to desecrate such a beautiful place with something so putrid. You can’t help but wonder, what if your worst nightmare had come true? What if someone really did fall into that black and foul sewer? How would anyone know about it? Maybe no one would ever find you. Maybe it did happen once. Maybe it wasn’t just a scary thought. Maybe someone really did live their last moments of life, standing in that very spot, on that green and brown concrete. Maybe your feet were planted... where a dead person stood.

If someone was swept away in that water, who knows where they would end up? The culvert ran all the way across The Valley before vanishing into the opposite hillside. For all they knew, that pipe could run for miles and miles. Just imagine falling into that. Pitch black. No light. The smell would be unbearable. No fresh air. All that methane from the sewage would probably kill you. If not, it would at least make you fall unconscious. Once you pass out, you’d probably drown in all that evil blackness. Dark vomit water, like ink, filling your lungs. When someone finally discovered your bloated and waterlogged body, black would pour out of your mouth, thick as old motoroil.

Maybe your body would never come out at all. Maybe the pipe got smaller and smaller until you would get stuck in the slimy concrete. Buried forever, a hundred feet under the hillside, your corpse entombed in wet filth, never to be seen again.

Colton stepped away from the manhole.

His racing thoughts were freaking him out.

“Smells like dead people. River Styx!” Maximilian announced.

And from that moment on, the sewage culvert was forever known among the children as the River Styx, and no one wanted to go near it, for fear Charon may appear and demand a coin for his bony hand.

§

The children were just close enough they could barely start to see the River Styx through the trees. Lera was driven at the front of the group, and before they got any closer to their doom, without turning around, she asked, “Hey, Stan. You ready?”

“Ready!” Stanley confirmed. “Go for it!”

“No talking! Silence prisoners or - ” before Colton could finish his sentence, Lera and Stanley both dropped to their knees. Lera grabbed small wooden daggers hidden in her socks. One stabbed Maximilian in the chest and the other rocketed at Colton.

Lera missed her throw, but Colton was so startled at the wood zinging past his head, he stumbled backward over a tree root and landed on his butt in the mud. Stanley quickly grabbed his bow, which Colton had dropped.

“Ah, ha!” Stanley shouted, cocking an arrow.

“What the heck!?” Colton couldn’t believe what just happened. Yelling at his little brother, he said, “I thought you disarmed them!”

Grabbing at the fake dagger wound in his heart, Maximilian gasped, “I... thought... so... too!”

His pretend death was wonderfully dramatic and filled with numerous ludicrous spasms that made everyone laugh.

“Tell... Big Bertha... I... love... her.”

“Who is Big Bertha?” Lera asked.

“My... tavern... wench.”

Laughing hysterically, Lera kicked playfully. “You’re retarded!”

“Tavern wench.” Colton smirked.

Gazing angrily at Colton, Stanley announced, “And now, you too shall meet your end!”

“Noooo!”

Aiming for Colton’s chest, Stanley let loose the sharpened wooden dowel, doubling as an arrow. Much to his horror, without fletching to true its flight, the arrow erratically arched upward and struck Colton directly atop his right cheekbone, barely missing his eye-socket.

The pencil-sharp wood stuck for half-a-second, then fell off his face.

A pinprick of blood marked the impact.

Time stopped. No one moved.

“Oh, my God!” Stanley gasped in shock.

Colton, scared to death, said nothing for a second or two.

“What the heck!?” Colton yelled, touching his would.

“Dude! I am so sorry! Are you okay?”

“You shot me in the face!?”

“Dude! I was aiming for your chest! I swear! I didn’t mean it!”

“What is wrong with you!?”

Maximilian, no longer fake-dead, spoke up. “What are you doing? You don’t shoot people in the face!”

“It was an accident! I was aiming for his chest!”

“Dude, I’m bleeding! There’s blood.” Colton dabbed his wound and showed his pink-stained fingertip.

“It’s not that bad. It’s just a little scratch.” Lera finally spoke.

“You almost shot my eye out!”

“I know. I know. I am so sorry. Are you okay?”

“I’m not okay. I’m bleeding.”

Even Maximilian could see it wasn’t serious. “Oh, it’s just a little dot of blood, you sissy.”

“That’s it, man. No more bow and arrow.”

“Okay. Okay. Fair enough. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

Stanley was mortified.

He really wasn’t aiming for Colton’s face. But that wouldn’t have been much of a defense if Colton’s eye was jammed onto a wooden stick like a lollipop. All Stanley could think about was that alternate reality, where the arrow did strike Colton in the eye. Stanley shuddered to imagine. Oh, God. He didn’t want to picture something so horrible. How could he live with himself? He couldn’t imagine the guilt and shame. What would it feel like when he was a 30 year old man, or a 50 year old man, looking back over his life, and knowing his childhood friend still lived with a patch over his eye, and it was all his fault?

Dear, God.

Imagine if that arrow had just been an inch higher.

Stanley and Colton would have had their lives changed forever.

All because Stanley did something stupid.

Oh, thank God.

Thank God the arrow didn’t take Colton’s eye out.

That would have been the worst thing that ever happened to either of them. This fun afternoon would have become a lifelong nightmare. A mere inch away from the worst day of their lives.

Thank goodness.

Oh, thank goodness it missed his eye.

Colton was still sitting on the ground, but he finally started to calm down. “Dang. You scared the bejeezus out of me.”

“I scared the bejeezus out of me too!” Stanley laughed.

The mood finally lightened, all four of them were chuckling.

Stanley held out his hand and helped Colton to his feet.

Patting Colton on the shoulder, Stanley repeated his apology. “I’m sorry, man.”

“It’s okay.”

Lera declared, “Let’s start over. Give you guys a running start to 60?”

“Okay.” Colton agreed.

“Give us back our weapons.” Stanley demanded.

The Sutherland brothers returned everything they had confiscated.

“Let’s go!” Maximilian began to run back the way they came, away from the River Styx.

“Wait up!”

Lera started to count, “Thousand 1... Thousand 2... Thousand 3... Thousand 4... Thousand 5... Thousand 6...”

§

Hours later, sweaty and tired from their battles, the four children were all ready to head home for dinner. They were all stiff and bruised from wooden sword hits that were accidentally swung too hard, and dirty from soil-touched palms wiping wet brows.

Walking back toward the easiest hillside to climb up, Stanley asked the brothers, “So, what are you guys doing tomorrow?”

“Nothing.” Colton declared.

“Nothin’.” Maximilian repeated.

Stanley asked, “You wanna go camping?”

“Camping?” Colton asked.

Lera added, “Yeah. Remember the monolith Charlotte found?”

“The one she showed us last week?” Colton wondered.

“Was that Keep on the Borderlands?” Maximilian asked.

Lera was confused. “What?”

So was Colton. “What?”

Stanley rolled his eyes, “No, dude. That was for D&D. I’m talking about the real monolith.”

Maximilian still wasn’t following. “What real monolith?”

“Dude, weren’t you paying attention? I used it in the game session, but it’s a real thing. Where do you think I got the pictures?”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s true.”

“Duh.” Colton hit his little brother in the shoulder.

“So what about it?” Maximilian asked, ignoring the punch.

Lera explained, “Charlotte found other ones and she thinks they may be a map to places that don’t exist.”

Right away, Colton and Maximilian were intrigued.

Places that don’t exist?

Magic places?

Real magic places?

“What kind of places?” Colton wondered.

Maximilian repeated, “Yeah, what kind of places?”

“That’s what we want to find out.” Stanley explained.

Colton recalled former conversations during their gaming sessions and noted, “I thought you said it might be some kind of portal.”

“Yeah, we did. But now she thinks it’s a map.” Lera clarified.

“We actually found another one.” Stanley told them.

“Another portal?” Maximilian asked.

“Oh, my God! Are you even paying attention?” Lera groaned. “It’s not a freakin’ portal! Another stone.”

“It was in the game!” Maximilian defended.

Lera sighed, wondering why she bothered.

Colton asked, “Another what? Another monolith? No way.”

Lera excitedly replied, “Yeah! Another monolith!”

“No way.” Maximilian was just as disbelieving as his big brother.

“Yeah. It’s all broken on Brookside Mountain.” Stanley disclosed.

Colton shook his head, “That’s crazy.”

“I know.” Lera agreed.

“Here. I’ll prove it. I have pictures of that too.”

Stanley stopped walking and grabbed his backpack. Setting it on a log, he started to talk as he looked inside the satchel. “So, check this out. There seems to be a certain way you can get into this place, but you have to walk between very particular mountain peaks to get there.”

Stanley produced a map Charlotte had drawn. “Look. We head out past Scarborough Ranch and up the Old Road toward Mount Waucoba. Oh! Here’s the other pictures too.”

“That’s crazy!” Colton stood stunned at the photos.

Maximilian, being the youngest, was definitely not interested in bicycling that far. He was all up for an adventure, but he would have preferred one closer to home. “Mount Waucoba? That’ll take all day. Maybe longer.”

Colton had to agree with his little brother. “Yeah, Stan. Even on bikes, that’ll take forever. Besides, there’s nothing up there. Past the old Scarborough Ranch, it’s just miles and miles of open desert.”

Maximilian replied. “Yeah, c’mon. I’m not going up there. That’s going to take forever to hike up there. What will we tell our parents?”

Lera chimed in. “We can totally pull this off. We’ll just tell them we’re camping up at Antelope Campground, like we did last summer.”

Stanley added, “Yeah. Antelope Campground is on the way.”

Maximilian protested, “But last year they came up and checked on us. What happens when we’re not there? We’ll all get busted.”

Stanley shook his head, “No, we won’t. We set up camp, leave our stuff, and take off. If your parents come to check up on us, they’ll see our campsite and think we just took off on a hike. Which won’t even be a lie!”

Colton paused for a minute, but he had to agree, that was a pretty good plan. “That’s... true... That just might work!”

Lera reassured them, “Of course it will work. That gives us at least 2 days. Our parents won’t even freak out unless we’re gone 3 or 4 days. We should totally be back by then.”

Colton said, “That’s brilliant. Yeah. We can totally do this!”

Stanley elaborated, “We travel light. Just food, water, some ammunition. We’ll be all set.”

Colton was finally sold. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll do it!”

Maximilian wasn’t as enthusiastic, but he conceded, “Fine. If you guys are all going, I’ll go. Me too. I’m in.”

High fives were exchanged all around and the pact was sealed.

“And you can’t bring the bow and arrow!”

“Dude, I’m not bringing the bow and arrow! I told you! You may want to bring a gun though.”

Lera shot a stunned gaze at Stanley. “Duh. Screw that. I’m not maybe bringing a gun. I’m definitely bringing multiple guns. Plural. There’s mountain lions and coyotes up in the high desert. Feral dog packs too. No way I’m going camping out there unarmed. That would just be stupid.”

“Drug dealers too.” Colton noted.

“Drug dealers?” Stanley laughed, “Dude, you watch way too much television. There’s no drug dealers hiding out in the desert.”

“How do you know? There could be!”

“Have you seen how fast mountain lions attack?” Maximilian wondered, “I don’t know if you’d have time to shoot one.”

Lera chided, “Well, after a mountain lions tears your throat out, and you’re standing before God, and He asks why you didn’t even try to defend yourself, you can tell Him you didn’t bother, because you figured you wouldn’t be fast enough anyway.”

The boys thought about that.

“Bear spray.” Colton noted. “You could use bear spray.”

“And if that mountain lion jumps on your chest?” Stanley questioned. “A point-blank cloud of bear spray will blind both of you. But half-a-dozen rounds of 9mm to the chest will stop him.”

Colton and Maximilian answered in unison, “We’ll bring guns.”

Chapter 4: The Campsite

Colton and Maximilian were the first to arrive in the parking lot at Juniper Hills Catholic Elementary. Their school was the most central meeting point on the way to Antelope Campground.

There was always something about being on school grounds during summer vacation which felt, somehow, rebellious. Even though they were allowed to be there, it always felt forbidden in some way. When the playground was silent, when there were no teachers’ cars in the parking lots, it was fun to imagine the school was shut down forever. Pretend they were living in some dystopian future, where most of the world had vanished. Now it was just them. Just four young kids, trying to survive, after some sort of biblical rapture, or alien invasion, or a plague that only kills people over the age of 16.

Maximilian complained, “This backpack is heavy.”

“I know. Mine too. Don’t worry. Once we get to the campground, we can get rid of most of this stuff.”

They had been packed and ready to go before sun up. The beige glow of sunrise still slumbered lazily beneath the horizon, waiting for the cue to crank up the lumens, and turn morning desert skies to scintillating bands of orange and gold.

“We shouldn’t have packed so much.”

“Just put it down, Maxipad.”

“Max! My name is Max!”

“When you act like a man, your name is Max. When you whine like a little girl, it’s Maxipad.”

“I’m not whining like a little girl!”

“Just take off the backpack, dummy!”

Maximilian finally did as his brother suggested and slid the backpack onto the cool morning asphalt.

“Better?”

“Better.” Maximilian mumbled at the ground as he detached his canteen and sipped some water.

Colton followed suit, removed his backpack, and used it to lean against as he sat on the ground.

Closing his eyes and relaxing, Colton asked, “Did you grab that extra .357 for me?”

“Uh, huh.”

Colton reached out his hand. “Let me carry it.”

Maximilian opened a side pouch on his backpack and pulled out five boxes of .357 ammunition. Colton took them and placed them inside his pack. “Thanks. See, that will make it a little lighter.”

“Thanks, Colton.” Maximilian smiled. Sure, it wasn’t much, but that wasn’t the point. At least Colton was making an effort and trying to help. That alone made Maximilian happy.

“You’re welcome.”

“I thought you brought the .45 Kimber.”

“I did.”

“So why did you want .357?”

“Stanley is bringing his .357 revolvers. He asked me to bring some extra.”

“Oh.”

Sitting up, Colton rhetorically wondered, “Where are they?”

A few moments later, Lera came through the back gate of the parking lot. Maximilian waved at her. “There’s Lera.”

Colton looked over. “Oh. Hey!”

“Hey!” Lera called out, “Where’s Stan?”

“I dunno.” Colton said.

As she got closer, Maximilian noticed the long case strapped to her back and asked, “Ooh! Is that the lever .410?”

“Yep.” Lera replied, stopping her bicycle near the boys.

“Let me see! Let me see!”

“No. I’ll show you at the campground.”

“Aw, come on.”

“No, Max! Not now. I told you, I’ll show you later.”

Colton announced, “Here he comes.”

Stanley raced down the sloped driveway on the opposite end of the parking lot and sped toward his three friends.

“Hey, guys!” Stanley called.

“Hey!”

“Hey, man.”

Stanley asked, “You guys ready?”

“Yep.” Lera confirmed.

“You got everything?” Stanley wondered.

“Yeah.” Colton replied.

“Uh, huh.” Maximilian added.

“Okay. Let’s check before we go too far. We don’t want to have to turn around.” Stanley pulled a handwritten checklist out of his pocket.

Lera nodded, “Good idea.”

“Okay. Let’s go over everything.”

Stanley ran down the items.

Backpack.

Tent.

Ammunition.

Firearm.

Water.

Sleeping bag.

Windbreaker.

Change.

Cowboy hat.

Flashlight.

Long sleeve shirt.

Hiking boots.

Knife.

First aid kit.

Lighter.

Binoculars.

Compass.

Folding shovel.

Waterproof ammo case.

Maps.

Stanley clarified, “Well, you don’t all need maps. But I packed Charlotte’s maps. We got everything?”

“Got it.” Lera affirmed.

“I have most of that.” Maximilian said.

“Okay. What don’t you have?” Stanley wondered.

“I think it was after sleeping bags, I don’t have any of that.”

Stanley frowned. “Dude, you’re going to roast in the desert. You need a hat and long sleeves. You can’t ride all day in a tshirt and no hat. You’re going to fry.”

Colton spoke up, “I have an extra baseball cap and I packed his jean jacket.”

“You did?” Stanley asked. “Okay. Rad. So we’re all set?”

“All set.” Lera grinned.

Stanley asked, “Brought some powdered water? Just add water?”

“Shut up!” Maximilian thwacked Stanley’s arm.

Colton laughed, “You totally believed that, last time.”

Maximilian defended himself, “I was a little kid! I was like, 8.”

Lera smirked, “That was a year ago.”

“So!?”

“Did you guys remember the MRE’s?” Stanley asked.

Lera wondered, “MRE?”

“Meal Ready to Eat. It’s a military thing.” Stanley explained. “That’s why I told you not to bring food, just water. Colton and Max had it covered.”

“Oh,” Lera nodded, “Yeah. You mentioned the food packets. I didn’t know they had a name.”

“Yeah,” Colton explained, removing rations for Lera and Stanley from his backpack, “we just got them at my parents store. They are like, really compact portions of food they use in the military. Great for camping too, because you can carry a lot of food, but it doesn’t weigh very much.”

Lera took her MRE packets and smiled, “Oh. Perfect. That’s very cool. Thanks.”

“Yeah, thanks, man. You guys ready to go?” Stanley asked.

“Ready.”

“We are go for launch.”

There are odd moments in life when you know you will remember them for years to come. The four friends looked at each other, and in that instant, they all seemed to share the knowledge that this was a moment they wouldn’t soon forget. No one spoke of it, but the smiles on all their faces said enough.

Stanley swung his bicycle around and lined up his front tire with a parking line on the asphalt.

“Okay, riders. Random start.” Stanley said.

Colton joined in and lined up next to Stanley. “Riders ready?”

Lera took her place and announced, “Watch the gate!”

Maximilian made a sequential beeping sound, imitating a BMX track gate start, then did the sound effect of a steel ramp dropping. The other three laughed and all four of them sprinted off the line.

“Right on. Let’s roll out, boys and girls... Boys and girl.” Stanley corrected with a smile, as he lead the way to Antelope Campground.

§

Nearly twenty miles from home, the day was heating up, although the sun was still low on the horizon. No one brought a watch, but the kids agreed, it couldn’t be past 9 o’clock as they rolled into the campground. The foliage and green of their mountainous foothill neighborhood slowly melted away behind them, as they rode deeper into flat expanses of chaparral and Joshua trees.

By the time they reached Antelope Campground, the terrain had completely transformed into craggy granite and silence. Were life a movie, there would have been a single tumbleweed and a lone hawk shriek in the distance. But in reality, there was nothing but heat and quiet solitude. Shade among the oven of rocks wouldn’t bring a reprieve from the sun until early dusk.

Their true goal was twice as far as they had already come. There was no way they could ride sixty miles in one day, but if they wanted to make it past Scarborough Ranch before dark, they should be able to do it, but it might be close to 6 o’clock by the time they get there. Sunset wasn’t until shortly after 8:00p.m. Knowing the Old Road was all dirt, their biggest concern was time. How much would it slow them down if they got into thick sand? None of them had ever been that far up the Old Road, so no one knew what to expect. How long did the road stay hard packed? How steep would it get? Would it become too rocky to ride? There were a lot of variables they expected, but who knows how many obstacles awaited which they were not anticipating?

§

As the four explorers finished setting up camp, a forest ranger pulled up in a beige 4x4, sporting a state seal on the doors, and approached the children.

“Good morning, kids.”

“Good morning, officer.” Stanley answered.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

Looking around camp, the ranger asked, “Your parents around?”

Stanley said, “No, sir.”

Lera added, “No, sir. We came up here alone.”

The forest ranger raised his eyebrow in approval. “Good for you. Looks like you’re spending the night out here?”

“Yes, sir. The whole weekend.” Colton volunteered.

“Fine. Fine. Should be great weather for it. Might be a little hot. You kids bring enough water? You know where the spigot is at?”

“Yes, sir.”

Despite their affirmation, the forest ranger jerked a weathered thumb over his shoulder, “Just back down this road on the left. About five hundred feet. Bright yellow. Can’t miss it.”

“Yes, sir.” Stanley repeated and smiled.

With a quick sniffle and a shuffle of his weight from one boot to another, the ranger added, “Well, I don’t mean to alarm you kids, but there have been reports of a mountain lion roaming here about. So, be careful. Especially in the evening. We’re making sure to tell everyone camping.”

“Mountain lion?” Maximilian asked with saucer eyes.

“Yep. Her and a cub. So watch yourselves. You know they get extra protective when they have cubs around.”

“Have you seen it?” Maximilian wondered.

“Me? No. Not personally. But she’s out there somewhere.”

“We’ll be extra careful for sure.” Stanley assured.

The forest ranger could tell young Maximilian was far more worried than the older children, and turned his gaze toward the boy. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. Been two weeks since the last sighting. She probably moved on. Just be on your guard. She didn’t hurt any campers, but we just want you to be aware.”

“Oh, we will.” Colton said.

Still focused on Maximilian, the forest ranger spotted his gun against the tent. “That a Marlin 60?”

“Yes, sir.” Maximilian smiled, proud of his rifle.

The forest ranger walked toward it. “May I?”

“Sure.” Maximilian grinned.

Picking it up and looking it over, the forest ranger said, “That’s a fine rifle. My first was a Marlin too. But don’t go shooting a mountain lion with it. Unless you can bean her right between the eyes, a .22 won’t stop her. Have something a little heavier.”

Lera declared, “I have my .410.”

Stanley added, “My revolvers are .357.”

The forest ranger chuckled, realizing these kids were better prepared for a camping trip than most adults. “Very nice. Okay. Well, then I don’t need to worry about you kids. You’ll be fine. Got enough ammo?”

“Yes, sir. My dad owns a gun store.” Colton explained.

The forest ranger seemed impressed. “That right? A gun store? Which one?”

“Sutherland Firearms.”

“Sutherland? In Juniper Hills?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, I’ve been there many times. I thought you boys looked familiar. Your family portrait is up on the wall of the shop.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent. I knew I’d seen you somewhere, but I just couldn’t place it. Well, you kids have a great camping trip. And tell your dad Ranger O’Malley said hello. He’ll remember me. I’ve shopped at your pops store a bunch of times.”

Colton vowed, “Yes, sir. We will.”

As Ranger O’Malley got back in his truck, Stanley asked, “Oh! Sir! Is the pay phone down at the information stand still working? Our parents wanted us to call when we got in and give them our campsite number.”

“This is Section AA, Number 23.”

“Yes, sir. Does the payphone work? At the information stand?”

“Should be. If it’s not, just come over to the ranger station and we’ll let you call from there. You know where it’s at?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ranger O’Malley explained the route anyway, “Back out to the main road, go right, hook a right at the first street, then it’s about four miles down on the righthand side.”

“Cool. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You kids stay safe!”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Thank you!” Lera waved.

As the truck pulled away, Stanley announced, “Well, that’s not good.”

“What’s not good?” Maximilian wondered.

The two older kids knew exactly what Stanley meant.

“Ranger O’Malley knows we’re here.” Colton explained.

“So, he might come back and check up on us.” Lera continued.

Maximilian understood. “Oh. Right. That’s not good. Dang. And he knows who our parents are!”

“Exactly.” Stanley frowned.

Lera tried to lighten the mood, “Hey, we came all this way. You sissies ain’t gonna wimp out now, are you?”

“No!” Maximilian scoffed.

“Not me.” Colton agreed.

Stanley simply said, “I’m going to go down and call.”

“I’ll come with you.” Lera told him, picking up her bicycle.

“You guys want anything at the vending machine?” Stanley asked.

“Nope.”

“No, I’m good.”

“Okay. We’ll be right back.”

“Not if a mountain lion eats you!”

That instantly made Lera turn around, grab her .410, and sling it over her back, before she caught up with Stanley.

§

With parents reassured of their campsite, and a lighter load of food, water and bedrolls, the quartet began their journey to whatever lay between just the right sliver of the horizon, past Scarborough Ranch, and up the Old Road, toward Mount Waucoba.

Despite being tired from their early morning start, they all felt energized as they mounted their bicycles. There was something special about starting this part of the journey. None of them had ever been this far from home alone before. Lera kept thinking of the hobbits in Lord of the Rings and the moment when Samwise Gamgee realizes his next step would take him further from home than he had ever been. That is a powerful moment for anyone. Truly setting out on a road to adventure, not in a metaphorical way, but on a literal, physical journey, away from the comfort and safety of your nice warm bed, is a life-changing experience for any young boy, girl... or hobbit.

All of them knew, no matter what happened, this would be a special day they would remember for years to come. None of them were sure what to expect. In all honesty, they kind of expected to fail. That was the strange thing about this adventure. None of them doubted Charlotte. They all figured she was probably right, about everything she said. They all just wondered if they could pull it off. Maybe they wouldn’t find anything at all. Not because Charlotte was wrong, but maybe because they’d go the wrong way, or misread the maps, or something silly like that.

They knew it would be a failure.

But they knew it would be all worthwhile anyway.

§

The four made excellent time out to the Old Road.

That wasn’t the official name.

The road didn’t have a name at all.

But, of all the maps Charlotte found for that part of the desert, the Old Road always seemed to be there. As far back as she could trace, newer dirt roads appeared over the years. One set appeared in the 1970’s. Another in the 1950’s. But the Old Road went back to at least 1930, if not more. Honestly, Charlotte just couldn’t find any map older than 1930, to know when the road was created. So, she just labeled it as the “Old Road”.

“This is it.” Stanley announced.

“You sure?” Lera wondered.

Squinting at the distance, then back to the map, Stanley pointed up the street. “Yep. This should be the Old Road, and that’s the mountain. Once we get to the second peak, we leave the road and head through this pass. That should take us to Calico.”

Colton wondered, “Are we going to get our bikes through there? Those mountains are all granite. We might have to hike.”

Lera shrugged, “We’ll see when we get there.”

“I’m starving.” Maximilian declared.

“Yeah. Let’s eat.” Colton agreed.

Stanley decided, “Wait. Let’s get a little deeper into the desert. Let’s get a couple miles up the Old Road first. Then we’ll stop.”

Lera backed Stanley up, “Sounds good to me.”

§

As they had feared, parts of the Old Road slowly changed, and became increasingly difficult to traverse. The small 20” tires of their BMX bikes sank into drifts of deep sand at every point the Old Road was cut by washes from the parallel mountain walls. The quartet found themselves separated by further and further distances as some of them were able to plow through more difficult sections and others fell behind.

Lera tried to go offroad and ride beside the trail, which worked for short periods of time, then her tires would break through into little burrows or drown in another pool of sand.

As the sun blazed in the afternoon heat, the effort began to take a toll on the children. Cooking in the hottest part of the day, in one of the hottest months of the year, in one of the hottest regions of America, as their bicycles had to be walked through the sands.

When they finally reached the part Stanley judged to be the turnoff point, he collapsed on his bike and cracked open his canteen, which unfortunately wasn’t insulated, and left the water much hotter than he would have liked.

Lera caught up shortly after.

“You doing okay?” Stanley wondered.

Lera nodded and smiled but didn’t say anything.

“Let’s wait here for them.”

“They’re coming. Colton was helping Max.”

In another minute or two, Maximilian approached with Colton following behind him.

Stanley asked, “You hanging in there, Max?”

Maximilian gave a grin and thumbs up.

“Right on. See, you’re a tough kid. I thought you’d complain the whole time.”

Maximilian explained, “Oh, I want to complain. Believe me, I want to complain. But if I do, you guys will send me home. So, I’m not complaining.”

Everyone laughed and for a few seconds, the heat was a little more bearable. A gentle breeze swept past the quartet, as if the desert itself were gifting the children with a brief reprieve of comfort, and a reward for their lighthearted spirits.

Lera observed, “But if we send you home, you’ll tell our parents where we really went. So, we can’t send you home.”

“That’s true! So, I guess I can complain!”

“Good job, Lera.” Colton groaned.

“Well, I think this is the spot. We keep going up that way.” Stanley pointed.

“That’s a lot farther than I thought it would be.” Colton noted.

“Me too. But the path doesn’t look too bad.”

Lera stepped off the Old Road and walked into the rocks a dozen feet or more. “Yeah. In fact, this all looks pretty solid. If the rocks stay this scattered up that ridge, it should be way easier to bring our bikes up there than it was to get them up the Old Road.”

“I sure hope so.” Stanley coughed, having choked on a little too much water.

“Lead the way.” Maximilian told Stanley.

This was it.

This was the moment.

Leading his friends to what? Just as Charlotte had led him.

Stanley stared up the mountain, his heartbeat quickening as he gazed at the point up the hill. Was this it? Was this really it? Like his sister had said? Those places grownups tell you that you’re not allowed to go? What will they find? What will be over that ridge?

Stanley put his canteen away, and smiled in anticipation.

He wiped sweat from his brow.

Mounting his bicycle, he pointed it up the gradual slope of the mountain and began to weave between the rocks.

“Let’s go.”

§

Stanley again found himself far ahead of the others. Off to the side of the road, he set down his bike and tried to get another look in the distance. As he marched over to a ridge-line of stone, a weird thumping noise suddenly bellowed underfoot. At first, it was so quiet, Stanley though he had imagined it.

Then it came again.

Weird.

Nearing the edge of a little outcropping, a beige male pitbull dog suddenly sauntered out from beneath the stone.

Stanley smiled, “Hey, little guy. What are you doing down there?”

Looking shocked and surprised, the dog let out a low and gruff series of barks. “ROUHGH! ROUHGH! ROUHGH!”

Clearly, he wasn’t nearly as cheerful to see Stanley as Stanley was to see him. “Okay, buddy.”

Ignoring the dog, Stanley continued on his way to scout over the rocks. Wiping his brow and sniffing the hot air, he thought back to that moment when he reached out to feel the vibrations of the stone on Brookside Mountain and realized, he could feel it better here. Perhaps the spirit of dogs and wind need be near for the magic to conjure.

As he turned back, the dog had positioned himself near Stanley’s bicycle and was joined by three others.

“Hey. Where did you guys come from?” Stanley asked. They must have all been hiding in the shade under the rocks.

The alpha male answered by running toward Stanley and barking again, “ROUHGH! ROUHGH!... ROUHGH! ROUHGH! ROUHGH! ROUHGH!”

Quickly drawing a revolver, Stanley stopped and yelled back at the dog, “Hey! That’s enough! Don’t you start!”

The dog paused about thirty feet away.

He started to pace back and forth. “ROUHGH! ROUHGH!”

Okay. Stanley froze and tried to gather his wits quickly.

Stanley could tell the dog wasn’t planning to attack. His tail was down, but he wasn’t growling. Only barking. And he stopped. An attacking dog will just charge. Looks like this was just a warning. Little show of force. Just protecting his pack and maintaining dominance in their eyes. None of the other dogs made a sound. In fact, all of them, even the alpha, looked fearful and hesitant for a confrontation.

“Okay!” Stanley shouted. “You keep your distance and I’ll keep mine.”

The dog stepped closer. “ROUHGH! ROUHGH! ROUHGH! ROOOOOOOUGH! ROUHGH!”

Stanley raised his gun. “I said, don’t start with me!”

Slowly, Stanley started walking sidelong away from the dog, keeping his eye on him. All Stanley kept thinking was, Lera was right. Feral dogs in the desert.

Worried about his friends approaching, Stanley wanted to end this standoff, and get these dogs out of here as quickly as possible. The last thing he wanted was to start shooting. Stanley told himself he wouldn’t pull the trigger until that dog starts to charge. Plus, there was a lot of granite around here, and a ricochet could be bad news. Once his friends arrived, they would be behind the dogs, and Stanley feared even a hollowpoint .357 round would easily tear through that pitpull and keep right on going. Opening fire was his last resort. Despite his wise composure, Stanley was smart enough to never put his gun away; the Ruger stayed in his hand, trigger finger on the frame, the whole time.

As he circled a set of boulders, Stanley vanished out of sight from the dogs. By the time Stanley came back around to his bike, the four dogs were marching in line, headed off over the next ridge.

Lera was just coming up the road as the canines disappeared.

“See anything interesting?” Lera called out.

“Nope,” Stanley smiled, holstering his revolver. “Nothing but a few little desert critters.”

“Did you hear that dog barking? He sounded close.”

“Yeah. I heard him. A dog walked off over that ridge. Don’t think he’ll bother us.”

“Boy, I hope not. Feral dogs are dangerous.”

Chapter 5: The Old Prospector & The Indians

Lera was feeling so drained by the heat, her mind seemed to process the journey like a movie montage.

The brown lighting streak of a scared jackrabbit.

A lizard darting across the sand, in front of her bicycle tire.

Arthritic black, dead creosote brambles, baking like witch fingers.

The kaleidoscopic shadows of a Joshua tree, as she rode past.

Despite the thirst-inducing ride, this path was much easier. Rolling over a velvet of gulleys and ridges, Lera looked behind them. Colton and Maximilian were keeping up fine, but the shadows across their path revealed something she hadn’t noticed before.

“Hey, guys. I think this is the Old Road.”

The boys all stopped and followed Lera’s gaze backward.

Sure enough, the trail through the rocks appeared to be a road. Well, sort of. Because of the way the sun was shining across the terrain, it was hard to notice the path when looking ahead. But with the sun behind them, the highway was more distinct, weaving through the stones and displacing the occasional shrubbery.

Stanley, being a few feet further ahead observed, “Annnd, it looks like we’re walking again.”

Shoulders slumped in defeat as the other kids groaned.

“What?”

“Not again.”

“Why? What’s up there?”

Biking a few more feet above the next rise, the quartet saw the next wash. This one had a sheer cliff on the opposite wall, only a few feet high, but still no way around it.

Once again, their bikes would sink far too deep into the sand to keep riding. They had to walk. They discovered, oddly enough, if they angled their front tire away from them as they trudged through, it actually tracked better, making it far easier to push the bike, than if one kept the tire pointed straight ahead.

Stanley pointed downstream.

“Look. You can see the lower side from here. We only need to walk about a mile or so.”

Lera agreed, “Yeah. That’s not so bad.”

“Come on.” Colton forged ahead, taking a brief chance to lead, since he could see where they were going.

The depths of the narrows gave the four a short opportunity to enjoy some shade, so they walked slowly, shuffling down the few yards they had to travel. Exiting the dry stream, they rested on cool varnished stones, as Stanley consulted a map again. “We should be really close. I think.”

