“Interesting,” he said. “Interesting. So, you can account for every single person then?”
“Yes.” We started getting annoyed. “Look. We have nothing to hide here. We’re quiet. Law-abiding and God-fearing.”
“I apologize,” he said. He could tell we were becoming angry. “I’m just trying to do my job. Just trying to get down to the bottom of things.”
And that was it.
He left.
We breathed a collective sigh of relief and continued on with our work.
He showed up again a few days later, holding a stack of papers in an envelope. We led him to a table, placed a cloth atop it, and poured him a drink of iced tea.
“Why, thank you,” he said, evidently stunned by the gesture, given the tone of his voice.
“We are civilized,” we replied.
“Of course.” He laughed, took a sip, and cleared his throat.
He had a habit of doing this. It annoyed us.
“What can we do for you?” one of us asked.
He opened up his folder and pulled out a few slips of paper. They contained a series of sketches and drawings that looked like symbols. It was a language, perhaps. We didn’t know. But whatever it was, it appeared ancient, primordial.
“Ever seen symbols like these anywhere?” he asked.
We shook our heads. “We have not.”
“You sure about this?”
“Of course, yes.”
He told us no one knew what they meant. He’d asked everyone he could think of, ran them through the police database, sought advice from anthropologists and university scholars versed in local lore. Everywhere he turned, though, he came up with nothing.
“If that’s the case,” we said, “then why do you think we can help you?”
“Friend of mine studied religion,” he answered. “Ancient sects.”
“We are not a sect.”
“Didn’t say you were. Just—”
“We don’t know any of this.”
He sighed. “Says this looks like something ceremonial.”
“What does this have to do with your investigation?”
He finished his iced tea. “Glad you asked. This little bit of information wasn’t released to the public, but it seems that these symbols, these bizarre-looking little stars and crosses and figures that could be letters and whatnot, well, they were carved into the skin of the dead woman.”
“And because we are a religious organization, you assume we have something to do with this?”
“I didn’t say—”
We pointed in a vague direction toward the horizon. “Why don’t you go and bother those crazy artists who come here and do drugs and dance around naked? They’re probably the ones that did it.”
“I’m only trying to gather information. That’s all.”
None of us noticed him standing there, just a few feet away, listening to everything the investigator was saying. It was only when the young man got up to leave, handing over his empty glass and excusing himself before walking over toward his car, that the boy came forward.
“What is it?” we asked.
The boy stared down at the ground. There were rocks and small pebbles littered about. He kicked at some of them with the tip of his dirty shoe.
“Those symbols? The ones that were drawn there on those papers?”
“What about them?” we asked, leaning in now.
“I seen them before. In a book my father carried with him.”
“Show us,” we implored. “Show us now.”
The camper was cramped and hot, and there were flies buzzing around inside, bumping against the torn mesh of the door screen, hovering over the dirty dishes in the sink, piled up for who knew how long. Stacks of paper filled the ground, and it was hard for us to move in there. In a section of the tiny laminate kitchen counter, next to the stove, its four burners charred black as the desert night, was a picture of a woman. She wore pants, and her hair was tied in a bun. Her left hand rested on her hip, and her other was placed on the window of a blue van. Her mouth was open, a tiny red O, as if she were in the middle of saying something. The woman’s eyes were radiant, glowing. This we could feel, even as we stood there, in that forsaken space. There were a handful of pebbles and a lit candle near the photograph.
“Your mother?” we asked.
“Grandmother,” the boy responded, as if knowing the next question already. “She raised me. My real mother … she left. When my father came back from the service, he took me with him.”
“Where?” we asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “All over. We slept in motels. Once we met some men on motorcycles. Followed them for a while. They gave my father drugs that kept him up for days. That was when he started seeing things. He started writing in his book.”
The boy riffled through a plastic bag and pulled out a spiral notebook. He held it out and told us to open it, to look through the pages. Inside there were scrawled images of distorted faces and scribbles, phrases, and words that made no sense.
“Witchcraft,” one of us muttered.
“Who is this devil?” someone else asked.
“The back,” the boy urged. “They’re in the back.”
They did look similar, though the marks on the dead woman’s body were distorted and blurred in the photographs the investigator had shown us. There was something sinister about the whole thing, something that made us feel as though we’d stumbled upon a situation not meant for us.
“Call the investigator back,” one of us said.
“No,” someone else replied. “They’ll think we killed her.”
“Let’s leave all of this alone. Pretend we didn’t see any of it,” still others insisted.
