Bad Moon Rising - Paranormal Romance (5 page)

“There was a family that lived out near Red Canyon,” Donny said, but then paused to pour himself another cup of coffee before continuing. “A couple of months ago they were found dead … two adults and three small children. The coroner couldn’t find a cause of death, but the official explanation was that they died of some kind of toxin.”

“What about the victim from
Chinle
? Was he part of this dispute too?” Mya wanted to know.

“No … but there is reason to believe that he was a skinwalker. When his body was discovered, he was naked … and there was an animal skin nearby.”

Mya already knew this much. “I kind of thought it was more of a ritualistic killing. That’s why I’ve been saying the same person is behind both murders.”

Donny stared at her with mild interest, but suddenly his gaze went to the window. At first Mya wasn’t sure what had gotten his attention; then she heard it too. It was a sharp - piercing sound, like a cat’s claws scraping against metal.

“If it’s a skinwalker, a gun won’t do you any good. And by the way … if you want to stay alive … don’t you be going outside at night to check on noises,” he warned before opening the door.

Mya left her seat and followed him to the door, watching as he inspected the exterior of his mobile home. A moment later he was back. “I can’t find anything.”

“So you think it was a skinwalker?” she asked, though she didn’t believe for a minute that a skinwalker had made the noise they heard outside.

“If it was … it will tire and go away after awhile.”

Mya sat back down before asking, “How would a skinwalker even know if you were talking about them?”

Donny heaved his frame back into the seat across from her. “They can read minds and know when people are talking about them. I told you … they are evil spirits.”

Mya shook her head, trying hard not to smile. “Okay, but if the Metzgers are skinwalkers, the guys on the motorcycles must not be.”

Again that featureless mask slid over his face. She found it odd that he would be willing to talk about the skinwalkers, but not the bikers. Sensing that he was trying to find a way to get out of answering her, she decided to come right to the point.

“I know it was one of those guys that helped me after the accident. He has silver - gray eyes.”

Donny started drumming his fingers across the table. Mya noticed that every time the subject came up, he seemed to get very agitated. Finally he let out a deep breath and told her what she wanted to know.

“His name is David Bray. He’s not
Dineh
. The guys you saw are
Sinapu
. They are a small group of Indians that live in a village near the Mesa Verde ruins.”

“Why are they on the Navajo reservation if they are not Navajo?
Sinapu
doesn’t sound anything like Navajo.” she added.

“Their name comes from a Ute word, but they are not Ute either,” he told her before taking another drink of his now cold coffee.

She noticed that he was no longer tense, and this made her nervous. Mya was sure that if she were asking the right questions, he would show a lot more unease than he was.

“If they are not Navajo and they are not Ute … what are they?”

Donny shrugged. “It could be they are what is left of the Anasazi, but no one knows for sure where they came from. The
Sinapu
keep to themselves, and they don’t like strangers. All I know is that they’ve always been here.”

“Have you questioned them about Ben Metzger?” she asked.

Donny shook his head, but offered no explanation as to why they hadn’t been questioned.

“I’ll do it,” she offered. Not only was Mya convinced that they should be questioned about Ben, but she also had some personal reasons for wanting to talk to them. She had an almost uncontrollable urge to see the guy with the silver eyes again.

Donny laughed out loud. “You can’t be for real!”

“Why not?” Mya didn’t see anything funny about it. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t ask questions, the same as he could.

He grew serious, and by the look on his face, Mya was sure he was about to tell her something of some significant, but he just said, “Because it’s dangerous. I told you … they don’t like outsiders.”

“Is that why they haven’t been questioned?” Mya was glaring at him. “To tell you the truth, that sounds like a pretty flimsy excuse to me.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Mya smiled, but made no such promise. She was going to talk to David Bray, with or without his permission.

Some people believe that dreams are a doorway into the subconscious, or that they are windows to another place and another time, even another reality. If not for her dream that night, Mya may have gone through the summer in blissful ignorance of the truth. She may never have made the discovery that would change her life forever.

It was nighttime, but it wasn’t really dark. The light of the full moon painted the landscape silver, making it appear almost magical. In her dream she was young - maybe seven or eight. She knew this because when she looked down at her feet, she was wearing her princess slippers. They had been a gift for her seventh birthday.