While Colton, Lera and Stanley sat, Maximilian looked over the next rise. “Oh, wow! Look at that!”

§

Stretching below the ridge was a majestic desert valley. Even in the harsh afternoon light, it was crowned in a mountainous horizon of purples and blues. Mesa towers of orange and red flame jutted from the valley floor as the green of Joshua trees and cacti dotted the landscape with vibrant color. Swaths of tan sand, and a multitude of grassy underbrush, carpeted the terrain. Golden flowers fizzled atop brittlebushes as though playing catch with sunlight and wind. The scene stretching before them didn’t look real. Everything seemed so vivid, it was like staring into a giant painting of the Old West in a museum. An idyllic and romanticized version of reality that has never truly existed. Yet, there it was. Wisps of clouds and cumulus boils churned in oceanic blue skies, and the breeze tickled their cheeks, so the children knew, this was no illusion. The air was cooler, yet still dry and comforting, as the desert breath can be. Scented by the masculine cologne of old creosote wood and warm sand.

Stanley scrambled for a modern map as the other children stood breathless at the beautiful scene before them.

His breathing grew faster as he declared, “Uh... Guys... This isn’t supposed to be here.”

All four of them stared at the map.

Sure enough, there were supposed to be at least four more mountain peaks, then as Colton said the day before, all open desert. Based upon where they had been, how far they had come, the route they had taken, there was no way there could be such a huge valley in this spot. No way. Even if they had made a huge mistake, even if they had taken a terrible wrong turn, there were no valleys on any of their maps.

Colton pointed to the north, “Look out there.”

Far off in the distance, strips of dark mud painted lines in the sand. Lera pulled out her binoculars. “Think it’s a ghosttown. Far away though. At least eight miles, if not more. Even with the binoculars I can’t make out much other than blurry brown buildings.”

While the girl spied on the apparent ghosttown, Stanley was distracted by something else.

Standing in the middle of the valley was a strange mountain.

At first glance, it didn’t seem any different from other granite towers in the desert. But upon closer inspection, Stanley had his head cocked toward a weird shape in the side of the bluff.

“And what the heck is that?”

Also grabbing his binoculars, Stanley saw a gaping crevice in the mountainside, as if a huge cavern entrance rose like a sentinel near the peak. There were also bizarre lines crossing the butte in haphazard ways. Not large enough to be roads, they seemed to be some sort of pathways and hiking trails.

The kids all took turns looking across the valley, inspecting the mountain cavern, and peering out at the town. Elated and astounded by the beauty before them, they wondered what to do next.

“Well, it’s getting late.” Stanley said, checking the position of the sun. “Might have three hours ‘til sunset.”

“No way we can reach the town in three hours.” Colton noted.

Lera pointed ahead, “But we can reach the mountain.”

Stanley agreed, “Yeah. I say we head to the mountain, pick a spot to camp, then we can explore tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Mountain is probably two miles away. That sounds like a plan.” Colton conceded. Wanting Maximilian to feel included, he looked at his little brother. “What do you think, Max?”

Exhausted already, Maximilian said, “The closer the camp, the better.”

Stanley grinned at Maximilian, “Look, Max. It’s all downhill from here. This is going to be awesome!”

With that, Stanley pointed his bike down the very old trail and started coasting to the wondrous valley below. Lera and Colton followed. “C’mon, Max!”

Left behind and talking to himself, Maximilian groaned, “Yeah, downhill for now, then we have to go up the other mountain... Hey, wait up!”

§

The journey across the plains of the valley floor was not like any other part of their quest. All around them, the landscape seemed almost engineered, like a majestic desert garden, instead of a natural arrangement of flora. Obviously, this was not true, but the outcroppings of stone, and the placement of flowering shrubbery and cacti, were heavenly, in a way most of the high desert never appeared.

Getting closer to the mountain, the odd pathways up the crags took on a new look. As their bicycles raced across the sand, glints of light sparked above in the trails. Once Stanley had seen a dozen sparks, he skidded to a stop.

Three bicycles chortled dirt to a halt behind him.

“What’s up?”

“Why we stopping?”

Stanley grabbed binoculars again. “What is that?”

“What is what?”

Stanley’s eyes widened, then squinted. “Those glints of light... Oh, no way!”

“What? What do you see?”

“You know what those are? Those are railroad tracks!”

“Minerails?”

“Yeah. For old mine cars.”

“No way. There are too many of them. They can’t all be minerails.”

Lera nearly choked Stanley, grabbing his binoculars to see for herself. “Hey!” Stanley cried.

“Holy cow! You’re right.” Lera agreed.

Colton tried to grab the binoculars too and Stanley smacked his hands away. “Cut it out! You guys all brought your own binoculars! Leave mine alone! Curly and Shemp making me feel like Moe!”

Lera shoved the boys, “Spread out!”

Maximilian laughed, but he was still too tired to say anything.

Although they intended to camp near the foot of the mountain, once they reached the lower minerail tracks, something amazing made them want to see more.

“Guys. These tracks are still being used.” Lera observed.

She was right. They were not the old, rusty, abandoned railroad tracks you would expect to find at a desert mine. They were shiny and polished silver, slick as mercury.

No wonder Stanley kept seeing glints of sunlight on them.

Maximilian had just been studying American History and the Old West, so he was the first to say, “How can that be? My teacher said there aren’t any working gold mines in the desert anymore. Haven’t been any for a hundred years.”

Stanley nodded. “You’re right, Max. But Lera is right too. These tracks are still being used.”

Colton asked, “By who? For what?”

“Let’s find out.” Stanley remarked, as he began following the precarious tracks uphill.

Lera was nervous. Gold miners might not like a bunch of kids wandering around their dig site. Plus, what if it wasn’t a gold mine?

“Guys,” Lera called, “could we maybe not find out? What if it’s not gold miners? What if it’s like, drug smugglers or something?”

The boys continued up the trail.

“Guys!... Drug smugglers!... They kidnap little boys, you know!... Sell them to rich Mexicans!” Whispering over her shoulder, Lera added, too quiet for the boys to hear, “And little redheaded gymnast girls too.”

Realizing they were totally ignoring her pleas, Lera unslung her shotgun, chambered a round, and started walking her bicycle up the hill with the gun on her hip. “Ugh. Fine.”

The farther up the trails they ventured, the more amazing the tracks became. They curved and twisted in weird pretzel shapes down the slopes and through tunnels, only to come out into stranger spirals and embankments on the other side. One track would split off into another, only to continue zigging and zagging up to plateaus and steeper inclines. A mix of old and new timber supported the rails over perilous cliffs, while beams of steel held up sections that were sheer madness. The rails more closely resembled an amusement park roller coaster than a practical railroad, intended to efficiently haul gold down a mountain.

Maybe Lera was right.

Maybe this wasn’t a gold mine.

But it didn’t look like the work of drug smugglers either.

These traintracks were built by some kind of lunatic.

When they finally rounded a corner at the top of the trail, they were breathless with what stood before them.

What had seemed to be a huge crevasse from the distance was a gargantuan maw in the mountainside, towering eighty feet above the mesa. The opening was deep and dark, a blackness that seemed to suck the very sunlight from the desert skies. The tracks they had been following vanished into the shadows and continued far into the granite.

“I’m not going in there.” Colton announced.

“I’ll go, if Stanley goes.” Lera didn’t speak to anyone in particular, she just stared at the incredible hole and slowly walked closer to it.

Stanley licked his lips thinking about it.

There are times when you need to walk into the cave and times when you shouldn’t. He read enough books and played enough Dungeons & Dragons to know that.

Was this one of the times to walk in?

Or not?

“Can we just go back down and set up camp?” Maximilian wondered. He was getting tempted to complain, since they were too far away from Antelope Campground to send him back now.

Stanley looked at Lera, who was still moving toward the cave.

“Lera! Watch it!” Stanley warned.

Beneath her feet was a collapsed and weathered wooden sign and barricades:

CAUTION

DO NOT ENTER

“Watch whaaaaaa- Aaaaaa!” Lera screamed as the ground collapsed beneath her feet. She vanished in a plume of dust, billowing up from a hole in the mountain which had swallowed her instantly.

“LERA!” Stanley ran toward the spot, then slowed.

As Colton and Maximilian rushed to help, Stanley held them back, “Wait! We’ll fall in too! Careful!”

The three boys eased near the cave-in, calling her name.

“Lera!”

“Lera, you okay!?”

Lera had fallen into a mine tunnel, only a few feet beneath the surface. Luckily for her, the underground stone had been excavated at an angle. She and her bicycle slid all the way down an easy stone ramp to a railroad track-floored cavern. Other than some dust in her hair and a few tiny scrapes, Lera was fine. She took a worse tumble last week at Hesperia BMX track, and walked away without a scratch. Embarrassingly, it wasn’t even during a race; she clipped the fence riding through a gate to the parking lot. She felt like an idiot. Luckily, no one saw her.

Dusting herself off with her hat, she shouted up, “I’m fine.”

Her pride was bruised more than her body.

When she saw where the boys were standing, she warned, “No! Don’t stand there! Come around to your left.”

Avoiding the thin ground and preventing a bigger collapse, the boys circled around as Lera told them. Stanley called down to her, “You need help up?”

“Hold on.” Lera pulled out a flashlight and peered over her surroundings. “You might want to come down here.”

“Why? What do you see?”

“Just get down here.”

Leaving their bikes, the three boys climbed down.

Inside the cave, a spectacular display of strata glistened in the dark. As intimidating as the shadows appeared in the giant entrance, in the glow of Lera’s flashlight, the dim cavern seemed enchanted and cozy. Again, the rails beneath their feet were sharp and silvery, obviously still in frequent use. Off in the distance, headed toward the main opening of the mine, a faint light shimmered.

What amazed the children most of all were the layers of yellow among the granite, shining flakes of golden apple cobbler.

“Is that what I think it is?” Colton awed.

“Gold?” Stanley whispered.

Gold. Pounds and pounds of it. Littered all around them. As Lera’s flashlight beamed through the dark, the gold glittered like a hundred Fourth of July sparklers, waving up and down the tunnel, far as the eye could see. Maximilian was reminded of the mine from Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs.

Laughing with glee, the kids started to grab bits and pieces and examine them. “Is this really gold?”

Lera noted, “Could be pyrite.”

“Ever heard of a pyrite mine?”

“No. Good point.” Lera conceded.

From near the mine entrance, several muffled voices were heard.

The children froze in terror.

“The light. The light!” Stanley whispered.

Lera switched off her flashlight.

The quartet pinned themselves against the walls.

They didn’t make a sound.

The shimmering light from the main entrance wavered and grew brighter. A voice in the distance, barely audible, said, “No. No. You take the last load out. I’ll go have a look.”

Another voice spoke, but the words were too quiet to hear.

Footsteps began to approach. Light from the tunnel rocked back and forth, growing brighter.

Again, the voice spoke. Louder this time. They still couldn’t see him coming, but now they could tell, it was the rusty voice of an old man, “Aw, pickleberries! If I didn’t say that danged side tunnel was going to fall in one day.”

The kids looked around.

Where could they hide?

They couldn’t climb back up the hole.

Whoever was coming would see them for sure.

Their bikes were all up top, except Lera’s.

All of them seemed to realize the same thing at the same time - they were busted. If they stay here, they’ll get caught anyway. They might as well make a run for it. At least they can race down the hiking trail on their bikes.

Exchanging glances, Stanley was the first to head up the collapsed roof, “Let’s go!”

None of the kids made it to the surface before the old man came into view. Holding a lantern, shadows wrapped around the top of his wool hat. His bearded face shouted, “Well, I’ll be a baboon’s diaper! Claim jumpers!”

Colton scrambled away, “What? No, sir! We’re not.”

Pointing at a pebble of gold in Colton’s hand, the old man repeated, “Claim jumpers! Security! Security! Kill these danged lying claim jumpers!”

Lera tried to explain, “Sir, we’re not claim -”

Before she finished her sentence, the old man raised a pickaxe the kids hadn’t even seen, swinging hard at Colton.

As Colton leapt away, a gunshot echoed throughout the cavern, deafening everyone.

Stanley leveled one of his two .357 revolvers at the old man. The shot ricocheted off the wall in a puff of dust and sent their attacker running back down the tunnel.

He kept screaming as his voice faded down the passageway, “Aw, peachnuts! Security! Claim jumpers! They be armed and dangerous!”

Holstering his guns, Stanley held out a hand for Colton. “Thanks!”

The kids quickly scurried up the opening into the daylight.

Heaving her bicycle up, Stanley helped Lera get out.

“Dude, you shot at him!” Maximilian squealed. “Actually shot at him! For real! That was awesome! Have you ever shot at a person before?”

“No, Max! Now shut up and run!”

As the quartet grabbed their bikes, whoops and hollers echoed from the mine entrance, growing louder.

“What is that?”

Suddenly, a dozen American Indians burst out of the darkness.

Garbed as though strait out of the Old West, they wore traditional leathers, warpaint and headdresses. Some were on horseback, others were on foot. They carried rifles, bows and tomahawks. Overtaking the Indians, and leading the charge, was the old man, furiously pumping a hand cart down the railway track toward the kids. Eying the children, he raised a rifle.

“Oh, this is not happening!” Maximilian yelled.

Stanley shouted, “Run!”

The four of them scrambled their pedals and took off down the mountain as a rifle shot rang out overhead.

Blasting faster than any of them had ever ridden, the four flew down the trails. Hugging the thin and precarious dirt next to the railcar track, they pedaled until their legs burned. Native American war-cries echoed through the mountain walls around them. From other mine shafts and cave openings, more Indians appeared. Behind the children, the rumble of the minecar grew louder.

Stanley slammed on his rear brake and powerslid down a side path, away from the rail track. “This way!”

His friends followed, and for a moment, it seemed they lost the minecar. But with a quick shift of a rail-switch, the old man came down another track and was closer than ever.

“He’s right behind us!” Lera yelled.

Raising his rifle again, the old man shouted, “Hold still! Aw, fiddlesticks!”

Spotting a slope in the trail, Lera tapped her brakes, slowing just enough to bring the minecar along side her.

“What the?” The old man, disoriented by her suddenly change of speed pulled the rifle away from his eye.

Lera slammed her pedal, shot up the slope, sailed over the ducking old man, kicked her frame into a tabletop, knocked the rifle down the cliff, landed on the opposite side of the trail, and continued to blast down the path.

“Yeah!” Stanley shouted.

“All right Lera!” Colton cheered.

Maximilian was floored, “Did you see that!?”

“Aw, I’ll be a gambling preacher! That was me favorite rifle!” The old man yelled.

Angrier than ever, he furiously began to pump the railcar faster down the tracks.

The Indians behind the railcar continued to run, but none of them dared to fire a shot, for fear of hitting the old man.

However, as the quartet approached a gauntlet of the trail, Indians on either side began to take aim with rifles and arrows.

The old man laughed, knowing his claim jumpers were doomed.

Thinking fast, Lera raised her shotgun, one-handed, and started to blast the cliffside. “Take cover!”

She cocked again, bracing the gunstock against her leg as she cycled the lever action.

In a fury of lead and gunsmoke, shotgun pellets hit the dirt, sending huge plumes of dust filling the pathway. The Indians, unable to see their targets in the cloud of debris, missed every single shot.

In a few seconds, the four bicycles burst into the fresh air, out of range and safe.

Maximilian, laughed and looked back at the Indians, scowling. From atop an outcropping of rock, one of them jumped, tomahawk slicing right for Maximilian’s head.

“Ahhhhh!” Screamed the Indian.

“Ahhhhh!” Screamed Maximilian. Swerving at the last second, the Indian missed Maximilian’s scalp and caught the rear axle peg of his bicycle.

Dragging behind the bike on his stomach, the Indian snarled, hanging on to the peg with his free hand.

Maximilian jumped off his pedal and slammed his feet onto the axle pegs with all of his weight. “Get... Off... My... BIKE!”

“Auuuuugh!” His fingers smashed, the Indian howled and tumbled down a cliff to an unknown fate.

Whipping down the trail, Stanley cut across a drop in the path and started to run beneath a railtrack trellis. Above, he heard the rumble of the railcar. The old man peeked over the side, brandishing a revolver. “I got you now, claim jumper!”

Firing over the side of the railcar, his bullet missed and embedded itself in the trellis wood with a blast of splinters.

Stanley locked his knees on his frame and rode no-handed.

Drawing both of his revolvers, he began to fire straight up into the floor of the railcar.

“Dag nabbit!” The old man shouted through the hole blasted under his feet. “Aw, horsespit!”

Another shot.

Then another.

Stanley couldn’t see the old man, but he could easily pulverize the floor of the railcar into a pile of toothpicks.

Shooting his final round, the railcar disintegrated into a pile of firewood, throwing the old man into a heap in the dirt.

Colton looked back, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw the old man was knocked cold as he pinballed off a rock and landed in a bundle of chaparral.

As Colton looked forward again, another Indian was waiting for him on a rock ahead. The Indian raised his bow and took aim at Colton. The whole thing happened in slow-motion. Colton could see the golden glint of sunlight on the arrowhead, and a strange glint of red, as if his blood was already marked on the weapon.

Colton shook his head, “Oh, not again.”

Pulling out his .45 Kimber, Colton fired a single shot, sending the Indian flying off his perch as the arrow whizzed past Colton’s cheek.

Continuing to swerve and race down the mountain, the quartet finally started to slow down when no one appeared to be following.

“We lose them?” Lera asked.

Stanley spotted an alcove of boulders a dozen feet high. “In here.”

Tires coughed across the dirt as the four skidded behind the rocks.

Ducking to the ground, all their eyes scanned the outcroppings in every direction. Up that peak. Down that gulley. Across those tracks. Over that trail. There. Here. Every nook they could imagine.

No sign of anyone.

The Indians must have all stopped to help the old man.

Colton glared at Stanley, “Come out to the desert, you said! It will be fun, you said! We might find another world, you said! We didn’t find another world. Just a crazy old man trying to kill us!”

Stanley yelled, “He wouldn’t be trying to kill us if you didn’t steal his gold!”

“You started taking the gold first!” Colton argued.

“Well, Lera is the one who fell into the mine shaft!” Stanley shifted the blame to her.

Lera barked back, “Well, if you were a better leader, you would have warned me sooner!”

“Oh, so now your mistakes are my responsibility!?”

Maximilian tried to calm everyone down. “Guys, this is not helping! And stop talking so loud! They’re going to hear us!”

The three older kids knew Maximilian was right.

They kept arguing, but lowered their voices back to whispers. Stanley focused back on Colton and disputed his first remark, “This has got to be another world, you idiot. There haven’t been any gold prospectors in the desert for a hundred years. And those were Indians! Real Indians! There are no Indian braves running around on horseback anymore! Why are we getting chased by Indians and old prospectors!?”

Lera offered a new idea, “Maybe we traveled back in time.”

Colton’s mind began to race with the possibility. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God! You’re right! What if they weren’t portals to other worlds or maps, but time portals! How will we get back home!?”

Stanley calmly explained, “We’ll have to go back the way we came.”

“How? I got all twisted around running down the mountain.” Colton said in a panic.

They looked around.

Colton was correct.

Where the heck were they?

They can’t go back the way they came. Those Indians are still back there. Which gulley can they take? Which path twists around the mountain in the safest direction? Who knows where else the Indians were stationed? They seemed to come from all over the place. No direction was guaranteed to keep them hidden. Not when they were completely lost in this unknown mountain range.

Lera tried to be rational. “Look, we headed north all day. If we just head back due south, we should get back home.”

Colton berated her, “Not if we traveled through time, dummy! We have to go back over that same part of the mountain.”

“I’m not dumb!”

Stanley explained, “Okay. Okay. Look, it doesn’t matter. Time travel, or a portal, or whatever this is. No matter what has happened to us, the smartest thing is to go back the same way we came. Right? So we have to get back to the valley. The sun is that way. We head back west toward the sun, we should reach the valley.”

“Whatever we do, we gotta do it quick.” Colton suggested. “Sun will be down in no time. We need to find a safe spot by dark.”

“You’re right.”

“I still say we go south.” Lera noted.

Maximilian ducked behind a granite block the size of a schoolbus, pointed up, and whispered, “Guys!”

Off in the distance, an Indian appeared on a rock, gazing across the mountain. He was due west, silhouetted by the sun.

As the kids huddled together behind a massive stone, Stanley whispered to Lera. “South, then west.”

“South, then west.” Lera smiled. She thought it was a full smile, but it wasn’t. She was too scared to smile that wide.

“Max, he still there?”

Maximilian peeked between a crack. “No. I think he’s gone.”

“Stay low. Pedal quiet. Try not to click your freewheel, Max.” Stanley whispered. “Follow me. This way.”

Chapter 6: The Sheriff & The Dust Devils

Moving carefully, the four children managed to reach the foothills of the mountain without being spotted.

They didn’t speak much, trying to remain as silent and stealthy as possible. Sound traveled far, and echoed unpredictably, in the silence of the desert. They knew even a brief loud noise might give them away.

Looking back across the valley, the golden hour light made the vision even more beautiful than it had been earlier in the day. They managed to trace a path far to the south of where they had started. Reaching the Old Road would be a long hike from where they were, and they couldn’t possibly reach it before dark. But, come first thing in the morning, they should easily be able to find their way.

Exploring the distant town was their original goal and intention.

But, to get there, they would need cross miles of open desert in the valley, directly below the gold mine mountain. That was far too risky. All four of them were afraid the old prospector and the Indians would pursue them, if they were spotted out in the open like that.

Disappointing to give up, but it was smarter to just head home.

As a breeze moved across the desert, Maximilian shuddered, “Oh, that’s a witches wind. That means something bad is going to happen.”

Colton rolled his eyes, “Oh, stop with the witches wind. There’s no such thing.”

“Yes, there is!”

“No, there’s not. You made it up!”

Lera asked, “What’s a ‘witches wind’?”

Maximilian explained, “When you’re in the desert on a hot, windless day, and out of nowhere, a cold breeze blows. That shouldn’t be possible. When it happens, it’s a bad omen. That’s a witches wind.”

Lera had never heard of such a thing.

But Lera believed him. Because there are some omens your heart knows to be true, the moment you hear about them, even if you never heard of them before.

Colton continued to undermine his baby brother, “But you made it up yourself. It’s not a real thing.”

“Just because I made it up, doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

Lera defended Maximilian. “Maybe Max just discovered something real, that you never heard about. That’s not the same as making something up.”

Maximilian, impressed by her explanation, smiled at Lera, and gave Colton a smug crinkle of his nose. “Yeah.”

Lowering his binoculars, Stanley noted, “I think it’s over there.”

“Should we set up camp here? Hide back in these rocks?” Lera wondered.

“Yeah. Sounds good. No campfires. In case the Indians are still looking for us.”

“Oh, wow. Look at that, Stan! Dust devils!” Lera pointed.

Across the span of the valley, moving fast, a row of swirling sand tornadoes chased the roots of the mountains. They grew larger. Larger. And larger still.

“I’ve never seen four in a row like that. Weird!” Colton noted.

Behind them, a single track of galloping horse sagedust followed.

Quickly, the spiraling swirls of the dust devils began to change shape.

“Oh, cool!” Maximilian grinned.

They began to look like horses, then dogs, then the clouds of sand took on the vivid and distinct shape of wolves, angry and gargantuan. Towering at least fifty feet above the valley, they plowed across the scene, shining in orange sunset light.

The grin of Maximilian melted into terror.

“What the!?” Lera’s jaw dropped.

“They’re headed this way!” Stanley cried.

“Witches wind! See!? I told you! Witches wind!”

“Shut up, Max!”

Turning toward the children, the gigantic sandstorm wolves began to race across the valley floor. Their maws opened, shrieking growls which deafened the landscape like freighttrain rage and hurricanes. Tan zings of horrified jackrabbits scurried under chaparral. Heat and oven dryness preceded the charge of dust like waves of sunpoached bones.

“Run!”

Dropping their bicycles, the kids scattered into the rocks, ducking for cover, desperately trying to hide.

As the malignant sandstorm approached, the vision of the wolves faded, but the growls still echoed around them.

Stanley found Lera, huddled against a stone.

Sand whipped in all directions. The sun was reduced to a pale cigarette ember, as though giving up on bringing any light to the world. The children couldn’t see more than a dozen feet before the world vanished into a haze of beige fog. Shirts were pulled up over noses so they could breathe.

“Colton! Where are you!?” Stanley shouted, his tongue instantly dirtied by whipping sand, he gagged, pulling his shirt back over his mouth.

“Over here!” Colton’s voice could barely be heard under the violent torrent of wind.

Red eyes glowed in the beige dust.

From out of the blinding sandstorm, a figure began to take shape. Closer it moved, the eyes blazing brighter with each step. Before them, a wolf the size of a horse, it’s body conjured by waves of billowing dirt, growled at Stanley and Lera.

Lera screamed and fired her shotgun. The buckshot slammed straight into the face of the wolf, and simply passed right through it. Sand swirled and vortexes spun around the wound, as the creature reshaped itself, and the fangs of the wolf remained.

Stanley fired. Forgetting he hadn’t reloaded since destroying the minecar, nothing happened. His revolver hammer fell with a weak click onto a spent round.

As the wolf of sand was about to attack, another shotgun blast came from behind. Only this time, the wolf howled in pain as the grit of his body seemed to solidify under the pellets, and crack into the ground. Like all living things facing death, the shriek it made as it perished was even more horrific than the growls it made in anger.

Maximilian screamed somewhere in the veil of dust.

Lera and Stanley heard heavy-booted feet turn, run a few steps, then another shotgun blast. And another.

Howling in pain, the final dust wolf collapsed into the desert floor, and vanished in wind and sand.

With the final light of day dipping behind the distant mountains, a majestic shadow fell over the children. Backlit by the grand sunset, dressed in a dusty trenchcoat and a gunblue leather hat, a silver sheriff badge glinted on his chest. The deep lines around his eyes matched the cracks in the granite of the desert stone while his gray beard and mustache bristled, as if they were made of creosote twigs. Gunsmoke billowed from his double-barrel shotgun. Clicking open the action, two spent shells fizzled onto the ground in a glow of blue jellyfish sparks.

When he spoke, his voice was the deepest any of the children had ever heard, yet it also had a tenderness of strange comfort, like an old barn door creaking in a hundred year old stable.

“You kids all right?”

None of them answered.

Cocking his head at the children, he asked again. “Y’all don’t speak English or y’all just stupid with fear?”

“I - I speak English, sir.” Stanley declared. “That - that is, uh, yes, we all do.”

“What y’all doing way out here?”

Before they could answer, a familiar voice called out from behind them. “I’ll tell you what they’re doing, Sheriff! Stealing gold! My gold!” The old man from the mine suddenly appeared, riding a buckboard pulled by two horses. His head was bandaged, but other than that, he looked as mean and tough as ever.

“Him! He - he tried to kill us!” Colton pointed at the man.

“Yeah, he did!” Lera confirmed.

“You stay back!” Maximilian cowered.

“Aw, sweatygirdles! I tried to kill you because you stole my gold! Check their satchels, Sheriff! Greedy little buggers! Dirty claim jumpers!”

“We didn’t know it was your gold! You didn’t let us explain anything! Then you tried killing Colton with a pickaxe!”

The Sheriff had enough.

He fired his pistol into the sky.

Everyone jumped and shut their mouths.

The desert was silent, except for the single shot continuing to echo in the distance.

“One at a time.” The Sheriff looked at the old man. “Old Gus, you go first.”

Old Gus shifted in his seat and began to tell his side of the story. “Sheriff Spade, I was up in me mine, mindin’ me own, ya see. As I was finishin’ up me day, I heard a terrible ruckus by one of the upper shafts. Sounded like a cave in. So, I takes a gander down the tunnel, to find these four claim jumpers have dug into me mine and are pocketing me gold! When I caught ‘em in the act, that one there took a shot at me!”

“I took a shot at you because you tried to kill Colton with your pickaxe!”

“Boy! Did I say it was yer turn?”

“No, sir.”

“Mr. McGilicuddy. Kindly continue to regale yer side of the tale.”

Old Gus McGilicuddy harumphed and said, “Well, when me and me help chased after them, they attacked us. That girl made me lose a fine rifle, and that boy shot one of me minecars all to smithereens!”

A smile twinkled across Sheriff Spade’s lips. “That right? Old prospector like you? Old Gus McGillicudy himself, disarmed by a little girl and bested by a young boy?”

“Jedediah! Now don’t ya be mockin’ me none! Ya may be Sheriff of these parts, but I’m still yer elder! Ya hear? Now ya may gimmie orders by the law, but don’t ya be disrespecting me manner!”

Sheriff Spade raised his palms in truce, “Yer right, Old Gus. I’m sorry. I was out of line. Now are ya done with yer tale?”

Old Gus rubbed his beard, “Well, that about sums it, I reckon.”

Absently watching Old Gus, Colton rubbed his face too, finally collecting his thoughts, and yelled, “I’m sorry! Can someone tell us what just attacked us!? What is going on here!?”

Sheriff Spade glared at Colton and answered, “Sandwolves, boy. Y’all should know that.”

“No! No, I don’t know that! What the heck is a sandwolf!?”

Sheriff Spade and Old Gus McGilicuddy stared at the kids in shock.

“Y’all kids ain’t from around here, are y’all?”

“No! We’re not!” Colton yelled. He was about to say more, but Sheriff Spade cut him off.

“Hold up, boy.” Sheriff Spade looked from Colton to Stanley. “You. I want to hear yer story. It true what Old Gus said? Did y’all take a shot at Old Gus?”

“Sir, I thought Old Gus was going to kill Colton. I was just trying to protect my friend.”

“Did y’all steal gold from Old Gus’s mine?”

“We didn’t know anyone owned the mine. We wouldn’t have tried taking anything if we knew it was his. And we didn’t break in. We fell in by accident, when the mine collapsed. Look at Lera’s arm. She’s all bruised from falling in.”

Sheriff Spade wondered, “Why the blazes were y’all snooping around Red Rock Mine anyway? Why don’t y’all start at the beginning?”

“Yes, sir. This morning, we started on a hiking trip from Juniper Hills and we came up by Scarborough Ranch -”

“- Juniper Hills?” Sheriff Spade interrupted and looked at Old Gus. “They’re from the Continental. Ain’t y’all?”

Old Gus McGilicuddy tore off his hat and smacked it against the side of his buckboard. “Aw, I’ll be a prairiedog buttcheek! Not Continentals.”

Stanley was baffled, as were the other kids. “What’s a Continental?”

Sheriff Spade answered, “Youngins like y’all. Schooled in those towns over the horizon. Where y’all hail from? Juniper Hills, y’all say?”

“Yes, sir. Juniper Hills.”

Sheriff Spade looked at the others. “Same for y’all?”

Lera replied, “Yes, sir.”

“Uh, huh.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stanley tried to explain where it was and said, “Yeah, it’s just over that mountain range and down -”

“- Oh, I know exactly where Juniper Hills be.” Sheriff Spade explained. As he spoke, he started to walk away from the group. For a moment, the kids thought he was leaving. Instead, he gave a quick, sharp whistle and a horse appeared from behind the rocks. Branded with a sheriff star, the horse came close and stood with a whinny to announce his presence. As he holstered his shotgun in a long-gun case, the Sheriff continued speaking, “I know Juniper Hills better than most, son. That’s definitely a Continental town with Continental schools.”

Lera shook her head, “I’m sorry, sir. I still don’t get what that means. Why do you keep calling us that? What’s a ‘Continental’?”

Sheriff Spade told her, “Y’all youngins are taught about the Continental United States. That’s what they teach y’all in school?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sheriff Spade nodded, “Yes, sir. Kids who think maps stay the same, year after year; that all fifty states have been explored high and low.”

“You mean, they haven’t?” As Stanley asked the question, he immediately realized they had not traveled through time. If this was the Old West, the Sheriff wouldn’t have said there were fifty states. Hawaii didn’t become the fiftieth state until 1959.

“Not even close. How’d y’all get here? Juniper Hills is a long way off. And Saddleback County ain’t easy to find from there.”

“My sister. She found a map carved into a rock in -”

“ - Let me guess. Oakmont Hill?”

“No, sir.”

“Bradbury Creek?”

“Yeah! How did you know that!?”

“I told y’all, boy, I know Juniper Hills very well. What did y’all say yer names were?”

“Stan Holloway.”

“Lera McKinney.”

“Colton Sutherland. And he’s my little brother.”

“I’m Max. Max Sutherland.”

Sheriff Spade looked at the four of them and repeated their surnames. “Holloway? McKinney? Sutherland, y’all say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

In that moment, a remarkable thing started to happen. As the sheriff looked at the children, his whole demeanor slowly began to change. You could see the gruff and ornery angles in his posture start to melt away, his armored scales falling carefree as leaves from Autumn trees. The children had no idea why this transformation was taking place, but it shot through every part of his body, from the twinkle in his eyes into the very leather of his boots. When he spoke again, the sheriff had a voice that was far more gentle than anyone would have imagined he could muster. “Parents know y’all are wandering about the desert, this far from home?”

“No, sir.” Stanley admitted. He wasn’t sure why he was so quick to tell the truth. There was just something about Sheriff Spade that made Stanley think the sheriff would know if he lied.

Maximilian was worried they were getting in trouble and gave up Stanley immediately. “It was Stanley’s idea! He made us come out here!”

“That’s a lie! I didn't make you do anything!”

“Yeah, you did. Make us feel guilty about your sister leaving.”

“I did not! I told you Charlotte found the maps, that didn’t mean I was trying to make you feel guilty! Duh! You’re a retard!”

“Now, boys, that’s enough. Y’all are here now and y’all have to deal with where y’all came to be. None of y’all look capable of kidnapping each other, so I’d say y’all come here of yer own accord. Ain’t that right?”

Maximilian realized he was in trouble no matter what. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, y’all kids don’t look nearly tough enough to be roaming Saddleback County, by yer lonesome, in the dark. I’m going home, because I ain’t leaving my kinfolk alone tonight. But I’m not looking after y’all on a deadly road either. So, good Old Gus here will have to put y’all up for the evening.”

“But he tried to kill us!” Colton argued.

