The UFO at Horseshoe Ledge
Short Story
“I’m Branson…”
“…and I’m Dave. Welcome back to the B&D UFO Podcast where we track aerial phenomena and extraterrestrial sightings across the gorgeous state of Utah.”
“We have a guest joining us remotely tonight,” Branson said. “Luke from Provo.”
“Go Cougars!” Dave added, and took a swig from his tumbler of bourbon.
“Thanks for inviting me on your show,” Luke said in a soft voice.
“So, Luke, your sighting’s from this past weekend…Is that right?” Dave asked.
“Yeah, three days ago…I don’t know if they were, like, extra-dimensional beings or what…”
“Woah,” Branson said. “Give us some context, Luke.”
Instead of responding, the man started to weep.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Dave added.
Branson hoped the caller wasn’t an addict or schizo. He typed an ungrammatical message to Dave in their private chat: if hes a whack job, we’ll have to use a prerecorded epoisode tomorrow night, because their putting in my fence and I wont have time to edit out his crazy shit or put in the plugs 4 the sponsors.
Dave read the chat, looked up at Branson and shrugged. The studio was eerily quiet except for the caller’s whimpering. Dave typed back: ur the one that invited him.
They waited for over a minute until the overwrought man regained his composure. He sniffed. “I have a recording on my phone,” he said. “You can hear the sounds, but you can’t see anything.”
“We’ll get to that, Luke,” Dave remarked. “Tell us your story.”
“Nightscape photography’s my hobby. I routinely camp out in the national parks, BLM land.—San Rafael Swell, Arches, places like that..”
Branson interjected: “For our listeners who don’t know; BLM stands for the Bureau of Land Management.”
Dave piped in, “Lots of UFO sightings in the southern part of the state.”
“Yeah,” Luke said. Then he went quiet again for an uncomfortable 10 seconds. “I drove down to Moab last Friday and took one of the ATV routes that leads back into the boondocks. I have a jeep…The route I took isn’t well known. It’s about 100 miles on a rutted and bumpy road. Not much gravel—some stretches of the road are so jacked up and hard to see that you really need to be driving during the daylight hours, and bring a GPS, or else you’ll miss the turns. You also need to stock up on gas and water. The road goes to the south side of one of the popular overlooks in Canyonlands National Park—but you’re about 30 miles southwest of the Canyonlands overlook itself.”
“So was your sighting on that road?” Branson asked. Branson was feeling a little better now that the guy was talking. I still probably should’ve vetted him before patching him through, he thought. The caller ID hadn’t picked up the guy’s number. But Luke had sounded educated, like he was a student or professor—although being a student or professor was no guarantee of sanity.
“The sighting wasn’t on the road. No, I saw it—them on the trail. You can’t find the trail on any of the standard maps. It’s also not on any of the online hiking apps that I know of. It’s called Horseshoe Ledge.—It’s a 4.5 mile trail that dead-ends at an overlook. You have to go back the way you came, so it’s a 9 mile loop if you do the whole thing. There’s an old marker for it at the trailhead, but it’s not well maintained and I think it’s technically under BLM jurisdiction instead of NPS.”
Branson interjected: “For our listeners who don’t know, NPS stands for the National Park Service.”
Luke continued: “The rangers head out there once every month or so—maybe less…I dunno.”
Dave grinned at Branson from behind the mic. The caller was starting to sound more interesting and less batshit.
“I parked my jeep at the trailhead. It was late afternoon. It’s cooler this time of the year in mid-November. I ate a sandwich that I bought at the last gas station I stopped at just outside of Moab. It wasn’t dark yet, but it was getting dark. The shadows were lengthening. I put my headlamp on and made sure I had a flashlight with me too, just in case. I also checked that my cellphone was charged, even though I had no service. I left my DSLR and other camera equipment, along with my star tracker, in the jeep. I planned to come back and fetch them after I’d done a once-thru on the trail; because by the time I got back, the stars would be out.”
Dave pushed his bourbon away and leaned back in his chair. This was going to be fun.
