I took the seasonal maintenance job at Canyon to Celli to make some extra cash and get out of Phoenix for the summer.

The work wasn't glamorous, clearing trails after storms, hauling debris, doing minor repairs, But I like the quiet.

The Canyons beauty hits you harder in person than in any photo.

Towering sandstone walls streaked with desert varnish, cutting deep into the earth.

It's also isolated.

Once you drop onto the Canyon floor, the road and visitors on the rim might as well be in another state by late July.

I'd learn two things about summer in the Canyon.

The monsoon storms come fast, and they can shut a trail down in minutes.

A single cloudburst can turn the sand to soup and send flash floods down from the rim without warning.

We were supposed to work in pairs after heavy rain, but the staff was stretched thin that week, and the White House Ruin Trail needed checking before the morning tours.

My supervisor handed me a radio, told me to keep an eye out for washouts, and sent me down alone.

The climb down was slow.

Even in the morning.

The Canyon floor was still damp, the mud grabbing at my boots with every step.

I worked methodically, stopping to kick loose branches off the path, dragging rocks away from the switchbacks, noting where runoff had eaten into the trails edge.

The air smelled like wet sandstone and creosote, and the sound of water dripping from the walls bounced around in a way that made it hard to tell how close anything was.

About an hour in, the trail bent into a narrow stretch where the walls pressed close.

Just ahead, near a large boulder, I saw someone crouched low.

From a distance, it looked like a man in a faded denim jacket, one arm wrapped tight around his midsection.

His head was bent, chin nearly touching his chest.

I slowed down, assuming it was a hiker who'd gotten caught in the storm.

Hey.

I called out.

My voice bounced off the walls and came back thin.

You OK?

No response.

I took a few steps closer.

The denim was soaked, dark in places, his jeans caked with reddish clay.

That's when he stood up.

It wasn't fluid.

His arms swung forward first, almost too far before his legs jerked to catch up.

The movement reminded me of someone trying to walk in deep water, except there was nothing to push against.

He turned his head toward me slowly, until I could see most of his face in profile.

Except his chin kept turning past where it should have stopped, his shoulder barely moving with it.

A deep exhale came from his chest, thick and wet, like he was forcing air through fluid.

I stopped where I was.

He took a step toward me.

The Canyon floor was nothing but mud in that stretch, and I had at least 2 miles before the loop would take me back toward the rim.

My radio was in my pack, but I wasn't eager to dig for it with him that close.

I started walking backward, keeping my eyes on him, my boots slipping just enough to make me realize how easy it would be to fall.

He kept coming, not fast, but steady.

When I turned to walk faster, I could hear his steps behind me, uneven, dragging but keeping up far too easily for how bad the footing was.

I told myself it could be an injury, maybe shock, maybe hypothermia from being soaked in the storm, but the way he moved didn't match anything I'd ever seen.

I didn't run, not yet, but I stopped thinking about the trail work.

I just wanted as much distance as possible between me and the thing in the denim jacket.

I kept my pace steady, hoping he'd slow down or stop if I didn't make it obvious I was trying to get away.

The problem was, the trail ahead wasn't the route I'd planned to take.

The last storm had damaged one of the small footbridges over a side channel of Chinla Wash, and when I reached it, the planks were half gone, 2 hanging loose, the rest slick with mud, and two warped to trust.

That meant my only option was to turn back toward the alternate climb out point near Junction Ruin.

I knew the distance from memory, close to 5 miles if I cut through every straight section and didn't stop.

Under normal conditions, it was an easy walk.

With the ground like this, it was going to be a grind.

I glanced over my shoulder.

He was still there.

Same jerky steps, same forward leaning posture.

The sound of his breathing reached me between the splashes of his boots in the mud.

Thick and labored, the Canyon floor funneled all the storm runoff toward the main wash.

In some stretches, the mud was ankle deep, each step pulling at my boots hard enough to slow me.

In others, small streams of water cut across the path, flowing from cracks in the Canyon wall.

Every time I slowed to pick my way through, I expected to hear his steps closing in.

The radio was still in my pack.

I pulled it free as I walked.

Press the call button.

Static.

The Canyon walls were too high here.

I shoved it back and kept moving.

A mile in, the trail narrowed into a stretch of sheer walls on both sides.

The floor was covered with loose rock and slippery clay.

My breathing was coming fast now, partly from exertion, partly from knowing the narrowing left me nowhere to go.

If he decided to close the distance, I risked another look back.

He was closer still, not running, just closing the gap a little more each time I slowed.

The worst was a section where the runoff had carved the trail into a shallow trench.

The mud at the bottom grabbed at my boots so hard I had to haul each foot free, and my pace slowed to a crawl.

I could hear the splashes behind me again, irregular but too quick for someone who should have been struggling.

I pushed through, legs burning.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered the stories from the Navajo crew I'd worked with earlier in the season.

They never talked about them directly, but one of the guys had mentioned something.

Skinwalkers, shape shifters that you weren't supposed to acknowledge if you thought you saw one.

At the time it had sounded like a campfire story.

Now it wasn't as easy to laugh off.

The climb out point was still at least a mile ahead, and the Canyon funneled me straight toward it.

I kept moving, knowing that stopping here wasn't an option.

The Canyon walls began to change, the flat mud giving way to angled sandstone cut with grooves from the rain.

I knew from the map that this climb out wasn't meant for tourists.

It was steep and exposed, more of an emergency route, but it was the only way out now.

I slowed just enough to check behind me.

He was still there, maybe 40 yards back.

Same strange gate, same dragging steps.

His breathing was louder now, a wet rattling sound that didn't match his steady pace.

The start of the slope was slick, the sandstone polished by runoff.

I dug the toes of my boots into the grooves and pulled myself upward, using my hands where I had to.

My legs burned immediately.

Sweat mixed with the grit on my face, and the sun pressed down through the narrow gap in the walls.

Halfway up, I risked another glance.

He was at the base, looking up at me.

He tried to step onto the incline but slid back, his footing giving way.

He tried again, with the same result.

The mud on his boots and jeans was thick, weighing him down.

I pushed harder.

The slope funneled into a narrow shelf about 8 feet wide, just enough to stand on.

