Just before dawn, I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. As I drank, I peered out the window and saw the familiar dark figure at the edge of the woods. He remained there, completely motionless, staring up at the trees with his back to the cabin. I checked on him every twenty minutes until daybreak, and only then, when the sunlight touched the tops of the trees, did he leave. I still couldn’t get a look at his face.
The sun became my guardian. It made me feel safe enough to risk sleeping, so I dropped onto the bed like a corpse into a grave. Sleep washed over me and dragged me down into a darkness beneath the dream world, where not even the creature outside could follow.
A loud knock at the door roused me. I instinctively grabbed the gun, dreading that the entity had come for another visit. Cheerful birdsongs and mumbling voices wafted through the cabin. I glanced at my phone.
10:49 A.M.
At least I got a few hours.
Lively chatter and the sounds of laughter eased my fears as I approached the door. The sight of Ranger Pike and two other men overjoyed me. I wasn’t alone anymore.
“Mr. Blackwell,” William said, tipping a cowboy hat, “like you to meet Tíwé Lopez and his son Nathan.”
The older of the two men approached me with a big smile on his face. His graying hair was pulled back in a short pony-tail, and his brown eyes glinted with an energetic youthfulness that seemed out of place on such a weathered face.
“Felix,” he said, shaking my hand and squeezing my shoulder. “A pleasure, finally!”
Nathan followed suit. He was probably a year or two older than me, and unlike his father, he had green eyes.
“You’ve come a long way,” Tíwé said, “been through a lot, from what I hear. It’s about time we talk.”
I welcomed all three of them into the cabin, but the
ranger declined and said he needed to do a few house calls and map road conditions. He handed me a satellite phone and told me that he couldn’t reach me on my cell. I told him I’d return his phone on my way down the mountain the day after tomorrow. We watched him back out of the driveway and head further up the winding road.
“How’s Angela look these days?” Tíwé asked, taking a seat on the couch. “Been nearly ten years since she’s come back to visit.”
I dragged a chair into the living room and offered the guys some water. Nathan made a counter-offer of hot tea instead, and busied himself in the kitchen while his father and I spoke.
“She seems great,” I replied, still unsure of the nature of their relationship. “Very nice lady.”
“She bore you with her academic spiels?” he laughed. “Some things you cannot learn from books!”
“I’m actually an academic myself,” I admitted. Tíwé’s expression changed.
“My apologies,” he said. “They come out here for their research trips all the time, organized by the universities. We can tell they mean well, but they sometimes treat us like…like…”
“Lab rats,” Nathan interjected, carrying mugs of tea into the room. He sat down next to his father and studied me.
“I was thinking of Jane Goodall, living among the chimps!” Tíwé said, cracking up.
“Angela mentioned that, uh, Natives are sometimes hesitant to share information with outsiders,” I said, trying to remember her exact words.
“It’s true,” Tíwé replied. “At least for my people. We aren’t so cavalier in sharing our history. It’s a very personal thing. You can’t just tell the stories like a history teacher in a classroom. The setting matters. The audience matters. How you tell the story, and where you tell it – why you tell it – it all matters! The wisdom of our fathers was spoken for generations, not written down and revised and published. Not sold and archived. The Europeans thought we were backward for this! And the anthropologists who visit us, they call this ‘oral tradition.’ I guess it’s fitting.”
“So it’s like a performance,” I said, trying to demonstrate that I understood.
“But not for entertainment!” Tíwé bellowed. He immediately regretted the outburst and lowered his voice. “Not always. This is how we keep our mothers’ and fathers’ teachings alive in the minds of our children.”
“My father’s crazy, by the way,” Nathan added.
“Te’anoi nakhan,” Tíwé said, tapping his head. “Too much snowboarding and Red Bull. Rots his brains.” This time, we all laughed.
“Just let me know if I ask something I shouldn’t,” I said. “There’s so much I want to ask.”
Tíwé gave me a comforting smile and nodded.
“I wish we had all the answers you’re looking for,” he said. “But all we know are some of the stories. My great grandmother might have been able to help. My dad always said she had vast knowledge, and could even see into the spirit world. If you buy that sort of thing.”
“Is that what we’re dealing with?” I asked, daring to draw upon my extensive memories of The X-Files. “Some kind of demon? Like a…skin-walker?”
“Older than the skin-walkers,” Nathan offered.
“This creature is one of the first beings, is what he means,” Tíwé pushed back. “Not many of our people believe in the skin-walkers. Those come from the Navajo, and we don’t know much of anything about them.”
I fidgeted in my chair. Despite the warmth of my drink, my body felt colder.
“Angela called him a hollow man,” I said, “or something like that.”
“There is a power in words and names, Felix,” Nathan responded. “We don’t speak the names of the dead for some time after they’ve passed. And we don’t repeat curses that were uttered long ago.”
“Now who sounds crazy?” Tíwé said with a big grin on his face. Nathan rolled his eyes and dismissed his father’s playfulness.
