Shadow of Time

by Jen Minkman

  “So let’s talk about your dreams and visions.” Emily dug up a notepad and pencil from her bag. “When do you think it started?”

  “I was harassed by the lake on Thursday night. Ben and Josh picked me up from Lake Powell because I ran out of fuel. That night, I had my first nightmare.”

  “What did you dream about?”

  “About a traditional village, in the past.” Hannah closed her eyes to recall the images. “A Navajo village. With primitive hoghans, the kind with dried-up clay on the outside. People were wearing old-fashioned clothes, and the village was attacked by Mexicans.”

  “How do you know they were Mexicans?”

  “Did they wear sombreros?” Amber inquired.

  Hannah couldn’t help stifling a nervous laugh. “Not the big ones. They wore some kind of smaller hats, uniforms, and they spoke Spanish. In my dream, they clearly sounded Mexican. After that first dream, I dreamed about the attack several more times, and it’s always the same people burning down the village.”

  “So, what are they doing exactly?” Emily continued.

  “Like I said, the village is burning. I think they set it on fire. In my dream I am running from the soldiers, looking for someone who can protect me. I clearly expect him to be able to defend me from them.”

  “And that person is...?” Emily scribbled down a few notes and then looked up at Hannah expectantly.

  “Josh,” Hannah confessed with red cheeks. “But he looks different. Older. He’s also wearing traditional clothes, and his hair is up in a bun like last Saturday at the rodeo. He seems about thirty years old.”

  “Is he your lover in that part of the dream?” Emily asked.

  Hannah hesitated. She suddenly realized something new. “No. No, he isn’t. I can feel he is really important to me, but he is not my husband. Not anymore.” She fell silent. That was an interesting discovery.

  Emily pondered over the things she’d written down. “So, does Josh save you in the end?”

  “I have no idea. I’m hiding from those Mexicans, and Josh sees me, but he looks away on purpose so he won’t alert the Mexicans to my presence. After that, I make a sort of leap in time, and the next thing I see is the hilltop where I leave him.”

  “Tell me more.” Emily picked up her pencil again.

  “We’re sitting together near a precipice looking out over Canyon de Chelly ... I think. He is telling me a story in Diné Bizaad, looking solemn. I get up and walk away from him, because his story makes me afraid of something. I have an overwhelming urge to be free. It feels like ... like breaking up.”

  Amber and Emily stared at her nonplussed. “That’s quite a saga,” Emily mumbled. “And that eerie feeling you get? Was it there the first time you had a strange dream?”

  Hannah shook her head. “No, not like that. It gradually got worse. The third time I had the same dream, there were three shadows waiting for me at the foot of the hill where I’m leaving Josh behind. The same three apparitions I saw in the vision at Rainbow Bridge.”

  Emily nodded slowly. “You said one of them turned into an animal?”

  “A coyote.” Hannah saw the color drain from Emily’s face. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  Her friend raised a hand. “No, I want to hear more about those shadows first before I spout my theory.”

  “Okay, fine. The sinister apparitions haven’t left since. They keep invading my dreams. When I woke up this morning and took a shower, I remembered a new installment in the storyline. I am standing near a precipice...” She closed her eyes and tried to remember what she’d seen. “Actually, it’s the same precipice where Josh and I had our heart-to-heart. I am looking out over Canyon de Chelly, facing the wind. The three creatures are approaching me, their faces distorted and looking like coyotes with bared fangs. Their eyes light up red in the darkness, and I am going insane with terror. Then, all of a sudden, there are bugs crawling all over my body. In the dream, it feels like I’m about to jump in the abyss and commit suicide so I can finally have peace.”

  She exhaled and opened her eyes again. Talking about her nightmares was useful for linking up dream events, but it also made her relive all the terror she’d felt. She shuddered.

  Amber tapped her shoulder. “Do you think those aura-less men have something to do with your dreams?” she asked gingerly.