From there, the switch back trail led to the rim.

I didn't stop until I was on that shelf, bent over with my hands on my knees, lungs burning, I looked back one more time.

He was still at the bottom, unmoving now, head angled up toward me.

I didn't wait to see if he'd try again.

The switchbacks were rough, sharp turns, loose gravel sections where the drop beside me went straight to the Canyon floor.

But the higher I got, the more air I could pull in and the more distance there was between us.

By the time I saw the rim road ahead, my legs were shaking so badly I thought they might give out.

When I stepped onto the asphalt.

I sat down right there, pack still on, boots caked with red clay.

It was late afternoon when a park truck pulled up.

Ranger Martinez got out and asked if I was Caleb Ross.

I nodded.

He drove me back toward the station, and when I told him where I'd been and what I'd seen, he went quiet for a while.

Then he said that spot.

You're not the first to see something like that there.

We've had a few summer workers quit after it.

Some won't talk about it, others wish they hadn't.

2 weeks later, I packed my gear and left.

I didn't give a reason on my exit paperwork.

On the drive out of Chinle, the clouds were building again over the sandstone cliffs from a pull out.

I looked down at the Canyon one last time.

Far below, just at the bend in the trail where the walls closed in, there was something small and still watching the wash.

I grew up working sheep around Cayenta, Arizona, right near the Utah line off US Route 163.

Out here you learn early that the desert changes fast when the summer monsoons roll in.

Dust one hour, a wall of rain the next, and lightning cracking down on open ground.

In early August, after one of those storms, I was helping my neighbor Danny with his flock.

His nephew was up near Denahatsuo hauling hay, so it was just the two of us fixing fence and making sure nothing got out before nightfall.

The pens sat about 15 minutes northwest of town, past the water tanks and out toward a shallow ravine that drained toward Segi Canyon.

I'd been out there plenty of times.

I'd never seen anything like what happened that evening.

The ground was still soft from the downpour, and the air had that damp smell you only get after a desert rain.

I was retying the wire at the South corner when I noticed one of the sheep standing oddly still in the far pen.

It wasn't grazing, wasn't shifting weight, just locked in place.

At first I thought it was sick, but then I saw the eyes.

Sheep don't watch you the way people do.

They don't track you side to side.

This one did, following me as I moved along the fence line.

I called out to Danny to check the count, and the thing snapped its head toward me.

Before I could make sense of it, it broke into a run.

Not the bounding, uneven gate of a sheep, but an awkward upright Sprint.

It plowed straight through the woven wire, snapping cedar stays like matchsticks and tearing out the corner brace.

My first thought was trespasser in a hide trying to scare us or steal stock.

We dropped tools and jumped on the ATVs.

The ground was a mess, mud sucking at the tires ruts deep from the earlier rain.

The thing cut across open ground.

It's run jerky and off balance, almost like it couldn't decide whether to drop to all fours.

It angled for the ravine and slipped down into the shadows.

We stopped short, slid halfway into the wash and found nothing but wet clay and a wall of Willow roots.

Upstream a loose rock tumbled but no movement followed.

Back at the fence we saw where it had gone through.

There was wool on the barbs, but it wasn't course belly wool.

It was cleaner, shorter, like it had been trimmed in the mud.

Around the break were two sets of tracks, hoof prints and human sized barefoot impressions.

The toes splayed wide deep in the soft ground.

Some had a toe drag like the person had an old injury.

We told ourselves it had to be someone messing around.

Still, when we locked the gates and headed out, I noticed the chain on the South entrance was wet again, the kind of slick you get from fresh sweat or rainwater.

Only problem was it hadn't rained since the storm passed and neither of us had touched it.

The next morning we were both back at the pens before the sun was fully up.

The storm had left the ravine slick, the clay still holding every print from the night before.

Danny and I patched the section where the fence had been blown out, then started following the wash on foot.

The rain had carved ledges into the banks and left slick tan shelves of packed clay.

Not far from the break we found wool caught on rabbit brush 6 feet up, well above where a you could have rubbed against it on a flat stretch of mud.

The tracks reappeared.

Coyote paw prints, sheep hoof prints, and the same barefoot impressions from last night.

They were deep space long and set heel to toe, like someone running at speed on one print, the big toe splayed far from the others, almost sideways, as if it had been broken long ago.

We drove into Cayenta later that morning for salt blocks at the market.

We asked around without giving details.

A couple of ranchers mentioned losing stock earlier in the summer N toward Shonto.

Another set of place down near Chilchenbeto had lost lambs with no blood trail, just drag marks that stopped at the base of a rock face.

Nothing about it sounded like coyotes.

When we got back, Danny's Uncle Joe came by to drop off some feed.

We told him about the Prince.

He listened, then said not to follow anything into a wash after rain and never to trail sign if it changed from animal to human and back again.

His voice was flat, no smile.

He left without asking questions.

That evening, Danny and I decided to watch the pens.

We didn't use a campfire and kept the lights off except for the AT VS, which we staged facing the ravine with red filters over the lamps, we counted the flock twice.

The night was quiet except for distant Thunder over Monument Valley.

Around midnight, a single U gave a short flat bleat.

A few seconds later, the same sound came from the ravine, but it was slightly off, close enough to mimic, but missing something.

We turned toward the sound, and I caught movement along the fence.

A shape rose up at the far side, a hand gripping the wire tight.

It moved sideways, slow, not hopping like sheep do when they clear an obstacle.

I started my ATV and the sound sent it dropping to the ground, then loping along the outside of the pen toward the low spot.

We gave chase.

My light caught it cresting A berm, tall narrow shoulders, something draped over its back that looked like rawhide with wool attached.

It stumbled, dropped to all fours for two strides, then surged upright and made for the ravine.

We hit deep clay and bogged the ATVs.

We followed on foot until we reached a rock shelf.

The tracks changed.

2 clean right foot human impressions, then a tangle of cloven Marks, and then nothing on the bare rock.

At first light we found a lamb downstream, tangled in wire against a Mesquite.

It was alive, but trembling so hard it could barely stand.

There were no bite marks.

It looked like it had been placed there.

By the third day, we'd stop trying to convince ourselves it was a prank.

The tracks, the lamb, the way it moved, none of it fits.