“I walked down the slope from the trailhead. The first half mile winds its way between some narrow rock walls. It’s basically a slot canyon. There’s a Native American petroglyph—I think it’s Paiute—inside the slot canyon. It depicts what look like six stick figures. They’re standing side by side. And hovering over the stick figures is a diamond in a circle. The petroglyph was mentioned in a book I found at the BYU library. That’s how I learned about the trail. The book was written in 1922 and there was a black-and-white photo of the same petroglyph.”
Dave gave Branson a thumbs up and winked.
Luke evidently had taken a drink of water. He sighed and continued. “The slot canyon opens up on the right-hand side two miles in. Then you’re just standing on the trail looking out over the canyon. It’s about a 2,000 foot drop.
“It was beautiful in the dusk; the rocks were violet and maroon. I think it’s about six or seven miles across to the other side. There was a mesa, three or four buttes, and a few chimney rocks rising from the cracked floor of the canyon. Some of the fissures in the canyon floor were about 10 or 20 feet wide.
“I switched on my headlamp and hiked down the trail until I came to the bend in the rock that gives the trail its name: Horseshoe Ledge. The trail runs along an overhang that forms a letter U—like a horseshoe, I suppose. To me it looked like a U. The curve, which is to say the trough or bottom of the U, was on the south side. I walked against the eastern wall, watching where I stepped because the path was only 3 to 4 feet wide—”
“Was it a sheer drop to the canyon below?” Branson asked.
“No, not a sheer drop. It’s about a 30-foot drop, and then it runs out another 20 feet or so before plunging into the canyon. I mean, if you had climbing equipment, you could probably make it down the 30-foot descent without too much effort, but you’d be climbing over loose boulders and rocks and it might trigger a rockslide, and then you’d be screwed. I mean, if someone wanted to jump into the canyon and kill themselves, there’s plenty of places to do that along the trail…”
Dave sat up and leaned into the mic. “So it’s on Horseshoe Ledge that you saw the UFO?” Dave asked. The caller was rambling. Dave needed to get Luke back on track. Branson would have to edit out that comment about committing suicide. Otherwise, they could lose sponsors.
“Yeah. I was walking along the trail, and I got to the bend of the horseshoe. My eyes were getting used to the dark—but I kept looking down to make sure I didn’t trip or lose my footing…I…”
Here his voice broke.
“I didn’t notice the light at first because it was so faint. But then, I dunno, it’s like I sensed something was there…I looked over my right shoulder, and there it was. It was cube shaped—pink and orange in color.”
“You say it was a cube?” Branson asked.
“Pink and orange?” Dave asked
“Yeah, pink and orange, but the colors kept swirling around on the cube and shifting. And the cube was rotating and floating inside what I can only describe as a clear shimmery bubble—and the corners of the cube touched the bubble. The cube couldn’t have been more than 5-feet in length and breadth. But the glow was really faint.”
“And it was high up overhead in the sky?” Dave was intrigued and looked at Branson, who was grinning.
Luke ignored the question. “It was probably a quarter mile away from me, hovering next to one of the chimney rocks—almost at eye level. Suddenly six white pulses of light shot out of it and went toward the trailhead where I’d come from. I turned off my headlamp because I was terrified. I don’t remember what I was thinking. I think I was hoping that if I doused the light, the cube wouldn’t notice me. But I got worried because I was wondering if it shot something, like a torpedo, at my jeep. And that really scared me; because if my jeep was destroyed, I was a goner…I just locked up and froze where I stood. It was probably a solid minute where I couldn’t move and was shaking all over…The cube, or whatever it was, remained motionless…I mean it was rotating inside the sphere, but it was fixed in that same position over the canyon by the chimney rock…And then that’s when I saw them.”
“Them?” Branson cocked his head.
“God…There were six of them. They came from the trailhead. They looked exactly like me—like mirror images of me—except paler. They were even wearing the same clothes I had on, the same headlamp. They didn’t look at me. They just walked single file along the path…No, they didn’t walk, because their feet didn’t touch the ground. It was like some ghostlike drifting motion, but their legs moved like they were walking. They moved along the same path from the direction I’d come from. I slowly edged my way, with my back pressed against the rock farther up the trail until I was on the west wall of the horseshoe. I was standing directly across from them. They stopped and faced me, but, again, without looking at me.”
