Whispers Out Of The Dust: A Haunted Journey Through The Lost American West (Dark Trails Saga)

by David J. West

  “I suspect perhaps it was with him all along. In his breast coat pocket perhaps and this last time that he was disturbed it fell out of his pocket and onto his chest.”

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  “I don’t think anyone did. I think it was his dark energies reacting and playing with his tomb.”

  “Yeah, but why did Rogers have it?”

  “I believe he is the one who taught the code to my mother in the first place. It is something members of his Order would use.”

  “Order? What Order?”

  “The Brotherhood of Hermes Trismegistus, of course! Granted, I was told that he was thrown out for conduct unbecoming and in response he made a vengeful threat to open the doors between worlds.”

  I said nothing, steering the truck around the winding roads in the dark.

  “There is something that must be done and I need your help. You won’t like it.”

  I certainly didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. “What do you need me to do? I am expensive.” I teased.

  “My father was a very dark magician hoping to open a doorway. His own death was to be the key to open it upon the full moon. We have only a very short time to prevent this.”

  “I’m just a cowhand who happened to help out an old man once. I do not understand a lick of what you just said back there.”

  She was pouting now and if I live to be a hundred I don’t believe I’ll ever understand women, let alone one who talks magic at me as if I’m supposed to be in on the great cosmic joke.

  She looked at me disbelieving saying, “Stop teasing. You probably know all about this from my father already. You must know I am his Moon Child and was bound to be here and discover these things. My mother always told me someday I would understand, and now, now I do. Upon his death exactly twenty eight days later I must fulfil the covenant and hold back and lock the gates one more time.”

  “Uh huh. Now what exactly do you want me to do, besides take you out to see your old man’s final resting place?”

  “Oh, it cannot be his final resting place. He told you specifically he must be buried deep and I know just what he had in mind when he came to this wretched town.”

  “Hey! I like it here! It’s a damn shame what’s gonna happen to St. Thomas!”

  She looked at me again and seemed to have resigned herself that I was no magician to understand what she talked about.

  We pulled up to the graveyard and there once again was Rogers coffin, sitting upright forced out of the ground.

  “Impossible,” I said, staring at the thing illuminated by the headlamps.

  Marian looked at me like she couldn’t make up her mind. Worrying that I was playing her when I didn’t even understand the rules of the game. “His headstone so fitting.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It says ‘I am the Worms Gatekeeper’. It’s a cruel joke considering what he meant to do. Get him in the back of the truck, we need to rebury him deep.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Somewhere the water is swiftly rising, somewhere he can be buried deep.”

  I picked up Rogers casket and slid it into the back of the truck. It was lighter than I remembered at his funeral by a good few stones. “And now?”

  “Drive us south, toward the Salt Mine, let me see the rising waters.”

  We drove down the old county road toward the Salt Mine and where the Virgin River met the Muddy.

  Marian was quiet now and I could in no way discern her thoughts. She watched the sky which was rapidly turning a deeper shade of blue as the pale glow in the west was fading fast.

  “There!” she said, pointing at some outcropping of rock. I did note that we were perilously near the rising waters of the reservoir.

  “That water is rising awful fast. Hugh Lord almost lost his car just a couple days ago while fishing this close. And you want me to bury him deep? I don’t know that I have it in me to go much deeper than six feet.”

  “That’s not what he ever meant by bury him deep. The waters will be his tomb and his prison, holding him fast far below the surface.”

  “If that’s what you say you want for your old man, that’s’ fine. But we could drive farther down and just throw him in with chains wrapped around him to sink if that’s what you are looking for.” I was surprised at this sudden bout of being an accomplice to this insane venture. What was I thinking?

  She just gave me that look again, the kind that would melt you on a winters day and shook her head. “It has to be here and now, you must know this.”

  “No! I don’t know any of this. It’s all crazy and I’m being caught up in it like a fool.”

  She stopped pacing out the spot I should dig and said, “You put on a convincing show. I almost believe that you don’t know what we are doing here, but I’m growing weary of the game. I won’t fall for it to just have you laugh that you caught me. Do your job. Dig the hole and together we shall bind the darkness.”

  I put the shovel to the earth where she had designated, grumbling about binding the darkness. This was truly the strangest night of my life.

  The soft soil made digging easy but as I was down about six feet, the mud began to collect and I suspected the pit would soon be full of water. “We better do whatever you’re planning awful quick!”

  “Put him in the hole,” she ordered, as she continued mumbling, while reading something from the dark notes.

  I pulled out the casket and let it down into the grave. I had miscalculated and it was too short.

  “Your games do not amuse me,” Marian said.

  Quickly I took the spade to the edge and started giving it another foot to fit.

  I wiped away the dirt and sweat and just looked at her. This game of magic was nearly more than I could bear. I truly was in over my head here.

  I dug away just enough for his casket to fit. My feet were now completely mired in mud as the ground at the bottom was soaking up the rising waters first. I put the casket in with an unceremonious drop and then Marian helped kick dirt over this soon to be unknown grave of her father.