Something harmless.

That morning, Danny and I decided to get serious.

We ran a grid along the ravine, tying low trip wires between Mesquite trunks and hanging old nails from twine so they'd clatter if anything brushed past.

We moved panels to tighten the pens perimeter and laid heavy cattle mats over the soft spots in the ground.

Danny called his Uncle Joe back and I brought my brother Tom.

Both had worked stock for decades and knew how to read sign better than most.

Nobody wasted time with stories or guesses.

We just worked, each man taking a section to fortify.

By mid afternoon Joe found something on a side cut where the ravine undercut a sandstone shelf.

He spotted a patch of sand that looked recently smoothed over.

We belly crawled under the ledge and found a shallow alcove.

Inside was a rolled tarp, 2 old jackets, an army canteen, a coil of twine and a pocket knife with fresh lanolin smeared along the edge.

In one corner was a pile of wool, cut clean at the base, sorted into neat bundles by length.

At the edge of the sand was a partial footprint, heel and midfoot press deep, as if someone had crouched there for a long time.

Beside it was a cloven print in the same wet layer.

We didn't speak, we just photographed everything, laid a tape for scale and packed the items into feed sacks.

Danny radioed the livestock officer out of Tuba City.

The man told us to preserve the sign, keep distance and wait until he could get out in the morning if the road stayed passable.

Joe took a shovel and drew a line in the damp dirt around the pens circling the flock.

He told us, without raising his voice, not to let anyone, especially kids, cross that line until sunrise.

He salted the base of the fence and set 2 wide snares on the outside, enough to catch a leg but not break it.

That evening, a small storm cell built to the West.

By nightfall, the wind was pushing hard enough to make the T post strain in their set.

Around 10.

The nails on the twine clattered once.

A few minutes later, one of the snares went taut.

Jerking the post sideways in the mud.

We swung lights toward the sound and caught movement just beyond the salt line, a figure standing close to the fence, tall and narrow, head turned slightly down.

It stepped back slowly, keeping outside the salt.

The dogs growled low but stayed behind us.

A second later, lightning lit the ravine.

In that flash, the figure pivoted and ran.

The run was smoother now, faster.

We chased to the lip of the ravine and saw nothing but shadow.

In the morning, the livestock officer found the snare cable kinked in tight twists, like it had been turned by hand.

We decided that night would be the last.

The next morning, no matter what happened, we'd load the flock and move them to Danny's cousin's land near Comb Ridge.

We'd already reinforced the weakest corner with new T posts and a railroad tie, then stacked old metal gates along the outside of the fence so there were no gaps.

By sundown, everything that could be done was done just after midnight.

The nails strung on the trip wires rattled in three different spots.

Instead of running the fence in One Direction, whatever was out there was testing multiple points at once.

We kept the house lights off to save our night vision.

The air was damp and heavy with a faint metallic smell.

A hand curled over the top of the fence, 6 feet up.

Mud streaked the skin and the fingers were long, the joints sharp in the ATV beam.

They gripped tight, then pulled back out of sight.

I could hear steady, controlled breathing somewhere past the posts.

Joe stepped forward to the salt line and spoke in Navajo low, and even.

He wasn't yelling.

He told whoever was there to leave what wasn't theirs and to stop coming here.

For a few seconds nothing moved.

Then the fence bowed inward from a sudden wait.

The railroad tie held.

Danny moved toward the gap on the low side and flipped on the floodlight we'd staged there.

Before dark, the wash exploded into white.

For a second everything was clear.

The figure at the low spot was tall and thin.

Ribs showing under skin, shoulders draped with rawhide, stitched with patches of wool.

The face was streaked with clay, eyes wide and black under the light.

It bolted, hit the second snare and tore free with a sharp cry.

The sound was human.

Strained.

It vanished into the ravine.

We followed the trail downstream.

Blood drops on the clay darken the beam until the ground turned to Flat Rock.

The drops ended there, and boot prints began heading north toward the Utah line.

The stride was long and even.

We called it.

At dawn.

The livestock officer arrived.

We gave him the wool bundles, the jackets, the blade and the photos.

He said there had been other calls like this, though not all had proof.

His advice was simple.

Move the flock, change the routine, and whatever it was would move on.

That morning we loaded the sheep and left.

No more losses after that.

Danny sold the property at the end of the season and moved his pens closer to family land.

Months later at the trading post, I heard the previous owner had lost half his flock in one night.

He told people it wasn't coyotes.

I don't doubt it.

I've worked plenty of dusk shifts since, but never alone and never near those pens.

Whatever we chase that week, I know this.

When we drew a line, it stopped crossing it.

That was enough.

I don't scare easy and I grew up camping so I'm not the type to post about shadows and swear they were demons.

I'm a dad, mid 30's, the kind of person who over packs first aid and argues about proper food storage.

Last August I took my family, my wife, our 15 year old son, and our nine year old daughter to Blue Water Lake State Park in western New Mexico.

It's about 30 miles West of Grant's, not far off I-40.

We'd been there once before for a day trip and like the quiet.

This time we booked a site for two nights on the northern loop, close to the water, but not right on it.

The plan was simple.

Fish in the morning, swim in the afternoon, cook on the fire, and get my kids off screens for a weekend.

When we checked in, a park employee in a green uniform told me our site would be really quiet.

He said it like it was either A+ or a warning.

I figured he meant we wouldn't be jammed between big RV's with generators running all night.

We drove the loop past a few tents and found ours tucked behind a few low trees and scrub a narrow path cut down toward the lake.

You could see boats out on the water, small aluminum rigs with outboard motors, and a couple of kayaks.

The sky was a clear blue and it felt like every family should have a day like that.

I'll say this up front, the place is beautiful in the daylight.

We set up without trouble.

I hammered steaks while my wife unrolled sleeping bags.

Our son Miguel spent a good half hour skipping rocks with decent form.

Our daughter Sophia collected chalky sun bleached pieces along the trail and lined them up on a Flat Rock like a museum display.

The smell out there is familiar.

Sage, dry dirt, hot sun.

A Raven flapped overhead once, and that was the loudest thing we heard all afternoon.

There isn't much to complain about at Blue Water Lake when the sun is high.