Her pastel pink slippers were now covered with the red-brown dust of the desert. As she moved through the tall brush, her long hair kept catching on wiry branches and she would have to stop to work it free. Mya wasn’t making a lot of progress, but that’s how it is in dreams. You can walk and walk, but never reach your destination, or even know what that destination is.

Unlike most dreams that are little more that a tangled mass of pictures passing through the mind, this dream was different. This dream seemed so real. Mya was aware that she was dreaming, but she had no control over the dream.

With her slippers and nightgown full of dirt and weeds, she kept walking. In the distance she heard a chorus of wolves howling at the moon. This didn’t bother her too much; the animals were far away.

Not that it mattered. Her legs would have continued to carry her to some unknown destination. Regardless of the terror that had begun to wrap its fingers around her heart, Mya was compelled to keep moving.

The dream faded into another. Now she was lying on an earthen floor. She knew this because of the sharp rocks that were jabbing through her nightgown to cut into her back and legs. The flames of a nearby fire eerily illuminated the faces that hovered above her.

It was those faces that terrified her. They were painted a ghostly white with black around their eyes and mouths.

To Mya they looked like grinning skulls. They were singing in a language that she didn’t understand, and this made her feel even more afraid.

The skull men began dancing around her, and as they danced there was someone sprinkling a white powder on her. The powder burned her skin and she felt as if she were on fire.

The fear she had been feeling now turned to mind numbing terror. Mya was certain that the grinning skulls were going to kill her. She was kicking and thrashing at them - trying to get away, but it was futile. Whenever she would try to get to her feet, one of them would push her back to the ground.

She could barely hear her own screams over the beat of the drum and the bizarre words of the singers. There were flashes of colorful feathers and strange costumes, but she was too frightened to focus on anything that she was seeing. In her young mind, the dancing skull men were death in the flesh, and their bony fingers were reaching out to drag her into oblivion.

Then it all changed. Now she was in a truck. She was trembling, but was trying to fight off the residue of fear that clung to her. The man driving the truck was trying to comfort her with soothing words. He was very old - older than anyone she’d ever seen. His long - gray hair was so thin that she could see the skin of his scalp beneath it.

* * *

In the light of day, her dream seemed less terrifying, but no less profound. All morning she’d been going over the dream - trying to make sense out of it. It had been too vivid to be the simple rumblings of her subconscious.

Mya stared down at the dry toast and boiled eggs on her plate. In an attempt to lose a couple of inches from her waist, she had made this her usual weekend breakfast for the past month. She was typically starving in the morning, but today she wasn’t hungry at all.

Her lack of appetite was partly due to the unappealing meal, but it was more than that. It was her life in general. Everything about her life was too predictable, from her weekend breakfast to the clothes she wore. She was in a rut, but then her life had always been like that. Mya was beginning to realize that she was a slave to routine and a dull routine at that.

But that wasn’t completely true, at least not lately. Her routine had changed a lot since coming to Arizona, but that might be exactly why she was beginning to realize that her life - up to that point - had been dull and uneventful.

The dream was one indication that her life was starting to change, but maybe not for the better. Again she wondered if the dream had been some quirk of her self conscious, or if it was something else.

Glancing at the little clock that hung over her stove, she noticed that it was already 9:00 AM.

Mya picked up the little black mobile phone that sat next to her plate and dialed her mother’s number. It rang only a couple of times before Joan Begay picked up.

“I’m okay. I just wanted to thank you for the flowers and find out how everything is going there. The roses and daisies were great.” Mya hoped that talking about the flowers would be enough to change the subject. If they stayed on topic, her mother would spend the next half hour asking her if she’d been running a fever, if she’d been eating right and just about anything she could think to ask. Her mother was still fishing for a reason that would justify Mya cutting her trip short.

From day one, Joan Begay had been dead set against her daughter working in Window Rock. At the time Mya had believed it was because her mom was being over protective, but now she wasn’t so sure.

She wasn’t prepared to get into a big discussion with her mom about it so she just said, “Oh yeah, the Daisies were great. So how’s everything back home?”

“Things are the same as always here; Steve’s out back … beating the car with his wrench. I just can’t understand why he don’t give it up and take the piece of junk to a mechanic.”