“If it’s all the same, sir, we’d rather camp outside.”

“What? Now, Sheriff, y’all may be the law, but y’all can’t go forcing me to babysit no -”

Sharp as the crack of a whip, the stern bulldog version of Sheriff Spade instantly reappeared, “- Gus! I’m not tellin’, ya old coot. I’m askin’! Polite like. And I’d be much obliged if ya were agreeable to my request. As for y’all, Colton, don’t be scared of Old Gus. He’ll treat you respectable and gentleman like. Like y’all were better than this own kin. He won’t be harmin’ a hair on yer head, or he’ll be answerin’ to me. Ain’t that a truth, Old Gus?”

“But they jumped me claim!”

“Oh, Gus, ya know that ain’t true, as well as I do. Look at these kids. They really look like claim jumpers to ya? Now ya going to show them some hospitality, or ya going to make me lose a little faith in humanity and yerself?”

Despite his words, Old Gus knew better. The Sheriff weren’t askin’. He be orderin’. But the sheriff was a good man, who had saved Old Gus’s hide time and again. Sheriff Spade weren’t the type of man who would remind y’all of that with his words, but he had a darned steely way of jogging yer memory with a sideways glare. Old Gus and the sheriff go way back, and McGillicudy has long been in debt to the bravery and decency of Sheriff Spade. With a sigh, Old Gus agreed, “Yes, sir, Sheriff. Fine. Fine, Sheriff. I got me plenty of room.”

“Oh, I should say ya do.” Turning his gaze to the children, Sheriff Spade ordered, “And camping outside ain’t all the same, no how. Come daybreak, I want y’all kids headed right back to Juniper Hills the way y’all came. Understood? And not a minute after. Trip will take y’all the better part of the day and I don’t want y’all anywhere near Calico Junction or Saddleback County come nightfall. Y’all got that? Sandwolves ain’t the least of the netherworld monstrosities lurking around these parts. And plenty more of them roam around after dark. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir. We understand.”

As the day began to fade, the children could feel Sheriff Spade was telling the truth. When people grow older, they have a harder and harder time feeling the ghostly parts of the world. But children can tell when the air is growing haunted, and the night is waiting to mischief.

No child ever speaks of it, because they know something that shouldn’t be listening will hear. But every child can feel when there are eyes watching from the dark, and claws are starting to awake.

Old Gus apologized, “Sorry for the mix-up, Sheriff. They looked like claim jumpers to me. Why y’all know the problems I been having. What with that darn Chinaman zombie we done killed last week. First one we nabbed! I never did thank y’all proper for that.”

Sheriff Spade brushed it aside, “The Sacramento Gang wights are a dangerous bunch. But that dirty ol’ Leland Yee shoulda known better than to trifle with y’all all by hisself. Zombie or no zombie. Yer lucky them outlaws ain’t been back for a little revenge since we sent Mr. Lee to the great beyond.”

“Aw, peachnuts!” Old Gus spit.

Lera, thinking she must have not heard Sheriff Spade correctly, asked, “I’m... I’m sorry. Did - did you just say zombies?”

“Wights, technically. But they calls themselves zombies.”

Maximilian wondered, “Whites? How can a Chinaman be white? I thought Oriental people were yellow.”

“Not white men, boy. Wights. W. I. G. H. T. S. Specters. Undead little heathens, is what they be. Not quite people. Not quite ghosts. And darned hard to kill, unless y’all know how.”

All the children stared at the Sheriff in silence.

None of them knew what to think.

Was he crazy?

Was Old Gus a lunatic?

If they had been standing there, with two insane old men an hour ago, they would have been terrified. But, now that they had personally witnessed the evil enchantment of sandwolves, they knew anything was possible. Why couldn’t zombies and wights be just as real?

Where the heck were they!?

Suddenly, Stanley remembered the faded text his sister had shown him. Calico something! That was what the Sheriff just said!

Stanley asked, “Sheriff Spade? What was the name of the place you said you didn’t want us to be at nighfall? Calico? Calico what?”

“Calico Junction, son. Finest gold-minin’, cattle-rustlin’, ghost-bustin’, six-shootin’ town in Saddleback County.” Sheriff Spade said with a wink, as if he were making a travel commercial. Pointing at each of the quartet individually, he added, “But that don’t matter none, because I don’t want y’all setting foot in my town. Understood? Not a place for Continentals to be roaming.”

Looking skyward, Sheriff Spade motioned to Old Gus. “Sun just set. Old Gus, y’all take these youngins back home, lickety split. I want them safe indoors before twilight ends.”

“Yes, sir, sheriff.”

The leather of his saddle made that familiar creak Lera and Stanley had heard a thousand times, as Sheriff Spade mounted his horse. Looking back at the kids one last time, he ordered, “Get home first thing tomorrow! Heya!”

Sheriff Jedediah Spade spurred his mount and was gone in a cloud of dust that was more manly than any cloud of dust, any cowboy, in any movie, ever left behind.

Lera asked, “Excuse me. Gus?”

“Dag nabbit, me title is Ole! Y’all call a doctor, Doctor, dontcha?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Y’all call a professor, Professor, dontcha?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call a judge, yer Honor, dontcha?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s right, y’all do! And y’all know why? Because them folks earned it. And I earned bein’ old! So y’all will address me as such!”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, Old Gus.”

The old prospector clicked and yanked on his reigns and turned the horses back from where he came. “Git! Git! Well, come on kids, twilight is a wastin’.”

Retrieving their bicycles, the boys fell into line and started to ride behind the buckboard. Lera mounted her bicycle and sighed, “Old Gus? Can someone please tell us what on earth is a freaking sandwolf!?”

§

Within twenty minutes, after a meandering route through shapely sandstone and flowing dirt roads, the children and the old prospector reached his cabin.

Nestled in the corner of the valley, it was quaint, yet surprisingly well-kept. Somehow, the children imagined it would be as run down, dusty, and mangy as Old Gus himself. Instead, his grounds were beautifully landscaped, fine gravel pathways snaked up to his porch and gorgeous flowers decorated the barn and water tower. Stretching out in front of the humble cabin was a vast ravine with a crystalline blue river tumbling over frothy rapids. Stanley noted, based on the maps he had seen, there was no sign of any rivers anywhere near this part of the desert. The only river he knew about was dozens of miles away, to the northwest.

“Ho!” Old Gus stopped his buckboard and turned back to the children. “Now y’all wait here while I go inside and tell the missus. Me wife is old, fat, more ornery than me, and don’t like no visitors! She ain’t to be trifled with! So, if she says y’all can’t stay, then y’all ain’t welcome. Sheriff or no sheriff!”

With that, Old Gus hobbled into the cabin and slammed the front door behind him. I don’t need to tell you it shut with a puff of dust, because you imagined it that way, even without me saying so.

In less than a minute, the door opened again.

A young and beautiful American Indian woman, with deep brown skin and a fine suede dress, motioned to the children. “Come inside. You can leave your bikes right there. They’ll be fine.”

Confused, the children exchanged glances and approached the door. She possessed the kind of beauty a man would love more deeply than he believed possible, and the kind who would break his heart with pain he couldn’t imagine, the day she left. The woman shook hands with each of them. “Hello. I’m Mrs. McGilicuddy.”

“Hello, ma’am. Stanley.”

“Howdy, ma’am. Lera.”

“Hello. I’m Colton.”

“Hi. I’m Max!”

“Pleased to meet you all. Please, come in. My husband tells me Sheriff Spade saved you from quite an ordeal.”

Still bitter, Colton spat, “Did he tell you he tried to kill me?!”

“Who tried to kill you? Sheriff Spade?”

“No, your husband!”

Old Gus quickly shuffled into the far reaches of the cabin, “Aw, plumbpuckey. I’m going to wash up!”

“Gus!” Mrs. McGilicuddy yelled. Apparently, she wasn’t required to call him “Old” Gus.

“Ma’am?” Old Gus asked.

“You tried to kill these children?”

“Aw, pantyzippers! I thought they was claim jumpers! No harm done!”

“Is that how you bumped your head?”

Like a scolded child, Old Gus just stared at the floor. “Ma’am.”

“I see.” Mrs. McGilicuddy said nothing more about the matter. “Come in, children. You’re safe now. From evil spirits and grumpy old prospectors.”

Offhandedly, Maximilian noted, “I thought Old Gus said she was old and fat?”

His brother kicked Maximilian in the shin.

“Ow! What you do that for!?”

Stepping inside the cabin, it was just as impressive as the exterior. The woods and rafters all seemed freshly oiled and shiny, like some model home cabin you would see in a catalog of wealthy Colorado estates. Yet, the decor was extremely modest and simple. No extravagant trophy game or paintings on the walls, no other gaudy accoutrements. Just simple furniture and a few decorative American Indian touches. Thank to the minimalism of the design, the home showed simplicity, yet class and style.

Right away, all of the children felt safe and welcome.

As any child can tell you, while all parents tell visitors to make themselves at home, not many of them sincerely want you to feel that way. The McGiliciddy cabin let you know, at this moment in your life, this was exactly where you belonged.

“Sit. Make yourselves comfortable.” Mrs. McGilicuddy gestured to the livingarea furniture.

Old Gus was standing in the corner of the room, looking very displeased that he had to put up houseguests. “Y’all want some viddles? Me wife is just gettin’ me supper ready.”

Mrs. McGilicuddy added, “I wasn’t prepared for guests, but I’m happy to throw on some more steak and potatoes, if you children are hungry.”

“Oh, thank you, ma’am. We have our own food.” Lera motioned to her backpack.

Maximilian wasn’t about to pass up steak and potatoes for a bunch of MRE meal packs. “I’ll have some!”

“Boy, that sounds swell!” Stanley grinned. “If you have enough to go around, that is.”

“Certainly! I’ll fix you each a plate. Lera, there’s some fresh peach tea in the fridge.” Mrs. McGilicuddy motioned to a wooden cabinet in the kitchen. Obviously, her small effort to entice Lera away from her MRE.

Opening the door, the kids were stunned to see a modern refrigerator behind the wood. What was going on? They didn’t travel through time. But this wasn’t some alternate reality either. That was a plain old Whirlpool refrigerator, the same one would find in a hundred thousand other houses, all across the United States.

As Lera began to pour herself some peach tea, the wagonwheel chandelier began to sway all by itself. A low rumble grew louder.

“Quake!” Old Gus announced.

The whole cabin began to shudder.

With the floor vibrating beneath their feet, everyone began to rush for the front door. By the time they reached the porch, the shaking had subsided.

Rolling away from them like a freight train in the night, waves of the earthquake passed lazily across the valley.

Old Gus looked out across the landscape. “Juniper Hills, y’all say?”

“Yes, sir.” Stanley nodded.

“By way of Scarborough Ranch, y’all say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hrm. Well, best get back inside.”

Colton remarked, “Haven’t felt one that big in about a year or two. I bet that was a 4 or a 5.”

Making her way back to the kitchen, Lera noted, “At least it didn’t spill my peach tea!”

§

While the six of them enjoyed a fantastic meal, Stanley looked to Mrs. McGiliciddy, “Ma’am, can I ask a question?”

“Certainly, dear.”

“What is this place? Sheriff Spade talked about Calico Junction and Saddleback County. I’ve never heard of those places. And he said we were ‘Continentals’ and the United States aren’t always the same size and shape. This looks like the Old West, but you have a modern fridge in your kitchen. I just don’t get it.”

Old Gus answered, “There’s nothing to get. Some places just ain’t on maps. Back in 1492, people didn’t have maps of the whole world. We still don’t have ‘em today. Simple as that. ”

Lera held her head, still confused. “This makes no sense. How can there be places that aren’t on a map? Why would people keep whole towns hidden?”

“The world is full of secret places what some folk have no business knowing about.” Old Gus replied.

Colton looked at Mrs. McGilicuddy and told her, “You and Old Gus and Sheriff Spade seem to know all about our part of the world, but we don’t know nothing about yours.”

Between bites, Old Gus set down his knife and fork. With a serious glare, he looked Colton straight in the eye. “Now y’all listen here. Grown-ups always know a lot more than we tell children. That’s why we’re grown-ups. We know things about life and death, about heartbreak and war, about evil and cruelty, and about what goes on behind locked bedroom doors. Every soul that’s seen thirty summers has done seen all sorts of dark corners of the human soul. There ain’t no use in ruining a perfectly good childhood by sharing our knowledge of all the sins of the world. Even a grumpy old coot like me knows better than to do such a thing. We don’t tell y’all everything, because y’all will find out for yerselves in due time.”

Old Gus belched and shoved his belly away from the table, “Fine fixins, missus. Much obliged.”

“You’re welcome, dear.”

Waving his finger, Old Gus directed, “Any y’all need to use the facilities, the outhouse is out the back door. Be sure y’all take a gun, just to be safe.”

“Safe? From what?” Maximilian wondered.

“Aw, pickleberries! Just take a gun if y’all gots to pee! Stop askin’ so many questions!”

Old Gus started to walk upstairs to his bedroom and the children were left at the kitchen table with Mrs. McGilicuddy.

Despite his demands, the children still had many questions.

Peeking around to make sure Old Gus couldn’t hear, Lera asked Mrs. McGilicuddy, “Ma’am? What are sandwolv -”

“- Shhh! Do not speak their name!” Mrs. McGilicuddy covered Lera’s mouth and stared nervously at the windows of the cabin, as if expecting to see something listening. “My people do not speak the names of evil spirits.”

Continuing cautiously, Mrs. McGilicuddy explained, “Since you are young, and you do not know of these things, I will tell you. There are many spirits of devilry on the far frontier. They are still many places in the world where they live and thrive. Children raised in towns, especially Continental towns, are never told of these truths. To keep you safe, they tell you to never go out the distant roads. Never venture into the far places.”

Stanley observed, “But that still doesn’t tell us what they are. Lera shot it right in the face and it kept coming! Then Sheriff Spade shot it with some weird shotgun shells that were sparking blue and it fell down dead.”

Mrs. McGilicuddy, clearly impressed, turned to Lera. “You shot it? You have a warrior soul.”

Defensive, Stanley said, “Well, so did I! But... I was out of ammunition. I tried to shoot it!”

“Yeah, he jumped right in front of me!” Lera noted. A boy would never notice, but any girl could see Lera started to look at Stanley much differently after that moment, and maybe she would blush a little the next time she saw him.

Smiling at his jealousy, Mrs. McGilicuddy said, “A man facing down evil with an empty weapon? To defend his friend? No one would ever question you are a brave warrior as well, young Stanley. Few men would equal your courage.”

That satisfied him, and Stanley grinned.

Lera, proud of him, smiled too.

Answering his question, Mrs. McGilicuddy said, “Sheriff Spade is a paleface with strong medicine. Stronger even than most of my people. That is why he was chosen to vanquish evil in this county. As for what they are, all I can tell you is this, children: There is much evil in this world. Many bad spirits. And devils never appear with horns and tails. They look like people you see everyday. The ones who rush across the plains in whirling dust are as not as dangerous as the ones you pass on the street.”

“Ma’am. Can I ask a question?” Maximilian whispered, still worried Old Gus might hear.

“Certainly, sweetheart.” Mrs. McGilicuddy whispered back and smiled warmly.

“Old Gus said you were old and fat and ornery. But you’re young and pretty and super nice. Why did he say all that about you?”

“Well, Ole Gus had his sweet heart jilted one too many times.”

Maximilian wondered, “What’s jilted?”

“Means his heart was broken. By lots of ladies. Now, if too many women do that, even the kindest men will eventually become grumpy old prospectors. Even ones who never set foot in a desert mine. Now days, Old Gus sees all women as fat, old and ornery, no matter what they look like. Poor fella.”

“What do you see in him?” Lera crinkled her nose.

“He’s still a good man, deep inside. As a woman, you will learn never to trust a ‘nice guy’, but to love a good man when you find one. You just have to know the good is there. ”

“And you have to know the gold is there! I gots me lots of gold!” Old Gus shouted and chuckled from atop the stairs. Although the boys didn’t know it at the time, years later, they would realize Old Gus just taught them far more insights about women than their friendship with Lera ever would.

Mrs. McGilicuddy didn’t deny the accusation of her husband and calmly sipped her tea, “And he has a lot of gold. That is true too.”

§

In less than thirty minutes, all four children had their bedrolls camped out on the hardwood floors in front of a cool hearth. The Sutherland boys were asleep almost instantly.

Although he was exhausted, Stanley wasn’t quite ready to go to bed. He had a promise to keep.

Quietly opening his pack, he grabbed some ammunition and stealthily reloaded his revolvers.

Gazing at the stars out the window, Stanley smiled at the peaceful silence. He imagined, in a place like this, he might hear the lone hoot of an owl, or perhaps the howl of a distant coyote. But the reality of the deep desert was a pristine quiet. Some people might be scared of that, he thought. Funny the strange things people get afraid of in life.

Stanley cherished that kind of stillness. Even at home, laying in bed, he could hear a car go down the street, or the fridge kick on in the kitchen, when he listened real close.

But here?

Here there was nothing. Not even much of a breeze. The loudest sound was his own breathing and a faint snoring from Old Gus.

Old Gus got Stanley thinking about how long he was going to live.

Old people did that to Stanley a lot; made him wonder how old he might grow to be. Stanley never talked about it to anyone, but it was always there in the back of his mind. He would think about how every old man was his age once. There’s a little boy buried deep in the heart of every old geezer. And that just seemed so weird. Stanley thought about all the things he knew and saw and experienced in his twelve short years of life. And here this old man had done all the same kind of things, five or six times over. Stanley just couldn’t imagine all that time. Men like Old Gus were alien beings. Not former children.

Sometimes, he wondered, if that was why so many teenagers were so mean and disrespectful to old people. Were they just mad, because old people reminded them of what they would become? And when you are a teenager, and you feel like you are immortal, you resent the elderly, for reminding you of your inevitable fate?

Once, there was a show Stanley saw on television where an old lady said, kids think old people chose to become elderly, and kids think adults are stupid for making that decision. Her words really scared him, not only because she was right, but worse yet, because the best thing he could hope for in sixty years was to be an old man. He wouldn’t get to keep his 12 year old body for the next sixty years. He’d get old. Just like everybody else.

Get old... or die.

Those are your only two options.

Right?

Not a joyful set of choices.

Sometimes, he had nightmares where he would wake up and he was 40 or 45 years old. And he would panic, wondering what had become of his life. Then, when he would wake up for real, he was still a little kid. He would lay in bed, terrified and thankful he wasn’t really an old man in his forties.

But, those dreams scared him for another reason.

Everytime it happened, he couldn’t help but think, one day, he would be a 45 year old man for real. And when he is 45 for real, he might dream he was still 12. And how painful will it be, when he wakes up from those dreams?

But that night, he was still 12.

And being an old man was a thousand lifetimes away.

Smiling at these hours, he drank in starlight and savored youth.

Then, he pulled out a notebook and a pen. As he was about to start writing, Lera whispered, “What you doing?”

“Huh? Thought you were asleep. Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t. I was just listening to you think.”

Stanley didn’t question her odd statement. He simply explained, “Just writing to Charlotte. She made me promise to tell her everything that happened if we followed her map.”

“Looks like she was right about everything.”

“Yeah. It does, doesn’t it?”

Lera propped up on her elbow. “Funny, when we started, I wished she was with us. Now, I’m glad she didn’t come and get hurt.”

“Yeah. I can’t believe what a day we had.”

“And now we’re staying with the guy who tried to kill us.”

“The sheriff told us we’d be safe.”

“How can we trust some strange sheriff we just met?”

Stanley blinked in the dim glow of the flashlight. Lera’s statement poured icewater down his back and into his socks. “Well, this is a fine time to bring that up.”

“I’m just asking.”

“Sheriff Spade saved our lives.” Stanley whispered, a little louder than he intended.

“True. But maybe they saved us just so they could kidnap us.”

“You with the kidnapping thing, again. Why are you so obsessed with us getting kidnapped?”

Lera was a little surprised. How did Stanley hear her say that a few hours ago? He was too far away. Ignoring those thoughts, she said, “I don’t know. I’m just trying to be careful. I didn’t think you heard me the first time.”

“Well, you drank the peach tea.”

“So?” Lera crinkled her nose, as if Stanley had just gotten bad breath. “What does drinking peach tea have to do with anything?”

“So, you’re still awake. I bet if they were going to kidnap us, they would have drugged us, using something like the tea you were so fast to drink.”

Lera felt a little silly and admitted, “That’s true.”

A brief silence fell between them. But it was not the awkward silence of two strangers. This was the kind of silence that only falls between good friends, not because they have nothing to say, but because they have everything to say, and they are trying to decide which of a thousand things they should say next. Stanley spoke first when he added, “By the way, thanks for earlier. When we were getting chased down the mountain, I mean. You saved all of us.”

“You did too. If you hadn’t made all the Indians stop chasing us to check on Old Gus, they would have just kept on coming.”

“I guess I did, huh?”

“Yeah, you did. Hey, speaking of Old Gus. This is going to sound weird, but, I was thinking. Well... nah, nevermind.”

“What? Come on. Tell me.”

“Well, I was thinking, Old Gus is an old man, right? But, he had to be a little kid once. Just like us.”

“Yeah, so? All old people were little kids once. Duh.” Stanley was a little disturbed by her questioning. Was she really listening to his thoughts? How on earth is she bringing up the exact topic he had been thinking about? Stanley didn’t know if she did read his mind, or if all little boys and girls just think about the same kind of things.

“Do you ever wonder if some people don’t get older?”

“What do you mean?”

Lera shifted, an itch on her side like a prickleberry made her scratch for a moment. “Like, what if God let some people, just, not age. Like if you were a really good person, or if you did something really special to help the world, God would let you live a lot longer.”

“Well, it would be lucky if we were those kind of people.”

“You think? Would you want to stay this age forever?”

“Well, no, I guess not. I mean, if my parents kept getting older, and they died someday, who would take care of me? I’d need to get a job and make a living and no one would hire me if I was 12 years old forever.”

“That’s true. But what if you were older? Like what if you got to 20 or even to 25 and you just stopped getting older? And you stayed there, at that age, forever?”

“Like a vampire?”

“No, silly. I don’t mean you’d be a vampire. Just immortal.”

“I don’t know.” Stanley wondered, “How about you? Would you?”

“No.” Lera didn’t hesitate for a moment to respond. “I wouldn’t. I like the idea of getting old.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I mean, not being old, but getting old, you know? Like you think about all the stuff that gets to happen to you. I mean, look at us right now. The adventures we’re having. I think maybe there are certain adventures life gives you, only at certain ages. When you’re 12, and when you’re 20, and when you’re 40, and when you’re 60. You know? Things happen to people that don’t happen at any other time. Like, I wouldn’t want to just be a 90 year old woman, but I’m looking forward to the journey of getting there. You know what I mean?”

Stanley nodded. He was impressed that someone else actually looked at things the same way he did. And suddenly, he wasn’t so scared of those 40-year-old-man-nightmares anymore. Maybe Lera was right. Maybe there are grand adventures to be had at every stage of life.

Stanley never really talked to anyone about this kind of thing before. Having deep conversations about life is something that warms the hearts of boys and girls alike. For centuries, the world over, boys and girls have spent late nights talking about these types of things. Life. Death. Futures. Dreams. Hopes. But Stanley was still too young to know that. And since this was his first time having such a dialog, he believed they were sharing thoughts and ideas that no boy or girl had ever shared before. That is why children place so much value on these moments; because they always believe they are pioneers of honesty and trust and the first philosophers of the human condition. “Yeah, Lera. I know exactly what you mean.”

Suddenly, a revelation clicked in Stanley’s head. “Oh my gosh!”

“What?”

“Calico Junction!”

“Huh?”

“That’s what the rest of the lettering said! I wanted to check after the Sheriff told me and make sure I was right! I totally forgot.” Stanley scrambled into his pack and found the paper Charlotte had showed him.

CALICO ---C-IO-

-A--L--AC- CO----

“That’s it...” Stanley wrote in the other letters.

CALICO JUNCTION

SADDLEBACK COUNTY

“This is what Charlotte couldn’t translate. It all fits!”

Lera was thrilled for Stanley, but she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She was so tired, the room seemed to wobble. For a moment, she thought it was another earthquake. Then, for a moment, she thought she was in her own bedroom. Inhaling sharp through her nose, she knew she was having microsleep dreams and anything Stanley said, sounded like he was far in the distance.

Lera smiled and shut her eyes. “Boy, I’m tired.”

“Me too.”

“We should go to sleep.” Lera slurred, the words barely escaping her tongue as she faded.

“I will. I still just want to start this letter to Charlotte.”

Lera didn’t respond.

“Lera?... Lera?”

Her breathing slowed, but the smile stayed on her lips.

“G’night, Lera.”

Stanley began to write.

§

Dear Charlotte,...

Chapter 7: The Storm & The Old Mill Log Ride

Full on a delicious breakfast of waffles, bacon and eggs, the quartet of children waved goodbye to Mrs. McGilicuddy as they left her cabin.

Old Gus had set off to his mine before sunrise.

The children didn’t have a chance to thank him.

“I’ll give Old Gus your best.” Mrs. McGilicuddy promised as she stood in the doorway.

“Thanks again!”

“Bye!”

“Thank you, Mrs. McGilicuddy!”

“So long, ma’am!”

With that, the kids headed on their way back home.

As they rode their bicycles back across the valley, they excitedly regaled their adventures. All four of them were thrilled that so much had happened in a single day. They knew they would still have plenty of time to get back to Antelope Campground, and their parents would never find out how far they had gone, and what mischief they had gotten into.

Far off in the distance, south near Juniper Hills, a summer storm was brewing over the mountains. Lightning lit the clouds in purple and gold Rorschach splashes, but the storm was so far away, there was no thunder.

“Look at that.” Stanley pointed.

“Shoot! How far is that?” Colton wondered.

“Pretty far.” Lera estimated, “Thirty miles? Forty?”

“Looks like it’s right over home.”

“Yeah, it does,” nodded Stanley.

“But did it reach Antelope Campground? Our stuff will be soaked.”

Maximilian agreed, “Shoot! You’re right!”

“We left everything in tents. It should be fine.” Stanley observed.

Multiple explosions of lightning fizzled in the sky, revealing depth and boiling dimension to the deep black of the stormclouds. And still the air was silent from thunder, only the occasional banter of two lonesome crows in a Joshua tree.

Lera reasoned, “Nothing we can do about it now. Just get back as soon as we can.”

The silence of the boys proved they all agreed.

By the time they reached the mountain, Lera questioned Stanley, “You sure this is the right way?”

Following her gaze, Stanley said, “You noticed too?”

“Noticed what?” Maximilian wondered.

“Tiretracks. Where are our tiretracks? Footprints? They should still be here. They were in the valley, but they just stop by the mountains.”

“Yeah. Desert footprints are still there a week later. It’s only been a day. All our tracks should still be here.”

“Probably got blown away by the wind.” Colton suggested.

“Wind? What wind? It was still all night.” Stanley replied.

Colton nodded. “Yeah, when we went to bed. But I woke up in the middle of the night and it was howling quite a bit. Wind must have erased our footprints.”

Stanley lifted his hat and scratched, “Well, look. There’s the glory-hole of the mine.” Pointing across the valley, he recalled, “We pretty much stayed north of that, as we came down the mountain. So, as long as we head straight up, and keep north of the mine, we should get back to the wash, then back to the Old Road.”

“Works for me.” Lera agreed.

“Lead on.” Colton replied.

§

Shortly after noon, they had successfully found the wash, but they still didn’t see their tiretracks or footprints. As they followed the pathway, the walls grew higher and deeper. With every step, the kids became more and more unsettled. This wasn’t the proper path. Something was wrong. This didn’t look familiar at all. The walk was starting to feel like one of those nightmares, where you were starting to suspect it was a dream, but you didn’t want to say anything, because the moment you did, you knew something worse would happen.

“I don’t think this is right.” Stanley was the first to confess.

The others cringed. Instead of being comforting, that almost made it worse. Lera, Colton and Maximilian all hoped Stanley knew where he was going. Once he admitted his doubts, they all felt a little more nervous.

A good leader will always lie to boost morale.

Kings and generals have done this since the dawn of time, to bolster the courage of their men. Unfortunately, Stanley hadn’t quite gained the wisdom to deceive his followers for the purpose of consoling them. Instead, Stanley chose to be a little too honest.

“Well, why don’t you look at those maps Charlotte gave you?” Colton suggested.

“Because, dummy, the maps only lead from home to the Old Road, remember? This whole Saddleback County thing, none of it is on the map.”

“This definitely isn’t right.” Lera agreed. “We’ve been walking way too far and these walls are way too high. The wash wasn’t like this yesterday. This has got to be the wrong one. That’s probably why we can’t find our tiretracks. Wind didn’t blow them away. We’ve never been here before.”

“Do we head back?” Maximilian wondered.

“We still going south?” Colton complained, looking skyward.

Stanley had to agree. “Yeah, we should be going south, but I don’t think we are. I can’t tell where the sun is at. If we could climb one of these walls and look.”

“Let’s head back.” Lera said. “At least we can climb back out and see the angle of the sun and figure out if we maybe wandered into the wrong wash or something.”

Stanley knew it was his call. They were counting on him and they would follow his decision. The good news in all of this was they could definitely make it back to Antelope Campground before dark and they would be able to pack up the next morning and go home.

Listening to the silence, Stanley heard a slight trickle of water. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Strangely, it almost seemed to come from inside the walls of the wash itself.

Stanley looked up and down the passage. “Tell you what. We’ve walked about a half mile. Let’s walk another half mile and see if there’s a way out up ahead. If not, we head back. Good idea?”

“Sounds good.”

“Let’s go.”

Stanley started to walk and something stopped him.

The walls of the wash seemed to fall inward. Grow darker.

“Wait...” Stanley froze. “No. We need to head back. Now.”

“What’s wrong?” Lera asked.

“I don’t know. We just... We have to go back.”

Spooked by Stanley’s unexplained fear, they all picked up the pace. As they did so, all of them started to feel it. Whatever had warned Stanley to turn around was now seeping into their bones too. There are moments of danger, instinctive to certain children of the world. Not everyone has a guardian angel to whisper those warnings into your soul, but the children who do have those watchful spirits, learn when to obey their cautions.

“How much further is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Dragging their bikes through the fluffy sand of the wash, a noise bustled ahead. The clip-clop of horseshoes and the clatter of wagonwheels echoed from above.

“What is that?” Colton asked.

“You hear that?” Lera wondered.

“I hear it.” Stanley confirmed.

From twenty feet above, atop the steep sides of the wash, a buckboard appeared, drawn by two horses, and Old Gus peered down into the crevasse.

“What in tarnation ya’ll kids doing down there!?”

“Old Gus!? What are we doing down here? What are you doing up there!?” Stanley shouted.

“I headed to market first thing this morning. Going to the mine now. Now answer me, what ya’ll are doing down there!”

“We were taking the trail back to the Old Road.”

“Trail? Why that ain’t no trail, ya fools! That’s Wilson Wash. And with the way that storm is a brewin’, she’s fixin’ to become Wilson River right quick! Ya’ll better skedaddle outta there or start diggin’ yer graves!”

“What!?”

Old Gus looked back and his eyes grew wide. “Aw, I’ll be a bowlegged elephant! Quick! Back downstream to the ford! Well, c’mon! Get movin’!”

Looking upstream, a frothy snake of water began flowing toward the quartet. Only an inch deep, it ricocheted and rippled back and forth, filling the wash all around them. For those who have never seen a rising flood, an inch of water may not seem like much of a threat. Growing up in the desert, all four of the children knew exactly what a flash flood looked like. In fact, Lera’s uncle lost a truck to one last summer; a story all the kids had heard at least three times over. What starts out as an innocent inch of water will grow into a muddy torrent of debris and rapids within minutes. This shallow water posed little danger, but soon, that inch would become a deadly six feet deep, churning with a force that could split your head open against a boulder; littered with a boiling detritus of logs and branches able to shred your limbs like crackers or spear your heart. They didn’t have much time.

“Oh, no! Run!” Stanley yelled.

The four of them dashed as fast as they could through the sand, dragging their bicycles by the handlebars.

“Faster!” Old Gus yelled from above.

Their thighs burned as they sprinted through the uneven ground. But it was simply too deep and thick, like dry beach sand, and they couldn’t possibly outrun the approaching torrent of water. For a few dozen feet, the children were able to stay ahead of the stream, but it finally ensnared their feet and drenched the surrounding sand.

Once the sand was wet and stiffened, it actually became easier to run. They kept their footing and ran even faster.

“Come on!” Old Gus shouted.

“I think we’re going to make it!” Stanley yelled.

The ford was only a hundred feet away. Old Gus ran his buckboard across the embankment, so the horses pointed out of the wash, ready to gallop out to the river bank.

Waters that covered their shoes suddenly exploded in a new swell slamming the back of their knees.

Maximilian’s legs buckled. He dropped his bike and fell face down in the water.

“Max!” Colton grabbed his little brother and pulled him up.

“My bike!”

“Forget it!”

“Aw, grandmas rosary! Forget all yer bikes and come on!” Old Gus yelled.

The water was up to the tops of their tires and rising. They couldn’t possibly drag the bicycles through the water anymore. Debris swirled in eddies and whirlpools as water rushed over stones and crashed into the walls. As the deluge covered their waists, another wave approached.

Old Gus, aghast, stared in dumbfounded terror behind them.

Without needing to turn around, the children heard the rumble.

“Oh, no.” Stanley held his breath.

A wave five feet high swelled atop the torrent and slammed the kids into the buckboard. Water gurgled around their heads and they went under. Frothing and fizzing with the cacophony of a thousand marbles chortling down a staircase, the roar of power trembled and resonated deep under their skin as they were drenched beneath the waves. Old Gus knocked forward as the fulcrum shattered and his horses panicked. Steeds shot up the embankment, cantering for their lives, dragging Old Gus out of the ford, as the buckboard lifted off the ground and floated down Wilson River.

Gasping for air, scrambling to get aboard the wagon, Stanley gripped the wet rail. He hoisted Lera and Colton up with him, as Colton grabbed hold of Maximilian.