Dave was losing interest. The story was getting too far-fetched, even for their program. They might have to disable the comments. Otherwise, the listeners would be ruthless: “Your caller sounded like he was tripping balz.”—Dave uncorked his bottle and poured himself another glass with the air of a man who’d resigned himself to the fact that he’d just been taken for a ride.
Luke went on: “You know how in video games when your player character is standing motionless on the screen, but he keeps shifting around from one foot to the other while you‘re working the controls?”
“Yeah?” Branson said. Then he rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“That’s how they were moving. Like they were waiting for instructions or something. And then that’s when they made those strange noises. The sound didn’t come out of their mouths. It just…I dunno…it was like it was projected from them, and then I, too, started mumbling stuff that made no sense to me, like someone was talking through me and making me say this stuff.—I pulled out my cell phone and started recording, but I was afraid to point my camera at them because I was worried they’d see it as a threat…I have the recording here with me. Can I play it for you on your show?”
“Sure,” Dave said with an ironic grin.
They couldn’t hear the recording clearly at first. Luke was evidently playing it directly from the speaker on his cell phone. He apologized, maximized the volume, and played the recording again. They could hear a man, presumably Luke, panting frantically. But in the background there was a faint hum. Dave and Branson strained their ears and held their headphones close to their ears. There were six distinct tones that sounded like the vibrations of tuning forks. Then they heard Luke’s voice speaking in a panicked whisper: “If crazy shit…My fence, they’re putting in tomorrow…For sponsors.—No time to edit out, edit out….Invited him, you invited him, you invited him.”
Branson looked up at Dave; then he muted both mics.
“Did this guy hack our chat session?” Branson asked.
The caller’s recorded voice echoed what Branson had just said, “Hacking this guy…chat session?” Then Luke’s voice whispered, “It’s like he’s reading our minds.”—which was just what Dave was about to say.
The hair on Branson’s arms stood up. Luke’s recording ended with the same strange tuning-fork hums in the distance. Then each tone died away, one at a time. Luke stopped playing the recording and spoke again. “Are you guys there?”
“ … ”
“Hello?”
“Yeah,” Dave said. “We’re here… Man, Luke… Your story is unlike any other we’ve heard on the show… So what happened then?”
“Like I said, there were six of them, and they looked exactly like me. I think there were six of them, because the UFO was a cube and had six sides. Maybe? I dunno. I was scared to turn my back on them. And then, one by one, they started jumping off the ledge. But they fell slowly and sort of—it’s hard to explain—they fell like feathers on the rocks 30 feet down from the ledge. All six of them were on their backs 30 feet below me on the rocks. There was blood coming out of their mouths and their eyes were wide, like they were paralyzed or dead. I kept feeling my way along the cliff wall, not taking my eyes off them.—And this whole time the pink and orange cube is floating over the canyon in the same place. When I got to the west tip of the U, I turned the corner slowly; and then I almost fell because the trail at this point had completely collapsed into the canyon below. There was literally no path. It fell 2,000 feet…That’s when I realized what had happened.”
“What?” Dave asked.
Branson couldn’t speak. He just stared vacantly at his mic.
“They were warning me. You see? If I hadn’t had my back against the cliff wall, and if I hadn’t slowly turned that corner.—In other words, if I’d just casually rounded the west tip of Horseshoe Ledge in the twilight, I probably would have fallen to my death. It’s like they were giving me a message…You know?”
“Yeah,” Dave said, leaning on the table, his face in his hands.
“When I realized what was happening, I turned back to look at the six replicas of me down below on the rocks, but they were gone. And the pink and orange cube was gone, too. It just vanished into thin air.”
There was a long silence.
“It’s…a powerful story, Luke,” Dave said. “Thanks for sharing it with us.”
“Thanks for having me on your show.”
Branson was pale, but mumbled a half-hearted thanks.