  Hannah nodded defeatedly. “I do. It’s like my dreams blend in with reality. I have the feeling those three entities are after me in real life. Not just in my dreams.”

  Emily put her hand on Amber’s arm. “Did you see anything strange? Is that why you wanted to know about people without auras?”

  “When I ran into Hannah in the supermarket on Saturday, I told her I could see auras. In turn, she told me about her weird dreams and her feelings of paranoia.”

  “I met three men in Safeway who creeped me out big time,” Hannah explained. “I just didn’t know why. I mean, two of them were talking in the aisle next to me and they had the exact same voices as the drunk guys who harassed me, but they looked nothing like them. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling something didn’t quite add up.”

  “So Hannah asked me to walk back to Safeway with her and have a look at those men,” Amber added.

  “And you saw something abnormal,” Emily concluded.

  “You bet I did. Those three had no auras. Nothing, nada, zip.”

  Emily fell silent and didn’t speak for a long time, mindlessly doodling underneath her notes. When the silence became too oppressive for her, Hannah cleared her throat. “So, your thoughts?”

  “Have you felt threatened by other people lately?” Emily asked without looking up. Her voice was so serious it scared Hannah.

  “Well, not people. Coyotes. Three of them, near the cabin on Saturday, just before we went to the rez,” she mumbled. But no, that wasn’t entirely true. She remembered the twins and their dad at the parking lot, waiting for her to leave, staring her down like they were about to murder her. She swallowed. “Yeah, I have, actually. Groups of three. I just thought it was in my mind. I thought I was going nuts.”

  “If I’m right about this, that is exactly what they want you to believe.” Emily grabbed her hand. “Please listen to me. You’re not crazy.”

  Hannah nodded curtly. “Okay. So what the heck is going on?”

  “I think you’ve become the target of something I dare not speak out loud,” Emily whispered.

  The hairs on Hannah’s arms prickled. Emily had such a grim look on her face she almost felt like running, just so she wouldn’t have to listen to whatever came next. Amber cringed next to her.

  “Yenaldlooshi,” Emily spoke, almost inaudibly. “Skinwalkers.”

  They were all completely silent for a moment.

  “What are they?” Amber broke the silence.

  “They are witches or warlocks – chindi. They never work alone, but in threes. The Diné don’t speak their name aloud, because it invokes them or attracts misfortune. Skinwalkers use black magic to change into coyotes so they can harass and terrorize people. If powerful enough, they can also change into other beings or copy other people’s appearances. Often, they will use their mental power to drive you insane. They influence your thoughts to make you believe you’re crazy, or to make you harm or kill yourself. It is the nastiest form of ánt’iihnii – witchcraft.”

  Hannah couldn’t help giving Emily a completely stumped look. Despite the heat, she suddenly felt cold as ice. Things like these didn’t exist. Right? At least, not in her world. On the other hand – Emily’s story was beyond bizarre, but at least it accounted for what she’d felt. So she wasn’t crazy – she was cursed. Under a spell. Chased by supernatural beings.

  “I know it sounds impossible,” Emily went on, a quiver in her voice. She looked insecure.

  “No. I believe you. I really do. But you know, stuff like this doesn’t happen in my life. I have such a different background from yours – no yarns about magic and mystery told by ancestors. My mother never even bothered
to pretend Santa existed.”

  “Do you think those dreams are all caused by a sort of curse?” Amber wanted to know.

  “I’m sure of it,” Emily replied. “You started having the dreams when you first met the three warlocks. Skinwalkers can use their powers to read people’s minds, to break into their thoughts.”

  Hannah shivered, thinking back to the moment she’d heard a coyote howl near Rainbow Bridge. Maybe Josh had felt something was wrong with her. Was that why he’d looked so scared?

  “So, those drunk guys ... and the lumberjacks at Safeway ... and those coyotes near my house ... they are all the same three people?”

  She remembered the way her attackers had moved. How much their behavior had reminded her of a pack of wolves. Actually, she knew the answer to her own question. Her gut feeling hadn’t betrayed her, but she couldn’t quite grasp the truth.