“I think he did it,” the boy said. “I think he killed her. That woman.”
They had stopped, he said, one night. A long stretch of road. Past the giant windmills churning their big, wide blades. He was fast asleep. His father had been driving for days. Without sleep, he explained.
“The squeak from the brakes woke me. I felt the camper stop. The engine turned off.” He took a deep breath. “I could see out the window.” He pointed toward the back of the camper. “Red lights flashing.”
“Was it the lady?” we asked.
“There was a voice I didn’t recognize.” He began to shake. “Then a scream.”
After that, there was nothing. He heard a loud thud, saw his father’s red, shaking hands, noted the look in his eyes.
“He was mad,” the boy said. “I tried asking him if everything was okay. But he stayed quiet.”
He only partially saw the name of the city where they were. Someplace with the words Hot and Springs in it. We knew then why her lungs were filled with water that had different mineral contents than the Salton, why she looked the way she did. She’d come from one of those expensive spas tucked away in the hills, those places that rubbed you down, sprayed your face with fragrant mists, where you could splay out under the hot sun and bake your skin until it itched and bubbled.
After driving for a long while, the car engine gave out. Steam hissed from the hood. His father beat his fists against the hot metal. He gulped down the last of their water, told the boy to take whatever he could carry, and they set off on foot.
“That was when we met you all. My father went back for our camper, somehow got it fixed, and brought it here.”
“Did you see a body?” we asked.
“No,” he said. “I only saw the blood.”
That was how we knew. We talked among ourselves. We held counsel and decided what steps we needed to take when it came to the knowledge we’d gained, this strange boy we’d inherited. Our scripture taught us to care for others and ourselves, but it also taught us to make sacrifices in order to fulfill the plan He had in store for us. Many of us argued over the proper solution.
Hand the boy over to the authorities, some felt.
Leave him to fend for himself. We could travel farther east into the desert.
Get lost and prepare for the final days, still others said.
We prayed.
Finally, the solution presented itself.
We had very little. It was easy for us to pack up and leave. We were, after all, not tied to material things. We needed none of that. We gathered at the center of the wide clearing, followed the lead car out. We were a caravan of God-fearing souls lost in the dry wilderness. All we were looking for was hope, a home, a place where we could hang our hats, put our Bibles down, and rest. Finally, to rest.
We imagined lakes. Jagged granite peaks. Waterfalls cascading down boulders and rocks. The sound of the water, that beautiful and gloriously rich sound. We smelled pine-scented air. We heard owls and hawks screeching in the sky. There would be wide fields of wildflowers all around us. We wanted to live again. We wanted to breathe clean, cool air. We didn’t want our lungs to feel scalded by the hot desert wind that bit and begged and took so much.
Out. Somewhere far. Miles from the main highway that led us out of the state. We found a desolate road. We followed the main car leading the caravan—that car where we knew the boy rode.
There was nothing out there. No buildings or houses. No sign of anyone anywhere.
He looked confused. He must have been sleeping, because when he was ordered out of the car, he rubbed his eyes. He bit his lip and wiggled a finger through the hole in his shirt. “Are we there?” He glanced around.
“Yes,” one of us said.
He looked around again. “Where?”
One of us, an old man with a long beard and glassy eyes, said, “See that ridge? It’s there. Just past it. On the other side.” He held something in his hand. Some of us couldn’t see, though. It looked like a green duffel bag. The old man picked this up, and he led the child up a thin path, cutting through wild sagebrush and thorny cactus up and over the ridge.
We waited.
We prayed.
The Holy Spirit entered some of us. We spoke in tongues.
Ashohala. Ere al om tah collah.
The sun had set by the time he returned. The green duffel bag was gone. He held a long wooden club. The end looked as though it had been dipped in red paint, the color thick and dark, menacing. We pretended not to know what it was.
“I suppose we should get going now,” the old man said.
It was taken care of. We must push on.
Somewhere out there was our rightful home.
The place promised to those like us.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Debra Cross
CHRIS J. BAHNSEN is known as a “zebra” by his Chicano uncles, in that he is half Mexican and half white, and thus walks the strange and sometimes precarious edge between cultures. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Smithsonian’s Air & Space, Hobart, River Teeth, and Hippocampus. He is an assistant editor with Narrative magazine, living biresidentially in Southern California and Northwest Ohio.