“There’s one more thing,” Luke added. “I don’t know how I got back here—to Provo. I woke up the next day in my bed, and my jeep was parked out front. I know they’re with me in the house. I can feel a strange heartbeat in my spinal cord; and it’s not mine…They’re tired of being ignored by us…We’re tired of being ignored by you. I guess that’s all we have to say… ”
The caller hung up. Dave removed his headphones. Branson was typing something on the computer. Then he hit the enter key.
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m deleting it—all of it.” He hit the enter key again.
“Are you kidding me?!”
“We’re not airing that.”
“That was gold, man!”
“I’m sorry. I’m way too freaked out, Dave!…I don’t think I can continue this podcast. I’m shaking. That was the weirdest experience in my life. Maybe sometime down the road…”
“You can’t do that, Branson!”
“I started the podcast, so I make the decisions. You can have the rights to the show… But I’m out, man.”
One week after the podcast was recorded and subsequently deleted, two BLM law enforcement rangers signed out a 4x4 truck at 6:00 a.m. in Moab and set out on the backroad that led to Horseshoe Ledge. It was the second day of the final inspections before the road was scheduled to be closed for the season from Thanksgiving weekend to Memorial Day.
Even though the rangers blocked the entrance to the road with a pipe-rail gate every year, with a notice threatening legal action and steep fines if anyone trespassed, there would inevitably be some idiot who’d manage to get his RV or camper around the gate and attempt to drive it down the road. He—and it was always a “he”—would get stuck in the mud or snow, roll his vehicle into a ditch, or drive off a cliff. It happened at least once a year, and would probably happen more if the road didn’t get “officially” closed down.
It was late morning. The sky was gray and overcast. Pam was letting the twenty-six-year old newbie, Andy, drive. He would need to get comfortable doing this on his own. Pam was in her mid-fifties and eyeballing retirement. It wasn’t as easy for her to hike up and down the trails as it used to be. She was a little stouter than she’d been when she started the job, but she didn’t smoke or drink and was in better shape than her three grown children, who had never been outdoorsy and had gotten really fat during COVID.
Pam kept looking up at the clouds. She told Andy they wouldn’t want to dilly-dally at Horseshoe Ledge, because they’d need to be on the road back to Moab before it started raining. They’d used up one of the four twenty-gallon gas cans they’d brought with them on the ride out.
“Once the rain starts,” Pam said, “it won’t take long for the road out this way to get muddy and slimy in about three places. New gravel hasn’t been laid out this far for over a decade.—Trust me, you don’t want to get stuck. If that happens, we’ll have to radio back and get someone to come out and tow us.”
“Got it!” Andy said in that eager beaver voice she found endearing. He’d evidently been in the Army, was married, had a four-year old son and was taking the job very seriously.
“You’re doing great, Andy.”
“Thank you!”
His tan uniform and matching cap were brand spanking new. Pam still ironed her uniform fairly regularly, but she only wore the cap when she was out in public.
They parked at the trailhead and Andy was off like a shot.
“When I told you we wouldn’t want to dilly-dally, I didn’t mean we had to sprint.”
Andy laughed, stopped, and waited for Pam to catch up. She wondered if he’d regarded her last comment as a reprimand.
“Andy, I don’t want to crimp your style. I’m just older than you, so I can’t walk that fast. If you want to go ahead and check out the trail, I’ll do my best to keep up.”
“Okay! As long as you don’t mind. It feels good to be out of the truck. I’m just gonna run ahead a little bit.—Oh, wow!” he exclaimed. “Look, a petroglyph!”
“Yep.” Pam said (not looking up). “They’re all over these parts.”
Andy photographed it with his cell phone and hiked ahead at a brisk pace. Pam loved the Canyonlands. The scenery never got old. She emerged from the slot canyon and ambled along red-rock as it brought her into Horseshoe Ledge. Horseshoe Ledge had always looked more like a letter U to her than a horseshoe. Andy whistled at her from the opposite side of the U. He cupped his hands over his mouth: “There’s been a rockslide! It’s huge! It’s a sheer drop up ahead!”
“Okay!” Pam said and waved at him. She made it around the bend and joined Andy, studying the damage to the trail.
