“No, you are not the boogieman,” my eyes rolled as I said the words. “You are Hidalgo who works for Ken Anderson, my father’s brother. You know way too much, you have described Ken and June exactly. You also described the ranch at Serpiente. Your description is exactly like the description I read in a letter from June, and she described the ranch in detail. She mentioned you.”
With this realization, Hidalgo threw up his arms and walked around the truck to the driver’s side. Hidalgo shook his head and said to me, “You are just like your father. I worked with him in Colorado. He was the one who got me this job with your uncle that has allowed me to send money to my family.” He glanced over at me and continued, “We don’t want to be mean about all this, but we have a problem out at the ranch and...”
I finished his sentence with, “and you don’t want me to get hurt.”
I just stared ahead and said, “Fine. If you don’t take me to the ranch I’ll get there by myself, even if I have to walk.”
I knew I had him; playing poker was not new to me, besides I had learned a few things from my mother such as how to handle men, and instinctually I was still learning.
Hidalgo leaned over to me and said, I was not lying about the problem at the ranch house, but so far, no humans have died, as far as I know.”
I looked at him but in his soft brown eyes all I could see was concern. He didn’t blink. Answering him with a firm and short staccato voice I said; “First of all, a real boogie man would not have been so corny when trying to approach a girl.” then I smiled at him.
Hidalgo went limp in the seat, then slowly rising he pushed the key into the ignition, turned the key, and stepped on the starter. The old motor roared to life and we pulled out of the parking lot.
Corey
Pulling onto the Old Isleta highway and heading south, entering the Rio Grande Valley, I began to realize that we were in a different world. Except for the long meandering valley that the Rio Grande River flowed through, there was little green anywhere until my eyes traveled all the way to the distant eastern mountains, the Manzanos, or Apple Mountains as Hidalgo called them. He explained that over two hundred years ago someone had actually planted an apple orchard on the back side which is how the Mountain got its name. No more rolling green hills with tiny farms like the ones back in East Tennessee! To the west was mile after mile of flat land, dotted with volcanic cones and flat topped black hills where lava spread out like pancake batter.
We turned off in Los Lunas and filled the old truck and some Jerry cans in the back of the truck up with gas, Then we ventured off to the west, over the Rio Puerco River, and finally turned south again on a dirt road past several black volcanic hills. We traveled between 10 and 35 miles per hour on this corrugated and winding road. In the distance Hidalgo pointed out Ladrone Peak, Hidalgo pointed further to the south where the ranch was located, still an hour away on this rutted and sandy road.
By the time we arrived at the ranch house, Hidalgo and I were fast friends. We had no choice, it was a long drive. Ladrone Peak was now to the north and the sun was just setting. It was a typical New Mexican ranch, with a very large main house, barn, and several outbuildings. Everything was run down, but that was normal in an area where everything had a function and pretty didn’t really count for much. Even in Tennessee the local farms had been small cities to themselves. However, this particular ranch house looked different. Everything was boarded up, with no windows uncovered.
Uncle Ken and Aunt June were there, under the porch along with two small children that belonged to the house keeper, a small boy about ten years old, called Jacob and an eight year old girl with hair so black that it seemed to shine. She was introduced as Rebecca. They were just leaving as Hidalgo and I drove up. Apparently they were being escorted out to their old truck. They loaded into their old truck and waved as we got out of Hidalgo’s truck.
Uncle Ken and Aunt June walked out to hug and greet us, but I could feel them pulling my arms and directing me inside the house. As I got to the steps of the porch a man appeared in the doorway. Standing on the porch was a young man who was about the same age as me and really good looking, I thought to myself. He was dressed just like Hidalgo, except that all his clothes were obviously work clothes draped over a muscular body. I was shocked to see those same brilliant blue eyes that looked like cut glass actually looking at me. He had a face with a smile that instantly mesmerized me. I instantly seemed to know him and thought to myself that I finally got to see the face that belonged to those eyes in my dream. Ken and June introduced the young man as Corey.
Uncle Ken later explained to me that Corey’s father had been his best friend. Unfortunately, when Corey’s parents were killed in a traffic accident a few years ago, he had to decide where he was going to live. Normally he would have simply stayed with his relatives in Albuquerque. He knew he was welcome there. But just on a whelm, Ken and June invited him to stay out at the ranch for a couple of weeks, a vacation, a place where he could be alone to decide what he wanted to do. He never left the ranch, becoming an integral member of the family that ran the ranch.
Aunt June later told me that Corey had turned out to be a great help to them. He was willing to do anything that needed to be done around the ranch, both inside the house and around the rest of the ranch. He was like a son to Uncle Ken and Aunt June, and an older brother to the many small children that seemed to appear around the house during the day. Before the disappearances that occurred, ranch hands would stay over at the ranch doing odd jobs and seasonal work and most of them had children. But now, few were around.
It was getting late when we arrived, but it was obvious that something was wrong. They quickly herded me past Corey and into the ranch house and the door was locked behind us. Inside, sitting at the kitchen table, was my father, with a big grin on his face.