Around 6A breeze died off and the heat settled, so we drove to the little store in Grants for ice and snacks.

On the way back, we took NM 612 from the South, the road that angles in toward the park entrance.

The kids were quiet in the back, the way kids get when they're worn out from the air in the sun.

I remember thinking I'd sleep like a rock.

We ate, cleaned up, and we're in the tent by 10:30.

I set the cooler in the shade, stashed trash in the car, and latched the windows on the SUV.

Routine stuff.

I woke up the first time around 12:20.

AMI know because I checked my watch.

The tent was warm and still.

My wife was on her side, facing away from me on the other side of the tent.

The kids had rolled toward each other in their bags and made a pile of limbs.

I lay there listening to the absolute quiet.

No motor from the lake, no wheels on gravel, no people talking around a fire.

Just air and the nylon of the tent.

When I moved, I fell asleep again without thinking much about it.

The second time I woke it was because something stepped close to the tent, not rustling.

This was wait on dirt.

One step, then nothing.

I held my breath and waited for the next one.

My heart knocked around for a few seconds, and then I told myself it was a raccoon, or maybe one of the stray dogs that wander through parks sometimes.

I've had bears push around cook boxes in Colorado and elk walk right through campsites in Utah.

You learn when to intervene and when to let an animal pass.

I kept still and listened another step slow, like a person taking care not to make sound.

I sat up and unzipped the sleeping bag.

My wife's hand found my leg in the dark.

I told her quietly it was probably nothing, that I was going to look.

I didn't want the kids to wake up to me crawling around.

I grabbed the flashlight from my shoe and angled it at the zipper.

I took a breath, lifted the flap and stepped out in my socks.

The air outside felt like it

does at 2:00 in the morning in August.

Warmer than it should be, close, a little stale.

I clicked on the light.

The circle caught the nearest tree trunks, the picnic table and empty air above the dirt.

I traced the beam in a slow half circle.

The light hit something standing by the tree line.

It looked like my son.

He was 25 feet away, just past the edge of our site where the ground drops toward the trail to the water.

The face, the hair, the height.

It was close enough that my brain filled in the details and said, That's your kid.

Except behind me, inside the tent, I could hear Miguel's steady breathing and I could see two shapes in the nylon.

I raised the light higher on purpose, straight into the face.

Miguel has a small scar on his right eyebrow from a skateboard fall.

The thing had it too, but not exactly.

It was too centered, like a copy made from a description.

The skin around it looks stretched and it blinked.

If you want to know what reset my thinking from sleep mode to full danger, it was the blink.

The eyelids moved up instead of down, bottom to top.

Smooth, no eyelash flutter, no reflex squint.

The mouth was slightly open and every few seconds it opened wider without the jaw hinging the way it should.

The light didn't make it squint.

People flinch when a bright light goes in their eyes at night.

This didn't.

Miguel, I said, testing the name in a level voice.

Not loud, not a challenge, just his name.

Nothing.

I took a small step to my right to angle the beam.

It rotated toward me, slow, like someone learning how to move shoulders.

The arms hung straight, two straight fingertips not curling.

The posture was wrong.

I picked up a rock from the ground because I needed the world to act like the world.

I lobbed it into the dirt near its feet.

The rock bounced and skittered.

It didn't react, Not a flinch.

That's when fear flattened everything.

I don't mean panic.

I mean clarity with an edge.

My arms prickled.

I remembered there's a knife in the cook box, a hatchet in the Suva.

Whistle snapped to my backpack.

None of those things mattered against something I couldn't categorize.

I said you need to leave because that's what came out.

It took a step, the knee lifted too high, and then the foot came down like it was testing the ground.

Another step, same odd motion.

That's when it moved.

One second it was slow and the next it ran into the trees in a straight line so fast I lost it at the edge of my light.

No build up, no panting, just gone.

The only sound was brush moving apart.

Then everything was still again.

I stood there until my arm shook from holding the flashlight up.

I turned it off to save the battery, went back inside and ipped the tent.

My wife whispered what I told her I saw someone at the tree line and that I probably scared them off and that we'd pack at first light.

I felt her hand grip my arm.

I know what people will say.

Wake the kids, get in the car, leave immediately.

I thought about it.

The problem is, it takes time to get two kids into a vehicle when they're asleep and confused, and the distance between the tent and the car felt like an exposed path if that thing was still nearby.

The safest place for the next few hours was a ipped tent with the four of us together and me awake.

I sat there, light in my hand, and I watched the seam of the door until the Gray of morning showed through.

I never heard another step.

We didn't talk much while we packed.

That's not bravado.

That's focus.

My wife rolled sleeping bags while I took down poles.

I told the kids we were leaving early to beat heat and crowds.

There was no argument.

Our sun moved slower than usual, like he'd been hit with a heavy workout the day before.

He kept looking at the trees.

Sophia, who almost always hums when she's happy, was quiet.

I had to go back to the rock where we'd lined up Sophia's little collection because she wanted to take two of them home.

I wasn't thrilled about extending our time by even 30 seconds, but I walked over.

Standing there, I realized why.

The hair on my arms lifted again.

There were two sets of footprints in the powdery dirt at the edge of Camp Mine from the night, and another set that matched Miguel's shoe tread closely but not perfectly.

The spacing was off, the toe off marks were too shallow for the length of stride.

It looked like someone had measured a teenage boy and built a map of his steps, but didn't account for weight.

I looked at the trees and saw nothing.

We had everything in the car in less than 10 minutes.

The kids were buckled.

I just turned the key.

When Miguel said dad, his voice had a flatness I don't hear often.

He was looking toward the same trees.

Past the trunks.

Standing half in shadow, was the face.

Again.

It was closer this time.

The jaw hung open wider, the angle wrong, not hinged.

At the point a human jaw stops, the eyes didn't water, didn't react to light or the cooler air.

It didn't move.

It didn't breathe visibly.

That might sound like a small detail, but when you're close to someone, you expect to see the chest rise, the throat shift.

It was like a photograph that slightly changed between glances.

Miguel's hand closed on the handle of the door, like he couldn't decide whether to step out or slam it shut.

I said his name and told him to look at me.

He did.

When we looked back, it was gone.

