“Jus’ be careful when you go down by the creek.”

“Is the water deep?”

“No.”

“Fast, then?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Cold?”

“Probably.”

“Then why the warning?”

“The salamander.”

“You’ve got to be kidding?!”

“No, I’m not.”

“Okay.”

That damned salamander was twice the size of a gator and it swallowed him in one gulp.

Manny and Julio tucked themselves under the awning to the left of the school doors, where it was the darkest. This is where they did business most nights and were waiting for their next customer.

Across the street and catty-corner from the school came a lone figure; a woman in a short dress, cut above her knees, with a flowing white train breezing behind her. She was tall, dark hairs and shapely, definitely a Latina.

The two men watched in silence as she casually walked by. Their surprise was more than mild, when she looked their way and smiled broadly.

She continued to walk down the uneven sidewalk, her heel-clicks growing fainter with each step.

It was Julio that said it first, “I don’t feel so well all of a sudden.”

“Me neither,” Manny confessed.

“Weird, right?” asked Julio.

“Yeah, dude,” answered Manny, adding, “I’m gonna head home.”

“Good idea.”

The woman continued down the street, passing beyond one overhead light to the next. Soon she was joined by another woman; also of Latin descent and dressed much more conservatively.

“I she you’ve done away with your mask,” the woman said.

“Why not, it is the 21st century after, sister.”

“Don’t call me sister.”

“Whatever.”

“Is this necessary?”

“Is what necessary?”

“Spreading this virus?”

“Yes and it’s easier on my vocal chords, too.”

“You know it isn’t any of these innocent peoples fault don’t you, that you drown your babies over a worthless man?”

“There’ no one innocent here or anywhere,” the woman in white said as she faded into the darkness, leaving the other woman by herself.

Soon that woman, too had faded into the night time.

Filled with slot canyons, Capitol Reef National Park lives in the south-central Utah desert. I love exploring slot canyons.

Experienced slot-monkeys know to tell someone where they’re going and to never go alone. Breaking both rules, I went in with only my day-pack.

Now, should I come to a fork, I’ll pick either left or right, and will stick to that, making back-tracking easier should I come to a dead-end. On this day though, I got lost.

To make matters worse, a thunderstorm had begun unleashing buckets of rain somewhere beyond both the hearing and sight of the canyon’s bottom. I had no way of knowing what was coming my way, until it was too late.

By that afternoon, a stream of water began trickling, then flowing, and finally cascading through the slot. After chimney climbing till it was too wide, I chanced wading the torrent, where a misstep swept me under.

The slot narrowed, trapping me when my pack got caught. Almost out of air, I slipped my straps and corked through the rest of the gap.

It spit me out into a shallow pool ten feet below the slot. Landing on my back, my head bounced off the rock floor as small rocks, pieces of dry wood, a couple of drown lizards and a half-eaten deer carcass pelted me.

Fairly battered, severely scraped-up and bruised, I scrambled down the rocky ledge and limping back to my truck, never seeing my day-pack again.

Finally, I rid myself of all those rejection notices accumulated over the years by shredding them. I had another plan for them, but then I remembered being eleven.

Mom and Dad collected Green Stamps.

With sheets of stamps about the house, I decided to use a few to redecorated my half of the bedroom that I shared with my brother. I wet and applied a couple of hundred to my wall, top to bottom, side to side.

That evening, when my parents saw what I’d done, the ass-whipping commenced. It’s this memory that sprang to the forefront of my mind while contemplating wallpapering the room where I write, with rejection slips.

The shredder’s grind is a comforting when compared to the slap of a belt being yanked through pant loops. It’s also better than the shouts of an angry wife.

As a kid, he was fascinated with two things: stories about ghosts and the Marine Corps. While he grew out of the ‘ghost’ phase of childhood, he fulfilled his dream of becoming ‘One of the Few,’ graduating from boot camp in late 2002.

Two years later, the Lance Corporal stood his ground with his ‘battle buddies’ in the Iraqi town of Al-Fallujah. The Corps earned this victory every step of the bloody way.

He found himself being shipped home shortly after the final push. He’s again indulging himself in the ‘ghost’ world, enjoying his afterlife with others also buried at Arlington.

Not only did he murder them using an ax, then chop them to pieces, scattering their body parts, he beat and raped them. And while the cops investigated Lulubelle’s disappearance as a possible victim to the man now dubbed, ‘The Axe Man,’ no evidence was ever found.

Slowly, Toby amassed more and more information. He used message boards, visited the dark-web, those hidden places few knew about, and searched open public records.

