Category: random

The unearthly din neared the surface and so uneuphoniously threatening, the two young men turned and fled. Once in the safety of the truck, they sped over the rough and ungraded roads, back to the paved security of Main Street and U.S. 95.

Stricken with an incorporeal fright, they refused to acknowledge that thing they knew, as naming it would confirm its existence, however they accidentally invited it back into their now settled and placid lives one afternoon, five years later, when they bumped into each other at the Gold Bar in the Sparks Nugget. After a few drinks, the memories spilled out, with one memory standing out beyond the rest that both attributed to a folie à deux.

There in the jingle-jangle of coins striking the tin pan of one-armed bandits and the cacophony of excitable voices, they took turns describing the strange sounds and the hideous decay their panosophic learning acquired in the instant ahead of flight.

As Jimmy talked of the moment he  fled, Eddie interrupted, “I…I…I saw something that’s left me frighten ever since.”

“Saw what?” Jimmy asked.

“A pair of gray, rotting hands and a blue-chalked face,” Eddie continued, “I think it was one of those dead miners and it pointed a bony finger at me and whispered, ‘We are coming.’”

“That’s jus’ your imagination,” Jimmy chided Eddie. “You need another drink.”

“No! I tell you they’re coming for me,” Eddie muttered argumentatively, “I know it.”

Jimmy sat at the bar long after Eddie left, draining his sixth beer and sipping a whiskey, all the while believing his best friend since grade school had lost his mind.

A week later, Jimmy received a telephone call from Tasker, Eddie’s only brother. His voice was a whisper at the end of the line, “The corner of Eddie’s house, where his bedroom was, was swallowed up by a sinkhole.”

Tasker went on to explain, “Eddie’s had this strange fascination with the mines beneath Virginia City. He told me that he could hear the distant, muffled sound of pickaxes and he had the crazy idea that something from one of the old glory-holes was searching for him. I thought he was nuts.”

Jimmy shuddered at the implication.

The blaze wasn’t a serious one. It was discovered while small and attacked for some time at close quarters, yet the insignificant flame developed into a deadly disaster.

That was 1911.

For sometime since, the old Belmont mine has been left to rot, abandonment and what ever nervy tourist or rock hound wishes to explore its depths. But the locals around Tonopah know the  ineffable horrors dwelling in those depths of the isolated silver mine.

Miners complained about the many bad omens surrounding the dig. Along with the ever-present disembodied voices, attributed to Tommy Knockers, there were the numerous carrion crows living in the subterranean vaults as well as the neighing of startled horses along the numerous passageways at unseen entities.

Walking up the hill, they avoided the mud puddles, formed by a midnight thundershower. Clouds of mist still hovered above the hole threateningly, whispering, ‘turn back,’ to return to the familiar comforts of the town below: Cisco’s, the Burger King, even the Clown Motel and the haunted historical, but still dismal cemetery next to it.

Beyond, lay the trail, marked by a rusty chain-linked fence. They approached, mindful of the eroded metal fencing poking up out of the gelatinous earth; sharp and menacing.

Twenty paces further and they were upon it: the Desert Queen shaft! And it was more blasphemous than imagined.

Their imagination was settled tales of people falling in; curious children  mysteriously disappearing; pets that strayed to far only to vanish. All were declared victims of whatever roamed the unfathomable passageways at the bottom of that accursed pit.

Then — movement from below. The movement came in the form of a sound: a shuffling, labored progression; the sound of frail, ashen hands clutching blindly at unseen hand-holds in the rocky sides of the crumbling shaft.

The metal extension ladder still stands against the cabin, where I placed it. To bad that I’m at the foot of it, neck broken, unable to move. Cooper, my half-shepherd, half-wolf and mostly wild, is tied outback. No one knows we’re here and I can’t help wonder which of us will starve first.

I think I heard Coops dog door, if so, he’s free and hungry. So now I know.

After a couple of hours, traveling back across the desert, Charlie offers, “By this time Billy was looking like hell, you look…you still have color.”

“Maybe Billy didn’t infect me after all,” Jack says.

“It’s a good possibility,” Charlie replies.

Very little is said between the two riders as they trail their way back to Candelaria. Charlie looks over at Jack, who has his head down, chin on his chest, sleeping, but still holding his red and swollen hand.

“Hey,” he says as he falls back to Jack’s position, “You still alive?”

Without warning, Jack’s head pops up and growling like a frenzied beast, he throws his body on top of Charlie, knocking him from his horse. The unsuspecting Charlie finds himself gripped between the monstrous jaws of Jack, who is biting down on Charlie’s right shoulder.