No branches moved, no sound carried.

We pulled onto the Loop Rd.

and then out to NM 612.

I watched the mirror for a mile.

There was nothing behind us but a strip of Gray asphalt and sunlight.

My wife's hands were braced on her knees.

She didn't say a word until we hit the junction for I-40.

Then she said we're not going back there.

I said no.

We passed the exit for the El Morro area and the signs for Gallup and Grants.

The kids were both looking out opposite windows like they were expecting to see something keep pace with us over the scrub.

We stopped for gas in Grants at a combination gas station and small store.

I went inside for coffee and to breathe in conditioned air for a minute.

The clerk was an older guy with a Gray mustache.

He glanced out at my SUV, at the cooler tied down and the rolled tent visible through the glass.

Camping, he asked.

Yeah, I said.

Blue water, He nodded once and said, Good fishing sometimes.

Not when you leave at dawn, I said, trying to make light of it.

My voice sounded thin.

I added, because I needed to say it.

We were in the northern loop.

Quiet spot.

He looked at me for a second, like he recognized something he'd seen before.

That side gets weird, he said finally.

You all right?

We're fine, I said.

We just.

I stopped because I didn't want to say it out loud yet.

I didn't want my mouth to form the details.

He reached under the counter and pulled out a pack of coffee stirrers and set them down.

Maybe just for something to do with his hands.

He said lower.

Couple years back a fisherman packed up in the middle of the night, left his gear, came in here swearing he saw himself standing by the trees.

Kept saying the eyes were wrong, blinked wrong.

Folks around here talk about things they don't want to give power to by naming.

You might hear them say Skinwalker, I can't tell you what you saw, but you did the right thing leaving.

I didn't correct him or ask for his version.

I paid and walked back to the car.

My wife met my eyes in that brief moment parents have when they speak without saying words.

I told the kids we'd get breakfast in an hour and that we could pick any place they wanted.

Sophia asked if we were going to camp somewhere else.

I said not today.

We got home early in the afternoon and unloaded fast.

The tent stayed in the garage for a week because I couldn't bring myself to set it up in the yard and wash it down.

Little things set me off those first few days.

A jacket hanging on a door.

My son taking a few seconds too long to answer when I called his name from another room.

My brain kept replaying the eyelids moving the wrong direction.

I tried to find an explanation.

I could live with a person messing with us.

Drugs.

A mask, but the speed from motionless to gone and the absence of normal reflexes wreck those theories.

I've worked through the list.

I'm not satisfied with any of it, but I don't need you to be convinced.

I only need to tell it straight.

I don't want to make this into a campfire story where I add adjectives and sell you a haunting.

What I saw looked like my son, down to the haircut, the way his shoulders slope, the scar on his eyebrow, but duplicated and misapplied.

It moved like somebody wearing a body they didn't understand.

It ran like nothing I've seen a human do across uneven ground at night.

And when it looked at me, I did not feel watched.

I felt measured.

We haven't been back to Blue Water Lake.

My wife and I agreed on that in the car without saying it.

We still camp, but not there and not near that kind of tree line.

I don't keep this to myself in some mystical way.

I tell friends to pick other sites and other parks, and if they go there anyway, to choose a spot closer to other families.

I tell them to leave if anything feels off, even if it's just one

wrong step in the dirt at 2:00 in the morning.

Every August, when the nights hold heat later than they should and the air sits heavy after midnight, I remember the quiet of that campsite, the beam of the light, the face at the tree line that blinked from the bottom up.

I don't know what to call it beyond what locals call it.

I'm not interested in chasing it or proving anything.

I wanted a simple weekend away with my family and I got a clear line I won't cross again.

If you camp at Blue Water Lake on the northern loop and you wake to heavy steps and a shape at the edge of your site, don't talk to it for long and don't try to take a second look.

Wake your family, be calm and leave in the morning.

That's not fear talking, that's respect for something that was there before we were and doesn't care if we believe in it.

I work for US Border Patrol.

If you've spent time around Monument Valley, you're already side eyeing that because my agency usually works the southern line.

Last July I was in Cayenta, Arizona on a short break that turned into a training attachment with Navajo Nation Police traffic interdiction and coordination drills.

It's normal interagency stuff.

I'd driven United States Route 163 so many times between Kayenta and El Jado Monument Valley that I could list every pull out and cattle guard.

I prefer daytime runs in summer because the tourist traffic thins in the hot hours and you can move fast.

What follows is exactly how it happened, without embellishment.

If you know that highway, the open straightaways with the mittens pinned to the horizon, you know there isn't much room for confusion when something steps into your lane.

I topped off at the giant station on the north edge of Kayenta a little after noon, AC blasting, windows cracked just enough to bleed off heat.

I called the NNP Sergeant I'd worked with that morning.

He told me they'd have a small sobriety checkpoint near Old Giotto later for a community event.

If you come back through, swing wide toward the cones and we'll wave you by, he said.

I tossed a nod he couldn't see and rolled out the highway North leaves town with a flat ease that always made me relax.

A few miles up the forest Gump Point pull out was busy.

Rental convertibles, people kneeling in the center line to frame the postcard shot.

I went past it and into one of those empty summer stretches where heat shimmers hover over the asphalt like low steam.

No radio chatter, no traffic in front or behind, nothing but a long ribbon of Rd.

That's where I saw the coyote.

It stood in the middle of my lane, sun high, no shade, no cover for half a mile in either direction.

It didn't flinch at the horn.

I dropped from 60 to 15 with two quick brake taps, unlatched my holster and rolled forward.

If you do this job long enough, animals in the road stop being interesting.

You give them a path and they move.

This one didn't.

30 yards out, I saw the details that put a hard edge on the moment.

The rib cage was too long.

The hips were rotated off true.

The fore legs hung a little forward, like the joints weren't lined up the way they should be.

It rose, not the way a bear does when it wants to scent wind.

It straightened like a person, knees tracking inward, arms hanging with elbows flared wider than any human shoulder can manage.

The muzzle stayed long, but the eyes did something I've never seen in an animal.

They matched my movement side to side with small corrections, not head bobs.

I stopped the truck dead 5 yards short.

The AC fan clicked, the engine idled.