  I shoveled in spade after spade full all the while watching the lake waters inch closer to us. By the time I finished, the waters were pouring into the last few inches of the plot.

  Then there was a rumble, and dark waters flushed back as something rose to the surface. Marian screamed and I was in shock as the coffin surged from the mud and filth.

  I saw no animated movement from the body itself but somehow the hand and arm had reached out of slime at the coffins ascension from the earth. They were smeared with wet earth and it was a truly horrible sight. The lid had partially snapped off and I saw the old mans wretched face leering in a deaths head grin. His shirt and coat were pulled back and that bizarre spiral tattoo faced the open night sky.

  But then it stopped and just lay there upon the surface as water splashed about the edges.

  “We have to do it again and find a way to keep him bound until the waters have him contained.”

  “And how would I do that?”

  She shook her head and wiped away tears with her shawl. “There! Let’s drive up there and dig a fresh grave, we should have at least another hour or two.”

  To this insanity I reluctantly agreed. I picked up the now waterlogged and muddy coffin, attached the lid again and putting it in the truck, drove just up the valley a short distance and proceeded to dig yet again. This time, when I took a breather, Marian dug too. It was a welcome change of pace.

  “Is this what you wanted?” I asked, breathing heavy.

  “This is beyond anything I want. This is a necessity.”

  We had him in the ground and once again the bottom had turned to mud. I shoveled the soft ground and rock over him. This time, I threw in a few large stones as well. Anything to make it all the more difficult to return.

  As I finished the waters were again washing over the freshly dug ground and it seemed that there was a movement beneath the murk.

&nb
sp; I looked to Marian and she answered the horror by saying, “Park your truck upon it and I will repay you.”

  It was mad but I agreed and drove the truck over the grave as the waters were splashing over the running boards. I jumped out and ran to the shore as the truck rumbled as something was pushing from beneath with great force.

  “Yes. He is contained here and soon the purifying water will hold him deep. It is done.”

  I looked at her and decided I had had enough of this madness and would never ever again extend help to an old man broken down beside the road or to a young grieving woman clearing out her mother’s place.

  As I looked to starry night, between the nearly full moon and Venus, I could swear I saw an especially dark starless spot swirling like a shadowy whirlpool directly above. As we sat there and watched the waters lapping over the top of the truck that dark spot in the sky gradually faded away.

  We stayed until morning, every few hours moving back from the newly found shore, keeping an eye on that grim place in the lake.

  I cannot explain any this bizarre happening and that is why I have written it down, so someone might someday hear of it and understand.

  There are dark things in the world, dark happenings that no one else sees, but they abide there on the borders of nightmare, waiting.

  “It is an ill thing to meet a man you thought dead in the woodlands at dusk.”

  ― Robert E. Howard

  Return of the Toad

  Journal of David J. West: September 21st 2015

  If there is one thing I know when I look out across this vast American west, it is that we inhabit a haunted land. Where we live has been dwelt upon since time immemorial and I do not mean just the last few hundred years as we so casually think. The history lessons you were told in school have missed so very much. These lands have literally swarmed with people who lived, loved, and died for a multitude of same reasons you and I do. They toiled by the sweat of their brow. They hunted and killed with abandon, and drank deep and did dwell upon their creations.

  And as with all peoples, there are good and bad and each may likely haunt our backyard. The bad have their way of lingering and reinforcing and magnifying their negativity and the good and innocent were perhaps horribly wronged an cannot yet deal with their powerful emotions – all of it binding the individual to this time and space, even if they seem to dance through it at times.

  So, I had to go and see these ruins I’ve been reading of for myself, I had to feel the land, touch it, smell it, breathe it, and taste it. There was no other way for to understand what had happened here and why it was a forgotten unknown nexus for the paranormal, the strange, and the very obtuse. How had so many of these things slipped under the radar of all the other talented historians and researchers? How could they have all missed this?

  I had to find out.

  I drove down I-15 past St. George, through the Virgin River Gorge where Black Jack and his gang ambushed a ghost, through the corner of Arizona, through Mesquite and hung a left toward what remained of St. Thomas.

  Bleached remains upon the desert floor like a cursed and blasted Sodom and Gomorrah. Remains that are all but forgotten. Skeletons of the lost west, a west that once was but is now slipping away into oblivion.

  I walked the hills and valley floor, trotting up the trail next to poisonous springs beside sacred palms. I looked at jagged cliff faces searching for any sign of the thunderbirds of old.

  If they remain, they sleep well yet.

  Ghosts still haunt the cemetery here, the ghosts of everyone who ever left their loved ones behind, ghosts of every regret and trial, ghosts of every tragedy and triumph.

  I went down to waters of Lake Mead and touched that shore, feeling what it might have been like to drown in that doorway to another world. How many spirits found themselves under those waves, forgotten all the more?

  Today only foundations remain of some few more recent edifices. These are sad and lonely and lose all grandeur of that struggle that has gone on before.