Wilson River grew faster and deeper by the second, the deluge of flash flood waters rising and churning, turning the buckboard into a whitewater raft. Kids bounced ragdoll flails off the timbers as a wagonwheel ricocheted off an underwater boulder and shattered into kindling.

For a second, the chaos of the rapids subsided, and the four assessed their mangled and saturated selves.

“Old Gus,” Stanley choked, “where’s Old Gus?”

“Did he drown?” Lera wiped wet hair out of her face, gasping.

“No. I think he’s okay.” Maximilian reported.

“Where is he?” Colton barely had a voice.

“His horses. I saw his horses drag him out.” Maximilian coughed.

“You sure he m - UGH!”

Before Lera could finish her question, the buckboard violently slammed a rapid and spun.

Regaining their bearings, Maximilian shook his head, cursing with an Old Gus euphemism, “Aw, pickleberries!”

Two tributary washes raged into the river, tripling the width of the banks, doubling the size of the whitewater, and conjuring a maelstrom of muddy Charybdis pools and violent wakes.

Barely floating and constantly threatening to plunge under the whitecaps, the buckboard barely kept the children out of the raging rapids. Stones slammed into the wood, fluttering floorboards and threatening to snap them like twigs.

“Stay on top! Don’t fall in the water!” Lera ordered.

The boys knew, just as she did, an arm or a leg wedged between those rocks would crack like a pencil, while a rib would splinter easier than an eggshell.

Ahead, the water streaked faster and faster as a giant hydraulic, big enough to upend a schoolbus, bellowed and roared.

“Turn! Turn!” Stanley yelled.

Desperately trying to paddle the buckboard straight, Colton assisted, “Turn! We can’t hit it sideways!”

Stanley and Colton had gone whitewater rafting for the first time, only a few weeks ago, with their fathers. They learned on their trip, the worst thing you could do was to hit a hydraulic sideways. You had to drive into a hydraulic head first, and power through as fast as possible. If you lumbered slowly, falling in sideways, it would flip a raft fast as a coin toss.

Lera started to paddle.

Maximilian did his best to help.

But it was no use.

The buckboard dragged down the slope of water sideways and whipped into an impossible angle the second it hit the churning whitewater. Within seconds, all four kids were laying in a heap as the upended raft began to tumble. Instinctively, Lera and Stanley both jumped as hard as they could onto the raising side of the buckboard. The force of their impact righted their makeshift boat, breaking them free from the grip of the hydraulic, saving the buckboard from flipping upside down.

Drenched from the showering rapids, Stanley and Lera saw Colton crumpled on the other side of the buckboard, which was now filled with more water than ever.

“Max. Where’s Max!?” Stanley shouted.

Colton scrambled to his feet and looked around.

The three children frantically scanned the water.

“MAX!”

“MAX, WHERE ARE YOU!?”

“MAX!”

Swirling from behind a rock, Maximilian swam toward them. “Here! Help! I’m over here!”

“Grab my feet!” Colton announced.

Colton dove in for this little brother as Lera grabbed his feet and Stanley held Lera.

Stanley looked up. “Guys! Hurry up! The rapids are huge!”

The water flowed faster and faster, the entire river starting to plunge down steeper angles of the mountainous desert. They had seconds before Maximilian would get swept into the violent rapids.

“Hurry, Max! Grab my hand!”

Colton reached his brother and Stanley began to pull Lera back in. The moment she was aboard, Lera and Stanley both helped the Sutherland boys as a bucking rapid knocked them all over.

The kids screamed as their wagon tumbled down massive swirls and rapids, flying airborne over boiling whitecaps and slamming down into hollows of exploding water. Brutally and mercilessly, the river pounded them for miles, never relenting, never calming enough for them to find their bearing. They were tousled about, slamming a shoulder into the deck, gagging on a wave breaking over the side, blinded by spray in their eyes.

Just when they thought it would never end, the wagon stopped dead against a massive boulder the size of a house.

Momentarily relieved, the kids all smiled.

In the next second, the river began to push the wagon up the boulder and flipped the children into the river. As they washed around the rock, a waterfall growled dead ahead.

“No!”

“Ahhhhhh!”

“Hellllllllllp!”

Crying in absolute terror, the children plummeted over the precipice and flailed through the air before landing in deep green water, fifteen feet below.

Screams and jet engine water muted to silence as they dove far under the surface. Disoriented, each of them clawed to find the sky and gasp for air. As each of their heads popped up from the pool, calm waters eased over to the embankment. With their last ounces of strength, the quartet swam to the shore.

§

Collapsing on a rock, Stanley panted for breath. “Well... I guess... the waterfall... wasn’t so tall... after all.”

Lera crawled onto the mud and dropped like a heavy sack.

“Is everybody okay?” Stanley asked.

Maximilian flopped into his back in the sand. “I feel like I just got beat up by Paul Gerowski.”

Colton just sat on a rock, rubbing his shoulder. All he could say was to repeatedly groan, “Oh, God. Ugh, God. Aw, man. Whew. Oh. God.”

“I’m good.” Lera mumbled.

Now that they were safe on the shoreline, the hush from the waterfall had become comforting and relaxing, instead of a nightmarish threat. A hundred feet downstream, an old millwheel paddled in the water, creaking and chattering in baritone timber rumbles.

As the warm desert sun gently began to dry their clothes, all four of them sat in silence, trying to catch their breath.

Stanley felt his racing heartrate slow and his mind began to wander. This was just great. Great. Now what were they going to do?

Thinking of his bicycle, Stanley almost started to cry.

He loved that bike.

He mowed laws all last summer, so he could pay for half the cost. Now it was gone. Covered in sand at the bottom of God-knows-where in the wash. If he had been alone, he probably would have cried. But he didn’t want to seem like a sissy in front of his friends. And especially not in front of Lera.

But, all of them lost their bikes too.

So, he didn’t dare want to complain.

Lera was rich. Her parents would probably just replace hers. But the boys couldn’t get brand new top-of-the-line BMX bikes so easily.

Lera was grateful for the cool of the breeze. The last day and a half had taken their toll and she was so worn out from the heat. The cool mud and water-logged jeans felt great as she dried in the sun. Closing her eyes, she counted each breath, grateful to be alive. As air flowed in and out of her chest, she drew longer and deeper gulps of wind, savoring the tingle as she felt the depths of her lungs expand. Unable to control herself, lips kept curling into a smile. All she could think about was that one day, this sweet feeling would end. One day, she would draw in her final breath.

But it was not this day.

Not in this river.

Not at this hour.

Today, she was alive. Gloriously, blissfully, gleefully alive, and every breath, every ounce of air, was a blessing.

Much like Stanley, Maximilian just missed his bike.

He was scared about what they were going to tell their parents.

How would they explain losing their bicycles?

They couldn’t hide their inappropriately-far hike into God-knows-where now. Their parents were going to find out for sure.

Colton was worried about resolving their situation far more than the others. Groaning, he asked, “Oh, man. How we going to get home now? We can’t walk. We must be 40, 50 miles from home! That will take days to walk. We can’t call anyone! There’s no phones. We can’t get a ride! We’re going to be in so much trouble! What are we going to do?”

No one answered him.

Stanley stood up, and waded out into the pool, retrieving his floating hat.

Lera got to her feet and ruffled her hair.

Maximilian sat quiet. He squished water, as he stomped his shoes, back and forth.

Despite all they had just experienced, they were surprisingly relaxed. Each of them knew they wouldn’t accomplish much by falling into a panic. They needed to remain calm. Rational. Think things through. They were all scared, but they were also smart enough to know, giving into that fear would only get them into a more dire situation.

“Well?” Colton demanded.

“We still have plenty of food and water.” Lera noted as she removed her soggy backpack.

Stanley checked his revolvers. “Ammo is probably no good. Everybody reload. Just in case.” He dumped the wet cartridges into a spare pocket on his pack and reloaded from the waterproof case.

“What do we do now?” Lera asked, cocking her reloaded lever gun.

“Colton is right.” Stanley said, “We have no idea where we are. We are totally lost. We have no transportation. But, on the bright side, Lera is right too. It’s still early in the day, we have food, we have water, we are armed. So, for now, we start by going to that millhouse downstream and seeing if anyone there can help us. Let’s hike up and see if we can’t find a road taking us there.”

Colton repeated, “We’re like 50 miles from home! We can’t walk home!”

Stanley stayed relaxed and didn’t yell back. “What do you propose we do? Just sit here and listen to the waterfall all day? Hope a helicopter rescue team arrives?”

Colton nodded. “Yeah, actually. Lera just said we have plenty of food. Don’t they always say when you get lost, just stay put until help arrives?”

Stanley explained, “No one knows we are here, genius! Our parents think we’re 50 miles away at Antelope Campground. Even if our parents freak out and call the cops to send out search parties, no one is going to be looking for us in Saddleback County.”

Maximilian agreed and put a gentle hand on Colton’s shoulder. “He’s right, you know.”

Colton thought about it, but he was smart enough that he didn’t need to think for long. “Yeah. Of course. You’re right. That was stupid of me. Let’s go to the mill. Makes sense.”

Stanley put his arm around Colton’s shoulder and started to walk him up the bank.

“You owe us all new bikes.” Colton chided.

“Oh, I knew you were going to blame me for that!”

“This whole trip was your idea! You lead us into the wash!”

“I didn’t make it rain! I didn’t make the flood! I lost my bike too!”

“Boys!” Lera yelled.

They all fell silent.

Reaching the top of the bank, a dirt road lay thirty feet away, and snaked through the boulders toward the mill.

Triumphant, Stanley smiled, “Ha! See!? Told you! A road to the mill! I was right.”

“Oh, so you got the one thing right in the last two days?”

“Shut up!”

Still soggy, the four hiked up the road. The terrain was enchanting with sandstone waving in sweeping arches and granite piled in steep clusters. Wet footprints sloshed and turned what would have been puffs of dust into tiny pools of mud that evaporated seconds after each footfall created it.

Rounding the final bend in the road, the rocks seemed to pull back like a giant theatre curtain, revealing not just the storefront of the mill, but an entire townscape.

Just after the road exited the stones, it was flanked by timbers which towered an arch twenty feet over the path. Massive bison skulls and wagon wheel totems crowned the pillars. Across the face of the wooden arch, carved in weathered old saloon lettering, read two words.

CALICO JUNCTION

Chapter 8: The Road To Calico Junction

“Oh, no.” Stanley groaned.

Lera wrinkled her lower lip. “Uh. Didn’t Sheriff Spade specifically tell us not to come here?”

“Yeah. He sure did.” Colton nodded.

The four stopped just before the massive sign.

They looked back up the road.

They looked at each other.

Finally, Stanley said, “We got no other choice.”

Lera shrugged, put her arm around Stanley’s shoulders and started marching him into town.

The Sutherland boys followed.

Calico Junction didn’t look like any Old West town the kids had ever seen before. All the towns they saw in the movies, or on television shows, were just two rows of buildings, framing a main street. Lera had even visited a few real ghost-towns out in the desert, with her family, and they looked just the same. Bland. Plain. Unimpressive.

Seeing Calico Junction left the kids in awe. The town sprawled across a gentle valley as it climbed up hillsides with mines and hotels and water towers and stables. Roadways meandered around boulders and rocky crags, leading to a saloon, winding down to a bank, and rising up to a church on a plateau.

A shrill and disturbing howl groaned from within the town.

“What. Was. That?” Colton froze.

“I have no idea.” Lera responded.

Oddly, few of the townsfolk appeared disturbed by the eerie noise. They simply went about their business. Didn’t any of them hear it? Was that noise a common thing? Why didn’t they seem to react?

Their lack of fear allowed the kids to continue walking.

“Let’s go.”

Townsfolk wandered the street, dressed in strange clothing.

They didn’t quite look like they were from the Old West. But they didn’t dress like people the kids had ever seen before either. Colton thought they looked like Civil War actors or some kind of sideshow cowboys. Their clothing had a pioneer and frontier flavor, but they didn’t look as dusty or unkempt as the movies portrayed that time period. In fact, thanks to their small camping packs, firearms and matted wet clothes, the four kids looked like disheveled Hollywood cowboys even more than the residents of Calico Junction.

Despite their somewhat modern clothing, there wasn’t a single car or truck on the roads. Stagecoaches, horses and buckboard wagons still rattled through town as if the city were two hundred years in the past. The buildings themselves were beautifully preserved and although you could tell they were very old, they were also very well kept. The fine woods had remained oiled in the harsh desert sun and signs were painted and vibrant. Walking through Calico Junction was like walking through Frontier Town in Disneyland, if Frontier Town was twenty times bigger and built upon the hills of a shallow valley.

Up the hillside, upon the grounds of the church, a glorious hot air balloon, its canvas striped in yellows and reds, slowly billowed to life. Unlike modern airships, this one was netted in black and the canvas was faded denims like the balloons used centuries ago.

The children were so enamored by the wondrous look of the town, they forgot all about stopping at the old mill for help, and just kept on walking, taking in the sights.

As they passed the town hall, they spotted a hangman gallows erected in the square, parked before the building staircase. Wheeled and strapped to huge Clydesdale horses, the gallows was obviously brought in that afternoon, for some special event. Everything about the gallows was gargantuan. The beams and superstructure had layers of massive logs bound together. The noose itself was thick as the arm of a grown man, looking like the mooring lines of a battleship, not the hangman rope for an ordinary criminal. Most of the meandering townfolk were headed to gather there.

“I bet the sheriff is here for the hanging.” Stanley noted.

“You think they’re really going to hang somebody!? In public?” Lera asked in shock.

Stanley replied, “Of course. Public hangings were a thing back on the frontier. And I think that’s still where we are.”

“And I think you’re right. The local sheriff will definitely be around for that sort of thing.” Colton noted.

None of them wanted to run into Sheriff Spade again.

“Maybe we should head back to the mill on the edge of town.” Maximilian suggested.

The others realized walking deeper into town was a huge mistake and would make it far more likely they would get caught.

Maximilian was right.

“Yeah. Let’s go.” Stanley agreed.

They quickly picked up their pace.

From up the hill, the creepy noise came again, louder this time. The four kids jumped at the sound right above them.

“Well, well.” A deep, familiar voice spoke from the hillside over their heads.

The kids shoulders tensed. They dared not face him.

“Holloway, McKinney, and Sutherland. Y’all sound like a law firm. Didn’t I tell y’all to head right home? Didn’t I tell y’all not to come here? Looks like I need to arrest y’all for trespassing!”

Turning around, the children cringed as Sheriff Spade stood in the doorway of a building with a giant JAIL sign over the porch.

“But, sir, walking down the street isn’t trespassing.” Stanley corrected.

Sheriff Spade thwacked his hat against the porchpost. “Now y’all definitely sound like a law firm. Get yer behinds in here this minute, before I hide ‘em right where y’all stand!”

With that, Sheriff Spade vanished inside the doorway.

The four kids ran up the roadway and into the building as fast as they could. Immediately upon crossing the threshold, they heard a massive bang and a repeat of the horrific scream they had been hearing echoed from deep in the jailcells.

“Dang it, Roy!” Sheriff Spade yelled from inside his office. “You can’t keep that darn thing quiet, take it over to the gallows right now!”

At the front entrance was a secretary desk. The placard read “Mrs. Prasek” and the moment you saw the white-haired grandmother sitting at her chair, you knew she made the best apple cobbler in town. Smiling at the children, she whispered, “Don’t fret the Sheriff, he’s havin’ a bit of a spell today.”

“What was that Bernadette!?” Sheriff Spade angrily shouted.

“I say don’t the Sheriff look swell today!?”

From down the hall, a young man, much younger than the Sheriff, wearing a Deputy badge, scrambled into the room. “Yes! Yes, sir, Sheriff. Right away, Sheriff! I just need the big key.”

As Deputy Roy stumbled past the children, he tipped his hat and said, “Excuse me. Pardon me.” Then, he grabbed a large iron key hanging on the wall, and ran back down the hall, as the terrible growl sounded again.

Mrs. Prasek motioned the kids to go into Sheriff Spade’s office.

As the quartet walked across the lobby, her eyelid twitching with fear, Lera looked down the hall. “What keeps making that horrible noise!?”

Outside, a flurry of horses hooves could be heard running up to the sheriff station. Clouds of dust puffed into the doorway.

Sheriff Spade looked at the children and said, “Before y’all tell me why y’all disobeyed me, and did not head home, would y’all care to tell me why in blazes y’all are drippin’ wet all over my floor?”

“I can explain everything, Sheriff -”

Before Stanley could begin, Old Gus came bursting into the room, screaming, “Sheriff! The kids! Flash flood swept ‘em away in Wilson River and -” His eyes adjusting from the sun, Old Gus noticed the children for the first time, and snorted, “Well, I’ll be a nun’s old socks! Y’all ain’t dead!”

“No, sir.” Stanley grinned.

Lera and Maximilian both ran over to Old Gus and hugged him. “Old Gus! You saved us! If it wasn’t for you and your wagon, we probably would have drowned.”

“Thanks, Old Gus.” Colton said.

Old Gus fussed, “Oh, now gets off of me! Yer wetter than a sack of drowned cats! Y’all lost me a perfectly fine buckboard and four sacks of groceries, is what y’all done!”

Sheriff Spade chided, “Old prospector, ya gots enough money to buy ten buckboards, three general stores, and still have enough in the till to buy the whole town five times over. Now y’all survived a flood, and I see yer horses are safe, so I’d say that’s as good as any man can ask for. I’m sure Mr. Stater would bag y’all some new groceries, and Mr. Becka would sell y’all a new buckboard. By the time y’all pull up in front of the general store, Mr. Stater would have yer bags ready to go.”

Old Gus shrugged and looked at the kids. “Aw, cherrypits! He’s right. Don’t worry. That was me only buckboard, but I can get a new one.”

“Rich man like you should have a fancy stagecoach.” Stanley joked.

“Bah! Waste of money! I’m rich because I don’t be spending it on nonsense like superfluous stagecoaches! Besides, I have me dead wife’s fancy old stagecoach at home.”

Although not a soul said a word about it, everyone in the room found themselves amused at the odd, yet appropriate, use of a word like “superfluous” from a grumpy old prospector.

“Dead wife? We just met your wife!” Colton said.

“The good Lord blessed me by takin’ one, then cursed me with a replacement.” Old Gus laughed at his own joke.

Upset by his disparaging remarks, Lera squared her shoulders and pointed a finger at Old Gus. “Listen. Your wife is a good woman and she loves you very much. You shouldn’t talk about her like that.”

“Loves me? Ha! Gold, sweetheart. She loves me gold.”

Sheriff Spade agreed with Old Gus and said, “Yer just a little girl, Lera. Girls yer age love boys. When y’all get to be a womanly age, like Mrs. McGilicuddy, y’all love gold more.”

Lera, indignant at being belittled, but having no idea how to reply, conceded angrily, “Well, fine. Maybe it’s the gold then!”

Glancing over at Stanley, Lera hoped he would never see women the way Old Gus and Sheriff Spade saw them. Then, she worried the old men might be right, and she hoped she’d never become a woman like Mrs. McGilicuddy.

“Havin’ lady bits don’t guarantee a woman will behave like a lady, Miss McKinney, just like havin’ man parts don’t promise a boy is a gentleman.” Tipping his hat to Old Gus, Sheriff Spade said, “Good day, Mr. McGilicuddy. Thank y’all for stopping by to let me know the children were in danger.”

“Thanks for looking out for us, Old Gus.” Stanley smiled.

“Aw, squirrelbutts!” Old Gus turned, squared his hat, and marched out the door into the street.

Stanley looked back at Sheriff Spade and said, “So, you see? It all happened just like Old Gus said. We didn’t mean to come here. It was an accident. We got swept up in a flash flood in, what did he call it?”

“Wilson Wash.” Lera offered.

“Yeah. In Wilson Wash, and that’s why we’re all wet, and how we ended up in Calico Junction.”

The other kids nodded and voiced their affirmation.

“Yes, sir, sheriff.”

“That’s right.”

“Yes, sir. That’s the truth. We didn’t mean to disobey you. We tried to go home right away, just like you told us.”

Stanley added, “But now we’re stuck. Because we’re like 50 miles from home and we lost our bikes in the flood.”

Sheriff Spade was leaned back in his chair, listening.

He didn’t say a word.

He just sat there.

His jaw clenched and breathing heavy through his nose.

Finally, stroking his beard, he just grunted, “Mm, hrm.”

Stanley looked at this friends. They all stared back. No one was quite sure how to break the awkward silence.

Finally, Sheriff Spade simply said, “I see.”

Truth be told, that didn’t help at all. In fact, it was probably more awkward than the silence, because none of the kids knew how to respond to a noncommittal “I see” they were not expecting.

The hideous roars from the jail cell shifted from the hallway to the rear of the building and were now muffled out in front to the jailhouse.

Sheriff Spade sat up from his desk and walked over to the porch.

The children stood in his office, unsure of what to do next.

“Deputy Roy! Hold up, there!” Sheriff Spade started to walk down to the street.

The children ran out to the porch to see what was going on.

An armored stagecoach, pulled by four horses, was parked in from of the jail. The side was painted with the lettering:

SADDLEBACK COUNTY SHERIFF

Although the children were unable to see what was inside the tiny barred windows, the blood-chilling roar echoed from inside, reverberating off the steel walls like a kettle drum and sounding more terrifying for the metallic crescendo. Massive weight pounded the stagecoach walls from within. The metal held fast, but one had the impression the stagecoach could only sustain a few such blows, before the thick steel plates began to buckle.

Sunlight peeked into the bars and for a moment, the children saw a hairy limb move past the window.

Sheriff Spade peered into the bars. “Deputy Roy! Fetch me my notebook, please.”

Deputy Roy, one of two deputies driving the stagecoach, quickly climbed down from his seat. “Yes, sir, Sheriff!”

Deputy Roy excused himself as he rushed past the children, ran into the jailhouse, and retrieved a pen and notebook for the sheriff.

“Toss it here!” Sheriff Spade called out. Deputy Roy flung the journal off the porch and Sheriff Spade caught it. He untied a strap, peered into the stagecoach window, and jotted down notes.

Before he could run back down to the driver’s seat, Stanley asked Deputy Roy, “Deputy? Who is in there?”

Scratching the back of his head, Deputy Roy explained, “Not a who. A what.”

“What?” Lera asked.

“Yes, ma’am. That there is a yuccaman.”

“What’s a yuccaman?” Maximilian asked.

Deputy Roy noted, “Ya’ll must be the Continental kids. Thought the Sheriff said he sent ya’ll home.”

“Long story.” Stanley noted.

Deputy Roy clarified, “Yuccaman is a Sasquatch what lives in the desert. Dumb, no good monsters. Vermin like a coyote. Just kill livestock. Destroy property. They ain’t good for nothin’. Even drink up outhouse water.”

“Drink outhouse water!?” Lera squealed in disgust.

“Yes, ma’am. Spit it back in through your bedroom window too. Why the young Westfall couple had it happen on their nuptial night! I hear tell the missus wedding dress is still soiled after three washings, bless her heart.”

“What is Sheriff Spade writing down? In that notebook?” Stanley asked.

Deputy Roy smiled proudly, “Oh, that? That’s for his new book. Sheriff Jedediah Spade’s Catalog of Netherworld Monstrosities. Second Edition, in fact. First one sold out right quick.”

“The Sheriff is writing a book about yuccamen?”

“Oh, not just yuccamen. The book is about all sorts of evil creatures. Sheriff Spade has a certain knack for hunting ‘em down and getting rid of ‘em. What with all the folk on the frontier, and around Saddleback County, who might not know the secret to wiping out these beasts, the good Sheriff authored this manual to educate men on how to kill the monsters.”

The children were dumbfounded not only by the need for such a book, but by the weird way Deputy Roy described it. Who on earth talks like that?

From across the street, a bespectacled, balding man came running out of a building labeled CARTOGRAPHER.

Sheriff Spade, finished with his last notes on the yuccaman, stopped the cartographer. “Mr. Gotch. I thought y’all left already.”

“No, sir, Sheriff. Running a little behind today.”

“Can y’all do me a favor?” Sheriff Spade shielded his eyes to look up the hillside at the hot air balloon, which was now almost entirely inflated, “When y’all get up to altitude, check out yonder by Wilson Wash for me first. Drop a note down right away. Tell me what y’all find.”

“Sure thing, Sheriff. I can do that.”

“Good man, Mr. Gotch.”

Mr. Gotch nodded and scurried up the road toward the church.

Sheriff Spade called out, “And Red Rover Gorge! Gimmie an update on that too!”

“Will do, Sheriff!” Mr. Gotch yelled back.

“This town is amazing.” Lera noted. Before anyone could react to her statement, the Sheriff took control again.

“Deputy Roy! Let’s get this show on the road!” Sheriff Spade called out.

“Yes, sir, Sheriff.” Deputy Roy tipped his hat to the children and quickly responded to Lera and he trotted down the steps.

“Well, Calico Junction is the junction of two towns. Up that side of the mountain was Crandall Springs, up that side was Willow Hill. As each town got a little bigger, the folks in each town decided to become one. Didn’t seem fair to the other town to keep one of the old names, so they made up a new one. Calico Junction.”

With his brief history lesson complete, Deputy Roy shook the reigns and the stagecoach was off to the gallows.

Sheriff Spade, standing alone in the middle of the street, looked up at the children. “Walk with me, kids.”

§

Reaching the bustling town square, Sheriff Spade had the children wait at the back of the crowd. “Y’all stay here. I needs to do me civic duty, then I’ll be back for y’all. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Sutherland brothers nodded affirmative.

The stagecoach was parked behind the gallows. From atop the platform, a man in a top hat shouted, “Ladies and gentlemen.”

The crowd continued to speak, ignoring the man.

“Uh... ladies and gentlemen!”

Still no one quieted.

Sheriff Spade walked up to the side of the gallows, drew his pistol, and fired a single shot into the air.

The crowd instantly fell silent.

Clearing his throat, the man in the top hat said, “Much obliged, Sheriff. Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans, as mayor of Calico Junction, it gives me great pride to announce we are gathered here today to witness the public hanging of a low-down, yellow-bellied, gutless-heathen, netherworld-monstrosity, and probably-a-communist, yuccaman!” The crowd whooped and howled with cheers as the man continued, “Courtesy of the bravest lawman in Saddleback County, Mr. Sheriff Jedediah Spade!”

Everyone clapped and cheered as the man in the top hat stepped aside and Sheriff Spade stood front and center. “Thanks for that, Mayor Trump. Ya’ll know me to be a man a few words. So, I won’t disappoint ya’ll this afternoon.” Glancing over his shoulder, Sheriff Spade looked at his deputies. “Boys! Kill it!”

On cue, the enormous noose dropped through a trapdoor in the roof of the stagecoach. The deputies jammed cattle prods through the barred windows and struggled to maneuver the noose.

“It’s on!” Deputy Roy shouted.

Pulling securing pins from the corners of the stagecoach, the four walls dropped, revealing the monster inside. Roaring louder than ever, it lunged forward at the crowd, only to be yanked backward by the tightening noose. The audience shrieked.

Standing at least twelve feet tall, the yuccaman looked like a grizzly bear crossed with a tarantula. Long and eerily spindly legs and arms, wriggled from a massive and muscled torso. While the body and clawed paws were covered in rank black fur, the limbs were hairless and sickly pale. The head of the monster was twice the size of a bull and looked like a bulldog burned in a fire.

Lera screamed and ducked behind Stanley. Colton and Maximilian cowered by a wall. None of them had ever seen a weirder or more dangerous-looking animal.

As the yuccaman screeched another defiant roar, the floor dropped out from under it. The astounding weight of the fiend made it plummet in a blur. Instantly, the neck of the beast cracked with the sound of glacial ice breaking into the sea.

The evil roar stopped immediately.

Cheering, the crowd threw hats in the air, and everyone celebrated the defeat of the beast which had been terrorizing Calico Junction for weeks.

Lera found herself particularly disturbed by the whole event. Not because she felt pity for the monster or anything as ludicrous as that, but because she was so unsettled by the fact it existed at all. Why was something so foul permitted to be a part of the world in the first place? There seemed to be something truly evil about unleashing such an ignorant and loathsome being unto the earth.

As these thoughts were running through her mind, Maximilian fainted and collapsed like a sack of sand.

§

Sacks of sand were unknotted from the hot air balloon as Mr. Gotch rose above the town of Calico Junction. While the shrinking flurry of the town was celebrating the end of a monster, Mr. Gotch was preoccupied with the ranchland he had just procured.

Of all the days Mr. Gotch soared over this land, today was different. Today, part of it was his.

What an odd thing, he thought, to own a bit of the earth.

By what authority was it his?

He never imagined buying land would throw him into an existentialist crisis.

God. Man. Generations. Time.

Ah, yes. Time.

Owning land made him reflect upon time more than anything.

The Earth has spun in the vast and empty dark of space for billions of years. And now, he owned a chunk of that dust, orbiting the sun.

Says who?

Mr. Gotch had signed piles of paperwork and written a check for many thousands of dollars.

Thanks to those actions, there are now files collected in a far-off building which tell certain people, “This man owns these square feet of the desert.”

And perhaps that is what made it the strangest of all.

Owning pure and raw desert. Desert that had never changed. Desert that, but for a dirt road or two, looked exactly the same today as it did 100 years ago. 500 years ago. Just the same as 1000 years ago. For the desert was like the moon. Footprints, for wont of wind, remained etched in sand like astronaut boots upon the Sea of Tranquility. Ravens rode the breeze, their wings whisking the air in strange whispers from a hundred feet off, so silent the day, you could hear their hush like seashell waves. Jackrabbits darted tan bolts of lightning, zig zagging between the chaparral in fluffy storms of fear and speed. Curious squirrels, with frazzled chipmunk tails, scurried and paused, scurried and paused, under rocks and brush. So it went on each day for centuries. Unchanging. Serene. Idyllic.

Who was Mr. Gotch, to now lay claim to owning a parcel of nature herself and the harmony of centuries?

But he did.

That distant square was his. His place. His land.

And now the day felt different.

Walking his land from corner to corner, earlier that day, Mr. Gotch inspected the perimeter of his property. Strange to trace these imaginary lines.

“This bush is yours. That one is not.”

Why?

Says who?

Ah, yes, the papers. The paperwork. The old men with the files. They say. They make the decision.

Everything west of this imaginary line belongs to Mr. Johnston. Everything east belongs to Mr. Smith.

As a cartographer, Mr. Gotch is the one responsible for drawing those pretend lines. But standing upon that sand, flying above it, there are no lines. There may be lines on the papers, but do the old men know there are no lines on the land?

Mr. Gotch wasn’t sure why he visualized the file clerks as old men. How else could anyone see them?

Yes. Yes, they must be old men. Wizened by knowledge of plot lines and parcel numbers and filing and knowing which man owns which bit of the planet. The planet which existed far before those men were born and will exist long after they die.

Owning a chunk of nature - never is a man made more cognizant of his own mortality than when he takes possession of something far older than himself.

Who possessed this before him?

Who will possess it after?

All Mr. Gotch could think about was the transient nature of his life.

Out there alone, in that opulent quiet, in a silence vast as the moment after the restful Sunday sigh of God, Mr. Gotch found himself unsettled by the brief flash of decades which would mark the duration of his life.

Sooner or later, all human beings, usually from a very young age, all come to that identical and profound realization.

We all find ourselves mourning the finite hourglass of our lifespan.

“Mr. Gotch?” The voice of his assistant broke his daydream spell. “Y’all wanted me to give a reminder about Wilson Wash when we reached altitude.”

“Oh! Yes. Of course. Thank you, Michael.” Mr. Gotch adjusted spectacles and gazed out in the appropriate direction.

Checking again with a spyglass, Mr. Gotch said, “Well, I’ll be.” Quickly peeking over his shoulder, he said, “Michael. Take down these notes, then drop them down the tether rope for Sheriff Spade.”

§

Sheriff Spade reached out his hand toward Stanley. “Canteen.”

Stanley handed it over and Sheriff Spade splashed water in Maximilian’s face. With a snort and a little kerfuffle, Maximilian shook his head back awake.

“Y’all okay, boy?” Sheriff Spade asked.

Maximilian, never having fainted before, was a bit too stunned to speak. Disoriented and confused, poor Maximilian had no idea what happened. He remembered being freaked out by the dying yuccaman, then the next thing he knows, he’s waking up on the ground, with a bunch of water splashed in his face. “I think so.”

“Let’s get y’all to some shade.” Sheriff Spade hoisted Maximilian to his feet and had Stanley and Colton help the young boy back to the office.

§

Gathered back at the jailhouse lobby, finishing their last forkfulls of apple cobbler, Lera turned to Mrs. Prasek, “Thank you, ma’am. That was delicious.”

“Yes, ma’am! Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Prasek.”

“Thanks, ma’am.”

“Oh, y’all are welcome. I’m glad y’all liked it.” Hastily clearing their plates, Mrs. Prasek whispered, “Don’t tell the deputies I gave y’all the last slices or they’ll have a fit!”

Sheriff Spade appeared at the doorway of his office. “Y’all feeling better now?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Maximilian nodded.

“Why don’t y’all step into my office?”

Once they were all in front of his desk, Sheriff Spade leaned back in his chair and proclaimed, “Now, we need to get y’all back home. And seeing as y’all can’t seem to get home by yer lonesome, I’ll take y’all myself. But, according to Mr. Gotch, it looks like there’s no going back the way y’all came. We’ll have to take the train to Red Rover Gorge and get y’all back by river. The train don’t run again ‘til morning, so y’all be staying out at my homestead this evening. Can’t seem to keep an eye on yerselves without gettin’ chased by injuns, sandwolves or darn-near drowning in floods, so I’m lookin’ out for ya, until y’all get back where y’all belong. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you for your help, sir.”

“Yeah, thank you sheriff.”

Maximilian was the only one brave enough to ask what they were all thinking, “But, yesterday, I thought you said it was dangerous to have us go with you, so that was why you had us stay with Old Gus.”

“Dangerous to travel after dark. Before that, y’all will be fine.”