The interior felt tight.

All at once.

It said my first name.

I don't mean a sound that reminded me of it.

I mean the exact name my mother uses when she wants my attention and isn't mad yet.

Same spacing between syllables, Same drop on the last vowel.

Hearing that out of anything in the middle of United States Route 163 in full daylight put a cold line up my spine.

I don't care how many explanations you can conjure, the real time decision looks simple.

Fight or go.

I went.

I threw the transmission forward, floored it steered to split the lane.

At the last instant, it moved like it couldn't decide which foot to put first.

The bumper hit it with a rubbery thud without the crack of bone.

The grill caught a smear of pale hair like undercoat.

I didn't look at the hood.

I looked at the line ahead and kept the speed building through 3040 sixty in the rear view.

It was upright again in two heartbeats.

Running the stride was wrong at first, too many limbs trying to find a pattern.

Then it started to smooth out, as if repetition was solving the angles.

I let the mirror go and drove.

The Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park entrance rolled up on the right.

The attendant in the booth lifted a hand when the truck passed with a scuffed bumper and hazard lights flicking twice.

I didn't stop.

I didn't announce anything on the radio.

I kept the wheel steady and watched the horizon.

Hot air punched through the window crack.

Wind noise filled the cab under it.

I picked up a new sound in short bursts when the road dipped, a hard slap of footfall that lined up with my speed too often to be a trick of sound.

When I backed off for a mild curve, the sound drew nearer.

When I accelerated, it fell back.

No phantom anything, just timing I couldn't explain.

I kept it simple.

Doors locked, windows up, eyes forward.

Unless the highway straightened out enough to risk a glance.

The shoulder was a soft apron of sand and scrub.

I stayed centered on one of the small dog legs.

Before the state line, I feathered the brakes in the rear glass.

I caught a glimpse.

Too tall for a coyote, too narrow for a man.

Elbows out too far, hands, not quite hands.

It moved with the power of a runner who hasn't warmed up yet and is dialing it in with each step.

Then the curve cut the angle and I lost sight of it.

The San Juan River Valley takes the grade down like an elevator if you're carrying speed.

As I slid toward Mexican Hat, traffic built just enough to matter.

2 RV's and a pickup in a slow parade, a small bus heading toward the tribal park.

Whatever had kept pace with me didn't like the stack of vehicles or it dropped back where cover made more sense.

The roadside widened, signs started breaking the monotony, and the Mexican Hat Rock turn off flashed by on my right.

Tourists were out at the overlook.

I didn't pull in.

I rode the small wave of traffic to the bend in the river where the few buildings sit, then took a deep breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

I pulled past town and found a wide shoulder with a clean line of sight.

I called the NNP Sergeant.

My voice came out level, because training helps.

I told him exactly what had happened.

Coyote in the lane.

Stood up wrong.

Spoke my name in my mother's cadence.

Pursued on foot, keeping pace.

Bumper strike with a hair smear.

There was a second of the quiet you get when a cop files what you say against a bin of other things he's heard.

Then he told me the checkpoint was active near Old Jado, southbound side cones visible from 1/2 mile.

Come back, he said.

We'll keep it orderly.

Turning around felt like saying come and get it, but I trusted the plan more than the alternative of sitting alone by the river.

I swung N, took the next safe place to reverse, then drove back S toward Old Jado at a steady clip.

Two marked units and a tribal cruiser were already staged with cones cutting the traffic to 1 lane.

ADPS Trooper stood under the shade of a makeshift canopy with two elders and lawn chairs nearby.

The scene looked like any summer DUI emphasis routine, organized, boring on purpose.

I pulled nose in behind a cruiser and set the brake.

The scuff on my bumper had a pale, wiry residue that wasn't like fur I'd pulled out of a grill after hitting a deer.

The DPS trooper saw me looking and said, we'll photograph it.

He had that face you get when you've decided not to be surprised.

The NNP Sergeant stepped over and asked.

Open road or cover?

I said open Rd.

unless it was forced to veer.

He nodded like I'd answered a question on a test.

Summer gives us calls out here, he said.

Worse, when the heat's heavy.

We don't let people stop.

We didn't go chase it, we set the place up to deny it what it seemed to prefer.

Lone vehicles at partial stop in the wide cones drew the lane into a tight chicane that forced slow, steady motion without pauses.

2 units idled facing north with their spots aimed low, not to beam the valley but to make sure we'd see anything on the long straight.

A third car slid to a scenic turn out S to watch the approach.

The elders were asked to move behind the line of vehicles.

For a while, nobody called any name.

We kept our mouths shut and our eyes open if it came.

The rule was simple.

No pursuit, no heroics, hard barriers between it and people, and a clean exit path back to Kyenta.

For 10 minutes, there was nothing.

The heat shredded the distance into ripples.

Tourists slowed and rolled through the cones, glancing at us like we were the attraction.

Then the shimmer on the north straightaway deepened around a shape that wasn't a car.

It held still first, longer than made sense, and then stepped forward 2 paces and rotated its torso in a motion that read like a demonstration.

It didn't break the cone line.

It didn't come in close enough for faces.

From where we stood, height landed in the wrong range, shoulders too narrow, head shape that didn't match any person under the sun.

I tightened my jaw until my molars hurt and kept my hands visible.

A bus came through the driver following hand signals perfectly, and when the bus tail cleared the far cones, the shape moved left, tracked parallel to the fence toward brush, dropped to all fours and was gone into the low rise without a sound.

We held the formation for half an hour.

Nothing else showed.

The traffic pattern stayed clean and steady.

When you're trained to weigh risk, you don't break a system that's working just to prove a point.

We kept it boring.

Back in Kayenta that evening, the NNP substation hummed with AC and fluorescent buzz.

Shift change float around me.

I wrote the report the way you have to write reports if you want to keep your integrity.

Later date time route, approximate mile marker.

Contact with unknown bipedal creature standing in lane.

Impact with vehicle bumper.

Pursuit on foot at sustained speed.

Arrival at checkpoint.

No injuries.

No property damage beyond scuffing.

No weapons discharged.

No pursuit initiated.

I attached the bumper photos.

The Sergeant filed it next to a thin stack of summer entries from the same corridor.