  I went to the Lost City to see what remained of that too and was melancholy at its tourist state. Rebuilt, removed and regurgitated it lacks everything the Toad told me it once was.

  The Toad, yes I found him in that bag of documents, or did he find me?

  He told me all about the majesty of what once was, of Coriantumr and foes. I can hear his whispers now, the glories of that Wicked Kingdom where the sons of Akish once ruled now the scorpions do impose. It stretched across the desert, blooming scarlet across its shadowy empire. The holy towers and vistas of an altered state ruled with iron and steel, gold littered the throne rooms of those secret robber kings while jewels set in silver rings danced upon their ladies wings, I saw how the mighty had fallen beneath their knighted step and broke all the . . .

  Wait.

  I heard nothing. I’ve been in the sun too long. A batrachian stone can’t have told me anything, that’s impossible, my imagination has run away with itself. Back to my typing, back to reality.

  But the whispers, the whispers, they keep calling me . . .

  “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

  — Hunter S. Thompson

  Afterword:

  The original Latin meaning of “anthology” is “a collection or gathering of flowers”. A bouquet of the flowers of verse. Today when we think of anthology it is a compilation of stories that are supposed to be an assemblage of the beautiful flowering of literary prose.

  I can’t say that what I gave you here is anything more than a gathering of dead and desiccated roses but I hope it accents your library well.

  Putting this project together was a labor of love, a sweaty, sleepless, frustrating, push me to the edge of my patience—yet also a needed labor of love and ego. I’ve never enjoyed putting something together quite as much as I have this and it is curious to me how much some these tales came together so quickly when I had no idea where on earth they were coming from, hence that very haunting mystique that leers over them like some specter of another world. That The Muse brought them to me is as much a mystery to me as anyone.

  Perhaps it was the Toad.

  Perhaps not.

  “God never labels his gifts; He just puts them into our hands;”

  ― M. R. James

  Acknowledgments:

  Thanks as always to my loving wife Melissa for her encouragement and ready ear. I could not have put this collection together near so well without her strength, guidance and patience.

  Thank you to my children for their enthusiasm and attentiveness, they were among the first to hear these truly weird tales.

  Thanks to Nathan Shumate for his wondrous work with the cover etc, always a talented man, please visit him at: http://nathanshumate.com/

  Thanks to the Space Balrogs for their encouragement and friendship. Please visit their page as well. http://spacebalrogs.com/

  Thank you to my friends and readers for giving this a chance.

  Thanks to both my educational, gunslinger and spiritual inspirations, after all only one of you are still alive! Robert E. Howard, M.R. James, George W. Brimhall, Aaron James MacArthur, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J. Sheridan LeFanu, Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Nathan, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Louis L’Amour, Bram Stoker, & Karl Edward Wagner.

  About the Author:

  David J. West is the bestselling author of Heroes of the Fallen, Weird Tales of Horror, and The Mad Song. He has an affinity for history, action-adventure, fantasy, westerns and pulp fiction horror blended with a sharp knife and served in a dirty glass—he writes what he knows.

  He received first place when he was seven for writing a short story about a pack of wolves that outsmarted and devoured a hunter and his dog. Some children and parents may have been traumatized. He has never looked back.

  His writing has since been praised in Meridian Magazine, Timpanogos Times, Hell Notes, and Amazing Stories Magazine which said his writing was “a solid collection of weird fiction.” David�
��s short stories have been published in the Lovecraft eZine, UGEEK, Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Iron Bound, Monsters & Mormons, Artifacts & Relics, Space Eldritch 1 and 2, and many more.

  Before becoming an award-winning poet, novelist, and songwriter he was vagabonding all over North America sampling native fauna for brunch. When he isn’t writing he enjoys traveling and visiting ancient ruins with intent on finding their lost secrets or at the very least getting snake bit. He collects swords, fine art and has a library of some seven thousand books. He currently lives in Utah with his wife and children. You can connect with him at:

  http://www.kingdavidjwest.com/

  https://twitter.com/David_JWest

  http://david-j-west.tumblr.com

  Also by David J. West

  Heroes of the Fallen

  Bless the Child

  Weird Tales of Horror

  The Mad Song: and other Tales of Sword & Sorcery

  Fangs of the Dragon

  Whispers of the Goddess

  The Hand of Fate

  Space Eldritch

  Space Eldritch 2: The Haunted Stars

  Gods in Darkness

  Redneck Eldritch

  Cold Slither

  Reviews are always appreciated,

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  [1] Deseret Industries is a thrift store franchise maintained throughout the Mormon-centric west for those who are unfamiliar. There are over forty such thrift stores spread out mostly over Utah, along with some in Idaho, Nevada, Washington, Arizona and California.

  [2] Pedro de Castenada was the historian and chronicler for Coronado.

  [3] Elias McGinnies was the only non-Mormon in the original party of settlers of St. Thomas. He presumably got along very well with them.

  [4] Legendary giant Aztec defender of Tenochtitlan known for throwing stones and killing Spaniards.