  “It’s just too unreal,” she whispered. “I know it’s true, I know you’re right, but my brain can’t process it.”

  “Why are they after Hannah?” Amber blurted out, sounding rebellious. “What has she ever done to those monsters?”

  “Usually, they choose their victims out of revenge, or they’ve been bribed to target someone.”

  Hannah collapsed back into her chair. She had absolutely no clue why anyone would want to put a spell on her, least of all a Navajo. “Have you heard about this happening before? A biligaana cursed by skinwalkers?”

  “Can’t say I have. People are still awfully afraid of them on the rez, especially in backwater villages. There’s tons of stories about people being harassed by yenaldlooshi, and they happened quite recently. But you don’t hear a lot about this kind of thing outside Navajo Nation.”

  “Can I stop it?” Hannah’s hands balled into fists. “How do I fight them?”

  “If you know who the skinwalker is, you can call out his real name when he attacks you in his coyote form. That will kill him.”

  “How is she supposed to do that?” Amber threw in. “They keep shape-shifting!”

  “I never said it was easy.”

  Hannah refused to give up. “Okay. What else?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. The only other way to stop them is to shoot them with bullets dipped in white ash. That will incapacitate them for a while or even kill them sometimes. But you don’t need to be that radical. Their influence can be weakened by using certain herbal extracts.”

  Emily rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a traditional medicine bundle. It was a small bag made of deer leather, with frills at the bottom decorated with little blue and red beads. “I brought this for you. The beads have a symbolic value. The stitching on the front depicts a sandpainting used in the Evil Way Ceremony, to ban evil spirits. The pouch contains corn pollen, cedar ash and dried juniper berries. That should be enough to protect you for a while.”

  “You suspected this was going on?” Hannah asked, her eyebrows arched. “Or do you carry things like that around all the time?”

  “Well, I heard you mentioning shadows turning into coyotes during our lunch together, and that made me think. I talked to Sani and I asked him for help. He gave me advice on what to do if the problem turned out to be related to skinwalkers.”

  So Emily had visited the village hataalii. The man who had such a big influence on Josh – the only one who knew what had happened during his vision quest. The old man who burdened Josh too much with rituals and traditions of all kinds. She didn’t want to be helped by him – in fact, all she wanted was to separate Josh from his old hataalii sidekick and teach him how to communicate a little bit more with the world around him – but her options were limited. At this point, she could use all the help she could get.

  “Thank you so much.” Hannah put the bag on the table. She’d take it with her wherever she went from now on. When she touched it, a wonderful, tingling feeling spread through her body, so it was obvious the pouch had a positive effect. Maybe she could put it on a cord and wear it around her neck, underneath her shirt. At any rate, she would put it next to her bed tonight, for lack of a dreamcatcher.

  Emily got up. “Who wants coffee?”

  Amber and Hannah raised their hands in silent unison.

  While Emily was banging away at making them drinks in the kitchen, Amber leaned into Hannah. “You know ... those dreams you’re having about Josh? I have the feeling they’re trying to tell you something, but these skinwalker creeps break into your dreams and turn them into nightmares. I mean, why would a bunch of witches want to make you dream about a guy you’re in love with?”

  “Beats me. I thought Josh was a recurring theme because I think about him a lot.”

  Amber frowned. “But why would it be set in the past, then?”

  “Care to share your theory?”

  Amber fidgeted with her red hair. “Well, I think you’ve experienced all the things you’re seeing for real.”

  Hannah blinked. “Huh?” she said unintelligently.

  “You said you had the feeling you know Josh so well? It feels familiar being around him. Don’t you think ... ” Amber hesitated. “Maybe you know him from a past life. Something like that.”

  Hannah bit her lip. Sure, she was a lot more spiritual than most of her friends. She definitely believed in life after death. And reincarnation wasn’t too strange to consider, but she’d never thought about knowing people in her present life from a past existence.