Still clutched in Jack’s teeth, Charlie draws his gun and fires a round directly into Jack’s face, ending his daemon life. Both horses have taken flight, but Charlie knows that catching up even one of them is useless.

Instead, he sits in the sand, under the shade of a Joshua Tree, thumbing the hammer of his pistola. No one will be around to hear the blast as he willingly puts a bullet in his brain.

Back at Mud Lake, the water effervesces as the stygian object dissolves into elsewhere nothingness. Later that night, under a gibbous and pale moon, the enigmatical desert-scape shall come to life with eidolon beings of a frog-like nature.

He was interrupted by a sudden guttural growl from an animal he didn’t recognize. He turned to look in the direction of the sound and was met by a horrific sight: Billy was sitting up, drooling and manically bellowing.

“What the…” is all Charlie can get out before Jack lets out a painful howl.

Billy has the outside of Jack’s left hand in his mouth and Jack is clubbing Billy with his free hand, while screaming, “He ain’t dead!”

Finally Billy lets go of Jack, who staggers away holding his hand. Meanwhile Charlie is stunned, staring at the once-dead Billy in absolute shock. As for Billy, his chin and lower jaw are dripping in blood, his skin has no color real coloration, and the look in his eye is so wild he could be Satan himself.

Billy shambles to his feet and rushed Charlie.

“Don’t let him bite you!” Jack yells.

Jack, nursing his teeth-torn hand, pulls his revolver and fires at Billy. The thunderous explosion from the barrel of his Single Action puts Billy on his back.

“Is he dead?” Charlie asks.

Jus’ then Billy starts to move again.

“Impossible!” Jack shouts, as Billy stands up.

Charlie waits for Billy to charge. This time, instead of running to avoid a nasty bite, he fires point blank in to the man’s head.

“That did it,” Jack says then realizing something, “Uh, I’m not saying we need to shoot anybody, but…”

“I already thought of that,” Charlie says, “Let us cross that bridge later, if we need too.”

A deep gash covered the flats in a straight line along with bits of dusky rubble. The sand, where the object had collided with the ground, had become a glass scoria, where bits of phlogiston from sage brush still smoldered in tiny flickering flames that naturally put themselves out.

But what was most interesting is what was in the lake itself. As the riders drew closer they could see an atramentous stone, obelisk in shape, and with hideous designs hewn along its four sides protruding from silt.

One of the riders, Jack leans over from his horse, looking into the water, “It goes all the way down.”

They all peer into the lake where he’s pointing. All they could make out was a silhouette.

“Let’s jump in,” offers Billy, “Where we can get a better look at it.”

“Wait,” exclaims Charlie, “No one is going in that water. Look at the fish, they’re bellied-up.”

Suddenly Billy sees a frog-like creature in the sand a few feet away, crawling around near the waterline, “Look at this, it’s alive.”

By now, and having dismounted, Billy picks it up, “It feels slippery.”

As Billy turns it over Charlie notices that not only is the misshapen creature a green-color, it also has a silver-tint. Then Billy yells out, the thing has bitten him between his thumb and pointer finger.

“Blood,” Billy blurts out, showing his wounded hand to the other two.

Minutes later Billy starts convulsing. And in less time, the seizing stops and Billy lets out a long, agonizing groan before he dies.

Charlie lets out a heavy sigh, “Don’t touch his body.”

“Ain’t we gonna take him back with us?” asks Jack.

“No,” Charlie replied, “Were going to leave him here and come…”

From the Nevada State Journal, February 6, 1894, “Last Thursday night the people of Candelaria were startled by a dazzling flash of light….The explosion was followed for three or four minutes by a terrible ripping and hissing noise and the afrighted people expected to see the very sky with its bright stars come down on their heads.”

The explosive boom brought the whole town outside and with it, talk of who saw it and what was its cause. At first the people though one of the mining companies powder bunkers had gone up, but that wasn’t the case.

As it disintegrated in earths upper atmosphere, it screamed a death knell of metallic thunder for three minutes, before skipping off the rocky crags of hillside to the south and east, disappeared beyond the horizon. Many said it might have come to rest in nearby Summit Springs others remained uncertain.

Three men volunteered to track it down and after a day and a half, riding and cutting sign, the trio rode up a small rise in the Nevada plain, where they could look down at Mud Lake. Not only was it the site of the impact, the water had become overly endowed with an unnaturally green-hued slime.