After hugs, everyone sat down at the dinner table, a huge table piled high with an astounding variety of food. There was a sampling of all the Mexican food popular in that part of the country and as soon as all the plates were full I began carefully tasting the strange smelling but delicious food, and a multitude of conversations began.
Finally the talk got around to me. “Penny, you will just have to forgive us,” said Uncle Ken. “Something strange is going on around here, and we don’t understand what it is.”
My uncle explained that all the local ranches were dealing with the same problem, and nobody understood what was causing it. “Our livestock is being killed; small animals are disappearing, and, as of last week, we learned some men have disappeared as well. We can find no trace of what is killing them, but it seems to always happen at night. During the day, nothing happens.” This sounded a little frightening to me, but I was too excited about seeing my father for the first time in more than two years to think too much about it.
Later, when everyone else was fast asleep, my father and I talked about what was going on and about what I was going to do. I learned that my mother had called my father in Texas. She related how everyone was in a panic when I left until they finally discovered your friend that had driven you to Knoxville.
Evidently Turner had showed up at the house the next day, which may have eliminated him as a kidnapper. However he got into a huge argument with Mona, punching her several times and demanding to know what Mona had done to his girlfriend, me! Fortunately for us but very unfortunately for Turner my grandparents had driven up, recognized what Turner was up to and called the police. They arrived a few minutes later and slapped handcuffs on him then hauled him off. He is currently charged with assault and battery, home invasion, and after the police discovered a stolen gun in his truck he was confined to a jail where he will be for at least a couple of years.
“Now that Turner is out of the picture, do you want to go back to Tennessee?” my father asked.
I emphatically answered, “No.” I was angry at what had happened, sorry for my mother, and wrestling with a dozen other emotions that were all taking a toll. I finally sl
umped down in the couch and at some point I dozed off, probably due to complete exhaustion.
Miss Snoops
I awoke with a start, wondering what time it was. The last thing I remembered was talking to my father while sitting in a couch next to a huge kitchen table. Now I found myself in a real bed. It was the first time I had slept on a real bed in several days and because of the late hour I had stayed up talking to my father I had slept hard. After catching my breath, I discovered that I was still in my clothes; someone had carried me to bed. It took me a while to sort out everything in my mind. I knew I had been dreaming but couldn’t remember the dream. The dream didn’t matter, it was just another dream. Besides, I was waking up in a whole new world.
The room was completely dark except for a pale sliver of light under the door. Fumbling out of the bed I discovered a round cylindrical object on the end table next to the bed. It was a flashlight. Slowly making my way over to the door I looked outside. The first thing I focused on was a skull staring back at me on a shelf. I was in a long hallway with the walls covered with bookshelves. Stepping out of the door and turning, I followed the light but stopped to look around. Books overflowed from many of the bookshelves that seemed to cover every possible space on the walls. Where there were no books or papers on the shelves there was copious amounts of Indian pottery and artifacts, all, I would discover belonging to June.
Looking up and down the hallway I discovered June walking toward me. “What’s with the skull,” I asked?
“Oh that’s Elmer” June answered. Walking over to the skull and plucking it off the shelf, she said, “Look at the teeth, Elmer once belonged to an Anasazi Indian. An old Indian, he lived until he was well into his forties. Look you can tell by the way the parts of the cranium have grown together. It is easy to tell how old a person was when they died if you know what to look for. He was very old for an Anasazi.”
“What killed him,” I asked?
“Well I don’t know what actually killed him but his people rarely lived more than thirty years. When their teeth wore out they usually died unless they had someone who would chew their food for them.”
I grimaced at the thought of eating food that someone else had chewed. Placing the toothless skull back on the shelf, June said, “Let me show you around. I’m sure you would like to take a shower.”
I hadn’t had a shower in over a week and felt downright slovenly. June opened a door next to the room I had been sleeping in and exposed a well-kept bathroom with a shower over a tub. “What time is it, I asked?”
“Almost noon, you must have been bone tired last night when you arrived.”
I immediately went back into the bedroom and picked up my small backpack, my only luggage, and pulled out my only change of clothes which had been washed out in a bathroom sink.
“Call me when you’re ready to come out,” June instructed me, “I’ll show you around. By the way, your father had to go back to work this morning. He had to sneak off the job to see you. Everyone has been very worried about you, especially your father.”
My father was gone, driving the long trek back to Texas to the job that demanded so much of his attention. I felt alone now, in a dangerous place, with no way to get out. What was I to do?
That morning over a plate of huevos rancheros, eggs with a spicy red chili sauce, my uncle and aunt explained to me that my father was going to be back as soon as he could. Until then, I was welcome to stay with them. “Please,” Aunt June warned me, “Don’t go out after dark without someone with you. Until we can figure what is going on here, it is not safe for you to be out by yourself. We are telling you this for your own good. We don’t want anything to happen to you while you are here!”