“Well, that’s significant. We’ll need to report this. I don’t know they’re going to get around to fixing this anytime soon, because that’s not gonna be cheap to fix. I think they’ll probably simply end the trail here and put up a fence…This’ll be good training for you. We’re gonna need to put two stakes here and tape it off and put up a warning sign. Then we’ll need to tack up a notice at the trailhead, letting people know that the trail’s been indefinitely closed.
“Okay,” Andy said. “If I recall, the tape and stakes are in the bed of the truck. If you want, I’ll go fetch the stuff and you can stay here.”
“Sounds like a plan. Here’s the keys.—You were in such a hurry that you left them in the ignition. I’m not gonna tell anyone, but you can’t do that. We have to lock the vehicle whenever we get out of it, otherwise someone could steal it.”
“Darn. Okay, I’m really sorry.”
“No biggie.”
Andy ran off like an athlete. Pam sat down on a boulder against the cliff. There was a breeze and it felt good. It was late in the year, but not particularly cold. Pam was wearing a jacket instead of a coat. She liked the brisk November air. Lightning quivered in the distance, but the clouds weren’t moving swiftly. She estimated it would take at least an hour for the storm to be overhead.
There was a gray cloud over one of the rock formations. A light was flickering inside of it. It didn’t take Andy long to get back to where Pam was sitting. He noticed the cloud with the light in it.
“The light in that cloud looks weird,” he remarked.
“It’s just ball lightning,” Pam said. “I’ve seen it before. It looks odd, but it’s completely natural…Okay, since you’re the strongman here, I’m gonna let you hammer in the stakes.”
Andy hammered in one of the stakes, but the rock was hard and he’d only hammered it four times when another piece of the ledge crumbled and fell.
“Goddamn it!” Pam said.
“I’m sorry!” Andy said.
“No, you’re fine, Andy. It’s my fault…So fucking stupid of me. We can’t put in stakes here. The ledge is unstable. We’re gonna have to put the tape up at the trailhead and hope that no one is dumb enough to go exploring on their own.”
“Ah, I see.” Andy said. Pam wondered if her cursing had offended the poor kid, but he seemed to be thinking about something else. He looked left and right. Then he put the stakes and the hammer on the ground. He held up his hand to Pam to silence her. “Do you hear that?”
“Yeah.”
“It sounds like someone hitting an iron bar or a pipe far away, like it’s echoing.”
“Yeah,” Pam said. “Sounds like a Tibetan singing bowl or something. It’s probably just the wind. You wouldn’t believe the strange noises you hear when you’re out this far.”
But Andy ignored her. He was looking up at the cloud with the light in it.
“That light’s still there. It’s more intense than it was before. It’s like pink and orange.”
Pam didn’t respond. She just stared at it. Andy removed his cell phone and started filming it.
Pam said, “I really think it’s just ball light—WHOA!”
At that moment there was a flash and a vertical beam of light struck the depths of one of the fissures in the canyon. Then the light in the cloud was gone. There was no rumble of thunder, no vibratory sounds. Everything was silent.
“What was that?!” Andy shouted. “Did you see that? It went underground!”
“That was a lightning bolt.” Pam said. But she sounded doubtful.
“I got it on film.” Andy played the video again and Pam leaned over his shoulder and looked at it.
Pam’s voice could be heard: “I really think it’s just ball light—WHOA!”
“That doesn’t look like lightning to me.” Andy commented. “It’s a straight line. It looks like something came out of the cloud.”
Pam sighed. “You and my dad would get along splendidly. He’s into ghosts and UFOs…Come on, let’s get back to the trailhead.”
Andy picked up the stakes and the hammer and slowed his pace to make sure Pam remained in front of him, since it would’ve been rude to leave her behind on the trail if they weren’t planning to go back to the damaged part of it. Andy didn’t believe that the vertical flash had been lightning. He didn’t know what it was, but it looked to him like some kind of UFO. He couldn’t wait to show his wife the recording when he got home that night.
When they returned to the trailhead, they put up red tape in a crisscross fashion between two timber poles. There was a shoddy old map of the trail on a faded billboard next to the trail’s entrance.