Mark Krajnak
ERIC BEETNER has been called “the twenty-first century’s answer to Jim Thompson.” He has written more than twenty novels, including All the Way Down, Rumrunners, and The Devil Doesn’t Want Me. When not spending the weekend vacationing in Palm Springs with his family, he cohosts the podcast Writer Types and the Noir at the Bar reading series. For more information, visit ericbeetner.com.
ROB BOWMAN moved to the desert several years ago from Denver, his longtime home and setting for his upcoming detective novel. His fiction has appeared in the Coachella Review and the Donnybrook Writing Academy. Additional credits include Modern in Denver, Book and Film Globe, and others. He cohosts the film and pop culture podcast Reel Disagreement. When not immersed in these things, he is with his wife Mindy and their sons, Jetson and Rocket.
Tim Courtney
MICHAEL CRAFT is the author of seventeen novels, four of which have been honored as finalists for Lambda Literary Awards. His 2019 mystery, ChoirMaster, won a Gold IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award. In 2017, Craft’s professional papers were acquired by the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of California, Riverside. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and lives in Rancho Mirage, California, near Palm Springs.
Adele Peters
BARBARA DEMARCO-BARRETT spends time in the desert whenever she can. She hosts Writers on Writing on KUCI-FM, and her book Pen on Fire was a Los Angeles Times best seller. Her short story “Crazy for You” was published in USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series. She has also published in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Inlandia, Shotgun Honey, Partners in Crime, and Paradigm Shifts.
ALEX ESPINOZA is the author of Still Water Saints, The Five Acts of Diego León, and Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime. He’s written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Magazine, VQR, LitHub, and NPR’s All Things Considered. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and MacDowell as well as an American Book Award, he lives in Los Angeles and is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.
Cat Gwynn
JANET FITCH is the best-selling author of White Oleander, Paint It Black, The Revolution of Marina M., and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, an epic of the Russian Revolution. Her short stories and essays have appeared in a variety of publications. Two of her novels and her story “The Method,” from Los Angeles Noir, have been made into feature films. The Palm Canyon mobile home in “Sunrise” belonged to her grandmother.
TOD GOLDBERG is the New York Times best-selling author of more than a dozen books, including Gangster Nation, Gangsterland, and The House of Secrets, which he cowrote with Brad Meltzer. His journalism has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Best American Essays. Goldberg is a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, where he founded and directs the low-residency MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts.
Mark Davidson
J.D. HORN is the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of the Witching Savannah series (The Line, The Source, The Void, and Jilo), the Witches of New Orleans Trilogy (The King of Bones and Ashes, The Book of the Unwinding, The Final Days of Magic), and the stand-alone Southern Gothic horror tale Shivaree. Originally from Tennessee, he lives in Palm Springs and San Francisco with his spouse, Rich, and their rescue Chihuahua, Kirby Seamus.
Bill Green
KEN LAYNE, editor and publisher of Desert Oracle, a pocket-sized field guide to the mysterious Southwest desert, hosts Desert Oracle Radio and its companion podcast from the Mojave high desert. Once a month he leaves his home alongside Joshua Tree National Park to tell eerie campfire stories at the Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs. Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s MCD Books recently published his first hardcover collection, Desert Oracle, Volume I.
Bruce Jenkin
T. JEFFERSON PARKER is the author of twenty-five crime novels, and numerous short stories and essays. He was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Orange County, and now lives north of San Diego. He has won two Edgar Awards for best novel, an Edgar for best short story, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a Seamus Award. When not at work he enjoys fishing, hiking, and beachcombing.
ROB ROBERGE, from Wonder Valley in the high Mojave Desert, is the author of four books of fiction and one memoir, Liar, selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program. His short fiction and essays have been widely anthologized, and he is currently at work on a novel.
Dalmiro Quiroga
EDUARDO SANTIAGO’S first novel, Tomorrow They Will Kiss, was an Edmund White Debut Fiction Award finalist. His next book, Midnight Rumba, won the New England Book Award for best fiction. His short stories have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Slow Trains, and the Caribbean Writer. His nonfiction was featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Advocate, and Out Traveler magazine. He is on faculty at Idyllwild Arts Academy, which sits high above Palm Springs.
KELLY SHIRE has published work in numerous journals, including Bre
vity, Entropy, and the Coachella Review. Her essay “Beautiful Music,” about long-standing Cathedral City radio station KWXY, appeared in Full Grown People. As a half-Mexican American, third-generation resident of Southern California, her writing often explores themes of place and identity. She lives south of Palm Springs with her children and husband, and is completing a memoir.
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