“It’s a bit like the Christians and the devil,” Nathan continued. “They don’t say his name often and they don’t use spirit boards to consult the dead. You don’t want to call out to him.”
“I won’t repeat it,” I promised. “I probably can’t even pronounce it.”
They both laughed. Tíwé got up to refill his tea. He returned with a glum expression.
“My people gave him the name At’an-A’anotogkua,” he said quietly. “The term refers to water, and how it is formless until it fills a vessel. Angela wasn’t wrong when she called him the ‘hollow one,’ because there is no direct translation, really. Maybe it is more accurate to call him ‘the Impostor,’ because this being fills himself with the life force of his prey.”
“The Impostor,” I echoed. I imagined a grotesque monster deep in the woods outside, suddenly opening his eyes at the sound of his own name.
“Felix,” Tíwé said, leaning toward me, “a lot of people in my community would be reluctant to share much of our heritage with you. So I’m going to tell you just a little piece. Only the stuff that I think pertains directly to you and your fiancée. Is that alright with you?”
I nodded, eager to hear anything that could possibly help Faye.
“And I must stress,” he continued, “we don’t have any experience with this sort of thing. No one in our community does, really. Some of the tribal elders recall the stories, and a few actually believe the Impostors are real. But Nathan and I don’t go around purging evil spirits, you know. By God, this kid can’t even purge a drain clog.”
Nathan scowled.
“Thanks, Dad.”
Chapter 24
Tíwé took a sip of his tea, then sat up straight as if to make a formal announcement. He searched the room with his eyes, carefully choosing his words. Nathan sat quietly and looked down at his hands. I wasn’t sure if this was a display of respect, or if he was simply concentrating, so I turned my gaze to the floor and fell silent as Tíwé cleared his throat.
“Colorado has been home to many groups,” he began. “The Ute, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Pueblo, and Anasazi people have all called it home at one point or another. There are many more who came and left. War and famine and weather always
shifted people around, but the big movements came when the Gold Rush spread here. Thousands and thousands of Natives were displaced – or killed. Mining operations forced people out of their ancestral homelands.
“There’s something you have to understand about land, Felix. How we think of it. The settlers thought of land as a possession. You claim it and put a fence around it. You sign a piece of paper, and it belongs to you. You sign another piece of paper, and now it belongs to someone else. Doesn’t matter where it is; land is all the same. You can even purchase land you’ve never seen before, never visited, a thousand miles away – and now it belongs to you!
“This is not how many Natives understood the earth when the settlers came. The land doesn’t just belong to us. We belong to the land. We were given to it, just as much as it was given to us. Some even believe we are of it, that we came from it.
“Our history is embedded in the physical landscape, anchored there by stories that convey our ancestral knowledge. A Native is reminded of specific lessons when he sees a particular landmark: the mouth of this river has an important story attached to it. That fallen tree has one too. A battle was won here. An elder died there. Peace was made between warring tribes with a ceremony here. And so, when a Native group is forced out of its homeland, the people sometimes forget their stories. History itself is lost.
“What’s worse, they leave behind the places where their dead are buried – their mothers and fathers. The dead are bound to that place, and have returned to the land there. Because of this, Natives who are forced out of their homelands no longer have connections to their ancestors, and thus, to the spirit world. Their medicines no longer work. Their prayers are no longer heard.
“Eventually, the younger generations forget the names of sacred places. And as the names and history and wisdom are forgotten, the peoples’ spiritual power diminishes. The culture collapses. How they perceive this change affects their whole way of life.”
Tíwé paused for my response, but I had no idea what to say. Nathan sensed my confusion and elaborated on his father’s words:
“Think of Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism,” he said. “Those are universal religions. The Jews were scattered all across Europe and the Middle East, exiled from their homelands – and yet they remained Jews. Muslims and Hindus emigrate from the other side of the world to live here in the United States, and they bring their religions with them. You could move to New York tomorrow and still keep your religion. Your god can still hear your prayers. He can still intervene in your life.”
“It is not so with the Native!” Tíwé exclaimed. “It is much more difficult to recover those things when his land is stolen. This is why the anthropologists come to us. They want to ask us about our ‘land-based religions.’ We’re telling you this, Felix, because you cannot understand the supernatural presence on this mountain without understanding the mountain itself.”
I nodded, trying to digest his words as quickly as he spoke them. Tíwé took another long draw of his tea, probably to give me a moment to process everything.
“When the settlers arrived,” he continued, “they forced my people and a few other tribes out of the valleys, where all the food grew. Some of us came to the mountain, and some went far away, never to return. When the settlers moved their mining operations farther up the mountain, they battled with our old neighbors, the Pozi. Many died on both sides. The remaining Pozi allied with the Ineho, the people from the mountains to the North, and together they slaughtered dozens of the miners.
“The settlers mounted a counter-attack, and murdered hundreds in retaliation. This went on and on, back and forth for a long time, until the alliance collapsed and the Natives turned against each other.”
“Why did they do that?” I asked. Tíwé nodded at his son.