Pam went to the truck and used her satellite phone instead of the truck’s radio. She called headquarters and reported that the trail was damaged about 2.5 miles in. She mentioned that they’d put tape across the trailhead. She said she needed dispatch to fax her a notice to the satellite printer in the truck, so she could print it out, put it in a plastic sleeve and affix it to the billboard. It took dispatch about 10 minutes to send the notification to the printer, which fortunately was working and had enough ink to print the form out. Pam slid it into the transparent plastic sleeve and sealed it. She got out of the truck and went to the sign.
Andy was standing at the trailhead, just staring into the slot canyon.
“There’s a light down there,” he observed.
Pam taped the notice over the map. “I think we’re done here.”
“Do you see that light?”
Pam looked down the trail. There was a faint glow. She said, “To me, it just looks like the light from the canyon. The storm’s rolling in, so…”
“But the glow is changing in intensity.”
Pam ignored him. “I think it’s best if I drive back. I know where all the potholes are and it’s getting dark.”
Andy handed her the keys, opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat. The window on his side of the truck was about 5 feet from the trailhead. Andy kept staring down the path.
Pam got into the driver’s seat and looked at him. She gasped: “Andy, your nose is bleeding.”
“Oh, it happens. It’s because of the altitude. But it hasn’t happened a lot lately.”
Andy didn’t want to get blood on the sleeve of his uniform. He was fidgeting around looking for a cloth. Pam handed him a leftover napkin from their to-go breakfast earlier that morning. He thanked her.
Pam called headquarters one last time on her satellite phone. “We’re heading out in a moment. We taped off the trailhead to Horseshoe Ledge. When we get back to Moab, no one’s going to be there, so we’re just gonna park the truck in the motorpool and put the key in the dropbox.”
“Roger that,” the dispatcher responded.
Pam hung up and told Andy she preferred using satellite phones, because the radios were a pain in the ass and she was getting old and having a hard time hearing people on the radio.
“I’m so tired,” Andy said.
“Feel free to take a nap. I think there’s a lever on the side of the seat. Just pull it up and you can lean back.”
“Thanks,” Andy said.
The bumpy road lulled Andy into an almost instant slumber. And within moments he was not only sleeping but dreaming. In the dream, he and Pam were finishing their work at the trailhead; but instead of Pam driving them back, Andy volunteered because he said he wanted to learn the route.
“That makes sense,” Pam said. She got into the passenger side of the truck. Andy walked around and climbed into the driver’s seat. Then he looked at Pam. Pam was looking out of the passenger window at the trailhead. “I think you were right,” she said. “There’s a light out there.” He peered out the window. Standing right outside the truck, next to the trailhead, were six versions of himself. They wore the same tan uniform and ranger cap that he had on. They weren’t looking at him. They were just standing there. Then all of their noses began to bleed. He heard the same sound he’d heard on the trail. A sound that Pam had described as being like the sound of a Tibetan singing bowl. Then he and Pam started to converse with each other. And what they were saying made no sense to him.
“I’m out, man.” Pam said. “I started the podcast.”
“It was gold!” Andy said.
Pam nodded and said, “I’m too freaked out. Maybe sometime down the road…”
“I can’t continue this,” Andy said and turned on the ignition.
Then Pam was shaking Andy awake. “Hey, Andy!”
Andy opened his eyes and sat up. He was still in the passenger seat.
“Man,” Pam said. “You slept the whole way! We’re in Moab at the gas station. I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Can you fill the tank? Here’s the office credit card. Make sure you get the receipt.”
“No problem,” Andy said. He got out of the car as Pam headed inside. There were only four pumps. No one else was around. It was drizzling rain and dark out. The gas station lights were on.
Andy swiped the card, selected the grade, put the nozzle into the tank, and started pumping the gas. He did this in a distracted state. The dream had been so vivid and unsettling. How could he have slept all that time! And then it happened. He couldn’t control it. He started to cry, because something wasn’t right.
When the tank was full, he replaced the nozzle, and pushed the button to print out the receipt. He went back to the passenger side of the car, got in, and shut the door.