He added a line to the roll call notes.

United States Route 163 between Kayenta and Al Giotto.

Avoid stopping alone in the open straightaways during peak heat.

Route traffic through cones when possible.

DPS logged the photographs and coded the incident to our training event so it wouldn't disappear into rumor mill.

A guy from the tow shop a block over buffed the bumper while I drank water out of a paper cup and avoided looking at the rag he used.

The pale hairs came off with effort, like they wanted to stay, but when he was finished, it looked like any other desert scratch.

I paid him cash, thanked him, and walked back inside.

The next morning, I drove a different way, AZ 98 toward Page for a handoff, then back via United States Route 160.

No announcement, no paranoia.

I changed a route because procedures exist for reasons that don't always fit on a slide.

A week later, the Sergeant texted.

No incidents since Cone started earlier in the day.

They kept the checkpoint through August weekends and then rotated S when the event schedule shifted.

People went to their cookouts and back home without hearing anything except tire noise and conversation.

Whenever someone asks what I think it was, I answer with what I know.

In full daylight on United States Route 163, I saw an animal stand in the lane and adjust itself into a human posture with movements that didn't match human structure.

It said my name in a voice built from something it shouldn't have had access to.

It ran after me faster than any person could run at highway speed, long enough to track my braking and acceleration.

We treated the stretch like a pattern instead of a story.

We tightened traffic.

We didn't stop alone out there, and we went home.

Call it what you want.

On that part of the rez border, they call it a skin Walker.

And the rule we use now is straightforward.

Don't stop.

The last time I drove that straight in September, the sky was cleaner and the heat had backed off.

The pull outs were busy again, but the cones near Old Giotto were already staged in stacks, ready to set quickly.

A family crossed the road at a slow jog between cars.

A Navajo officer waved them through, and the line kept moving without anyone vehicle stuck.

Alone in the open, the highway looked like a highway.

That's the ending that matters.

We adjusted, nobody got hurt, and the road stayed the road.

I grew up in Durango, Co, where most nights end with someone suggesting a drive to nowhere.

Mason and I have been those guys since high school.

Two friends in an old Tacoma, a cooler in the back, and some plan to shave 15 minutes off a trip by cutting through a section of map that looks empty.

We weren't reckless, just casual about risk in the way you get when nothing bad has happened yet.

By last July, we'd logged a lot of miles through the Four Corners.

We knew where the paved roads ended, which convenience stores stayed open late and which county lines went quiet after sundown.

We also knew the desert near Shiprock can turn from scenic to hostile the minute the sun drops.

Knowing a thing and respecting it are not the same.

That afternoon we were returning from Gallup.

We'd stop to see a buddy in town and stayed longer than planned.

The route was galloped to Shiprock, to Farmington, to Durango.

But the highways were clogged with summer traffic, campers, rentals and a wreck somewhere that had eastbound lanes crawling.

Mason pulled up a mental map and said we could cut northwest on back roads near Shiprock, then reconnect with 160 closer to the state line.

He said it like we'd done it 100 times.

In reality, we never had.

He swore it would save half an hour.

I checked the time.

It was already past 7:00.

We'd be chasing the last of the light.

We topped off at a gas station just South of Shiprock.

The wind had died.

Heat still rolled off.

The concrete inside, the cooler section hummed.

We grabbed waters and jerky.

The clerk, an older woman with her hair pulled back tight, wasn't chatty.

When Mason asked if the dirt roads were decent north of town, she didn't answer right away.

She looked at our keys, then at us, like she was weighing whether it was worth saying anything.

Finally, don't go out there after dark.

Not a lecture, just a fact laid on the counter, Mason smiled like he'd heard Watch for deer and said we'll be quick.

Be faster, she said.

We told ourselves she meant livestock on the road, flash flooding or drunk drivers.

We told ourselves a lot of things.

We paid, walked outside, and the sun had slid lower.

A thin line of orange sat above Shiprock's jagged silhouette.

We got in the Tacoma.

Mason drove.

I set my phone on the dash as a clock.

That was all the planning we did.

The first miles out of Shiprock were paved, then patched, then fractured, then dirt.

A few houses sat far apart, each with a couple of vehicles and a dog that barely glanced our way.

10 minutes in, the homes thinned.

The road stretched long and flat with shallow washboards rattling the cup holders.

The desert up there is an empty, but it can feel like it when you don't see lights for minutes at a time.

Low sage, a few junipers and long views toward mesa's going dark.

We kept the windows cracked to bleed heat.

The air smelled like dust and creosote.

I told Mason we should turn back if we didn't hit pavement.

By full dark, he said we had at least 30 minutes of usable light.

Dusk was already proving him wrong.

The road split at a cattle guard with no sign.

Mason chose left, keeping us generally N.

The speedometer hovered around 40.

We hadn't seen another vehicle since leaving the last paved spur somewhere out there.

No landmarks, just a stretch of dirt.

The sun dropped behind Shiprock and we lost all color.

Headlights cut a cone ahead of us.

The dirt glowed pale.

The cab cooled by degrees.

At 8:19, I started counting minutes.

We rounded a bend and she was there, a person in our lane, 50 yards ahead.

Mason braked the Tacoma, dipped gravel, skidding under the tires.

We rolled to a crawl.

She looked young, maybe 20, dark hair to her shoulders, pale shirt streaked with dust.

Bare legs from the knees down, bare feet.

One arm hung, the other raised in a slow, unsteady wave, palm out, then in, then out again.

No car, no driveway, no fence.

Just her, Mason said.

You seeing this?

Yeah.

We closed the distance to 20 feet, close enough for details, not close enough to read a license plate, if she'd had one.

Her chin was low, shoulders rounded, stance uneven, like her left foot didn't fully plant.

I reached for the window switch and stopped.

Something was wrong, and my body decided before my brain could name it.

We'd spent years stopping for people.

Flats, dead batteries, hauling gas to ranchers.

This was different.

My instincts wanted no part of it.

We should pull past and call it in, I said.

Sheriff or tribal police?

Yeah.

Mason said.

He inched forward.

She didn't move aside, didn't flag harder.

Just kept that slow wave at 10 feet.

I expected her face to change.

Surprise, relief, anything.