“Oh.”

Sheriff Spade slapped his thigh and got back to his feet. “Well, let’s get fixin’ to get ready. We head out now, we’ll get our keesters back to the homestead before nightfall.”

Chapter 9: Daphne & The Spade Homestead

Lera called shotgun on Sheriff Spade’s stagecoach, and she got the post, because she was the only one who actually had one.

Stanley and the Sutherland boys rode inside, enjoying their first opportunity in days to sit on velvet cushioned seats and relax. The rough motion of wood and steel wagonwheels, bouncing along dirt roads, was far from comfortable, and they enjoyed far less rest than they were hoping.

What the ride may have lacked in physical comfort it more than made up for in making them feel safe. After all their perilous adventures, all four of them were eager to get back home. Being with Sheriff Spade made them feel like such a destination was finally an attainable reality.

The metronome of horse hooves lulled along the lazy road as a small plume of dust shimmered behind them on the trail. No longer trying to figure out which direction they were headed, no longer needing to keep track of every twist and turn in the road, or follow the track of the sun, Stanley eased his mind and shut his eyes.

Colton and Maximilian enjoyed the view and talked of small things that young brothers discuss. Things that meant nothing whatsoever, but meant everything at the time.

Lera found her eyes drooping, but she started talking to keep awake. “Sheriff Spade? What did you mean by the things you said earlier? About us not being able to get back home the same way. Having to take the gorge and all that?”

The desert was so quiet, even inside the stagecoach, all three boys heard her question. Heads peeked out windows, curious for his answer. Sheriff Spade, his voice quieter from the ease of heading home, said, “Y’all feel that earthquake last night?”

“Yes, sir.” Lera answered.

“And what do they teach y’all earthquakes are in school?”

Lera rolled her shoulders, “I don’t know. That they are tectonic plates. Moving. And when the pressure builds up from the movement, and gets released, we have earthquakes.”

Sheriff Spade said, “What if I told y’all that wasn’t true. In truth, earthquakes are the Lord’s way of building up new parts of the world. Parts most of y’all never learn about.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s only so much space in the world. Y’all know the old saying, ‘Buy land because God ain’t making anymore’? Well, that there is a lie. God is making more land all the time. Some folk just don’t know where to find what is being made.”

“You mean like Saddleback County? Whole counties that don’t exist? Not on Continental maps anyway?”

“Yes, ma’am. Now yer starting to learn the truth. And y’all can’t just walk down any road, or follow any trail, to get to those places. There is a very particular way y’all have to go, or y’all walk right around the path y’all are trying to find.”

Colton interjected, “That doesn’t make sense. We walked north to find Saddleback County. If we just walk south far enough, we have to get back to our town, or hit a freeway, or something.”

Lera agreed, “Yeah. This is America! This is the 20th century. This isn’t 1827. There are roads covering every inch of this country. Why, you can never be more than 30 miles from a road, no matter how lost you get.”

Stanley wondered, “And what about satellites? I thought - I mean, don’t they make maps with satellites these days? If there was suddenly a bunch of extra space, the satellites would get all messed up and wouldn’t work right anymore.”

Sheriff Spade took no offense to their incredulity and simply informed them, “Y’all would think that was true. But, like I said, the world is a lot bigger than y’all know. And who is to say that them what make satellites ain’t in cahoots to keep secret places secret? Not every place is on a map. And once y’all stumble into a place that ain’t on any maps, it’s a lot harder gettin’ yerself back to places what are.”

As the children thought about his words, they rounded a bend in the road and saw a sign reading SPADE & WINTERBORN RANCH. The open range surrounding the ranch appeared small, as the whole of the property seemed tucked into cozy rolling hills. Much like Sheriff Spade himself, everything from the corral fences to the front porch floorboards seemed a bit weathered and aged. Some folks say that dogs look like their owners, but no one could deny, Sheriff Spade’s ranch looked just like him. Rugged. Brave. Gritty.

Easing the horses to a stop near the porch of his house, a young brunette girl, not much older than the children, greeted them with a warm smile.

“Hey, papa. Home early?”

“Yes, my dear. We have ourselves some guests tonight. Continentals who need a place to stay for the evening, before I take ‘em home in the morning.” Sheriff Spade motioned politely between all the children, “Miss McKinney, Mister Holloway, Sutherland brothers, I’d like to introduce my daughter, Daphne Spade. Daphne, this is Lera, Stan, Colton and Max.”

“How do y’all do?” Daphne politely smiled. “Pardon me if I forget yer names and have to ask again.”

Sheriff Spade dismounted the stagecoach and asked, “Now, who wants to help get us a barbecue going?”

As with most children their age, they were always hungry. Barbecue sounded like a fantastic idea. The three boys scurried out of the coach as Lera hopped off the shotgun seat.

“I’ll help!” Stanley volunteered.

“Yes, sir. Me too!” Colton said.

“Yeah, same here!” Maximilian offered.

Sheriff Spade pointed around to their wet room and said, “Before any of y’all do that, go wash up. Y’all are a mess of muddy river rats.”

“Oh! What about our backpacks?” Stanley asked.

“Grab ‘em off the back of the stagecoach. They should be dry by now.” Sheriff Spade suggested. Sure enough, the last moist remnants of their whitewater adventure, clinging to their backpacks, had gone bone dry in the desert sun.

Climbing up onto the driver seat, Daphne announced, “While y’all wash up, I’m gonna tend the horses.”

“Oh! Can I help you?” Lera asked, “I can wash up after.”

Sheriff Spade nodded to his daughter.

Daphne smiled, “Y’all sure can. Come on.”

Lera clapped for her good fortune and skipped back to the stagecoach to sit with Daphne.

The boys, bathed in the cologne of dangerous rivers, traildust and gunfights, made their way back to the wet room, so they could be somewhat presentable, as guests of a Wild West barbecue.

§

As they rode the stagecoach to the barn, while Daphne may have appreciated Lera’s enthusiasm, she wanted to make sure Lera knew a thing or two about horses, before setting her loose with any tasks. “You know your way around a stable?”

“Yes, ma’am. I have a quarter horse at home.”

“Oh! Ya do?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s his name?”

“She’s a girl. Her name is Ariel. I volunteer at the horse rescue too. And Stan’s uncle has a ranch with two horses.”

“Well, here I thought city kids like y’all wouldn’t know nothing ‘bout horses.”

“More like suburb kids who spend a lot of time in the woods. We all have a little bit of country in us, I think.”

“Every real American does, as daddy would say.”

“Not many real Americans live in cities.” Lera grinned.

“Daddy would say that too. I cleaned their stalls before y’all got here. Just need to give them some water and feed.”

“Okay. I can do that.”

“So, daddy says y’all are Continentals? What brings y’all to Calico Junction?”

“Stanley talked us in trying to find it. We didn’t even know if it was real. His sister told him about it, actually.”

“A bit of a surprise?”

“What’s that?”

“Finding Calico Junction. Was that a bit of a surprise?”

“A bit!”

“I’ve never met Continentals before, but I’ve heard stories.”

“Have a lot of others come before us?”

“I don’t think so. Not many. But y’all sure aren’t the first.”

“Oh.”

“Y’all friends from school? The four of y’all, I mean.”

“No. Stan and Colton met in school. I go to an all-girls school. Saint Augustine. The boys all go to the same school though.”

“So how did y’all meet them?”

“Stan and I met racing BMX. Found out we had a lot of stuff in common and just became friends.” The moment she finished, Lera wondered if Daphne knew what BMX was. She didn’t wonder long.

“BMX track? That’s lovely. BMX looks like a lot of fun.”

“You know BMX?”

Daphne grinned, “Of course. Just ‘cause I live in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean I have no idea what is happening in the world. Y’all spend time with him a lot? With Stan?”

“Yeah. With all the boys, really.”

“Don’t y’all have any girlfriends?”

“Sure. But the boys are more fun. Girls my age are just... I dunno. They just like music and reading corny teen magazines.”

“And y’all don’t?”

“Oh, no. It’s not that. I like those things fine, but I also like lots of other stuff they don’t like.”

“Like what?”

“I like gymnastics, and BMX, and playing boardgames, and riding horses. I hang out with the other girls at gymnastics, but they aren’t into any of the other stuff. Actually, this is going to sound kind of silly, but, my best girlfriend was probably Charlotte.”

“Who is Charlotte?”

“Stan’s little sister.”

“Why is that silly?”

“Well, she’s a lot younger than me. She’s like 9. Same age as Max. But she doesn’t act like she’s 9. She seems a lot older.”

“Why didn’t Charlotte come with y’all folks?”

“She moved. With her mom.”

“Oh.” Daphne knew right away what that meant. Divorce in Calico Junction usually consisted of the jilted party shooting their disloyal spouse like a dog. There weren’t prejudice for gentlemen or ladies in Saddleback County, so the chances of the spouse doing the shooting was just as likely to be the man or the woman, and folks didn’t make much of a fuss either way. Husband or wife, y’all get what y’all deserve for breaking a sacred vow. But Daphne understood, divorce could be a little more cruel and unjust, in other parts of the world. Lawyers and judges are far more heartless than a slug of lead.

“I like your dress.” Lera noted.

Daphne smiled, “Y’all are sweet.”

“Most girls my age don’t like to wear dresses. How old are you?”

“Sixteen. How old are y’all?”

“Twelve.”

Daphne smoothed her pleats. “Well, papa always taught me the world is going to treat y’all the way y’all behave. Y’all dress and act like a woman with no scruples, the world will honor yer uniform. Same holds true for a man as well. Man presents the guise of a degenerate outlaw, he will receive all the scorn and disrespect his apparel is requesting.”

Lera giggled. “My grandma said the same thing. Well, a little different, but the same thing.”

“But y’all aren’t in a dress now.”

“No. What with all the biking we had to do, jeans seemed easier.”

“What kind of bike y’all have?”

“A Redline. At least I did have a Redline. But we all lost our bikes in the flash flood. In Wilson’s Wash.”

Daphne’s eyes swelled, “Y’all got swept in a flash flood in Wilson’s Wash!?”

“Sure did.”

“So that’s what pa meant when he called y’all a mess of river rats! Many a man has died gettin’ caught up in Wilson River! Y’all know that? Y’all are very lucky! Tell me all about it!”

§

Even after washing up, the boys still smelled of a little dust. Sheriff Spade understood that boys will be boys, and there’s a certain aroma of gunpowder and mud that will never wash off a young man, no matter how many showers he takes. The scent of wildfires comes out of their blood with every cut and scrape. That is the magic of boyhood.

Walking through the livingroom of Sheriff Spade’s home, Stanley spotted a small library of shelved books. The one that caught his eye was a red-spined, canvas hardcover volume called Sheriff Jedediah Spade’s Catalog of Netherworld Monstrosities.

The size of the volume caught his eye more than anything. The sheer heft and number of pages was far more than Stanley expected.

“Wow. Look at this!” Stanley remarked, partially to himself and partially to anyone who might be listening.

Maximilian asked, “What is it?”

“I think this is the Sheriff’s book. The one Deputy Roy was telling us about.” Stanley grabbed it off the shelf, barely able to lift it. On the cover was a crudely drawn little monster in blue ink, obviously not part of the original printing. As he began to leaf through the pages, Stanley noticed the whole volume reminded him of a book on faerie lore or a role-playing game. Each page contained an illustration and a descriptive paragraph of countless beasts, warning of the dangerous powers and vulnerabilities of any given monster.

Sheriff Spade spotted Stanley looking at the book and said, “That there is the first edition.”

Stanley pointed out the childish sketches on the cover. Sheriff Spade chuckled and said, “Daphne did that when she was six. Trying to contribute to the illustrations.”

“Is all of this real? I mean, you really fought all these things? I have never even heard of half these creatures. Qui. Remlic. Behevian Gor Beast. Silmivarian. Dark Supplicant. And, I can’t even pronounce this one... Doshil... Dohilish -”

Smiling, Sheriff Spade took the book from Stanley’s hand.

As he set it back on the shelf, he explained, “- Which is why I’m working on a second edition. So, folk who have never heard of these things, never will. And so boys who haven’t read the book don’t accidentally summon one of those devils, by saying their name three times, like y’all just said once.”

Stanley’s heart sank and his feet became a sack of marbles.

Maximilian, equally scared, thwacked his arm, “Dummy!”

“Uh, which one did I say?” Stanley asked.

“If I tell y’all, then y’all repeat it, we’ll all be having a very unpleasant evening. So, let’s just stop talking about the book altogether, and get that barbecue going? How’s that sound?”

“Sorry, sir. Yes, sir. Good idea, sir.”

§

Having finished the most delicious barbecue of their lives, the children sat around a campfire with Sheriff Spade and his daughter.

Sheriff Spade wriggled into a more comfortable seat on the bench and plucked the strings of his guitar. As a few notes and chords began to hum, he smiled at Daphne.

Daphne knew the tune and had obviously sung the song many times before. The orange campfire glow became her footlights, embers sparked like fireflies, and all the Mojave desert was her stage, as Daphne began too sing a rousing country song.

Some men believe,

mostly brigands and thieves,

they have the right to tell you what to say.

They write evil laws,

with all their lapdogs,

to steal your freedom away.

Sheriff Spade joined his daughter on the chorus, his deep baritone rumbling under her soaring charms.

But I say, ‘No sir not me.

I will fight to be free.

I will die, like a man, on my feet.

We will never be slaves.

We’re the Home of the Brave,

and we will kill before we bend a knee.’

Because that is the American Way.

That is the red white and blue.

That is American pride,

hot dogs and apple pie,

where my sisters and brothers are true.

Daphne sang alone again on the next verse.

Some men believe,

they are sure to achieve,

the Founders being slandered as wrong.

They call ‘em bad things,

no gentleman would sing,

but I have a much better song.

This time, the children all joined along, rocking back and forth as the vibrant and patriotic lyrics filled their hearts with joy and pride.

I say, ‘No sir not me.

I will fight to be free.

I will die, like a man, on my feet.

We will never be slaves.

We’re the Home of the Brave,

and we will kill before we bend a knee.’

Because that is the American Way.

That is the red white and blue.

That is American pride,

hot dogs and apple pie,

where my sisters and brothers are true.

Daphne sang the final verse alone.

Some men believe,

that gun you received,

from your grandpa who passed away,

don’t belong to you.

They’ll take it away too,

because you are owned by the State.

Sheriff Spade stopped strumming, his haggard old face angry in the firelight said, “And I will look those no-good, low-down, dirty-communist, authoritarian-socialist, devil-dogs, square in their evil eye sockets and say...”

‘No sir not me.

I will fight to be free.

I will die, like a man, on my feet.

We will never be slaves.

We’re the Home of the Brave,

and we will kill before we bend a knee.’

Because that is the American way.

That is the red white and blue.

That is American pride,

hot dogs and apple pie,

where my sisters and brothers are true.

Sheriff Spade clapped and Daphne whooped and hollered. Stanley fired off a round from his revolver and yelled, “Yeehaw!”

All the children cheered.

“That was fantastic!”

“I never heard that song before!”

“Let’s do another one.”

Sheriff Spade did his best to calm them down. “No. No. We should all be gettin’ to bed.”

“Oh, come on. One more.” Maximilian asked.

“Well, fine. I’ll do something y’all might know.” Sheriff Spade said.

All by himself, Sheriff Spade sang a gentle lullaby rendition of Way Out Yonder in the Golden West. His voice tumbled softly off the rocky pillows of the hillside, making the children think of church and home. In the tender forge of campfire light, all the comfort of their own beds seemed to be promised in the cloudy sea of slumber. Overhead, starlight was a dust of the Milky Way, hushed across the darkest navy blue skies anyone had ever seen.

When he finished his song, Stanley interrupted the silence. “Sheriff Spade?”

“Jedediah. When we’re out in the world, y’all call me Sheriff Spade. When we’re on my land, at my home, y’all call me Jedediah.”

“Yes, sir. Yes, Jedediah.”

“What’s on yer mind, son?”

“Well, it was something Old Gus said. About some folks not wanting people to know about secret places in the world. And, well, sir, I guess I’m just nervous about going home and, well, what might happen.”

“What might happen?”

“Yes, sir. Now that we’ve seen Calico Junction.”

“Ah. Y’all are worried if the wrong people find out y’all have been to Saddleback County?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, boy, there’s an easy solution to that.”

“There is?”

“Most certainly.” Sheriff Spade smiled.

“How?”

“Can y’all keep a secret?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then y’all will be just fine.” Sheriff Spade leaned back.

The boys and Lera all looked at each other, feeling humiliated that they didn’t think of such a simple solution.

Keep it a secret?

No one knows where they went, except the four of them.

Keep it a secret.

That was all they had to do.

But what about Charlotte? Should Stanley keep it secret from her too? No. He couldn’t do that. Besides, that was the advantage of being twelve years old. Even if anyone did find out about the journal he was keeping for Charlotte, no one would ever believe it. He could just say it’s an idea for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign and people would forget about it. No one would think it was real.

“G’night, kids. Don’t stay up too late.” Sheriff Spade excused himself and headed off to bed.

Lost in the aftertaste of campfire song and quiet conversation, the children sat in silence, watching the fire crackle and pop.

“This is nice.” Lera observed, her chin resting on her forearm.

Daphne agreed. “Yeah. I love summer campfires in the yard. I could do this everynight. This is nice. My favorite.”

Stanley found himself lost in the fireglow reflections of Lera’s eyes. He had never seen her in firelight before and her face took on a whole different shape. Or maybe the shape had always been there, and he just never noticed before. All he knew was that something fluttered in his stomach when he looked at her eyes. “Your freckles look nice.”

Stanley held his breath.

Did he just say that out loud?

Colton and Maximilian started giggling.

Shoot. Yep. He said it out loud all right.

Lera smiled and her blush made her look even prettier. “Thanks, Stan.”

Colton mocked Stanley and mumbled to Maximilian, “Your freckles look nice.”

“Shut up!” Stanley smacked Colton in the chest.

“You shut up!”

“Shh! Both of you shut up! Did you hear that?” Daphne leaned forward and squinted at the dark.

Everyone went dead quiet.

“Listen.” Daphne whispered.

From out in the darkness, a creepy groan resounded. A guttural groan that seemed to ooze into their pores and scrape their bones like knives on a chalkboard. The children had all heard that sound before. Maximilian started to panic. “Yuccaman! That a yuccaman? Sounded like a yuccaman!”

From the far side of the ranch, a low thumping could be heard.

Then it grew louder.

And louder.

Closer.

Daphne grabbed a shotgun she had by her side.

Looking at the others, Daphne eyed Stanley. “Stan? Y’all armed?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The rest of y’all?”

“No. My gun is back in the house.”

“Mine too.”

“So is mine.”

“Y’all get behind me and Stan. Stan, I’ll take 2. Y’all take 10.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Stanley knew right away she was talking about 2 o’clock and 10 o’clock. Daphne didn’t need to explain further and she was pleased Stanley was smart enough to follow her command.

The chilling roar pierced the dark, coming from two directions.

Two?

TWO!?

There were two of them!?

The yuccamen emerged from the night. They were astoundingly huge. What had been killed in the town square was nothing compared to these behemoths. Each one was easily towering over twenty feet in height with claws as long as a man’s leg.

Sheriff Spade emerged from the house, asking, “What in tarnation is that racket? Oh. Yuccamen. Daphne, y’all can handle this?”

“Yeah, pa! Stop distracting me!”

Sheriff Spade calmly smiled, turned around and walked back into the doorway.

The yuccamen howled again, charging at the five kids around the campfire. Daphne raised the shotgun to her eye and fired. The closer yuccaman exploded in a cloud of dust.

“Shoot!” Daphne yelled at Stanley.

Stanley raised both of his revolvers and fired two shots at the second beast. It too disintegrated instantly, showering the yard in a puff of ash and smoke that smelled of burnt licorice.

Catching their breath, the kids were all in a panic.

“What was that!?” Lera squealed.

“Your dad didn’t even help!?” Colton yelled at Daphne.

Daphne looked at Stanley, “This is a single-shot, ya know. I couldn’t have done that without ya. Good shooting.”

Stanley was still too terrified to thank her for her compliment. “Why didn’t your dad help us!? He just walked away!”

Daphne giggled, “Those were old yuccamen. Probably the parents of the one pa killed today. They can be quite vengeful monsters. Young ones are very tough beasts. Y’all don’t want to trifle with them. Elder yuccamen are scary big, but very vulnerable to lead. Heck, you just graze one with a birdshot pellet and they will - POOF! - fall to pieces. Pa knew we didn’t need no help against two old yuccamen.”

“Will there be more?” Lera asked, scanning the darkness around the range.

“Don’t fret Lera. Sleep with that shotgun by yer side and y’all be fine. There ain’t many things that dare to go bump in the night around the Spade Ranch, I’ll tell y’all that. Anything smart enough to be dangerous don’t snoop ‘round these parts.”

“I’m going to bed.” Colton declared.

“Me too!” Maximilian had enough. He might not be able to sleep at all, but he didn’t want to spend another minute outside.

§

Exhausted from the day, Lera and Maximilian fell asleep almost before their heads hit their pillows.

Colton still felt his adrenaline pumping and could barely shut his eyes. He looked over and saw Stanley was still awake too. Clearly, he could see Stanley was unsettled. “What’s wrong, man?”

“I’m just thinking about how much trouble we’re in. Our parents are probably freaking out. They might even have called the police by now.”

“We’ve only been gone two days. That’s not that long.”

“No. But we didn’t call our parents today. So, we’re pretty much all in trouble. Remember what the forest ranger guy said? About the mountain lion? What if they think we got killed by a mountain lion and they’re all out looking for us? As long as we can get home tomorrow, we could probably still talk our way out of it.”

Stanley suggested, “If you’re so worried, why don’t you just ask to use the phone?”

“Use the phone?”

“Yeah, I’m sure the Sheriff has a phone. We didn’t go back in time, remember? And Old Gus had a fridge. I bet the Sheriff has a phone.”

Colton, feeling like a complete fool, climbed out of his bedroll to knock on Daphne’s bedroom door. Within moments, she answered and Colton asked about calling home.

“Sorry. We don’t have any phones. Towers and wires don’t work in places like Saddleback County. Perimeter ground around the county moves and shifts and next thing you know, wires fall down, towers get knocked out of alignment. Just won’t work. Same reason we don’t bother with cars and paved roads.” Daphne apologetically shrugged.

“But Old Gus had a fridge. That uses electricity. Don’t you have power lines?” Stanley wondered.

“We have batteries. Windmill generators. That kind of thing.” Daphne explained.

“Oh. Okay. Thanks, Daphne. Sorry to keep you up.”

“It’s no trouble. G’night, Colton.”

A dejected Colton roamed back to his bedroll.

Stanley looked upset too.

Colton smiled, “Looks like you finally agree with me.”

“Huh?” Stanley asked, distracted.

“You look upset now too. Like you finally agree we’re going to get in big trouble.”

“Yeah. We will.” Stanley frowned. “Something else on your mind?”

“Oh,” Colton painfully grinned, “no, actually. It’s... well, you’re going to think it’s stupid. I probably shouldn’t talk about it.”

“About what? Tell me, man.”

Gritting his teeth and holding his breath, like he was about to jump into an icy cold pool, Colton said, “I keep thinking about that Indian I shot.”

“Huh? What Indian? Oh, you mean up on the mountain? When we were running from Old Gus?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Stan, grown adults freak out when they kill somebody. I’m 12 years old and I shot someone.”

“So? He was literally firing an arrow at your head.”

“I know.”

“And your family owns a gun store! What does your dad always say about guns? ‘Don’t own one if you are going to be afraid to use it to defend your life or the lives of the people you love.’ Right? Never be eager to shoot someone, but never hesitate.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Colton stared at the floor, as if the warmth of the wood somehow held his redemption.

“And you weren’t afraid to use it. You didn’t freeze. You didn’t panic. You didn’t wimp out. You did what needed to be done. You didn’t do anything wrong. You would be dead yourself if you hadn’t shot him. God won’t condemn you for that. I think God would be upset if you just sat there and let yourself get killed. Right? Throwing your life away is a sin. Defending it ain’t.”

Colton thought it over.

Stanley was right.

Absolutely right.

What choice did he have? That was truly a “kill or be killed” situation. His dad talked about that sort of thing all the time. He said no man should own a gun if he was afraid to use it, and if a man did use a gun to defend his life, he needed to be strong enough to cope with the consequences.

Colton never really understood what that meant. Until now.

He just didn’t imagine he’d have to make that kind of life-or-death decision when he was 12 years old. Colton was hoping he could go his whole life and never be forced to make that choice.

Looking over at a sleeping Maximilian, Colton thought about what might have happened to him if the Indian had shot him with that arrow. Maximilian may have drowned in the Wilson River. Maximilian may have been killed by a sandwolf. Who knows?

And what about his parents?

How would they have felt if Colton died?

What about Stanley? This whole adventure was his idea, after all. Colton bet, if he died, Stanley would have felt guilty forever. Heck, Stanley would have probably blamed himself for the rest of his life.

Colton thought about all of those things.

Plus, the fact that, you know, he’d be dead.

And when Colton started to look at things that way, he didn’t feel guilty at all for shooting the Indian. Like Stanley said, Colton did what needed to be done.

“You’re right, Stan. Thanks, man. I’m being a sissy, I guess.”

Stanley, seeing the pain in Colton, did something he had never done before. With a grin, he added, “Besides, you didn’t kill him.”

“What? How do you know?”

“Because I saw him, dummy. He fell back with a shoulder wound and one of his buddies helped him against a rock.”

“Really? He didn’t die?”

“No. Of course not.” Stanley lied. All his life, he had been honest and true. This was the first deliberate lie he had ever told. He wasn’t sure why he did it. The truth was, he didn’t see what happened, and he didn’t know if that Indian was dead or not. But, he knew Colton would feel better if he was convinced he didn’t kill anybody.

Stanley added, “Dude, you’re like the toughest guy in our group. How many other kids do you know who can shoot an attacking Indian, with a .45, while racing downhill on a BMX bike? That was totally rad.”

“Well, you shot a minecar to pieces! While a crazy old man was taking shots at you! And, in case you forgot, you just killed a yuccaman. You’re pretty tough yourself.”

“Guess you’re right. We’re a regular Butch and Sundance.”

“Well, Sundance, I’m tired. I need to get some shuteye.”

“Me too. G’night, Butch.”

After rolling over to sleep, and pausing a few seconds, Colton grinned and quoted the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie, “‘Kid, there’s something I ought to tell you. I never shot anybody before.’”

Knowing the line, Stanley replied, “‘One heck of a time to tell me.’”

§

Charlotte, you aren’t going to believe this...

Chapter 10: The Train to Red Rover Gorge

Maximilian watched dragonflies hover around the porch, their wings glittering a twinkle of stars in morning sunlight. Standing there, he realized, having no phones or televisions in Saddleback County was not such a bad thing. After all, watching television in the morning was something everyone did. Watching dragonflies at sunup was something only a few people in the world get to do. And that seemed a lot more important.

He couldn’t have known it at the time, but every child who ever lived gets to have a few random and beautiful moments in life that will stick with you until old age. Watching fireflies in the morning sun, on Sheriff Spade’s front porch, was one of those moments for Maximilian.

“Ya ready to go, Max?” Sheriff Spade asked from the doorway.

“Yes, sir.”

“Everything packed up?”

“Yep.”

“Good boy.” Sheriff Spade waited until everyone else filed out of the house and locked the door behind him.

Maximilian caught Daphne, as she was the last one out. “Thanks again for breakfast, Daphne. Those were some swell waffles.”

Daphne grinned and rubbed his hair, “Yer welcome, little man.”

“Are you coming with us?”

“Just to Red Rover Gorge. Always love a train ride.”

Before reaching the stagecoach, Stanley beat Lera to calling shotgun this time.

Lera pouted. “Aw! That’s no fair. I have a shotgun. You don’t.”

Stanley unbuckled his revolver belt, handed it to Lera, and grabbed her shotgun from her pack.

“Shotgun.” He grinned.

Lera pursed her lips. “Fine. I’ll ride in back with Daphne and we’ll talk about girl stuff.”

“Fine. Talk about girl stuff. I’ll ride up top with Sheriff Spade and talk about man stuff.”

Lera squinted at Stanley and climbed inside the stagecoach, keeping her eyes on him the whole time.

§

Black coalsmoke billowed from round the mountain as the steam locomotive approached the Calico Junction station. The brass bell clanged its warning, ringing a metal vibrato, bouncing shrill off the wood and windowpanes behind the platform. Mighty pistons chugged the soft metronome of their hissing song as the train eased to a stop and railcar hitches thunked in succession down the line. The engine bubbled and breathed great gasps of steam sighs, panting like a live thing.

A small handful of arriving passengers departed before the conductor stepped out, pocketwatch in hand.

“Mornin’ Sheriff.”

“Mornin’ Wilford.”

The conductor tipped his hat to Daphne, “Miss Spade.”

“Mr. Bartles.” Daphne did a slight curtsey in turn. Glancing back up the tracks, she noted, “Long line today.”

“Yes, ma’am. Rail is down an engine. So, we’ve a few extra freight cars and a stable car in back.”

“No wonder.”

“Don’t fret none though, ma’am. Still right on schedule.”

Sheriff Spade grinned, “We’ve no doubt, Wilford.”

Tickets in hand, Sheriff Spade pointed the quartet and his daughter up the steps onto the train.

“Explain where we are going again, Sheriff.” Maximilian asked, as he took his seat.

Sheriff Spade explained, “We gotta take the train from here, about twenty, thirty miles, on out to Red Rover Gorge. We climb down the gorge, take a steamboat right back to Kern River. Put y’all just on the outskirts of the High Desert. Y’all can call yer parents for a ride from there.”

Enchanted by the decor of the passenger car, Stanley looked around in wonder. “This is so cool.”

“I’ve never been on a train like this before.” Lera noted.

“I have,” Maximilian stated, “at Disneyland. But that one just goes in a big circle around the park. I’ve never been on a real train that goes someplace.”

They had all been on the train at Disneyland, and what all kids pray for, but they never say out loud, is that one day, they will get aboard, and instead of circling the park, it will transport them to a place like Calico Junction in Saddleback County.

§

With a sharp click, the rear door of the passenger car latched open. Walking down the aisle, the conductor announced, “Next stop, Red Rover Gorge Station! Next stop, Red Rover Gorge!”

When he reached the next door, he exited the railcar and continued his rounds.

Looking out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the station, Lera saw something else. Across the other side of the valley, approaching fast. “Daphne? What is that?”

Daphne looked toward the direction Lera was pointing. “I have no idea. Papa? What’s that smoke?”

Sheriff Spade sat up and casually peeked out from under his hat.

He sprang to his feet and jumped forward so fast, he nearly put his nose through the window. “Nightmares!”

The children were all confused.

“Nightmares?” Colton asked.

“Only one crew of villains in these parts ride nightmares.”

Daphne, her eyes wide with fear, gulped, “The Sacramento Gang.”

Sheriff Spade turned to rush out of the passenger car, calling over his shoulder, “I’m going to warn the engineer. Daphne, y’all stay here, look after the kids.”

“Yes, sir.”

The commotion riled the other passengers who all began to look out the windows and murmur to each other.

“Sacramento Gang?”

“Where?”

“Was that the Sheriff?”

“What did he say?”

“Look outside!”

“What is that?”

“That a dust devil?”

Stanley asked Daphne, “What do they want?”

Daphne explained, “There’s a huge trestle bridge, thousand feet long and two hundred foot high, crossing Red Rover Gorge, right past Red Rover Gorge station. They can’t ride across the gorge, so I recon they’re gonna try to hijack the train right before the station.”

“Hijack the train?” Maximilian shivered. “And what about us?”

Daphne didn’t lie. “The Sacramento Gang don’t leave witnesses.”

Stanley, Lera, Colton and Maximilian all looked back out the window.

The shadowy steeds drew closer, obsidian manes trailed smoke and flame behind them. Atop the beasts rode the vague shapes of men, also swirling in wisps of ash and fire. As the nightmares brayed, their guttural bellows resounded more like vicious motorcycles than horses. Their calls made the very foundations of the desert shake, and the sand itself quivered in fear at the touch of their hooves.

Each side of the train was flanked by two horses and riders.

The passengers started to panic and shriek with fear once the wights came close and could be easily seen.

Clearly the engineer had not noticed the outlaws approach and began to slow the train into Red Rover Gorge station. Quickly overtaking the slowing train, the Sacramento Gang jumped off their nightmares onto the tender car and vanished. Although freed from the burden of their riders, the nightmares continued to run along side the train.

Daphne popped her head back inside. “I can’t see where they went!”

“Me either.” Stanley confirmed.

Daphne stared at the carpet for about two seconds. “I have to warn my pa. Y’all stay here.”

Daphne ran out of the passenger car to follow her dad.

Suddenly, the train lurched forward, continuing to run full-steam ahead and pass the platform of Red Rover Gorge station.

“We’re not stopping!” Passengers yelled and screamed, unsure of what to do next.

Stanley looked back out the window, trying to see if he could get a look at the engine and the tender car at all. “Oh, my God.”

“What? What is it?” Lera asked.

“You guys!” Stanley poked his head back in. “You have got to see this! Look! Look!”

As the locomotive engine began to cross Red Rover Gorge trestle bridge, the nightmares continued to run along side the train, floating in midair, beside the tracks.

“That’s impossible.” Colton remarked.

“No way.” Maximilian was stunned.

“We can’t just sit here. We have to help Daphne.” Stanley said.

The other three didn’t hesitate. Colton smiled, “Just waiting for your word, boss.”

Without warning, the brakes of the train locked, sending everyone flying forward. Passengers slammed into seats. Maximilian and Colton braced against a wall while Stanley and Lera bonked heads.

“Ow! What are those fools doing up there!?”

§

Most of the train was still off the bridge, but the engine, the coal tender, and the first few freight cars were over the gorge.

Sheriff Spade, revolver drawn, cautiously exited the last freight car and climbed up the ladder of the tender. As his boots chortled across the coal pile, he saw the nightmares canter through the air and stop on the other side of the gorge.