  “Think about it,” Amber continued, when Hannah stared at her silently. “You say you dream about a village in the past. I already told you I see a very strong connection between you and Josh. Reincarnation would explain why you gravitate toward each other. It’s not completely stupid.”

  “No, of course not. You have a point. It’s not such an out-of-this-world idea, but it’s out of my world. I have to catch a breather. One minute I have this run-off-the-mill simple little life, and the next thing I know, I’m caught up in some bizarre folklore tale.”

  Hannah jumped up when she heard her cell phone buzz in the kitchen. She went inside to read the text message she’d received.

  “hey sis! u okay down there? it’s nice & hot on the rez. josh is walking around with a wide smile chiseled on his face all day long. starting to get on my nerves ;) best wishes from ur grilled brother.”

  She bit back a laugh and quickly texted back she was fine. Ben never failed to cheer her up. She suddenly missed him terribly, already dealing with the fact she could never tell him Em’s story about the skinwalkers. He was so down-to-earth he couldn’t even board a plane. If she bugged him with myths about witches and black magic, he would cart her off to the nearest loony bin. Still, she looked forward to seeing him again on Friday. Plus, the fact Josh seemed to be in the best of moods ever since he kissed her made her feel so much in love. With him by her side, she could do anything. Even deal with Navajo skinwalkers and their sick tricks.

  Whistling to herself, she stepped outside and helped Emily with the coffee cups. Emily caught her serene face and smiled at Hannah. “Looks like my medicine bag is starting to work. You definitely seem more relaxed.”

  When Hannah pulled the medicine bundle toward herself across the table, Emily put a hand on her arm. “But please be aware the medicine is boosting your self-confidence, too. It eradicates fear. Don’t be reckless or overconfident, okay?”

  When Emily and Amber got up to go to the neighboring cabin and check on Ivy, Hannah made her way to the living room and dug up the leather cord from the bag Josh had brought. He surely wouldn’t miss a piece of string from the heap of dreamcatcher accessories.

  With careful fingers, she strung the piece of the cord to the medicine bundle and put it around her neck and underneath her clothes. It was amazing how powerful the thing was – she felt so strong, so completely different from even this morning. The constant shadow of threat hovering over her was gone, despite the fact she now knew that witches were after her. Their spell had obviously made her feel more anxious than she’d normally be, and suppressed
her natural instinct to fight. Now she was ready for battle. Sani’s remedy was doing its job perfectly.

  Good thing Emily warned her not to get reckless. Her friend was right. Now that her fear was gone, she almost felt invincible. She would have to keep a clear head. And keep this story to herself, moreover. Josh would undoubtedly believe her if she told him about the skinwalkers, but he already seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Maybe she shouldn’t bother him with this. Or with Amber’s theory about reincarnation. Heck, they just started dating. There would surely be a time and place for a confession like that... but this was clearly not it.

  That night, there were no dreams. At least no dreams Hannah could remember. She woke up without the usual headache – as a precaution, she’d just taken a homeopathic sedative Emily had given her – and stretched her legs and arms. She heard the kitchen door slam shut in the next room, so Emily had probably just left for work.

  “Hannah?” she suddenly heard Amber’s voice through the door. “Are you awake yet?”

  “Yeah, only just,” she called back. She got up and stepped into the kitchen, where she found Amber sitting at the table.

  “Did you have a good night’s sleep?” the neighbor girl asked. “I just said goodbye to Emily, and she asked me to check up on you. She said you’d been quiet all night long.”

  “Yup. Smooth sailing. No nightmares.” She grinned at Amber. “So, you girls made any plans to meet up later?”

  “Yeah, we’re going to hang out tonight,” Amber replied, clearly trying to assume a carefully neutral tone. “You know, at your place. I’ll be staying here for the next couple of days. My parents are taking Ivy to Window Rock, but I don’t mind lounging around here.”

  “Let me get this straight. You’re skipping a trip to Window Rock so you can bum around with us? You are so in love,” Hannah established dryly.