It felt like there was something in his head, like when blood rushes all at once to one part of the brain and makes you dizzy. And he could feel a warm throbbing sensation in his spinal cord, like a pea-sized heartbeat. Whatever it was, it was spreading. His brain and nervous system were being colonized.
He waited and waited. Then he realized it had been over half an hour and Pam still hadn’t come back. No other cars had stopped for gas.
Andy got out of the truck and walked toward the gas station. He went inside. An old man was at the counter.
“Can I help you?” He asked.
“I’m waiting for my colleague. Is she still in the bathroom?”
“No one’s come in here…Are you okay?”
“I… We stopped here about a half hour ago.”
“I know. You’ve been out there by the pump for a long time. I knew you were law enforcement from the truck, but I didn’t know what you were doing here…Is it some kind of sting?”
Andy went to the women’s restroom and threw open the door. There was no one inside.
“Hey!” the man said. “What’s your problem?”
“I came here with someone.”
The man looked apprehensively at Andy. “There hasn’t been anyone here other than you. I watched you drive up. I saw you get out of the driver’s side of the truck.”
“What?”
“You got out of the driver’s side of the truck, filled the gas tank, got into the passenger side, and sat there for about half an hour.”
Andy swallowed hard and stormed out of the gas station.
He ran to the truck. He looked through the window of the camper, then opened the tailgate. Nothing seemed out of place. Then he pulled out his cellphone. Luckily, he had service. He dialed the number to headquarters by accident. He was shaking. He really didn’t think anyone would be there at this time of the day. But someone answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Andy.”
“Yeah, you came up on the caller ID.”
“I’m the new guy.”
“Yeah, we know. Where are you?”
Andy looked around for the gas station sign. “I’m at the Moab Convenience Plus station. I don’t know—”
“Stay put. We’re heading your way.”
Within twenty minutes two cop cars pulled into the gas station, lights on, sirens blaring. Andy was arrested and taken to an interrogation room.
The detective showed Andy his badge and said, “Tell us what happened today at Horseshoe Ledge.”
“I don’t understand what this is about. I want to talk to my wife.”
The inspector looked at his colleague, who nodded and stepped out of the room.
“You’ll get a chance to talk to her later. But I need you to tell me what happened out there today. We got a call from Pam’s satellite phone 6 hours ago. And that call is why you’re here.”
The colleague came back into the room with an open laptop in his hands. He set it on the table. The detective pushed a button on the keyboard. Andy could hear Pam and the BLM dispatcher talking.
“Pam?”
“Oh, God Mary! I’m bleeding so bad!”
“Pam, where are you?”
“Please, please, please hurry…He hit me with one of the stakes we were gonna use! I’m bleeding so much! He drove off. I don’t know if he’s coming back.”
“Pam, you have to tell me where you are!”
“I’m still at the trailhead…”
“Which one?”
“Horseshoe Ledge! Andy just kept hitting me with a stake! Then he got in the truck and drove off. I’m so scared!”
“Stay with me, Pam… Keep talking…”
The detective stopped the recording. “Well?” he asked. “Do you have anything to say?”
Tears coursed down Andy’s cheek. He closed his eyes and with absolute clarity saw Pam lying by the trailhead, bleeding, begging him to stop. The vision was so crisp. Even though he was sitting in the interrogation room, it was as though he was standing over her body with the iron stake. Behind him stood six entities that looked just like him. In the sky, overhead, just above the truck, there was a large cube, pink and orange, rotating in a shimmery translucent sphere.
Then Andy began to speak. He addressed the men in the interrogation room in a dull voice.
“They’re growing tired of being ignored,” he said.
“What?!” the detective asked.
“We’re tired of being ignored.”
Really enjoyed that Daniel. Had a wonderfully unsettling rhythm to it where you thought you were getting to grips with the story and then it spun away out your grasp again
Excellently done 👍🏼
I just it on the record that I’m not ignoring anybody. There. I said it. I’m safe... right?!
Love this story. You’ve deftly tackled several genres so far. Bravo 👏