Ducking down, the sheriff tried to move quietly. Slowly.

As he peeked over into the engineer compartment, a voice called out behind him. “Now!”

With a loud metallic bang, Sheriff Spade heard the tender car couple release while the engine slammed forward. Looking behind, two wight males approached.

Sheriff Spade scrambled to his feet and looked into the engineer compartment. Another two wights, a man and a woman, held the engineer captive. “Howdy, sheriff.”

Sheriff Spade was trapped.

Two in front of him.

Two behind him.

The gorge on either side.

The wight woman threw the engineer over the side, into the ravine.

“No!” Sheriff Spade watched helplessly as the engineer plummeted to his death. The poor man screamed and howled as his body flailed through the air, slammed through tree limbs, and crashed silently into the ground far below.

“Curse y’all!” Sheriff Spade fired point-blank at the wights, but his bullet wounds simply swirled in vaporous holes through their bodies, as the lead passed harmlessly through them, and ricocheted off the steel of the locomotive.

Daphne threw open the door of the freightcar in time to see the tender pulling away and the gap between them growing by the second.

“Pa!” Daphne yelled.

“Daphne?” Sheriff Spade looked back over the coal. “Run!”

Daphne grit her teeth and stood her ground, firing at the two wights behind her father. She hit one in the shoulder, but her bullets also passed through them, as they continued to advance. The two wights who uncoupled the train drew on Daphne and began to fire. Diving back into the freightcar, she took cover.

“Daphne! Get out of there!” Sheriff Spade yelled.

Daphne couldn’t hear him.

Under the ringing in her ears from the barrage of gunfire, all Daphne could hear was the sound of splintering wood.

Checking her surroundings, Daphne’s heart sank.

The freightcar was filled with wooden crates marked:

DuPont Explosives • Extra Dynamite

Blasting Caps • Handle Carefully

Gold Medal • Explosives

American • Standard Gelatin • Dynamite

“Oh, no.” Daphne slammed the door of the freightcar closed and ran as fast as she could. The wights continued to fire blind. As she ran from the freightcar, a stray bullet sparked the blasting cap box and a fire instantly fizzed to life inside the crate.

Escaping safely into the next car, Daphne ran into Stanley and his friends.

“What are y’all doing here!? I told y’all to wait for me!”

“We came to help.”

Daphne grabbed Stanley by the collar and dragged him back with the others. “Run! The freightcar car is about to explode!”

“What!?” Lera yelled.

“It’s full of dynamite! They started a fire. RUN!”

That was all Lera and her friends needed to hear.

They ran as fast as they could.

They made it through two more railcars before the freightcar exploded in a massive fireball. Flames swirled out in every direction, scouring the sky and engulfing the timbers of the bridge as giant beams of stout wood crumbled to dust easier than Fall leaves. Steel beams of railroad track twisted and snapped as though they had only been tinfoil.

When the shockwave hit the children, they were all slammed into the floor. The noise deafened them all and the world was silence. They could see each other groaning and aching from the blast, their insides felt like gelatin, wriggling under the sheer force of the noise.

Then, slowly, the decimated railcar began falling into the hole blown in the bridge.

For a moment, it lodged on a snapped beam of timber.

Getting back to her feet, Lera looked out a window.

The locomotive and the tender were still pulling away, nearly safe on the opposite side of the bridge. Turning her gaze to the massive gouge, she saw the destroyed railcar snap off the timber and begin to plummet into the gorge.

All the remaining cars of the train started to drag forward.

“Oh, God!”

Looking back, they were still in the middle of the bridge, hundreds of feet from the safety of the cliffside. On the side with the railway station, dozens of passengers had poured out of the train and were safe on solid ground. Lera switched her gaze from the cliff, to the hole, to the cliff, to the gaping gorge beneath them.

“Oh, God! Guys! Guys! We gotta get out of here!”

“What’s going on?” Stanley shoved in next to Lera and looked.

Daphne grabbed another window and saw it too.

Colton asked, “What is it?”

“We’re falling into the gorge!”

“What!?”

The second railcar started to plummet over the precipice as the remaining traincars began to accelerate.

“Move! Move! Move! Move! Move!”

“Run!”

As they all began running for their lives, Stanley noticed all the railcars were empty. “Where is everybody!?”

“They all got out already!”

The faster the quintet ran, the faster the train seemed to speed up. Lera glanced out the railcar window and it looked like she was standing still, while the floor moved like a treadmill beneath her feet. “Faster! You guys! Faster! Faster!”

“I’m going as fast as I can!”

One after another, railcar doors flung open, and the kids leapt from one car to the next. Behind them, the bridge continued to crumble and shatter as the domino of unsupported weight strained the girders beyond their breaking point. As the children reached the last car, the cliff was starting to fall away.

“Hurry!”

Bursting in, they found a stable of horses in a frenzied panic.

Daphne stopped everyone.

“What are you doing!?” Colton asked.

“We can’t leave ‘em to die. Open the stables. I’ve got the ramp.”

“Oh, you gotta be kidding!” Maximilian whined.

Stanley and Lera opened the rear stables as Daphne unhinged the ramp. The tracks were a kaleidoscope rushing by as the cliff ground was right before them.

“We can make it! Ride out the last horses!” Daphne opened the stable gate and grabbed the third remaining horse.

Stanley got Colton and Maximilian on the next.

“Guys. Guys! Wait! We don’t know how to ride! We’ve never been on a horse!”

“Just hang on!” Lera yelled and opened the gate.

Lera and Stanley leapt on the final horse.

As Colton and Maximilian approached the open ramp, their horse panicked, reared, and slammed Colton’s head into the heavy beam of the doorway. The horse tripped and nearly fell down the ramp, barely making it onto the track, and almost breaking an ankle.

Stanley and Lera vanished over the side of the cliff as the train fell into oblivion.

“Lera!” Daphne yelled.

“Stan!” Maximilian screamed.

In a violent puff of dust, the front hooves of their horse jumped out of the train, slamming into the crumbling hillside, and rocketing them up the cliff to safety.

§

Dozens of people gathered on the edge of the cliff. Some were passengers of the train. Others were patrons from the Red Rover Gorge station, rushing over to see if everyone was okay.

“Colton? Colton!” Maximilian yelled, shaking his brother.

Colton’s head was bleeding and he was slumped over on the horse, unconscious.

“Here, son. Let me help y’all.” A man spoke as three gentlemen grabbed Colton and Maximilian and eased them to the ground.

Stanley turned around to Lera. “You okay?”

Lera nodded, “Yeah. Yeah. You?”

“I’m fine.”

Lera saw Colton on the ground. “Oh, no. Colton.”

Stanley and Lera rushed over to Colton.

As the crowd gathered, a man from the station approached. “Make way folks. I’m a doctor. Make way.”

“Is my brother going to be okay?” Maximilian cried.

The doctor smiled, already noticing Colton was still breathing. He reassured Maximilian, saying, “He’s still alive. Let’s keep him that way.”

A familiar voice rose out of the crowd.

“Aw, fuzzyslugs! Should have known all this commotion had something to do with y’all kids!”

“Old Gus!? What are you doing here!?” Stanley asked.

“I was picking up a shipment of blasting supplies for me mine. But it looks like the outlaws done used it to blow up the Red Rover Gorge bridge!” Old Gus gasped. For the first time, he noticed Colton laying on the ground and bleeding. Old Gus immediately removed his hat and wrung it in his hands. His ornery ranting became a whisper, “Oh! I’m sorry boys. Ma’am. I - I didn’t know yer boy Colton was... is... he gonna make it, doc?”

Reaching in his bag, the doctor produced smelling salts to try and revive Colton. “Rung his bell something awful. That bruise on his arm tells me it might be broken. He’ll live, but he needs a hospital.”

The doctor looked at Maximilian. “That yer brother’s name? Colton?”

“Yes, sir.” Maximilian sniffed, “And I’m Max.”

“Well, I’m pleased to meet y’all, Max. Colton is not going to be a very happy boy for the next few hours. But he’s going to be fine. Okay?”

Wincing, Colton opened his eyes. “What happened? Oh, I feel like I’m going to puke.”

He did.

§

Steel brakes squealed on the far side of Red Rover Gorge as the racing locomotive eased to a stop. The shrill noise echoed in the depths of the ravine, startling crows to warble in their perches.

Four figures emerged from the train, dragging a fifth. They were over a thousand feet away, so they simply looked like the shapes of men. You couldn’t discern any of their faces. One of the outlaws peered through a spyglass, then nodded to his companion. As Stanley scrambled for his binoculars, a voice called from across the divide.

“Miss Spade! Still alive, I see!? Y’all hearin’ me!?”

Daphne shouted back, a little more shrill than she had intended, “I hear y’all. Let my pa go!”

“Oh, we will, little lady! And we won’t harm a hair on his precious little head! But the good Sheriff here is writing a book! Ain’t that right, Sheriff? Tells folk how to kill our kin!”

Stanley gasped as his eyes focused through the binoculars. The figure speaking looked like he was once an ordinary man, but his skin was the grotesque bluish white of a cadaver at a wake. His eyes were sunken so deep, Stanley wasn’t sure he had any. There seemed to be an occasional glint, but instead of being reassuring, the spark of light being swallowed in his eye sockets made him more terrifying to behold. His three companions were equally grotesque mannequins, except one was a woman, or at least she used to be, before she became whatever abomination she was now.

The wight leader of the Sacramento Gang continued, “In 2 days, high-noon, at the church in Wabash Valley, y’all exchange us the book, for yer daddy! Bring us every copy, little missy. Understand? Every copy. Otherwise, his precious little head is all y’all be gettin’ back... and the rest will be coyote dung!”

“Oh, no! My papa is gonna get the drop on y’all and -”

“- This here weren’t no conversation, Miss Spade! That what I gave y’all was called a monologue!”

Black shadows and fire spat from the coal tender as wisps of smoke formed into nightmare steeds. Stanley saw them hoist Sheriff Spade onto one of the nightmares, and all four outlaws rode off, disappearing over the ridge.

Daphne shouted across the ravine, “Hey! Hey! Y’all get back here! My pa is gonna get all y’all varmints! Get back here! Get back here I said!”

No reply came to her.

The wind was only a whisper.

Daphne’s voice barely echoed, as if the gully itself were showing solemn respect, and mourning for her heartbreak.

Chapter 11: The River & The Saddleback Queen

As the evil outlaws of the Sacramento Gang rode over the ridge with their hostage, Sheriff Spade, his daughter fell to her knees in the sand, tears brimming in her eyes, but not falling. She wouldn’t dare let them fall. Not when her papa needed her to be strong. Not when she had a job to do. She would be darned if the townsfolk were going to see the daughter of Sheriff Buford Jedediah Spade crying in the dirt like some kind of cowardly sissy girl. No. When the people of Saddleback County talk about this day, they will all say Daphne Spade had the backbone of her father. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed a handful of sand so hard, her palm almost bled. Slamming it to the ground, she rose to her feet again, tears swirling in her eyes to a liquid rage.

“We need to get y’all kids home.”

Old Gus asked Stanley, “Is that where y’all was headed? Home?”

“Yes, sir. Sheriff Spade was taking us home by the river.”

The crowd slowly began to disperse, returning to the railway station platform. Everyone murmured softly, sympathizing with Daphne, worried about the sheriff, upset about the destruction of the bridge, and lamenting the death of the engineer.

Old Gus walked over to Daphne and set a hand on her shoulder, “I know the way to Juniper Hills by the river, Miss Spade. I’ll get ‘em home, little missy. Y’all go save yer pa.”

Stanley immediately spoke up. “No. I’ll come with you, Daphne.”

“So will I.” Lera nodded.

Stanley scolded Lera. “No. You need to go home.”

“Excuse me? Who do you think you are?”

“I don’t want you getting hurt! And I need you watch over Colton.”

“I’m watching over you.” Lera said, her fists akimbo. She almost added, ‘For the rest of my life’, but she stopped herself, and said nothing more.

Maximilian clutched Stanley’s arm. “It’s okay, Stan. I’ll take my brother home. He saved me in the flood. My turn to save him.”

Daphne shot down their entire conversation. “None of y’all are coming with me. I’ll round me up a posse with the deputies. Old Gus is taking all y’all home. This ain’t yer fight. Y’all are just kids.”

“You’re a kid too!” Stanley turned to Old Gus. “You’ve seen us handle guns. Old Gus, you know what Lera can do.” Turning back to Daphne, he added, “Let us help you. Your dad saved our lives. We can’t just walk away. We’re your posse, Daphne.”

Lera put her arm around Stanley’s shoulder and told Daphne, “Yeah. We’re coming with you. We can ride. We can shoot. You need our help.”

Old Gus grinned at Daphne as he motioned to Lera. “The boy is right. This little girl is a dead eye with that shotgun. He’s no slouch either.”

“I don’t want to leave you guys.” Colton interjected, hissing at the pain as he moved his shoulder.

Stanley crouched down next to him, “Colton, you’re a mess. You can’t move your arm. You probably have a concussion.”

“I know. I know. You don’t have to tell me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I just don’t want to wimp out.”

“You’re not wimping out. You’re severely injured.”

“I feel like a sissy.”

“You’re not a sissy. I saw how hard you cracked your head. That was no joke. I shouldn’t have put you on that horse.”

“There was no time. If we didn’t ride out, we’d be dead. You saved us. Don’t feel guilty.”

Stanley pursed his lips and nodded. Then he turned to Maximilian, “You keep him safe. Yourself too.”

“I promise.”

“Take care.” Lera waved goodbye to the brothers.

“Get better, Colton.” Daphne kissed Colton on the forehead and he blushed. “Bye, Max.”

“Bye, Daphne.”

“See you guys back home.” Stanley promised.

Lera hugged Old Gus, “Thanks for taking care of our friends.”

“Aw, snakefarts! Quit yer mushy-makin’!” Old Gus shoved Lera away. Looking at the Sutherland brothers, he said, “You two stay here. I’m gonna run over to the station and get me buckboard, then we’ll ride down that there road to the bottom of the gorge. We’ll hitch a ride on the steamboat down below.”

“Thanks, Old Gus.” Colton smiled as best he could.

“Thanks, Old Gus.” Maximilian waved, “We’ll wait here.”

§

Daphne found the train conductor at the station. “Mr. Bartles? Excuse me,” Daphne asked, “Where were the horses on that train headed?”

The conductor, still visibly shaken from the ordeal, stammered, “Uh, I believe they were headed for the McCallister Ranch.”

“All of them?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Can y’all do me a favor? Can y’all tell Mr. McCallister that Daphne Spade and her friends needed to borrow three of his horses to get home?”

Chuckling, the conductor reassured her, “Miss Spade, you saved his entire stable. I’m sure Mr. McCallister won’t mind that the sheriff’s daughter had to commandeer a few horses, considering all ten would be dead without you.”

“Thanks, Mr. Bartles.” Daphne turned to Lera and Stanley. “I hope y’all know how to ride bareback.”

“That’s up to the horse more than the rider.” Lera noted.

Daphne smiled, “That means ‘Yes’. Let’s go.”

§

The Sutherland brothers sat alone in the dirt next to the cliff. Staring at the smoldering remains of the devastated bridge, they could hardly believe how narrowly death had been escaped.

Gradually, some people from the train depot began to walk down the road into Red Rover Gorge. Clearly, they had come here to meet the boat too, and despite the tragedy that had just unfolded, some of them decided to simply get on with their trip.

Even when Death nips at your heels, life goes on.

Lumbering slow, Old Gus returned across the field with his buckboard. As he approached, he pointed at Maximilian. “Max. Y’all take yer bedrolls and lay ‘em in back for yer brother.”

Maximilian took his pack, and grabbed his brothers, and made a decent bed. When he was finished, Old Gus and Maximilian hefted Colton’s arms over their shoulders and helped ease him into the back.

“Ow! The arm. The arm.”

“Sorry, Colton.” Maximilian apologized.

Settling in with a grunt, Colton shut his eyes, the soft padding of the two bedrolls bore a welcome relief from the hard ground.

Colton tried to relax, as best he could, while the sky rolled overhead. His head and arm were both throbbing and he moved in short, pained twitches as he tried to find a comfortable position.

“You doing okay?” Maximilian asked.

“No. But I’ll live.”

Maximilian held Colton’s hand as the buckboard rode down into the gulley. The shade of the cliffside cooled the afternoon heat. Passengers from the riverboat began walking up the road as the wagon headed down. All of them were confused and stunned, having seen the explosion and the train plummet into the gorge.

Old Gus was grateful he didn’t have to answer any of their stupid questions. Most of them had already pestered people who had walked down the road before them, and that was just fine with Old Gus.

Maximilian’s eyes lit up as the buckboard leveled out.

“Oh, my God! Colton! Get up! You need to see this!”

Colton propped himself up on his good arm and peeked over the edge of the buckboard. There at the bottom of the gorge was a lazy and mellow wide river. Docked at a fancy ship depot was a magnificent white riverboat, with an enormous red paddle-wheel. The boat towered four stories tall and stretched three hundred feet long. Two smokestacks with fleur-de-lis crowns shot above the boat like church steeples. On the stern read the name: Saddleback Queen

“Wow. That’s not the kind of boat I was expecting.”

“Me neither!” Maximilian noted.

Old Gus guided the buckboard up a ramp and onto a ferry garage on the main deck. As he climbed off his bench, Old Gus informed the boys, “Now, we should reach Kern River by nightfall, but I’ll get us a stateroom, so Colton can take his rest in a bed. Y’all just stay here and I’ll get us our tickets.”

“Thanks, Old Gus.”

“Thanks again.” Colton smiled, still stunned by the fact that the man who tried to kill him with a pickaxe is now helping him get home to a hospital. Life is weird.

§

By the time Daphne, Lera and Stanley had ridden their three horses bareback to the Spade & Winterborn Ranch, it was late in the afternoon.

Lera and Stanley saw to the horses getting some water and feed while Daphne headed into the house to find the latest draft of her father’s book. She knew the Sacramento Gang would demand to read whatever she gave them, before they set her father free. And once they did, those dirty scoundrels would try to kill all of them.

Daphne didn’t have a plan to deal with that yet, but she was working on one. In the meantime, she needed to find Sheriff Spade’s genuine notes on killing zombies and wights. Otherwise, they wouldn’t get two steps before a fight broke out.

Then again, a fight was going to break out, no matter what.

Daphne knew that.

But a legitimate book entry had the potential to buy some time. She couldn’t risk a gunfight starting while her father was still tied up and vulnerable. She had to do whatever it takes to make sure his bonds were freed first. That meant giving the outlaws legitimate pages.

While all of these thoughts were running through her mind, she could find nothing in Sheriff Spade’s notes. She knew everything he was working on. Where he kept his sketches. Where he jotted down ideas. Which notebook held first drafts. Which folders he used to alphabetize the monsters.

Nothing in the Z folder.

Nothing in the W folder.

The more she looked, the more frazzled she became.

There had to be something here. Somewhere.

Lera and Stanley, having finished caring for the horses, came into the house.

Daphne was sitting at a desk, papers scattered all around. Her fingers roughly combed through her hair in frustration. When she spoke, she didn’t even lift her eyes off the notebooks. “I can’t give ‘em the book. Papa didn’t write nothin’ on the wights. There ain’t no chapter in there on ‘em yet.”

“Are you sure?” Lera inquired.

“Sure, I’m sure! I know the old book better than most townsfolk know their Bibles and I’ve been readin’ the new book every day since he started writin’ it. I know what’s in there and what ain’t. And zombies ain’t.”

“I’m sorry. I still don’t quite follow. What is the big deal about killing a wight?” Stanley asked.

“They are almost impossible to kill. Regular lead bullets go right through them. So will a knife blade. The Sacramento Gang seem to think papa knows the secret to wiping them out, but I don’t see it in his notes.”

“So what do we do?” Stanley wondered.

Finally looking up, Daphne said to them both, “We need to go to town. Papa sometimes writes at work. I can check his files at the jailhouse. See if he wrote something in there.”

Excited, Stanley noted, “Yeah! We saw him writing in a notebook at the jailhouse on the yuccaman!”

“Do you want one of us to stay here and keep looking?” Lera asked.

Daphne looked around the room and thought it over. “No. No. The Sacramento Gang is too aggressive. I wouldn’t put nothin’ past ‘em. We stick together. If they come snooping around here, I don’t want either of y’all to be alone.”

§

Water sneezed under the mighty paddle-wheel as Maximilian stood hypnotized by the cascade. He found himself staring at one particular piece of the blade, trickling to four vivid drops as it rotated around.

Four drops. Drip. Drip. Roll away.

Four drops. Drip. Drip. Roll away.

Someday, Maximilian would become a grownup. And when he did, he might remember dragonfly sparks, but he would forget about things like paddle-wheel water. That is the difference between children who grow up and grownups who still see the world with the eyes of a child. When a grownup remembers dragonfly sparks and paddle-wheel waterfalls, they see the world like nobody else.

“Hey, Max.” Colton spoke and he sounded like he was far away, even though he was just behind Maximilian.

“What’s up?”

“I feel awful. I really need to lay back down. Help me back to the cabin?”

“Sure. No problem.”

“Sorry. I really wanted to see the whole boat, but I just can’t walk around. I’m feeling dizzy still.”

“Should I get you some water or something?”

“I still have some. I’m good. Thanks.”

“Okay. Let me know if you want me to get you anything.”

“Thanks, Max. You’re awesome.” Colton was touched by the fact his little brother was being so attentive. Like most brothers, they didn’t always get along, but Colton and Maximilian never really argued or fought either. At least, not about anything big or important.

Colton knew he would be okay eventually, but his headache and his probably-broken-arm had him worried about the pain he was going through for the next few hours. He felt slightly nauseated the whole time. Part of him really wanted to sleep, but he was scared to do that, because isn’t it bad to sleep when you have a head injury? Like you can go into a coma or something like that?

He couldn’t remember what it was.

But he knew there was something dangerous about going unconscious, like, a day after a head injury. Or was it two days?

He didn’t know.

Man, he just wanted to get home.

Ugh. Getting home.

“Dude, we’re going to be in so much trouble.” Colton blurted out as they shuffled back to the cabin.

“I know.” Maximilian frowned. “Thanks for reminding me. I keep trying not to think about it.”

“I’m sorry I got hurt, man. We’ve only been gone three days. Maybe we can still talk our way out of it.”

“Mom and dad wanted us to call every day. We haven’t called for two days. We are totally in deep trouble. They probably already checked our campsite and can tell we haven’t been back. They’re probably freaking out and calling for search parties and stuff.”

Colton sighed, “Oh, God. I know. But maybe my getting hurt is a good thing. Like if they feel sorry for me.”

“Dude, are you nuts? No. They’re going to be more upset that you got hurt! Sure, they might not yell at you right away, but they will once you get better.”

“You’re right. I just keep trying to figure out a way out of this.”

“We’re not getting out of it. We’re busted.”

“Yeah. Shoot. You’re right.”

“We’re going to be grounded for, like, a year.”

§

“Daphne. How y’all doing, child?” Mrs. Prasek smiled from behind her desk at the jailhouse. When she saw Stanley and Lera, her brow wrinkled in confusion. “Stan? Lera? I thought Sheriff Spade was taking y’all home!”

“Papa has been kidnapped.” Daphne spoke plainly.

“Kidnapped!?”

“By who?” Deputy Roy stood up from his desk.

“Sacramento Gang. They destroyed the train and Red Rover Gorge bridge. They are holding papa captive, unless I hand over a draft of his book, with the chapter what tells how to kill wights.”

“Oh, my!” Mrs. Prasek fanned herself with a limp wrist.

Deputy Roy grabbed his hat, “Well, come on! We’ll go save Sheriff Spade right now!”

“How, Roy? No one knows their hideout.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Just as quickly as he sprang to action, Deputy Roy deflated.

Mrs. Prasek shook her head, “Don’t make no sense. Why grab him off the train?”

Deputy Roy explained, “With due respect, ma’am, I can see why they done it. Train is vulnerable. Especially over the gorge. Sheriff is too well-fortified at home or in town.”

Daphne told them both, “Listen, I’m to meet the outlaws at the abandoned church in Wabash Valley in two days. Deputy Roy, in two days, I want y’all to get a posse and guard my ranch. Split another crew to town, keep a weather eye here on the jail.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause the Sacramento Gang are dumb as rocks, but cunning as the Devil hisself. They knows papa would keep extra copies of the catalog. They told me to bring ‘em all, but they won’t trust me to actually do it. So, their Gang will be sendin’ henchmen to burn down our ranch and the jailhouse when they know we’re both in Wabash Valley.”

“How y’all know that?”

“Because if I was them, that’s what I’d do. Never underestimate yer enemy, deputy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

§

Sunset was near by the time the Saddleback Queen arrived at port. Old Gus and the Sutherland brothers debarked in the buckboard and headed out a dirt road through the mountains.

“You think Stan and Lera are going to be okay?” Colton asked out loud, but to no one in particular.

Old Gus grumbled, “The way that boy shot up me minecar, I thought he was Billy The Kid hisself. I wouldn’t worry about him. His girlfriend is a pistol too.”

“She’s not his girlfriend.” Maximilian corrected.

Old Gus chuckled, “Boys yer age never know when the girls are.”

“Huh?” Colton wondered.

“Nevermind.” Old Gus grinned to himself.

The Sutherland boys were stunned to see Juniper Hills off in the distance. Even though their adventures had only lasted three days, they felt as though they had been away for years, and might never see their hometown again. For a moment, Colton imagined they would find their parents had passed away, and all their friends from gradeschool were old men and women, who wouldn’t recognize him. Silly thought. But fun to imagine.

The boys were never more excited to see Juniper Hills. Streetlights were just starting to come on as the sky held onto the last remnants of sunset oranges and blues.

“Are we home!?” Maximilian asked.

“Still a good hour or two. I’ll just head to town and when the roads look familiar, y’all tell me where to point the horses.”

“I can’t believe we got back so fast.” Colton said in shock.

Old Gus explained, “Gettin’ in and out of Saddleback County ain’t a long trip, if y’all know the right ways to go. Just not too many folks who know the ways, is all.”

That comment was enough to make the boys feel proud they had done it, and grateful they had gone along with Stanley’s plan.

Leaning in, the old leather of his reigns creaking comfortably in his equally leathery hands, Old Gus added, “Ya see boys, finding the roads is like finding a full moon. The moon is always there. Sometimes y’all just can’t see it. The road to and from secret places is always there, but sometimes y’all can’t see it either.”

Colton should have been excited, but the closer he got to home, the more he thought about Stanley and Lera. The more he felt like he had let them down and was almost guilty of betraying their friendship. He knew that wasn’t true, but that was what it felt like.

Colton again looked for some reassurance from Old Gus. “You really think they will be okay?”

“Absolutely.”

Maximilian asked his brother, “You don’t think Daphne will really give those undead things her dad’s book, do you?”

“I don’t know.” Colton admitted.

Maximilian turned to Old Gus and added, “What did that guy who kidnapped the sheriff mean about killing his kind?”

Old Gus grumbled, “His kind are wights. Hard to kill if you don’t know how. One of them robbed me for weeks, before I got me learnin’ on how to wipe ‘em out. The secret trick to killing zombies be gold and blood. The old injun chief taught me that.”

Colton asked, “Gold and blood?”

“Yes, sir. Coat yer bullets or arrows in gold, then smear a little California king snake blood on ‘em. No other blood. Gotta be from the veins of a king snake. Gold and blood is all it takes. But if y’all shoot a zombie with ordinary lead or steel, it will pass right through their cursed bodies. Won’t harm ‘em in the least.”

“How did you learn that?”

“Darned goons from the Sacramento Gang were stealing gold from me mine. Couldn’t stop ‘em. Shoot ‘em with an arrow. Put a bullet right between their eyes. Didn’t do a thing. So, I went to the medicine man and asked. He told the secret. Me and all me injun security put gold and blood on our bullets and arrowheads. Next time Leland Yee came looking to steal from me, I sent his undead Chinaman bones straight back to Hades where he belongs!” Old Gus spit over the rail onto the road, but imagined it was Leland Yee’s grave.

“Sheriff Spade was there,” Old Gus added. “Saw the whole thing.”

§

Daphne groaned and shoved the notebooks off the desk.

She stormed out the jailhouse door and stopped on the porch in the sunlight. Her pause was awkward. As if the warmth of the sun itself froze her in her tracks and was easing her exasperation. Standing on the boardwalk of the jailhouse, she looked down at the bustling and peaceful town. For a moment, Daphne Spade smiled. Calico Junction was a beautiful place. Tranquil. Serene. Quiet. There was never a bit of trouble in this old town, and anytime there was, folks knew Sheriff Spade would set things right. Daphne was proud of her father. He was more than a lawman. He was truly a peacemaker. Keeping the town safe, a warrior on the crazy remnants of a wild frontier. The joyful ease with which the town lived, was all thanks to him.

“You okay?” Lera asked.

Sighing, Daphne explained, “They’re not in there! Papa didn’t write nothin’ on killing wights!”

Stanley rubbed his neck. “Well, the zombie gang seem to think he did. Why do they think that?”

Lera snapped her fingers. “Old Gus! Remember, when we met Old Gus, he said something about Sheriff Spade and killing that zombie. He even called the zombie by name. Lee something? Or Yee something?”

“Leland Yee.” Daphne corrected. “Whole town knows he was killed stealing gold from Old Gus up at the mine. He’s the first and only member of the Sacramento Gang anyone killed.”

Stanley lifted his hat and scratched his head. “Well, if the Sheriff is the only one who knows the secret, and he didn’t write it in the book, how can we give the Sacramento Gang the book as ransom?”

“Should we wait until Old Gus comes back? Ask him?”

“No,” Daphne paused, “There is someone else who should know.”

“Who?”

“The Winterborn Witch.”

“The Winterborn -”

“ - Hush! I shouldn’t be sayin’ her name ‘round townfolk. C’mon. We got ourselves a ride ahead of us.”

§

William Sutherland sat in the quiet basement of his Juniper Hills home, cleaning guns that were already spotless. That was his way of relaxing. Trying to calm himself from his worry about his missing sons.

It was not helping.

Naomi Sutherland sat in her living room, watching reruns of I Love Lucy, to distract herself from her own worries about her baby boys.

It was not working either.

Naomi smiled now and then, during scenes which always made her laugh. But she didn’t even notice she was grinning.

During a brief lull before a commercial, when the whole house went silent for a moment, she heard a strange noise outside. For an instant, she thought she had heard the faint clip-clop of horseshoes on pavement. Peering through her curtains, Naomi saw a silhouetted figure under the light of a streetlamp, disappearing over the hill. He seemed to be riding an old buckboard, and wore the tattered hat of a prospector. Looking at the driveway, she saw her sons walking toward the house.

Rushing to the door, she flung it open. “WHERE ON EARTH HAVE YOU TWO BEEN!? And why were you with Old Gus McGilicuddy!?”

Colton and Maximilian froze in their tracks. “...What!?”

Chapter 12: The Winterborn Witch

Daphne picked up her stagecoach from the Calico Junction train depot and headed far outside of town with Lera and Stanley.

For a few hours they rode, twisting and turning, up and down a confusing maze of mountain roads. Upon the approach of sunset, a beautiful valley sprawled before them.

Daphne looked at her companions and said, “There it is. The Valley of the Dead. That’s where we’ll find the Winterborn Witch.”

“I thought Death Valley was a lot further north.”

“That isn’t where we are. Stick close to me and y’all will stay safe.”

“Safe? Safe from what? It’s beautiful.”

“Evil don’t come with horns and tails. Evil always comes looking beautiful. Acting like a friend. If devils showed up with scales and pitchforks, everyone would run away. Temptation seduces us because devils always show up looking like angels.”

Stanley and Lera felt strange hearing those words.

Daphne spoke them almost like an incantation.

The sound of her voice carried across the prairie, as though it were unlocking a side of the landscape that was dangerous to open.

As the trio rode deeper and deeper into the valley, Lera and Stanley slowly began to understand what Daphne was trying to say. Once the sun dipped below the horizon, and dusk fell darker with each minute, the vista began to change. Shadows grew and splashed until their ebony dire began to flood the desert with blackness.

Every creak of the stagecoach, every groan from the leather of the bridles, seemed to grow quieter. Muffled. As if the horses themselves wished to remain silent, for fear of calling the attention of the dark.

Deeper and further into obsidian they rode, the hush of sand and struggle of their steeds worsening with each passing yard. Daphne reigned the horses to a stop. Climbing down off the bench, she surveyed the expanse of nothingness.

Lera and Stanley looked out across the plain. They eyes darting from one shadow to another. An oily breeze ruffled creosote branches and made them chatter. Or was that something else?

What moved behind the darksand washes and rolling veins of deathblood parched blackness?

“We walk from here.” Daphne announced.

Her voice sounded deadened, the blood rushing in their ears.

“Walk?” Lera asked as her heart sank. The sand itself looked like it was cursed. As if walking upon it might grate your soul with scars that would never heal.

Stanley, nervously whispered, “We’re just going to leave the horses? What if they run off with the stagecoach?”

Daphne simply repeated her command, “We walk from here.”

Lera and Stanley hesitatingly eased off the stagecoach and continued to question Daphne. “I don’t see why we have to -”

“- The sand gets too deep. No one uses this road. The stagecoach will just get stuck if we go much further.” Daphne explained.

“How much further do we have to go? I don’t see anything.”

Daphne said, “Now stick close. Y’all will be safe as long as y’all are near me.”

Sanely and Lera looked at each other, feeling no comfort.

They still didn’t know what they would be “safe” from, but this time, they didn’t want to ask.

As they walked deeper into the desert, the curtain of night seeped tighter around them. Like a vile ink, the darkness sometimes began to pour into the corners of their eyes, threatening to strike them blind. Lera would shake her head. Stanley would open his eyes so far, his cheekbones started to hurt. Anything to drain the black out of their vision.

The splatter of ten thousand stars overhead began to fade.

With each passing step, the dark snuffed out more and more.

Every hint of starlight began to drown in an ocean of nothing.