I just listened, but was thinking that when adults didn’t want you involved in something, they always said that it was for your own good. Usually they were not telling you the whole story. At that moment I vowed to get to the bottom of what was going on here, whether I had anyone’s permission or not. I had just turned seventeen years old, and had been pretty much on my own for several years now.
It wasn’t that my mother had been neglectful; she just had other things on her mind. I gradually took over a lot of the cooking for both of us, and if any cleaning got done around the house, I had to do most of it. My mother had a night job and her own life. Mona was a petite woman, with soft curls around her face, blue eyes that always had a twinkle in them, and a figure that most women her age would die for.
On the other hand, I had inherited my disposition from my father, but then, I had inherited my looks from my mother. As I had grown older I discovered that I wasn’t ugly. In fact, I had a nice figure as a result of all the exercise from wrestling, softball, and volleyball. I had a very pretty face, not beautiful like my mother, but pretty just the same, and the older I got, the more like mother I looked. In time, it was obvious that I could become a gorgeous woman like her. But I knew a secret, beauty like that is not always a blessing; I knew it could also be a curse.
I was simply independent, having neither the time nor the inclination to deal with boys, boys that were looking for someone to take care of them. I had not had a lot of dates in high school because of my attitude. Most of the boys saw me as a great friend, but knew better than to try to look at me as a dating prospect. Some had tried to get personal with me, but they all soon learned that I definitely had a mind of my own.
My most prominent trait, however, was not looks, but curiosity. Some of the kids at school had teasingly called me Miss Snoops because I couldn’t stand being in the dark about anything. I had not had a surprise party in my whole life, because I always figured out what was going on before the party took place. My mother had tried many times to find a good hiding place for the few toys at Christmas when I was just a little girl, but I always found them early and then figured out what they were even before I could read the words on the outside of the box.
But now I was in a new situation. Yet this seemed to me to be the perfect time to put my sleuthing skills to work on an important and very real problem. If I could find out what was going on here at the ranch, I would not only help my uncle and aunt, but maybe my father would see that I was responsible enough to take care of myself and let me stay for a while. I was so excited at the possibility that chills ran up and down my spine. I was determined to show them and decided to start asking questions.
The Ranch House
After washing up, I sat at the kitchen table with Ken and Corey who were just finishing up a light lunch. The table was huge, with twelve chairs around it. It was an amazing ranch house. It was large and modern yet very utilitarian. The kitchen adjoined the living area and again there were bookshelves everywhere with strange looking objects on them. Items such as white Indian pottery with black zigzag lines next to a tri cone drill bit used in oil drilling. The large living area had several large tables arranged for work but all of them covered with maps, papers and books. Built in woodstoves heated the structure and even in the kitchen there was an old timey cooking stove next to a new gas range. I was mystified at the large rounded structure that was in the yard just out the kitchen door. I had never seen a thing like it before. It was about six feet tall with an arched opening that was very smoke stained. June explained that it was a common horno or oven used for baking bread in both the Spanish and Pueblo settlements in the Southwest. They particularly used it during the summer months so the house would not get hot. Unfortunately, since the problems had occurred at the ranch it had not been used.
I also learned that what electricity they had in the house came from a car motor in one of the outbuildings that generated all their electricity. During the colder months they rarely used it preferring kerosene lamps and woodstoves.
Despite the hundreds of books and artifacts that covered just about everything, the house was kept perfectly clean. There were work areas and areas to recline. June explained as she pointed to the kitchen, “Just about everything in this house has a purpose. Take those sinks over
there.” They were huge, used for far more than washing dishes; it was where they worked up meat for the winter months. In fact, she explained, all the meat that is eaten in this house is butchered here and worked up in those sinks. “Everyone here cleans up after themselves.” Feeling a blush come to my cheeks I excused myself, went back to the room where I had slept and made up the bed.
Returning to the kitchen I asked about some of the artifacts scattered among the books on the shelf.
“Most of those were given to me years ago. Some of them like Elmer are on loan to me,” said June. “In fact, I do not approve of removing artifacts from burial sites. Elmer is used when I give lectures at the universities around here. I sometimes work as a guest speaker in anthropology and archeology classes.”
My thoughts returned to the problem at hand. I understood that I knew very little about what was actually plaguing the ranches in the area known as Serpiente and wanted more facts to work with. My first thought was to ask everybody as many questions as I could think of. Looking at Corey I implored him, “You know, the more information a person has, the easier it is to solve a problem.” Corey just shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t know anything but his eyes gave him away; he looked at Ken almost asking permission to answer my questions.
My eyes also locked on Uncle Ken until finally he responded.
Ken spoke slowly, carefully choosing his words. “I do have a theory but it is a bizarre theory to say the least.”
“Good” I said while folding my hands under my chin and batting my eyebrows, “I love a good spooky story.”
Uncle Ken started to explain, “We think,” then after another long pause he said slowly, “I think it may have something to do with El Montana del Serpientes de Cascabels, the mountain of rattlesnakes.
With eyes narrowing and a frown appearing I asked “What is a mountain of rattlesnakes?”
The Family at Serpiente Page 4