Seated outside by a giant umbrella tree for shade, the man watches bees and other assorted flying insects flit from leaf to upturned leaf, searching for the water of a night time dew. Each hover effortlessly from above, looking deep into leafy folds as other’s disappear inside their depth, only to reappear seconds later in search of more.

Near the man’s foot, movement; a Great Basin Skink with its bright blue tail, lizard movements, quick and cautious. It stops, one short dash and then another from rocky flower beds, reaffirming its place in the food chain, to the base of a wild Star Gazer, with spindly green leaves and splendid orange-yellow petals, perfect pitchers for the hidden moisture the tiny reptile desires.

Moving a quarter of a mile in little lizard length, he pauses before starting up the skinny stem of the flower, where glistening in the morning shine is that singular dew drop. Thirst refreshed, it darts to a nearby rust-colored rock, a hillock to one so diminutive in stature, to rest and bathe in the sky one’s glow.

To the corner of the man’s eye, floats a darting sight, a hummingbird on the wing. Its resplendent feathers resonate through the warming of the early hours, buzzing to and fro then gone; a magical trace only God can provide.

The man’s eyes return to the lizard and searches for one no longer there. Gone, warmed enough to seek out food before the dry earth becomes too unbearable to its diminutive touch.

Such is a morning time in the summer’s heat of oppressive breeze, dust and survival. The man must also retreat inside as a touch pellegrino awaits his drying taste buds.

The following day, and against the doctor’s wishes, Hutch checked himself out of the hospital to return home. He pulled into his driveway jus’ as Deputy Melton was preparing to pull away from the curb in front of Hutch’s home.

“Heard you left the hospital,” Melton greeted Hutch as both men exited their vehicles.

“Yeah, needed a decent cup of coffee and a little more bracing than a couple of Tylenol,” Hutch held up a brown paper bag in one hand and the sleeved-paper cup in the other, then strangely found himself smiling.

“Sorry about Lulu Belle,” Melton offered.

“Thanks,” Hutch said with a heavy sigh, “Twice she saved my life, but I doubt you came here only to offer your condolences.”

Hutch’s directness caught Melton off guard, “You’re right. I came here to tell you that the guy you killed, also killed Mr. Whitehouse or at least the rifle he used to shoot you is the killer’s weapon.”

“Anything else?” Hutch asked impatiently.

“Well, we still don’t know who the shooter is, no hits from CODIS as of yet, and the rifle is reported to have been stolen out of Idaho about a year and a half ago.”

“You’ll let me know if and when you find anything out, right?

“You bet, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

“Hutch…please, call me Hutch.”

“You got it. Hutch.”

“If there’s nothing else, you wanna come in have a couple of shots with me? No fun drinking alone. Besides, I’m drinking to my other, even deeper pain.”

Melton wrinkled his brows, not understanding the reference.

“Lulu Belle,” Hutch quickly answered his puzzlement.

The deputy looked at his watch, “Sure, what the hell!”

Happy to have company, Hutch slipped the key into the deadbolt, turned it, pushing the front door open. He didn’t expect the overwhelming silence.

Hutch didn’t have time for tears as in the distance he heard the fast pace of an oncoming runner. Hutch reacted by crawling like a wild animal into a nearby drainage ditch at the far end of the dirt piles.

He burrowed beneath the dried clusters of sage brush and freezing snow, the thorns and goat-heads driving themselves into his hands and knees. In spite of the pain, Hutch moved slowly to the opposite end of the berm and near where Lulu Belle lay.

By then the sound of the running feet had dribbled away to a near-noiseless creep. Then came the unmistakable double-click of a bullet entering the chamber of a rifle.

Hutch froze in place.

It was the sound of crunching bits of sage and minor gravel that gave the shooters’ position away. Taking a deep breath and knowing it could be his last, Hutch stood.

He was two feet lower than the man with the rifle. Hutch already had his arm, revolver in hand, outstretched before the man could respond.

In rapid succession, Hutch squeezed the trigger of the forty-four; each round striking its mark with a bone breaking thud. Then it was over.

Dropping his now empty gun, Hutch drew his knife intent on finishing the job had the six well placed rounds hadn’t done what they were designed for. As Hutch scrambled over the berm, it became immediately apparent that he need-not employ his blade since the body of the man lay unmoving and unbreathing.

Turning back, Hutch retrieved his weapon, reloading as he walked back to where Lulu Belle lay. By then the wound in his side from a bullet solely meant for him, but mostly absorbed by Lulu Belle’s huge bull mastiff body, was beginning to ache.

Despite this, Hutch sat next to Lulu Belle and grieved the death of his best friend.