It didn't.

Her lips look split.

Her eyes stayed fixed past the bumper, not catching the light.

I told myself there were reasons, Angle dust, but the thought didn't help.

Mason eased left to go around.

I watched her as we passed.

She rotated at the waist like a hinge, not a step, tracking us without moving her feet.

We rolled on.

Mason checked the rear view.

I watched the side mirror.

She turned farther than her neck should allow.

The brake lights lit her face red, then dark again.

The expression wasn't vacant or angry, just wrong.

No shoulder, no lights, I said.

Next intersection, we call.

He nodded.

We brought the speed back up.

No service on my phone, no house within miles.

Turning back meant walking up to her in the dark.

Going forward meant hoping for a good decision point.

I wanted pavement signs, something fixed.

We drove in silence.

My hands were damp.

Then motion in the beams again.

Same shirt, same shape.

This time she was only 30 feet ahead when we saw her.

No paths, no turn offs behind us.

She shouldn't be there, Mason swore, slowing just enough to steer wide.

As we drew level, she turned her head toward me in one sharp snap.

Up close, I saw dark marks on her forearm, like bruises or finger impressions.

Before we were passed, Mason accelerated hard.

She stayed in the mirror longer than she should have, her arm finally dropping as she bent forward at the waist, stiff and unnatural.

The dash clock read 827.

None of the possible explanations fit.

We kept going.

The road narrowed and widened again.

Brush crowded in, then fell back.

The sky ahead lightened slightly, like a promise of the highway.

I told Mason we'd stop at the first name track.

He nodded, eyes locked on the road.

We hadn't seen her for minutes when we crested arise, and there she was, closer now, offset toward our right, headlight arm still raised, head tilted so far forward her chin nearly touched her chest.

I felt my mouth go dry.

Mason, I see her.

Mason didn't slow much this time.

The raised hand wasn't waving.

It twitched at the wrist when we lined up.

Her head snapped toward us again, eyes fixed on mine through the glass in the mirror.

She pivoted faster than before, her stance wide now.

She stepped toward us, then again, closing faster than made sense, her right foot dragging and snapping forward.

She's moving, I said.

I'm not looking, Mason replied.

He pressed the accelerator.

The Tacoma fishtailed briefly before straightening.

She was still visible in the tail lights now, running full out, arms swinging loose, head angled enough to keep us insight.

The brush closed in on both sides.

Mason took a bend tight back, tires kicking dust before he corrected.

Where's the highway?

He muttered up ahead, movement again, coming toward us this time, limp, becoming a hop, then a faster run.

No vehicle, no cover, no way.

She should be here first.

Mason swerved left, flooring it.

Her mouth was open wider now, teeth visible but not in a smile.

We hit 60, the wheel trembling.

She didn't reappear for a stretch, but the sense of her stayed.

Then a flash along the right side, lower now, moving on all fours, matching our speed for seconds before vanishing into the dark brush and exhale.

Hit the passenger door, close with weight to it.

I turned.

She was there, level with my window arm, reaching before dropping back to the ground.

Nails, or something like them, too long, too dark.

She surged within a foot of the door before falling back.

The next Crest put her dead center in the lane on all fours, face tilted at us while her body stayed square to the road.

Mason took the right edge, hard brush hammering the truck as we paralleled her.

Her head snapped toward me, eyes black, mouth wide, teeth too, even for the way she moved.

We pulled ahead.

Another exhale slammed the door, vibrating the glass.

Then light ahead, a glow off to the left.

Highway, maybe.

Mason stayed on it.

AT intersection appeared.

He turned left toward the glow in the mirror.

She cut across behind us, fast, a blur, and was gone.

The new road was smoother.

We hit 65.

The glow resolved into headlights and tail lights.

Then one more time she was in the lane ahead.

Mason didn't break, just took the far right edge in the high beams.

She lunged, covering ground in three bounds.

Angling for my door, I flinched as a hard, quick rake of sound ran along the panel.

Not brush, not rock contact.

Then the dirt ended pavement.

The change in sound was immediate.

Mason merged onto the highway.

A green sign flashed past.

Another promised a service area in 2 miles.

We pulled in under fluorescence.

The marks on the passenger door, 3 parallel gouges to primer, each with evenly spaced interruptions, looked worse under the light.

Dust flaked at my touch.

My hand shook.

Inside the cashier, Henry asked if we'd been on the dirt.

When I told him roughly where, he said don't stop on those roads after dark.

If someone needs help, you call from town.

Another man overheard and told us to look at the passenger side we already had.

Henry followed us to the door, arms crossed.

If you feel like you need to talk to somebody, tell the Navajo Nation police exactly where you were.

But don't go back.

Not to show anyone, not at all.

We didn't argue.

We got back in the truck and left.

The drive to Durango was uneventful.

The farther we got, the more my mind tried to turn it into something ordinary.

The scratches wouldn't let me.

In daylight, the marks were sharper.

A faint bloom of rust had risen overnight, too fast for dry weather and intact paint.

I rubbed it with my thumb.

The color came away faintly, like a coin.

Later, I told Gabe, a Navajo Co worker from Farmington.

He listened, then said, You don't stop on those roads at night.

Sometimes it isn't a person, or it isn't only a person.

He told me to wash the truck, not show the marks off, and if I wanted to sleep, better to buy something small from a local vendor near where we came out as a sign of respect.

We did exactly that.

Daylight, highway, plenty of traffic.

I bought a beaded key chain.

Mason bought a carved wooden fox.

We didn't explain.

We said thank you.

Left cash, didn't haggle.

I felt something in my shoulders let go.

The scratches never washed out, but the rust stayed thin.

Mason and I still take drives, but never through that stretch.

If traffic is bad, it's bad.

You sit in it.

You let the sun go down in company.

The ending is simple.

We made it home.

The marks cost 600 to repaint the key chains on my keys.

The fox is on Mason's shelf.

We tell the short version to most people, the long version.

This version I tell plain like Henry did.

Don't stop out there after dark.

Call it in.

Keep moving.

The last time we drove through the four corners late, we passed that country in daylight.

Mason turned down the radio and said no shortcuts.

Yeah, I said no shortcuts.

It's a simple rule.

It gets you home.