More and more bushes and shrubs began to move in the distance. Things in the sand appeared to crawl. Old cans and trash and filth started to pile up slowly around them. First a few spent shotgun shells. Then wagon wheels half buried in the ground. Bottles and clothes and garbage that started to poison the air with foul and awful breaths of wind.

Spindly shadows grew. Skittering around like spiders and loathsome spirits of old world lore.

When the refuse and the landfill junk finally seemed to fill the whole desert, a figure approached from a Joshua tree shadow. With womanly arms and willowy legs, it rose from the blackest shades of the dark. Blackened lips curled back over hideous fangs and bony claws raked the air in gleeful greed. The hag slunk closer to the children, her disfigured body towering seven feet tall, skinny and emaciated, barely covered in disgusting rags and scraps of fabric.

Lera squealed a quiet rasp of fear, deep in her throat.

Terror iced her veins so coldly, Lera didn’t even know she had made a sound.

“Stick close.” Daphne repeated, but her voice couldn’t be heard.

The hag opened her mouth and her breath smelled like spittle and rotten blood. Her voice was part cackle, part guttural roar, and it chilled Stanley and Lera to the pit of their stomachs. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

Daphne answered, her voice still so quiet, it sounded like the nonsense of a dream. “I need yer help. I need to know how to kill wights.”

The old witch growled, and floated over to Lera, “I see you bring me an offering? Delicious. These will make for tender stew and marrowbones to brew and suckle. And suckle and stew. To brew. To cook to stew.”

Daphne defied the hag’s plans. “These are my friends. They are not for eating.”

“In my realm, they are for whatever I say they are for!”

“Don’t you touch her.” Stanley bravely commanded the witch, stepping in front of Lera.

The roar of her voice hurt their ears, the sand of the desert vibrated underfoot as the sound of her deafening wail crashed like tidal waves over the children. “Who gave you permission to speak to me!? Foul youth! Young love! A lifetime thrown in my face for mockery!? How dare you address me!”

Lera and Stanley both cowered at her rage.

Daphne yelled, her voice a whisper in their ringing ears. “Mother! Enough! Leave them alone. I need your help!”

The Winterborn Witch softened her eyes, and turned to Daphne. “Come, child.”

With that her demeanor became gentler and tender. Mischievous dark faerie bloodshot eyes roiled. Walking off into the night, the witch lead the trio to an outcropping of junk and rubbish. As she dug through the waste, her hand held up a dusty and stained mason jar. Inside, a thick and sticky liquid stuck to the glass. In the overpowering darkness, the children could barely tell what the witch handed to Daphne.

“To kill their kind, blood and gold must pierce their flesh.”

“Blood and gold?”

“And not just any blood will do. Only blood from the veins of a kingsnake shall lay waste to a zombie. Blood I can give. Gold you must acquire on your own.”

“Thank you.”

Without another word, Daphne turned her back to the witch and motioned to the children that she was ready to leave.

As the three of them started to walk away, the Winterborn Witch spoke, far more gingerly and benevolently than she had before. As her voice called from behind the children, Stanley and Lera almost thought it was some other person speaking.

“They have come for your father, haven’t they?”

Daphne paused. “How did you know?”

“Go, child. Be on your way. Blessed be to the living.”

“Farewell, mother.”

§

Only when they had made it back to the stagecoach, and there were again stars, and the delicate dust of the Milky Way glistened overhead, did Lera or Stanley dare to speak.

Lera asked the question first. “That was your mother!?”

Daphne said nothing.

Stanley looked at Lera with sympathy. Lera probably shouldn’t have asked that. But Stanley was going to ask the same thing. How could he not ask? He just felt bad that Lera asked first and now it looked like Daphne didn’t want to talk about -

“Yes. Long ago.” Daphne finally revealed.

“How did... I mean, what was... why does she look... I just -” Lera didn’t know what to ask first. She had a hundred questions running through her mind.

“Broken hearts do terrible things to the body and soul. She was once a very beautiful woman. She didn’t always look that way.”

“I don’t understand. Did your dad leave her? Why is she out here?”

“She was banished. For witchcraft.”

“Was she a witch before she married your dad?”

“No. Of course not. But he loved her enough to stay with her, even after she was taken.”

“Taken?”

“Yes, after a coven took her.” Daphne explained, but Lera and Stanley obviously didn’t understand. Before they asked, Daphne clarified by saying, “Witches do not chose to be what they are. Covens kidnap young girls and force them, through dark rituals, to become witches. No woman ever became a witch on purpose.”

Stanley said, “I thought witches were a religion. What is it called? Wicker or something?”

“Wiccan.” Lera corrected.

Daphne scoffed, “Those aren’t real witches. Those are just gullible women spending too much money in new age bookstores. Don’t they teach you anything true in Continental schools?”

“So, wait. So, your mom was turned into a witch against her will, like a vampire, then banished?” Lera asked.

“Yes. She is the most noble woman I know. She and my father gave up everything. That was why papa became a sheriff, and started to write his books, and go after these monsters terrorizing the frontier. They sacrificed their love for each other, so they could help protect the world. Frankly, I could never do what they have done. They deserve each other, but the world doesn’t deserve them.”

Stanley wondered, “If your father loves her so much, why would he allow her to make that decision? To stay banished?”

“What choice did they have? To live in a world filled with monsters and beasts that will destroy innocent families?”

Lera’s voice broke, feeling so sad for them, she almost cried, “But she’s all alone. She has nothing. She lives in that... awful... place. Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s better than everyone else. And the world hated her for that.”

“Just seems like there has to be another way. A way for them to be together and to still fight evil.”

Daphne paused, then stared intently at her young friends and said, “Wait. Wait. Y’all... I’m sorry. I didn’t explain things right. Y’all think she’s still alive? My momma died. They banished her and burned her alive for witchcraft. Way before papa ever became sheriff. That’s why she and papa ain’t together no more. They can’t be. She passed on. I told y’all we were going to the Valley of the Dead. Y’all think it got that name for nothing?”

Something about her confession terrified Lera and Stanley more than anything else they had seen or heard that night.

What was this place?

Where did Daphne take them?

“Who burned her for witchcraft?”

“The townsfolk. Not the people in Calico Junction. Another town. Before papa was sheriff and when I was too young to remember.”

Lera snuggled closer to Stanley.

What happened?

The Valley of the Dead?

They didn’t belong there. They shouldn’t have gone.

What a terrible, terrible place.

Every step had felt like one of those awful nightmares where you know it’s a dream, but you still can’t wake up. And you feel dark things around you. Watching you. Holding you down. Laughing. Screaming. Running outside your bedroom window, even though your room is on the second floor. Impossible terrors and fears clutch your heart and even when you finally wake up, it feels like something from your nightmare is still there, fading into the corners of your room, so it can catch you another night.

Lera never spoke of such things.

No one does.

Because we know if we speak of them, if we even read words on paper, those things will know, and they will be angry with us, for daring to think of them when we are awake.

§

There was a strange hush back at the Spade Homestead.

Daphne prepared a light dinner for Lera and Stanley, but they didn’t have much of an appetite.

Something had changed in them after the Valley of Death.

Lera and Stanley both felt defiled somehow.

As if they had seen a place no child was ever meant to see.

Taken to know things no child should know.

Both of them almost resented Daphne. She had taken them somewhere their souls didn’t belong.

Before Daphne went to bed, she seemed to read their minds. “I’m sorry, y’all. That was... I think maybe I made a mistake in taking y’all with me. The Valley of Death was no place for children.”

Lera looked gently at Stanley, then said to Daphne, “I think maybe I’ve been there before. When my grandma died. I... dreamed of... well... something like that.”

Afraid to look either girl in the eye, Stanley asked, “Is that where everyone goes? When we die, I mean? Is that why it felt familiar to her?”

Daphne reassured him, “No. I asked my mama the same thing once. She says everyone passes through places like that. But that’s not where everyone stops.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Stanley sighed, “but it feels true.”

“Get some rest. We’ll sleep in tomorrow. G’night, y’all.” Daphne excused herself, then she quickly hugged Lera and Stanley and ran off to her room.

Once her door closed, Lera and Stanley heard a slight sobbing from within. Lera moved near the doorknob, but Stanley stopped her before she could knock. Mouthing the words, “No. Don’t.”

“I think she’s crying.” Lera whispered.

Stanley pulled Lera away and whispered back, “Leave her be.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s a sheriff’s daughter. She don’t need anyone seeing her cry.” Stanley explained.

Lera nodded. “You’re right.”

Making their way back to their bedrolls, Stanley asked Lera, “Hey, I don’t mean to sound weird or anything, but... do you... feel okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I feel kind of... weird. After tonight. Meeting the witch and all that.” Stanley uncontrollably looked out the window when he mentioned the witch. For a second, he feared she would appear outside the door, simply by speaking of her.

“Yeah. It feels like we shouldn’t have been there. Like I left something behind. Part of me. That I wasn’t supposed to lose. I’m kind of...” Lera trailed off.

Stanley finished her thought, “Kind of freaked out by it. Part of you is missing and it shouldn’t be. Even though you don’t know what it is.”

“Yeah!” Lera smiled. And in that brief moment of knowing, of connecting, of understanding and empathy shared with Stanley, Lera almost felt like that missing thing had returned.

“Me too. But just talking about makes me feel a little better.”

“Me too.” Lera grinned.

Stanley paused and looked at her very seriously, “I don’t want to die, Lera. Ever. I want to live forever and ever.”

Lera took a long time to answer him and finally said, “Maybe that’s what we lost. We think we might live forever and then...”

“Then we walk into the shadow of death and realize we won’t.”

“Yeah.”

“And maybe we are too young to know that.”

“You really think it would matter?” Lera scoffed.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean being young doesn’t matter. You could walk into that Valley when you are thirty or fifty or seventy years old and I bet it would scare you just the same.”

“Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”

“I don’t want to die either, Stan.”

Stanley held her hand, which he had never really done before, and said, “Then let’s make a promise. That we will both live to be really, really old people. We won’t ever let each other die.”

Lera knew such a promise was silly and it could never be kept.

But she also knew, if she made that promise, she would feel a lot better about everything that happened to them that night. So, with a grateful smile, Lera said, “I promise.”

“I promise too.” Stanley grinned.

“Live forever.”

“Live forever.”

And with those simple words, the chill of the dark lifted a bit. The weird silent curse that seemed to seep into their bones had been broken. They were free again. Buoyant with all the hope of youth.

Maybe that was what the Winterborn witch meant, when she seemed to curse them. Maybe she knew, the mere promise of youth would lift the dread out of their hearts, and free them into the sunlight once more. Maybe she was just a jealous old lady, who was sad that she had the same promise stolen from her.

Lera and Stanley fell asleep, fingers intertwined.

And that was enough.

Enough to keep away the nightmares they feared they might have.

Enough to give them comfort.

Enough to give them hope.

Enough to make their hearts feel they had found home.

§

Daphne awoke before sunup the next morning.

With the birth of a new dawn, she too felt the dark of the Valley of Death had all but fled from her bones.

Maybe, that is the way it’s supposed to be, Daphne thought.

Maybe, now and then, things happen in life which bring us into dark places, but the hope of sunrise always carries us back to the light.

Before starting her morning chores, she climbed atop an outcropping of haphazard granite boulders, so she could see the sun rise over the distant mountains. There was something sacred about giving herself that time, to witness the birth of a new day. This wasn’t a ritual she did everyday, but she knew she did it more often than most folks ever get a chance. As the cool grays and the cozy blanket of morning shadows began to fade, and the orange reds of dawn began to color the desert, she felt privileged to see another day.

How many people, she wondered, live their whole lives without seeing this? Without watching a new day rise?

But then, another thought hit her.

A thought which made her pity the droves of humanity even more.

How many of them have been blessed with experiencing such a moment, but they lack the wisdom to appreciate it?

Gosh. That was even worse.

There are countless people in this world who can see something so magical, and instead of being inspired by awe, they dismiss such wonderment as trivial. Were such creatures even human at all? Were they truly on the same plane as Daphne?

Grinning, she realized, maybe that was why she was alone in this moment. Maybe God kept some people by themselves, so they could cherish all the splendor of life without interruptions. Without the holy minutes being tainted by the cynicism of the unappreciative souls of the world.

These few precious hours were for Daphne alone to relish.

There are some precious hours in life which are meant to be lived in solitude. When none but you and God look upon His creation, and share wordless prayers, and stand in awe at the glory of the world.

“God, please don’t let me fail him. Please bring my daddy home.”

Daphne almost added “alive”, just to make sure her plea was answered properly. Then she realized, she was praying to a benevolent God, not a vindictive genie in a bottle. The good Lord knew what Daphne was asking. She didn’t need to play games with the phrasing.

Isn’t it strange, she thought, how the dawn comes no matter what?

Despite all the sorrows we face in life.

Despite all the tragedy and worries we might have.

The sun still rises.

The stars still shine.

The heavens are a permanence, impervious to our woes.

Children are born. Old folks die. And the sky neither celebrates nor mourns these milestones of our existence. We are so acutely aware of our finite time upon this earth, yet time itself, pays no attention to us. Daphne found an unexpected comfort in that. A reassurance that somehow, the world will right itself, in the face of all our troubles.

Daphne shut her eyes and let the brilliance of the new sun warm her cheeks. The longer she sat there, the less afraid she felt. Every second of sunrise light stoked the forge of her bravery. This was going to be a grand day.

§

“Rise and shine, sleepyheads!” Daphne called from the kitchen.

“What time is it?” Lera asked, rubbing her eyes.

“Little past noon.”

Stanley was shocked, “Noon!? We slept that late!?”

Daphne nodded, “I wanted y’all to be rested. Y’all look exhausted. Slept since dark on the way to see ma.”

Stanley squinted at Daphne, “Slept since dark?”

“Yeah. Don’t y’all recall?”

Lera looked just as unsettled as Stanley, “I had the weirdest dream about meeting your mother.”

“Me too! She’s still alive?” Stanley asked.

“Who?” Daphne wondered.

“Your mom.” Lera replied for Stanley.

Daphne chuckled, “Of course, she is, silly. How could we go see her if she wasn’t?”

“Man, that dream was creepy.” Stanley noted.

“Folk can sometimes have strange visions around mystic souls. That there’s a fact they don’t teach in those Continental schools.”

After a short silence, where Lera and Stanley both thought about what Daphne said, their memories of the previous night began to fade more and more into the mist of forgetfulness.

Finally, Lera said, “I’m glad she’s not dead.”

Daphne scoffed, “Mama would say being abandoned by the world is the same thing. Plenty of living souls are ghosts, because that’s the way we treat them. After awhile, they don’t even know if they’re alive or not.”

“I don’t remember walking back into the cabin.” Stanley said.

“You were barely awake. You slept the whole time there, the whole ride home, then I roused y’all to come indoors. Passed right back out again once y’all hit the sacks.” Changing the subject, Daphne added, “I spent all morning writing as much about wights as I could. Looks a lot like papa’s handwriting too. Once y’all have some breakfast, we need to run up the forge in the barn.”

“The forge?”

“Need to melt down some gold, then we can recast our bullets with it. Remember, every shot needs to have gold and kingsnake blood. Y’all bring enough ammunition?”

“Plenty.”

“I have some 12ga shells. I can recrimp those too. Replace the pellets with small gold nuggets and a few drops of kingsnake blood.”

By the beautiful sunlight of a desert afternoon, all the gloom and shadow of the Valley of Death nightmares were forgotten. Even the mason jar of kingsnake blood took on an exciting charm of wonderment, instead of a bleak foreboding of doom.

Stanley whispered to Lera, “Wait. Kingsnake blood? I thought Daphne said it was all a dream.”

Lera noted, “How did we dream the same thing?”

Chapter 13: The Wight Showdown & The Stormcoyotes

Rain had begun in the night, while the Daphne, Lera and Stanley were sleeping. By the time the three awoke, the downpour was steady and patient. The sort of rain determined to last all day.

Never in the history of sleep has anyone wanted to sleep in more than they do during a desert rain. There is a peace in such a storm that no blizzard or night can match.

As they gathered themselves to leave, the trio spoke very little.

Each of them were lost in a haze of slumber and fear.

Daphne was afraid of losing her father.

Lera was afraid of losing her life.

Stanley was afraid of losing Lera.

Their fears were silent and private. No one mentioned them, but they could see them in each others eyes.

“You two ride inside. No sense in y’all getting drenched.” Daphne suggested.

“Nope. We’re in this with you. You ride up top, so do we.” Stanley insisted.

Daphne grinned, “Suit yourselves.”

Lera glared at Stanley, but no one saw her do it.

As the stagecoach waddled down the muddy road, mile after mile, and wind sneezed a gust of rain in her face, Lera glared at Stanley again.

No one saw her do that either.

§

“There it is. Wabash Valley.” Daphne announced as the stagecoach peaked upon the rise. “Stan, what do you see?”

Stanley pulled out his binoculars, angling the lenses in an effort to prevent raindrops from splashing on them.

Wabash Valley was vast and empty.

For miles and miles it stretched, without so much as a gulley or an outcropping of rocks. Only a thin spray of chaparral bushes dotted the ground. Both sides of the valley sloped, ever so slightly, down to the old adobe church. There, a steeple three stories tall, was the highest point in the land, for thousands of acres. A rusted old fence encircled a graveyard next to the mission.

Domed over the bleak landscape was an endless expanse of gray sky. Rain drained everything to a pasty tone of shale, from the heavens to the sand itself. Every color of nature seemed to have been forgotten and washed away. The only sound was an occasional warm breeze and the relentless gentle shush of rain on sand.

“Good location.” Stanley declared. “Nobody can sneak up on them. They can see anyone coming for miles.”

“What do they have?”

Stanley squinted and wiped rain from his brow. “Looks like they have an armored stagecoach. All black. No windows. Being pulled by those shadow horses for the train hijacking.”

“Nightmares.” Daphne corrected.

“Right. Nightmares. The four wights are all standing outside. I can’t see their faces from this far away, but I think they’re looking in our direction.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Daphne waved the reigns. Water flung skyward in an arc of snakes and the wagon continued down the road toward the abbey. Now and then, Stanley would check through the binoculars once more. When they were about a quarter mile away, two of the wights began to flank the church on either side. From the WANTED posters in the jail, Stanley recognized them as Devi Harris and Edmund Swalwell. At the same time, Alexander De’Leon and Christopher Newsome entered the vestibule.

“They’re splitting up. Harris and Swalwell flanked each side of the building. De’Leon and Newsome went indoors.” Stanley put away the binoculars.

“Nobody else?”

“Nope. I’ve only seen the four this whole time.”

“I’m going in alone.” Daphne declared.

“No!” Lera objected.

“If they ambush us, I want y’all to have yer eyes on the outside.”

Stanley and Lera didn’t like her plan, but knew she was right. All three of them going indoors would be foolish. Someone had to stay in front and see what was happening. Besides, if Daphne could get her father free, they’d been evenly-matched outdoors and in.

Stanley asked, “And if they do ambush us?”

“I never did work that part out.”

“Lovely.”

Daphne reigned the horse to a stop a hundred feet from the doors.

Pointing at the two outlaws outside the church, she said, “Stay back here. Watch them. I’m going in.”

All three climbed off the stagecoach.

Lera and Stanley each had a bead on a wight.

A strange glint sparked off in the distance.

The spark vanished, then glinted again.

Peering off at the horizon, on the other side of the valley, Stanley squinted. “Were those headlights?”

Lera brushed at wet hair on her shoulders. “What? I don’t have headlice.”

“Lights, goofball. Headlights.”

“Headlights? Where?”

§

Daphne walked toward the church, a leatherbound notebook in one hand and a pump-action Mossberg shotgun in the other. There was no longer a door on the decrepit building. Before she reached the steps, she could see straight through to the alter.

Newsome stood in front of an empty congregation. Standing before an alter turned Daphne’s stomach, knowing he was an abomination that had no business setting foot in a church, abandoned or not. In one hand he held a pocketwatch.

To his left, Sheriff Spade was bound to a chair. Daphne was relieved to see he appeared uninjured, except perhaps for his pride.

To the right of the alter stood De’Leon, looking so eager for a fight, Daphne worried he might try to shoot her before she even handed them the notebook.

“Miss Spade.” Newsome grinned, clapping the pocketwatch closed. “Right on time.”

Halfway up the aisle, Daphne stopped.

She held the notebook over her head. “Here it is. Y’all untie my papa.”

Newsome motioned to De’Leon who walked over to Sheriff Spade and cut him free. Sheriff Spade didn’t say a word. He simply glared at his captors and walked toward his daughter. The Sacramento Gang hadn’t even disarmed him, because they knew his ammunition couldn’t harm them.

“The book.” Newsome motioned.

Daphne threw it at his feet.

De’Leon picked it up and handed it to Newsome.

Newsome thumbed through the pages and paused. Daphne wondered how those black, eyeless voids in his grotesque skull could read. As those thoughts came into her mind, Newsome announced, “It all seems to be here. It has been a pleasure to do business.”

Daphne and Sheriff Spade walked out of the church backwards.

They didn’t say another word. And neither did the wights.

Something was wrong.

Something was very wrong.

The wights didn’t threaten them.

The wights didn’t attack.

This was way too easy.

They just walked in and out.

Sheriff Spade and Daphne began to exchange nervous glances.

The wights didn’t move. They didn’t reach for their guns. They didn’t walk out the back of the church. They just stood there. Watching.

Once they neared the doorway, a voice called out.

“Are you okay, Sheriff?”

Sheriff Spade turned around for the first time. “Stan!? Lera!? What in blazes are y’all doing here!?”

“They insisted they help.” Daphne explained.

“Oh, they insisted, did they? Daphne, they are children. Ya should know better! Where my deputies?”

“Guarding our house and the jail.” Daphne explained.

A small twitch in his brow revealed Sheriff Spade was impressed Daphne had thought of that. He added, “Where’s Colton and Max?”

“Colton got hurt. Max took him home. Old Gus took ‘em.”

“Colton got hurt!?”

“He’s okay. Just bumped his head. He’ll be fine.”

“We are going to have serious talk when this is over!” Sheriff Spade scolded his daughter.

When Sheriff Spade and Daphne got closer to the stagecoach, Stanley asked, “They just set him free?”

“Yeah. That was too easy. Something is up.” Daphne finally said aloud what all of them were thinking.

“Snipers?” Lera wondered, handing new ammunition to the sheriff.

No explanation was necessary. Sheriff Spade knew exactly what the ammunition was for and why. Loading his gun, Sheriff Spade disagreed with the worry about distant assassins. “Valley is too big. Closest mountain is three miles away. Longest sniper shot in the world is two miles.”

“Maybe they’re just hiding in the chaparral.” Stanley noted.

Over the sound of the rain, a click sounded from the steeple.

De’Leon raised a rifle and shot the two horses pulling the Spade stagecoach.

“No!” Sheriff Spade shouted. He sprinted back to the church.

Daphne, enraged, raised her shotgun and fired four slugs in rapid succession at the steeple. De’Leon’s body slammed into the brittle wall and exploded out in a hail of dust and clay. He screeched an inhuman howl. As his body plummeted to the ground, it shriveled into a blackened husk and shattered like a coal statue when it impacted the desert.

Turning to the four nightmares pulling the armored stagecoach, Daphne vengefully blasted each of them, their shadowy wisps solidifying under the magic of gold and blood wounds. Shrieking a death-rattle like burning ravens, their corpses smouldered and creaked with the sound of campfire wood.

Harris and Swalwell dashed for cover behind the church as Stanley and Lera split up, chasing after them.

Halfway through the graveyard, Harris fired at Stanley. Stanley dove behind an old tombstone for cover, the bullet zinging over his head.

“Jeez!” Stanley moaned. This was now the second gunfight in his life and Stanley still wasn’t used to hearing gunshots that close, without ear protection. The sound was deafening and his ears rang into muffled deafness.

Lera charged after Swalwell, shouting as though all her berserker Irish ancestors had suddenly infused her blood. Swalwell panicked. Having a girl run after him like a maniac, knowing she had the proper ammunition to kill him, was not what he was expecting.

Sheriff Spade heard footsteps darting up the steeple as he rushed down the aisle. Bolting after Newsome, the sheriff ran toward the staircase.

Stanley peeked over the tombstone and another shot whizzed by. He spotted Harris, hidden by the corner of the church. But she had him pinned down. Laying on his back in the wet sand, he took off his hat, and hung it on his boot. With a deep breath, he grabbed both pistols and cocked them. As he raised his leg and showed his hat, he swung his guns around the other side.

Two shots fired and sent his hat flying off his boot.

While she went for his decoy, Stanley shot from the other side of the grave. One shot hit Harris directly in her cheek and the other right in the middle of her chest. Her last gasp couldn’t even scream. With a grotesque prattle of splintering wood, she too collapsed into a black husk and disintegrated.

Lera continued to charge after Swalwell on the other side of the church. As she marched through the graveyard, a headstone moved and broke her concentration.

“Huh?”

Without warning, a grotesque hand blasted out of the ground in an explosion of dirt and grabbed her ankle. Lera screamed and tripped, cracking her head hard on a statue as she fell.

Stanley looked up, hearing her scream, and scurried around the back of the church to help her. “Lera! I’m coming!”

Swalwell paused and looked back.

A zombie was crawling from the wet ground, closing in on Lera. She was still conscious, but dazed. Her shotgun had dropped from her grip. Swalwell laughed perversely. He walked closer to her, his rifle leveled at Lera’s head.

“Swalwell!” Stanley yelled as he fired a shot at the wight. He missed.

Swalwell turned away from Lera to face Stanley. “Thought the good guys never shot a man in the back.”

Swalwell raised his gun at Stanley’s face.

Lera called out, “You’re not a man.”

Lera pulled her trigger and a slug hammered the back of Swalwell’s skull. The gold and blood made his entire body suck into the wound, then explode in a burst of black ash.

Stanley and Lera shielded their eyes. As the smoke cleared, Lera screamed again. The zombie that grabbed her ankle was now completely free from the grave. The ground around her began to roil.

Sheriff Spade eased his way up the steeple stairs, slowing near the top. Newsome’s footsteps had ceased. Walking up the final step and pointing his gun around the corner, there was no sign of the evil wight.

A dark figured dropped from the rafters. Newsome pounced on Sheriff Spade, disarming him. Sheriff Spade kicked a boot at Newsome’s knee and the wight fell. Spinning to face him, Sheriff Spade wailed a punch into Newsome’s cheek. With a terrifying strength, Newsome brushed the punch aside. The monster grabbed the sheriff by the throat, dangling his body over the broken wall of the steeple.

Newsome grinned. “Shall I drop you?” Swinging the sheriff back over the wall, he let go of his neck. “Or toy with you?”

Angrily, Sheriff Spade played the same game, grabbed ahold of Newsome’s jacket, and dangled him over the precipice. Newsome simply laughed, “You forget, Spade. If you drop me from the steeple, it won’t kill me.”

“No. But this will.” Sheriff Spade reached his free hand into his boot to unsheathe a knife. With one swift motion, he raked the blade across the bullets on his belt, scraping flecks of gold and kingsnake blood onto the edge, then thrust the steel into Newsome’s heart.

Sheriff Spade shoved Newsome off the steeple with the knife still in his chest. Before the wight even hit the ground, he burst into a swirl of flame and smoke, shattering in a black ceramic husk on the sand.

“Papa! You okay!?” Daphne yelled as she burst into the room.

Sheriff Spade looked around the entire church from the steeple. Every inch of the surrounding graveyard was bubbling and cracking as dozens of zombies began to emerge from their graves.

Lera screamed again.

Stanley ran to her, shouting, “Back to the church!”

Sheriff Spade saw Lera and Stanley running for the rear door.

“Back downstairs!” Sheriff Spade told Daphne.

The four met inside the nave.

“Sheriff! You okay?” Lera asked.

“Temporarily.”

“You guys good?” Daphne asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” Stanley answered.

They all stood in a circle, their backs to each other. Lera and Daphne faced the front and rear doors of the church. Stanley and Sheriff Spade faced the windows.

“How we looking?” Sheriff Spade asked.

“Um, way too many zombies this way.”

“I’ve got at least a dozen.”

“Same here.”

“Wasn’t snipers.” Lera observed.

Stanley noted. “No. Looks like they picked an abandoned graveyard for a reason.”

Sheriff Spade asked, “Ammo check. How much you got?”

“Maybe four shots.”

“Two.”

“I have two as well.”

“Not enough.” Sheriff Spade noted.

Daphne said, “Rest of the ammo is in the stagecoach.”

As the zombies began to come through the windows, Lera cried out, “Sheriff? What do we do!?”

Outside, an engine roared.

Headlights swept across the rain and the front of the church.

A rapid succession of gunfire began to rip across the zombies. From inside the church, the quartet couldn’t see what was happening. The monsters crawling in the windows scattered back outside to face the fight.

With zombies approaching the front door distracted, Sheriff Spade shouted, “Stagecoach! Get more ammo!”

Running out the main doors of the church, a Jeep was parked between the stagecoaches. Perched atop the Jeep was the entire Sutherland family, each holding an AR-15, blasting zombies.

Mr. Sutherland paused and threw Remington shotguns in the air. “Stan! Lera! 12 rounds! Ammo can is by my feet!”

Stanley and Lera caught the guns.

With a clear path to the stagecoach, Sheriff Spade and Daphne reloaded.

One after another, blast after blast, zombies were vaporized with blood and gold.

Lera screamed the final shots, hitting two at once with a spread of buckshot.

Panting for breath. Ears buzzing from gunfire.

Everyone stood silently in the rain.

Other than gaping holes in cemetery plots, and the two dead horses, there was no sign of the carnage of battle. Every wight and zombie had turned to dust, or smoke, or coal, and dissipated on the wind, or melted into the sand.

Sheriff Spade looked at Mr. Sutherland. “William!? Well I’ll be darned, you old pirate. Is that you?”

“Jedediah. Hear you’re the new sheriff in town.”

“What are you doing here!?” Sheriff Spade asked.

“My sons told us you were in trouble. Said Stan and Lera stayed behind. Thought you could use a hand.”

“Nice to see you again, Sheriff.” Naomi tipped her hat.

Sheriff Spade smiled and returned the gesture, “Miss Naomi.”

Stanley and Lera, jaws agape, stared the same thought into each others eyes, HOW do the Sutherland’s know Sheriff Spade!?

A metal window clanged open on the armored stagecoach.

A deep woman’s voice spoke from within.

“Touching reunion.”

Sheriff Spade, Daphne, Lera, Stanley, Colton, Maximilian, William, and Naomi all cocked and racked their guns and pointed them at the window.

Sheriff Spade said to the voice, “Step out slowly.”

“Oh, we will step out, Sheriff. Be assured of that. We are what y’all might call an insurance policy. The Sacramento Gang made a deal with us, to avenge them, in case the day did not go in their favor. Seems to me, it did not. You should have wondered why the Sacramento Gang wanted to wait two days to release you, Sheriff. Maybe checked the forecast.”

An old woman peered out of the window of the metal stagecoach.

She placed her hand on the wet sill and screamed.

For a moment, her eyes seemed to turn yellow and slit like a cat.

“RUN! EVERYONE TO THE JEEP! NOW!”

No one had ever seen Sheriff Spade run so fast, or look so scared, and no one knew why he was scared or running. But no one questioned it. Everyone just chased after him.

“Papa? What are we running from?” Daphne asked.

Sheriff Spade smiled awkwardly, “Tell y’all in a minute, precious. William! Get this contraption moving! Now!”

“I’m moving! I’m moving!” William fumbled for his keys and jumped in the driver seat. The engine roared to life as Stanley, Lera and Naomi clamored into the vehicle.

“Go! Go! Go!” Sheriff Spade ordered.

Colton and Maximilian nearly fell off the bumper, but held on.

William gunned the engine and sand spat from the tires.

As they began to put some distance from the stagecoach, Naomi asked, “Sheriff? Would you mind telling us what is going on?”

“That there woman was Harriet Clinton. Leader of the Demon Rat Gang. They’re all stormcoyotes.”

Daphne looked terrified. “Stormcoyotes!? How many of them were in that stagecoach?”

“Whole gang, I reckon.”

Stanley asked, “I’m sorry. What the heck is a stormcoyote?”

“Y’all know what werewolves are? Men that turn to wolves under the full moon?” Sheriff Spade explained.

“Yeah.”

“Men who turn to mountain lions in rainstorms are stormcoyotes.”

“Mountain lions!? Wait. Wait. Stormcoyotes are men who turn into mountain lions!?... Why aren’t they called stormlions?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t name ‘em!”

Looking back, the beasts had all emerged from the stagecoach. They stood in the rain, screaming, howling, growling. As the water hit their flesh, it began to steam and sizzle. You could hear their bones cracking and breaking and fusing back together again. Arms elongated. Legs ballooned to painful sizes. Their faces stretched. Mouths ripped open as huge fangs began to jut from their jaws.

“Stop the Jeep. Stop. Stop.” Sheriff Spade said.

William, seeing the monsters in the rearview mirror said, “Stop!? Are you crazy!?”

Sheriff Spade looked back. “Right. Just slow down a little. Daphne, hand me that shovel!”

Sheriff Spade took the shovel, leaned over the side of the Jeep and scraped it along the sand. “Drop some sand down the barrel of your gun.”

“What?”

“Sand. That’s their weakness. Rainwater transforms them. Sand turns them back... No! No! Not wet sand! It’s got to be dry!”

“Dry sand!? Where we going to find dry sand in a thunderstorm!?”

“Everything you dragged up is wet, Sheriff.” Lera noted.

Sheriff Spade pointed to the closest mountain range in the valley, “Over there! That way! William! Get over to Pronghorn Hill. There’s old mines up in them mountains. Sand will still be dry in there.”

Their transformations complete, the stormcoyotes began to dash across the valley in pursuit of the Jeep. There numbered a dozen horrific, gargantuan mountain lions, the height and bulk of fifteen foot grizzly bears, and covered in mange.

Sheriff Spade explained, “Now remember, y’all gots to shoot ‘em twice. Not just once. First time, sand gets in the wound and turns them back to human. Then hit ‘em again, before they change back into animals.”