His work always turned up the same names, K.T. DeWitt, an employee of W.S. Hepperton Processed Meats Plant of Ames, Iowa. He was never really considered a suspect since his wife had made a couple of calls to family during the time he was working.

The other name that kept popping up on Toby’s radar was a guy named King. It appeared that he’d never been spoken too about her disappearance, not by the cops, not a single reporter, no one.

Eventually, all of Toby’s suspicions fell on King, first name Steve, Steven or Stephen. After a week, he’d become convinced that King was the murderer, the Axe Man, as he appeared connected to other strange activities through out the US, but mostly along the eastern sea-board.

To smoke this murderer out, Toby opened threads on ‘Chan 4′ and ‘Chan 9,’ of the dark-net. Within minutes he had a most singular answer: “This is a Stephen King short-story, dumb ass! S.K.”

Toby typed in the name ‘Stephen King,’ on Wikipedia: “Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, and fantasy novels.”

Toby reached over and turned the power to his computer off, utterly embarrassed, and mumbling, “Fucking Stephen King,” though he’d never heard of the author until that moment.  He switched off his desk lamp and pushed away from the black screen.

Within two years, Tobermory Blodgett would be studying to be his pipe-fitter father’s apprentice.

Throughout his twelve short and unexciting 12 -years of life, Toby Blodgett, slang for Tobermory, had always wanted to be a murder cop, a homicide investigator, and at the very least, an armchair detective. And happily for him, his father, a pipe-fitter, had little understanding of the computer, the world of Internet, its world-wide-web and the ability to search out most any information on any subject at any time, day or night.

It was an article that intrigued him and Toby took off researching, searching, and learning all he could about the disappearance and possible death of Cynthia ‘Lulubelle’ Simms-DeWitt in 1997, nearly 11-years before Toby was born.

According to a report, her Subaru was found parked nose-down in a ditch along side a desolate Nevada ranch road, near the town of Caliente. Her driver’s side door was open, the rear view mirror ripped from the post on the windshield and on the floor, the front seat covered in blood.

Authorities quickly discovered that the blood wasn’t human. It was that of a dog.

Lulubelle was known to have a Jack Russell Terrier named ‘Frank,’ with her. However, there was no sign of the woman.

Toby would later learn from another article that the dog, presumed to be Frank, was found lying dead and ‘crow-picked two rises away.’ The entire idea of the dog’s death left his stomach turned and sick.

But Toby knew he had to swallow-down the bile and press on if he intended to solve the case.

In 1997, law enforcement believed a man had been prowling the back roads of Nevada for at least three-years, murdering women. Four of the women were transients and the fifth, a rancher’s wife.

Go ahead, say ‘new normal’ again.

Way too much of this,
A bit too much of that,
Not enough in between
Left my waters muddled.
And not a drop was had.
So what the hell gives!
Shit that is head-trapped,
Bouncing from ear-to-ear,
Top to bottom inside-out.
Maybe those bad memories.
Perhaps not enough sleep.
Must write it all down.

The old man ignored the comments: “As they made me ready, a riot broke out, fire, destruction, killing. It was prisoners attacking and ending the camp, giving death to the guards and others that had power.”

“What is ‘riot?’ a girl-child asked from the row closest to the old man’s knee.

“It is violence made by many people towards someone or something,” Grandser answered, “In this case, it was the camp and the people that make the camp work. I made it it out of the execution chamber and as I was running to get out of the camp, I saw the man with the bird head and I tore it from his shoulders as a trophy and kept it.”

“It is the same bird head on your totem?”

“You ripped the bird head off its body?”

“Did you get blood on you?”

“Yes, yes and no,” the old man answered looking towards where the questions came.

“How come you did not die from the Grand Pan, Grandser?”

“I do not know, child. I do not know.”

After a short pause, Grandser said, “I am tired now, you should go back to your parents.”

Junior took up the challenge, directing the children from the house and telling them to go to their home as it was getting dark and wild dogs would be setting upon the village soon. This caused the children to hurry, though it had a couple of years since a child had been snatched by any pack in the area.

As Grandser laid back on his pallet, he looked up at the head that everyone knew as that of a bird, which it did look like, and smiled knowingly whispered, “I need to tell Junior the full truth of it, before I am dead.”

The 87-year-old man, and quite possibly, in his opinion, the oldest man on Earth, fell into a fitful sleep, with the last thing seen that night being the ‘Plague Doctors’ mask, where it lived on his totem.