“No one knows,” Nathan said. “Some believe the settlers bribed the Pozi. Colonists have always used bribery to turn Natives against each other. Made them fight in their wars. It is said that the Ineho found out about these bribes and killed many of the Pozi, then dug holes and buried them with their feet sticking out of the ground. Legend says they wanted the wolves to eat the meat on their legs, so that the Pozi could never make the journey back to their homeland – even in death.”
“This is dark,” I said, glancing at the pristine snow through the window. I imagined it
soaked red with blood.
“Try getting those anthropologists to publish that!” Tíwé boomed, laughing hysterically. “They want you to think we sit around campfires singing about world peace and Mother Earth. We’re human, aren’t we? We make war and peace like anybody else – blood feuds aren’t just a European thing!”
“Try to keep in mind,” Nathan added, “that story is a brief moment in the long history of this mountain. Perhaps my father might have told you about the times of great peace instead, if he knew you wouldn’t fall asleep.”
I nodded my acceptance of the rebuttal.
“But what’s this got to do with the Impostor?” I asked, pointing to the window. “Did the Pozi summon him for revenge or something?”
Nathan laughed, but Tíwé did not.
“There are fewer believers among us these days,” Tíwé replied. “But once, many of our people thought that the Impostors snuck into our world from time to time, looking for things they coveted. We believed that they are sometimes drawn to the sites of terrible suffering – like here on Pale Peak.
“Shortly after the Pozi slaughter, the Ineho suffered a tragedy of their own. Every child in one of their villages disappeared. Some Ineho believed that the slaughtered Pozi rose up from their graves and stole the children away.
“But my people told a different story. They believed the At’an-A’anotogkua had come to the mountain, and called out to the children in the night. He killed a few of them and stole their skin and hair, and hung them up in the trees for the villagers to find. Then, posing as a child, he led the rest deep down into the mines. They were never seen again, but their voices still echo on the mountain.”
My breath froze in my chest. The laughter and crying of little kids ran through my imagination, sounds that were all too familiar to me in this cabin.
“Did he lure them with a song, by any chance?” I asked. “Did he stand at the edge of the woods?”
“You’ve actually seen this being?” Nathan asked. He looked at his father with grave concern.
“I think I’ve met him,” I said, and explained at length the encounters I’d had with the strange man.
Tíwé studied me carefully, and Nathan looked upon me with disbelief.
“I’ve heard it said that the Impostor cannot pass for a man,” Tíwé replied, “no matter how hard he tries. That is why he appears only at night, and why he always faces away from his victim – even when he is watching.”
“You’re the first person we’ve ever met to describe such things,” Nathan added. “Tourists that visit the mountain sometimes report strange noises at night, or someone peeping into their windows. But no one has ever told us something like this.”
“One family did,” Tíwé corrected. “A long time ago. And they lived in this very cabin.”
“Do you believe me then?” I asked, point-blank.
Both men hesitated.
“We need time to think about all this,” Tíwé said with a sigh. “This is very serious. I have no idea how the leaders of my community will react, but I need to speak with them about it.”
“I believe you,” Nathan offered. He smiled and dropped a fist onto his palm in a gesture of camaraderie.
Chapter 25
After our conversation, Tíwé asked me to lead them to the dreamcatcher I’d described to William. When they had first investigated the cabin, they couldn’t find it, but it took me less than a minute to locate it. We romped through the shallow snow and made our way into the trees. Tíwé seemed reasonably certain that he had checked this location, but blamed the oversight on his old age, rather than some strange magic. I was unset
tled by the idea that the object had been hidden during their last visit.
“I don’t think this is really a dreamcatcher,” he said, examining it closely. He manipulated it with a stick, rather than touching it with his hands.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know for sure. My people don’t make these. In fact, very few Native tribes do. They’ve sort of come to represent all Indians, but they’re not some universal thing we all use. The reason I think it’s something else is because dreamcatchers were made for protection and balance. This one was made using symbols of death.” Tíwé pointed at the jagged bones and bloodied feathers. “And the woven pattern here is a disaster. It could be sloppy craftsmanship, but it could also be intentional – to represent chaos.”
“Looks like it was done by someone with claws instead of hands,” Nathan said, half-joking.
“Or a drunk-ass redneck,” Tíwé mused. “But honestly, it could be some other kind of totem. Who knows.”
I shrugged at the term.
“It’s like a crafted object with a link to the spirit world,” Tíwé explained. “Or at least some kind of spiritual meaning. Ever worn a crucifix?”
“Sure,” I replied. “Long time ago. Faye’s got one.”
“There you go,” Tíwé said, taking one last look at the strange object. “I recommend you don’t touch this thing, Felix. Someone put this here on purpose, and we have no idea what it means to them.”
“I need you to be honest with me,” I said, looking off to the woods, then back to Tíwé. “You wouldn’t have told me all this stuff if you didn’t believe the Impostor might be real. I need to know if you think Faye and I are in danger. Something evil has been visiting us every night, and so far we still don’t know what he wants.”
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