“They’re getting closer!” Maximilian yelled.

“Get the shotguns!” Sheriff Spade ordered. “Won’t kill ‘em without sand, but blasting them backward might slow ‘em down!”

Daphne, Lera and Stanley all faced backward, ready to shoot.

The stormcoyotes were gaining, but were still too far to hit from a Jeep careening through arroyos and bouncing over washboard terrain. Tearing over the landscape, they reached the foot of the mountain and powered up an incline that looked as if it may have been a road, long, long ago.

“That way!” Sheriff Spade pointed to William. “Left! Then over that rise! There!”

A mine opening, large enough to swallow the Jeep, loomed ahead.

William raced into the cave and skidded to a halt thirty feet within.

Everyone quickly jumped out, grabbed handfuls of dry sand, and dropped it down the muzzle of their shotguns.

Rushing to the mouth of the mine, they took positions of cover behind the rocks. The rain pattered on hat brims as they eyed the hillside.

The dozen stormcoyotes came rushing up the mountain. Sheriff Spade hit the first one with two quick blasts. The spray of sand ripped into the fur. Screeching from an animal roar into a human wail, the stormcoyote almost instantly changed back into a person. The second blast knocked him down the mountain.

Another lunged at Lera, who shot it in midair.

The monster began to transform back into human form. In her panic, Lera almost forgot to hit it with a second slug.

“Shoot it twice!” Daphne reminded her.

Lera quickly squeezed off another round, sending it tumbling down the rocks.

Stanley and Colton wiped out two more in a series of four rapid canon roars.

The remaining stormcoyotes scattered and ran. They knew they were vulnerable. Attacking from the low-ground into the cave was suicide.

Naomi and Colton fired warning shots over the shoulders of the retreating beasts.

William smiled, “Just another lazy weekend in good old Saddleback County.”

Stanley and Lera were still in shock that Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland showed up.

“You need a ride home?” William asked Daphne and Sheriff Spade.

“No. Take us back to the church.” Sheriff Spade requested.

“Back to the church?”

Daphne nodded. “We need to bury our horses. Can’t leave their corpses for the coyotes. They were good animals. Need to give ‘em the proper respect.”

“We’ll all help.” Lera offered.

No one was bothered that she volunteered everyone.

§

There is something incredibly comforting about familiar roads, after a long journey, far from home. Daphne relaxed in her seat, once she knew she was only a mile or two from her bed. The closer they were to home, the clearer the skies became. By the time they reached Spade & Winterborn Ranch, the sun was steaming the rain from the sand, and a welcome warmth blanketed the air.

Deputy Roy rushed over the Jeep as it came to a stop in front of the main gate. “Sheriff! You’re safe!”

“Yes, sir, Roy. Did y’all have any trouble?”

“No, sir. Miss Daphne asked us to watch over yer place. But there weren’t a soul out here.”

“Good. Good. Thank you, Deputy.”

Sheriff Spade walked around the vehicle, removed his hat and reached a hand to Stanley. “Stan. Thank you, son. Without y’all helping Daphne, I don’t think we’d have made it out of there.” Turning to Lera, he shook her hand as well. “Miss McKinney. You’re a brave little girl. I can’t thank you enough.”

“You’re welcome, Sheriff.”

“You saved us too. Fair is fair.”

Colton spoke up, “And we’re sorry for all the trouble we caused. If you weren’t taking us home on the train, none of this would have happened.”

Daphne climbed out of the Jeep and comforted Colton by saying, “It’s not your fault. The Sacramento Gang would have come after papa no matter what. This had nothing to do with y’all. If they hadn’t grabbed him on the train, they would have done it someplace else.”

“Speaking of gettin’ home, I’m sure Stan and Lera’s folks are worried sick.” Sheriff Spade said, “Y’all should head out right now.”

Naomi assured the sheriff, “Don’t worry. We called Stan and Lera’s parents two nights ago, as soon as Colton and Max got home. We told them everything is fine and you were out on a long hike. They were upset you didn’t call, but they are fine with you being home this evening.”

Sheriff Spade put his hat back on. “Well, in that case, Daphne and I would be much obliged if y’all joined us for supper!”

Daphne looked at Deputy Roy, “You and the deputies are welcome to some vittles too.”

Deputy Roy tipped his hat, “Thank you, Miss Daphne. That would be swell!”

“You hungry?” William asked his youngest son.

“And how!”

Despite the horrors of fighting wights and zombies and lycanthropes, despite the sorrow of burying their horses, a good meal with friends and family made things better for everyone. When tragic darkness befalls the human soul, all it takes to dispel the nagging worries of despair, is a warm afternoon of sunshine, and sharing a few laughs, with those we love.

And during that meal, Stanley and Lera finally learned the tale of how William and Naomi Sutherland met Jedediah Spade. But that is a story for another time...

Chapter 14: The Journey Home

Charlotte smiled at her dear brother as she opened her eyes.

Fall had come to The Valley and the Thanksgiving season set the landscape aglow with the radiant shine of a billion falling leaves. Everywhere the children looked, it was as through they had fallen into the puzzle pieces of a pointillist stained glass explosion. Stanley’s regard for the woodlands as a church rang truer in Fall than any other season. Golds and oranges and reds mixed with birch white bark and the remnants of green clinging in defiance, among silver maples, and pine.

Lera had her sword pointed at Colton and Maximilian.

Stanley held a notebook out to his sister.

“Mi’Lady, as Oberon, King of the Faerie Realm, for defending our land from these mortal boys, I present you with this Gift of Knowledge.”

Charlotte gingerly wrapped her fingers around the notebook. For in that moment, she was not playing make-believe. In that moment, she was truly Puck, The Valley was truly Broceliande, and her brother was truly King. Lera was truly Titania, and the magic could be real as long as Charlotte believed.

“What is this?” Charlotte asked.

The other four children smiled.

“Just read it.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

Charlotte opened the notebook and read the first line.

Dear Charlotte,

§

Sitting upon a log in The Valley, Charlotte couldn’t believe the story she was reading.

“Is this real!?” Charlotte asked over and over.

“Yes.”

“This part too? This really happened?”

“Yes, Charlotte. It’s all real. I promise.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner!?”

“I’m sorry. Listen, I knew if I told you when you were in New York, two things would happen. First, it would drive you crazy that you weren’t here to see it, and second, you might not even believe me. So, I decided to wait until you came home for Thanksgiving.”

Lera added, “And if Stan gave it to you, in front of all of us, we can all vouch for it.”

Charlotte looked at Colton and Maximilian. “Really? This all really happened?”

Colton pointed at his brow, “You asked how I got this scar on my forehead. That’s in the story too.”

Stanley reached into his pocket. He pulled out a fist and held it over Charlotte’s hand. “Here. One last bit of proof.”

“What is it?” Charlotte giggled.

Stanley opened his fingers and set one tiny gold nugget in her palm. “From Old Gus’s mine. I kept it. I didn’t weigh it, so I’m not sure how much it’s worth.”

Charlotte gasped and hugged her brother tight. Smiling at Lera over Stanley’s shoulder, Charlotte kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear, “Thank you. It’s worth everything. Everything.”

Lera and Charlotte never shared their secret of the pebble with the boys, so Stanley would never grasp how valuable that gold was to his baby sister. But sometimes, young girls even need to keep happy secrets to themselves. That’s the surest way to keep them magic.

Charlotte went back to reading, giddy with excitement. She was so overjoyed, her hands were shaking. Anytime she would get to a dangerous part of the story, she would tense and bit her lip. When she would read about Old Gus, she would giggle and wrinkle her nose.

But underneath everything, there was something else.

A different thrill.

An undercurrent of elation she was bursting to share.

“I knew it!” Charlotte would say now and then. “I knew I was right!”

Finally, before finishing, Charlotte set the notebook on her lap and said, “Listen, guys. I have something else to tell you.”

“Aren’t you going to finish?” Stanley asked.

“Later.” Charlotte said, “I have to tell you this.”

“What?”

“I think there are more places like this in the world. Secret places.”

“Yeah?” Lera nodded.

Everyone was confused and didn’t understand what Charlotte was trying to say. Of course Saddleback County wasn’t the only place. The kids all knew that now. Charlotte wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. The world was filled with places that were not on maps.

Charlotte slowly turned her head to the end of The Valley. “Yeah.”

The other children all followed her gaze.

“Did you ever look?” Charlotte asked.

“What do you mean?” Maximilian wondered.

“What do you mean, what do I mean? It’s a simple question. Did you ever look? Did you ever go all the way to the other side of The Valley? And look and see what was there?”

“Not really.” Colton volunteered.

“Not really? So, no. You haven’t.” Charlotte rolled her eyes.

“Sort of.” Colton said.

“Jeez! Why is this such a hard question to answer? Did you look or not?”

“No! We headed over that way and we could hear the highway, so we just turned back around. I don’t know, it sounds silly, but we didn’t want to see it. Okay? Because it was almost like, if we saw the highway, then we’d know where The Valley ends. And it’s more magical and special if we don’t know where it ends. If we let it stay a mystery. You know? Because if we don’t see the highway, then we can pretend it’s anything. We can pretend it goes on forever.”

Charlotte immediately began to march toward the highway.

“Charlotte? Where you going?”

Charlotte stopped, turned around, and scolded everyone, “Guys! What if it really does go on forever and you don’t have to pretend?”

Charlotte raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips, just to let everyone think about it. Then, she turned her back to everybody and took off walking toward the highway again.

No one else moved.

Stanley looked at the others and finally said, “You don’t suppose...”

Lera bit her lip. “She was right the first time...”

“It couldn’t be.” Colton doubted.

Maximilian just grinned and started to follow Charlotte. “Wait up!”

§

Unexpectedly, the undergrowth and brush of The Valley began to grow thicker as Charlotte neared the end. For a short while, the trees were more sparse and a partial clearing was revealed. That was where Colton and Maximilian had turned back in the past. But as Charlotte continued onward, the ivy became more dense. Fallen trees blocked her path. Using her fawn prowess for gliding through the woodlands, she scaled logs and dodged overgrown green. With each passing step, the hissing lull of highway traffic grew louder and louder. Grabbing one last handful of vines and leaves, she drew them aside.

Charlotte stared in wonder.

Unable to speak. Unable to move.

Charlotte wanted to call out to the others. But she couldn’t.

Gasping at the splendor before her, she was frozen with awe.

“Oh, my God.”

§

“Charlotte!” Stanley called out. “Wait up for us!”

“Charlotte! Where are -” Lera caught her breath as she pushed aside the ivy and found Charlotte.

Colton, Stanley and Maximilian emerged from the woods.

The boys stopped breathing for a moment.

None of them could say a word.

§

What had sounded like a highway from the distance was actually a series of majestic waterfalls, cascading into a gargantuan valley. Winds carried the waters crashing down rocky cliffsides and murmuring a sigh of mist into streams and rivers. Snowcapped mountains rose in the distance, as a lush pine forest rolled down the hillside at their feet. Beyond the forest, golden green fields framed a sparkling and deep azure lake. And upon a stout butte in the center of the landscape rose a grand and breathtaking castle of white granite, spires dancing into the sky, capped with noble emblazoned flags.

The children felt something in that moment which few people ever experience. Not only did they see the totality of their own lives, but they saw that of their friends and families as well. They saw high school computer classes and art club. Stanley saw prom with Lera while Lera saw their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Colton and Maximilian saw their parents as children themselves, exploring gold mines in Saddleback County. Charlotte saw telling her future kids about The Valley, but never setting foot in it herself, because there comes a time in life when places are no longer for you, and they must be passed on, for children to discover on their own. They saw old age and the end of days. And Stanley saw something so obvious, it made him smile when he wondered why he never saw it before; hand-in-hand, he and Lera would one day cross the Valley of Death at sunrise, when the sky was golden, and the road was warm with promise. There would be dragonflies to spark the trail, and hot air balloons to color the horizon. And an old sheriff would come to meet them, and guide them on their way. For taking the path of hope, or the road of sorrow, are simply a question of what time you set foot upon the journey.

In that instant, when everything, when everytime, when everymoment, poured over them in a wind of joy, the children weren’t afraid of anything anymore. Not of growing up or growing old. Not of sadness or pain. Not of hardships or grief.

They were simply filled with delight, for all the glory of living, and for all the thrills which awaited beyond the horizon...

Epilogue

I’m sorry it’s over too.

I know.

You get so sad when you reach the end of a book. You want more. You want to see what happens next.

I feel the same way.

Remember, as the writer of this story, I met these characters before anyone else in the whole world. These kids are my friends. And I don’t want their story to end either.

You want to know how I came up with the idea for this book?

There is a scene in the 1984 blockbuster film, Ghostbusters, starring Bill Murray, and directed by Ivan Reitman, where two characters announce they are going to do some paranormal research by consulting a pair of books. One book is called Tobin’s Spirit Guide and the other is entitled Spade’s Catalog.

And I got to thinking, what if, paranormal investigators who reference Spade’s Catalog only call it that as a shortened nickname? What if the full title was something much longer, such as, maybe, Sheriff Jedediah Spade’s Catalog of Netherworld Monstrosities?

But here is the funny part...

I was totally wrong.

“Spade’s Catalog” was a misnomer.

After all these years, I discovered, I was mistaken.

The line in Ghostbusters isn’t “Spade’s Catalog”.

They say, “Spates Catalog”.

Spates!

SPATES Catalog!?

Not Spade’s!

But, now it was too late! I couldn’t change the name of my book!

Why?

Because “Sheriff Spade” sounds awesome.

“Sheriff Spates” sounds silly.

Thus, the title for this novel, is a tribute to Ghostbusters, using a completely misunderstood line of dialog.

Those ideas inspired the first facet of this tale.

The other element of this novel, the “hidden world” concept, is one of the oldest story ideas I have ever had. I first thought of this premise about 33 years ago, when I was 14 years old. The question I asked was simply this:

What if the world wasn’t what we were told?

What if maps were all lies? What if there were other continents out there, no one had discovered? What if there were parts of the world no one knew about?

There is an old saying, “Buy land. God isn’t making anymore.”

What if that wasn’t true?

What if earthquakes actually made new land, kind of like a volcano making an island? Vast acres of land. Enough to increase the very diameter of the planet. Only, what if the land was created in places we never see? What if, all you had to do to find those places, was to make the effort to go look? No magic. No mysterious portals. No alternate dimensions. Just real, honest to goodness, hidden parts of our planet, that anyone could stumble upon, if they knew how to search right.

As a child, I would fantasize about that idea all the time.

If I was riding horses on my uncle’s ranch, or racing my BMX bike deep in the woods, or hiking in some shadowy boulder-walled creek, I would often stop and wonder... what is really beyond that ridgeline, down that path, or around that corner?

What if I could find some secret place, no one else knew was there?

I toyed with that delightful concept in my head for over 3 decades, but I never had a story to go with it. Creative and unique ideas are great, but without a story giving it purpose and bringing it to life, you can’t do much with the idea.

When I combined my “hidden world” idea, with the Spade’s Catalog idea, I finally started to have something.

At last, I started to imagine some characters. Once you know the world and the characters who live in it, figuring out their story is the final part of the equation. During the summer of 2018, the story ideas noisily began to kick around my head. I kept seeing the kids in my mind. Hearing flashes of their conversations. Seeing their faces. Knowing what they look like. How they dress. How they sound. Seeing their rooms. Hearing the buzz of their BMX tires on pavement and the chortle on dirt. Once characters begin to reveal themselves like that, once the veil between imagination and daydreams becomes thin, you know you are on the right track. These characters want their story to be told, and they won’t leave you alone, until you tell it. Sometime in early October 2018, I wrote most of the outline for this novel in one evening.

That got me excited.

Once I have an outline, I know I have a legitimate story.

Because an outline gives me a beginning, middle and end.

In my mind, I kept seeing the wonderful coming-of-age movies I grew up with in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Films like The Goonies, The NeverEndingStory, Stand By Me, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Explorers, Hook, E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Gremlins, Jumanji, Jurassic Park, The Last Starfighter and even Back To The Future. All of these movies featured gradeschool or highschool protagonists in grand adventures. I really wanted to capture that kind of fun and joy in this book. I wanted this to be a story for kids of all ages. No foul language. No inappropriate scenes. A tale of thrills and excitement. I wanted to write a story authors like L. Frank Baum and Frances Hodgson Burnett would be happy to read. Something that might delight Ray Bradbury. Something that might make them proud their way of telling stories was staying alive for future generations of children.

To the kids who read this book...

I’ll bet you anything that giant old stone is still there...

Back in Ohio...

Deep in the woods...

Resting in the creek...

At the bottom of the ravine...

Just waiting for some child like you to find it...

And unlock the secrets it is guarding...

Eric Muss-Barnes

24 June 2019

Biography

Raised by the 1940’s swingkid generation of his maternal grandparents, Eric Muss-Barnes is a Fifth Generation American, born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. There, he spent the first 32 years of his life, before picking up and moving to California, with no job and nowhere to live, in the spring of 2003. (Although, he frequently jokes, he was “born and raised 2,500 miles outside of Los Angeles”.)

During the course of five decades, Eric has spent years working at Walt Disney Studios; solo-piloted hang gliders over 6000 feet above the Earth; dated fashion models, rockstar goddesses and glamazon actresses; been thrown and dragged by horses (arguably similar to his dating experiences); earned a living as an American Greetings toymaker and a Hollywood game designer; ridden motorcycles more than 100,000 miles through mountains and desert sandstorms (make that “over” mountains, he’s not Buckaroo Banzai); produced, directed and edited numerous music videos and an award-nominated film (The Unseelie Court); briefly wed a tattooed MENSA astrophysicist chick, who was also a drummer in heavy metal bands; crewed on an Academy Award nominated movie (American Splendor); skateboarded in pools all around California with XGames medalists and documented his adventures in an online video series which has garnered over 6 million viewers; written an epic duology of vampire tales, plus standalone speculative fiction stories and imaginative literature (for a total of 11 books, including 6 novels); photographed numerous fashion models and sold his images in several art gallery showings across the nation; had stories published in multiple fiction/non-fiction anthologies; served 12 years hard time in parochial schools; been trained in the use of firearms by the San Bernardino County sheriff’s department; purchased 10 acres of the Mojave desert (while unemployed) to begin building a Disney-inspired, technologically-advanced, off-grid, dreamhouse/cabin project, called “Luthorville”; started an educational project called “Teaching Girls & Grandpas How To Build Websites” to share his 20 years of programming knowledge; and created a blog called “InkShard” where you can see videos and essays about his experiences as a writer.

A true child at heart, he has been 100% sober and straightedge since the day he was born; never used illicit drugs, never taken a single drag from a cigarette, never been pierced or tattooed, never cussed in front of his late mother, and never touched a drop of alcohol, with the exception of sips of wine at church. The guy is Little Lord Fauntleroy incarnate.

Books authored by novelist
Eric Muss-Barnes
www.EricMuss-Barnes.com

Voodoo & Loveshadow
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Ever since he was a little boy, Rusty Stratford always believed he was destined for great things. Now, with his 40th birthday fast approaching, Rusty is starting to suspect he might only be destined for mediocre things. A bachelor with few family members and fewer friends, life hasn’t quite panned out the way Rusty hoped it would, and he’s beginning to resign himself to being alone and unimportant.

All that changes the night he meets the precocious ghosts of his unborn twin daughters, Isabeau and Oona. Quickly, he comes to discover the universe is a strange brew of fate and happenstance wherein Isabeau and Oona only have a small window of time during which their spirits can be born. Can the little girls help their father find the woman destined to become their mom? Or will Isabeau and Oona miss their chance to exist?

If you squandered decades of your life awaiting “one true love” who never arrived, if dreaming of an idyllic “soulmate” kept you alive through your darkest hours and they didn’t show up, this magical tale will comfort your heartache of missed chances and abandonment with an empathy like you’ve never known. Voodoo & Loveshadow kindles hope in the loneliest of hearts, assuring when the world has given you up for dead, you may still conjure reasons for life, love and laughter to prevail...

Sheriff Jedediah Spade's Catalog of Netherworld Monstrosities
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Deep inside, every child knows, there is far more magic and enchantment, hidden in the corners of the earth, than adults are willing to admit. Somewhere out there, mysterious coastlines are plundered by cursed pirate ships, woodlands shroud kingdoms and castles you can’t find on any map, and deep in Old West mountain passes, gunfighters duel on forgotten stagecoach roads.

All kids instinctively sense, these wondrous places still exist, and if you muster the courage to venture over just the right sliver of the horizon, you will find lands of adventure, grownups pretend to know nothing about.

When four gradeschool friends brave a quest into the desert, seeking such forbidden country, they learn our world is far bigger than they ever dreamed possible, and monsters under the bed are child’s play, compared to the netherworld monstrosities lurking around ghosttowns.

The Gothic Rainbow: Beginning Volume of The Vampire Noctuaries
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Helle Tompkins has reached the end of her days as an outcast, suburban teenager. Ever since her beloved father killed himself, and they released Helle from the mental hospital for trying to join him, she’s been in a place where her pain is far deeper than high school melodrama.

No more hiding behind black lipstick and a mohawk. Now she’s playing with pagan charms, Wiccan rites, and the scrying sorcery of her Ouija board. It’s the perfect distraction until she summons the attention of a charming and sinister faerie prince. A seductive spirit lurking in the shadows of treebranches shimmering upon her walls, he may be something much more horrible than he claims.

Will she succumb to bewitching promises and find salvation in his cruel embrace, or will his own agonizing secrets draw Helle into even deeper heartbreak?

“...The Gothic Rainbow by Eric Muss-Barnes is, frankly, one of the most absorbing novels that I have read in quite some time. ... I’ve found the book well worth my time, and I hope you will give it a shot. ... At the end, I think you will agree that Eric Muss-Barnes will be a name to watch...”
- Christopher T. Miller, Book Stacks Unlimited

“... The Gothic Rainbow gives solace and escape for those who feel trapped in a messed-up world full of heartaches and misunderstandings. There is plenty of sex and violence to stimulate, but it’s the delicate beauty and passionate writing of this novel that will touch your soul ...”
- Octavia, Outburn Magazine

“... if you’ve ever listened to The Cure in the dark, danced to The Dead Milkmen, lost a loved one, hung out with skaters, hated your parents or hated preppies, or if anyone’s ever called you a “freak,” I think you’ll find a little of yourself in this book. Its honest representation of this subculture - from the music to the fashion - is spun throughout the web of fantasy ...”
- Cynthia Conlin, Implosion Magazine

“... it’s quite a page-turner, with lots of shocking vampiric escapades. This book, on the whole, is extremely well-written with a wonderful poetic style. I’m glad I didn’t let the slow start scare me off ...”
-Susan Moon, The Nocturnal Lyric

“... One aspect of the writing that I appreciated is that the author uses different styles of writing throughout this novel. Muss-Barnes excels in his literary descriptions of buildings, character dress, and dreams. ... the choice of words and inflection of mood hit dead on at what I anticipated I would find when I first picked up the book ...”
-Dan O., IndustrialnatioN

“... Eric effectively blends elements from different genres and literary styles in a duet between mortals and Fey. Highly unique, believable characters, and a musical playlist to boot! I found the book compelling and charming (in a twisted way), and would gladly read the book again ...”
- Chelsea, Thistle Magazine

“... I’m utterly mystified that this book worked as well as it did for me. It’s written for readers with a firm grasp of the Goth subculture (I don’t qualify); it doesn’t attempt to have a plot as such; and the vampires are hopelessly larger-than-life, with their expensive cars, outrageous acts of violence, and nonstop scorn for mortals. (In fact, the vampires consider themselves so godlike that pronouns referring to them are capitalized, a typographical idiosyncrasy that I found rather disconcerting.) Perhaps the book’s appeal lies in the sheer honesty of the narrative. ... Self-serving but sincere, The Gothic Rainbow is definitely worth checking out ... I know that’s a strange kind of thumbs-up, but The Gothic Rainbow is a strange kind of book. It’s certainly not for everyone. ... It is a book of dreams and fantasies, power and pain, and bittersweet Goth-flavored wish fulfillment ...”
- Catherine B. Krusberg, Sphere Fantasy Online

Annwn’s Maelstrom Festival: Concluding Volume of The Vampire Noctuaries
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Fetishes claw inside of you. Ones you dare never admit. Desires you could never reveal. Claims of being free of all their taboos has never made you stop fearing your own carnal wants... For none could ever endure your passions and live.

Whips and chains are for prudes.

Fangs. Talons. Blood of full moons. The darkest hungers never die. Tell us the tale of your lusts. Succumb to the story of your deviance.

Or pretend this isn’t you at all. Wonder how far burns the flame, but fear to melt the wax. No matter. We have you eternal. Wondering. Wanting. Trapped with no escape from the blackest scenarios you envision.

Know no remorse. Submit to this dread sensuality.

Mock my every word, for still, this is you.

There is a vampire legend within us all. You have felt it for years. Yearned to hear of it. To read of it. See it in a tangible form. Live it. Hungered. And yet no one has ever even spoken of it. No one has ever given that saga a voice... Until now...

This is the myth of the vampire as you have always dreamed it should be told. The one we have all secretly shared, but never expressed.

Hear how she wants every boy and girl?

The dawn of eternal night has come.

More than 17 years in the making, Annwn’s Maelstrom Festival is the long-awaited conclusion to The Gothic Rainbow. When you thought the shadows could become no darker, Annwn’s Maelstrom Festival: Concluding Volume Of The Vampire Noctuaries takes you further into the tale of Elric and Helle DuBois. Told from Helle’s perspective, the story picks up where The Gothic Rainbow: Beginning Volume of The Vampire Noctuaries ended. We learn the true motives of Camillia, and the mystery of mortals played as Pawns, in centuries-old Killing Games, by the insidious DuBois sisters.

The secrets grow deeper. The passion becomes stronger. The fury knows no limits. There is far more to Elric and Helle than they have ever dreamed. Welcome to Annwn’s Obsidian Sideshow & Maelstrom Festival, where the love of Elric and Helle will cause dominions to fall and tragedy and death be left in their wake.

How You Can Get a Job at Walt Disney Studios Without a College Degree
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Working for Walt Disney is a childhood dream, shared by millions of people, from all across the world. Since the founding of the studios in 1923, only a small fraction of individuals have ever experienced the bliss of making that dream come true.

After working at the illustrious Studio for more than 6 years, author Eric Muss-Barnes shares his story of how that wish-upon-a-star came true for him, starting from humble beginnings in a bluecollar family in Ohio.

Told with warmth and humor, you learn every job, every experience, every career move he made. Starting from his childhood paper route during Cleveland blizzards, he explains how he journeyed all the way to sitting with Minnie Mouse, as a Cast Member, at the Disney Studio lot, on a warm Summer day.

How You Can Get a Job at Walt Disney Studios Without a College Degree is not merely about landing a job at Disney. Rather, it’s a tale regaling every trial and tribulation which lead Eric to Los Angeles, told in the hopes of inspiring you to continue the pursuit of your own dreams, whatever they may be.

You still have time to make your dream come true too. It’s never too late.

As Jiminy Cricket promised, if your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme...

The Page of Wands
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Legend has it, an ancient walking staff, known as “The Wand”, first presented itself to old widow McCreadle, along with The Three Rules.

1. You may use the magic wand for 3 days.
2. You may only use it in your profession.
3. You must secretly bequeath it to an anonymous stranger.

As the power of The Wand is entrusted from one Los Angeles resident to the next, randomly falling into the hands of noble and corrupt citizens alike, the city is brought to both bliss and ruin. But when things finally spiral out of control in a city infested with aliens, dinosaurs, and superheroes, can a misfit group of townspeople set the world right again, before The Wand must be passed on once more?

Grandpa Steiner Saves the World (from Illegal Aliens (from Space))
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Grandpa Steiner offends everyone. He doesn’t mean to. It just happens. During his youth, his attitudes were commonplace and perfectly acceptable. As the conventions of society change around him, and more and more of his opinions become derided as obsolete, Grandpa Steiner decides to start a blog, to vent his frustrations upon the Internet.

Little does Grandpa Steiner know, when a race of space aliens secretly decide to obliterate mankind, they regard his blog as the only redeeming quality of humanity. Grandpa Steiner inadvertently causes the aliens to reconsider, thereby sparing the world from annihilation.

But when his popular essays cause a media backlash and his family convinces Grandpa Steiner to stop his politically incorrect rants, will the prevailing “culture of damn sissies” spell doom for the Earth?

The United States of America Founding Documents
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Containing the complete and unabridged text of the original documents which founded the United States of America.

1776: Declaration of Independence
Sent to leaders around the world by the thirteen original American Colonies, to proclaim their dissolution from King George III of England, and to make the United States of America her own sovereign nation.

1777: Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union
Document which served as the foundation of government for the thirteen original American Colonies and is regarded as the first Constitution of the United States.

1787: Federalist Papers
A series of 85 essays from the Founding Fathers, written and published to gain public support to ratify a new United States Constitution, intended to replace the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.

1787: United States Constitution
Serving to this day as the foundation of government structure in the United States of America and the document upon which all politicians and armed forces swear an oath to protect and defend.

1789: Bill of Rights
The first of ten amendments to the United States Constitution, enumerating multiple God-given rights, as implied in the Declaration of Independence.

1795-1992: Constitutional Amendments
After the original 10 amendments made by the Bill of Rights, beginning in 1795, an additional 17 amendments have been made to the United States Constitution.

Compiled in 2018 by novelist and patriot Eric Muss-Barnes

InkShard: A Compendium of Essays
by Eric Muss-Barnes

InkShard is a compendium of articles and social commentary, written by author Eric Muss-Barnes, between 2004 and 2018.

Revised and expanded, this volume assembles various topics culled from posts on social media websites to the scripts of video essays.

Carefully compiled from the finest of his journalistic work, InkShard represents the definitive collection of Eric’s most compelling dissertations and beloved editorials.

Schooling Your Boss To Not Suck
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Schooling Your Boss to not Suck takes a fun and sarcastic journey into tales of horrible bosses. There are countless books on improving the workplace, but nothing quite like this.

Is your boss a supervillain? Need a superhero to straighten him out? Instead of being written by another stuffy “expert”, author Eric Muss-Barnes (who barely squeaked out of high school, let alone finished college), offers a lighthearted slant on leadership from the viewpoint of the common worker.

True stories. Real experiences. No silly parables here, folks. No “puppydogs and rainbows” like those other motivational books. Just genuine events of piss and vinegar from the American middleclass workplace.

Eric is just an Average Joe, like yourself, telling it like it is. If your boss sincerely wants to learn how to motivate and inspire the people, it’s time the boss stopped listening to other leaders and started listening to what regular people like you have to say. It’s time someone stood tall, whipped off those mild-mannered glasses, and schooled your boss on how to not suck!

Forever Loving You
by Eric Muss-Barnes

Years ago, after author Eric Muss-Barnes had the cover photo for this book taken, a friend ridiculed him and said, “Who do you think you are, Michael Bolton? This looks like a cover for an album of rock ballads. ‘Eric Muss-Barnes, Forever Loving You!’” Twenty years later, instead of an album cover, it became a book cover for a compilation of cheesy lovepoems.

Colophon

Printed Editions Colophon

• HP Pavilion dm3t 1100 Notebook PC (3GB RAM / 160GB SSD)

• Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit OS

My trusty dead-silent SSD laptop was used to write this novel. I also wrote 5 additional novels, reformatted 3 other books, and composed 2 memoirs on this very same computer. Indeed, it has served me well. I intend to continue writing books on nothing but solid-state laptops for the rest of my life. I’ve used typewriters, notebooks, and desktop computers and the thin-profile laptops are definitely my favorite. They are really my element. The nice thing about writing novels is that you don’t need a ton of drive capacity either. You can easily fit a lifetime of work on a 160GB drive with room to spare.

• Notepad++ 7.5.9

• Open Office 3.4.1

My initial outline was written in plain text using Notepad++ simply because I like doing outlines in plain text. The files stay clean that way. Uncluttered.

Once the outline was done, I moved into writing the actual manuscript in Open Office, so I can compose the book in the final format including page layouts and font choices. This way, no time is wasted converting a final draft into a final format. Instead, every single draft of the novel is the final format. I can concern myself with nothing but writing. The formatting is already baked in to the process. Once I choose the ideal fonts for a given story, I never have to think about formatting again.

• Adobe Photoshop CS2

The cover image was done in Photoshop and was made with the idea of old books from the 1800’s with canvas covers. The little blue monsters are supposed to represent sketches Daphne may have drawn in pen on the cover, to show her ideas of some of the monsters her dad had captured.

• Fonts: Galliard, Saddlebag

Classic and stylish, I found the 11-point font “Galliard” to be an excellent choice for the main body of text on all the pages. With a hearty bold and a nicely flourished italic, it gave a dignified look to the text.

The titles were done using a font called “Saddlebag” which is intended to give a feel of Old West lettering.

eBook Editions Colophon

• Dell OptiPlex 3040 Desktop PC

• Windows 7 Professional OS

As with my past titles, the eBook editions were created on a desktop computer, converted from the original Open Office .ODT files used in the printed version of the book. For whatever reason, I simply prefer doing my HTML programming on a desktop computer and my novel-creation on a laptop computer. I think because my first novel was written by hand and a laptop is close to recreating that feeling. Whereas I’ve made a living as a programmer and I am used to doing that as a desk job. Hence, the reason I make printed books on a laptop and eBooks at a desktop.

• Notepad++ 7.5.9

• WinZip 9.0

In order to make the book available to readers digitally, the original Open Office .ODT files were rebuilt as an .EPUB file. Being a programmer, I engineered and constructed the .EPUB files by hand - coding all of the CSS, XHTML, OPF and NCX files in a plain text editor. Once that was complete, I used WinZip to package my .EPUB file which was then triple-validated against epubcheck 3.0, and Sigil 0.6.2, and finally in Flight Crew 0.7.2.

• KindleGen 2.9

Using the command-line utility KindleGen, I converted my .EPUB file into .MOBI format for sale and distribution online using Amazon and other .MOBI-based eReader systems. This is also the way I create my free MOBI versions that people can download for nothing and pay for via donations later.