Pallid Airs and Lost Highways

Ellsworth and Emery Kolb were in their twenties when they opened their own photography studio high in the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in 1904. Not too shabby for a business that didn’t result in putting a bullet in someone’s head back then. Robbing, killing and pillaging were all financially beneficial parts of the region and the Kolb brothers were as gentle as cloud fluff and had no means for such sketchy vices. Truth was, there had been only one gun in between them should their venture exploring the Colorado River leave them in any danger and that cold pistol remained cold for several years after it was bestowed upon them by their father.

The studio itself was a family home they constructed, one their ingenuity turned into a photography studio after Emery’s arrival from Williams, Arizona a few years before with only his camera, a guitar and his slim tweed suit.

Emery was the one with the crackpot idea to own a photographic store having visited one between Williams and northern Arizona on his way to the Grand Canyon. It was there he bought their business for a whopping $400. Sold American!

The following year, the Kolb brothers moved their budding enterprise near a trailhead at the Grand Canyon after acquiring permission from the owner of the Bright Angel Trail, Mister Ralph Cameron.

Initially, they pitched a tent on the canyon rim on account there was no El Tavar Hotel on the trailhead, and in 1906 built a small wooden house which they named after themselves: Kolb Studios. It was here, and through the next twelve years, that the Kolbs became established, not just as photographers but adventurers where their photography of visitors and lesser-known areas of the canyon supported their chosen career path. Unfortunately, the world was filed with vipers in the ground and those that stare at you face-to-face, and they were not the only ones who saw an opportunity to earn money through photography.

By some means which Ellsworth never could fathom, Emery Kolb continued to keep age-old secrets to himself and as the sun fell over the Arizonan mounds surrounding them and morphing the ochre scenery to a looming indigo they had a run of only a handful of hours before dusk settled over the land, there was ample time to close up shop and sleep through the dusk. The first week of owning the shop was bit of a mismatch with little to no customers, and even though the few that would arrive Sunday through Wednesday, learning the remainder of that week for fear like some sort of Purgatory right there on the rim of the end of the world.

Emery knew there were better days ahead while Ellsworth spent that entire week fretting about funds—how would they make it past the month? And just as the stresses put him at his wits end, they were given their first string of ordinary customers who would come in setting the two brothers on local adventurers in the surrounding areas, some even applying their expertise to document hunts of local wildlife Word of mouth was an amazing thing. Hunters and explorers were most of their clientele, but eventually couples would come to them looking for wedding portraits overlooking the massive space of the canyon. They weren’t just photos for those of matrimonial concerns, there were oftentimes men looking to have portraits taken of animal hunts, scavenging, and gold mining for a percentage of the take. The business’ boom was a slow crawl after the first few years, but before they knew it spring turned to summer, summer cooled the autumn, and autumn chilled to winter and the snow came and with it there was a dry spell. The tourists came few and far between until no one knocked on their doors, but the following years spring business picked up and this became the rhythm of their business.

“If we save up through spring to winter, we’ll survive from January to April,” Ellsworth suggested. It was one thing to freeze in the winter, but to do it in the middle of nowhere, Arizona was torturous.

“All right then, let’s spend a percentage on rent, bills and needed supplies so the rest can go to savings.” Emery said.

It was settled. The business would rest through a winter’s hibernation and from the first day of the spring would open and pick right back up where they left off. Seemingly it was a wise decision, one that brought in a good amount of money on top of the savings, so much in fact their small business would have big eyes on their secret fortunes—the wondering eyes of regional corporations.

There had been a telephone call one morning, and even through the mask of the miles of wire the titillation of uncountable stunts had sounded over the phone. “I finally get to speak with one half of the great Kolbs,” a man called, in response to Ellsworth answering the ring; “and who, by pray tell, do I have the honor in speaking with?”

“With Ellsworth Kolb, and who is this?” for all he knew this man on the other end was a business call, regarding a business that had nothing to do with photography, and if it wasn’t a customer there was no need for Ellsworth to continue this conversation.

“My name is Fred Harvey.”

Ellsworth knew of this Harvey. They were big for their food, stylish and tasteful services and ‘Harvey Girl’ waitresses. He’d also read in the paper that the company began establishing a monopoly and while they were taking over most of the canyon’s businesses there remained only two holdouts one being the Kolbs and the other the Verkamp. Fred Harvey knew about their business as though he was working for them. He knew they sold photographs of the canyon in leather-bound books for three dollars and knew the prices of their services.

“I want you to work for me,” Harvey said.

Ellsworth sighed, “Well we’re already under contract with another company and as I know of you, you’re aligned with Albertype.”

“I am…we are!” he corrected himself.

“We no longer work with them,” Ellsworth told him. “Their contract was too strict. As the men going out on these jobs to take these photos and risking our lives, we should be allowed to work for whomever we damn well please.”

The man on the other end of the phone gave a wry chuckle and said, “So it’s you; you’re the nut I have to crack. I’ll get your business or at least break my neck trying.”

Then Ellsworth thanked him for his inquiry, mentioning the store hours, snapped the phone down on the receiver, and went about his day, unassuming he’d ever hear from this man every again let alone lay eyes upon him and his escorts on account of his mask of generosity.

For denying Fred Harvey’s business over the phone this demanded the man himself make an appearance to the Kolbs’ on his own with his handful of escorts, the same that broke bones and joints to get Harvey the kind of overtaking of business he sought in the region. Certainly, the phone call between two companies held all the manner of possibilities but would violence be an ingredient? Neither the Kolbs nor the Verkamps knew about this or bothered themselves with such thuggery because they’d both spent time at the rim of the canyon without many anxieties outside of a few rattlers and coyotes in the region, but it was a week later that Ellsworth and Emery’s concerns grew when Fred Harvey, donned in his velvet suit arrived. Harvey had all the demeanor of a man who’d smile at you while drilling a silver bullet in your face.

“This building has a solid wood scent,” he told them, as he entered with a collective of seven other men, “but I do believe I’m not familiar with that smell of wood, could you mind my bother and care to tell me what kind of wood that is?”

“Cedar,” Ellsworth said, having a time remembering that voice but knowing it was strangely familiar.

“The walls and flooring are all cedarwood.” Emery said. “How may we help you?”

“Oh, you must be the man behind the camera while the other one is the man behind the business.”

A look of confusion came over both. Emery was confused as to what this man was talking about—still holding this fold of a smile on his face. His brother who stood behind the counter six feet from him soon came to the realization this was no customer but Fred Harvey who he’d spoken to only a week prior seeking to buy their business.

“You must be Fred,” Ellsworth said. “Didn’t we settle things over the line? I gave you a proper send off, didn’t I?”

“You did, Mister Kolb, but I thought we could talk to each other like proper business men—face to face—without the courage of wires and phones in between us.”

Emery’s head whipped between the dueling men in silent questioning, almost behaving as an audience of hampered doubt, to this well-bred and gallant standoff. There were no guns at sundown, no waiting of the call of “draw!”, but two men who wanted to best the other financially until one of them came crawling out the other end on their knees begging like a dog. Fred Harvey was in the business of making men beg. Teasing and waving their prized possessions over their heads until they had no other choice but to drop and plea, hands in prayers, tears from their eyes, looking at him the way angels looked at God.

“What is this about, Ellie?” Emery asked.

His eyes were on his brother, no longer dancing between the men.

“Mister Harvey here—”

“Fred, boys, call me Fred.”

Ellsworth refused.

“He wants to buy us out and take over our store.”

Fred had a joyous grin sketched over his face.

“But as I’ve already told him, we can’t be sold.” Ellsworth added.

“I’m not looking to buy you out,” he said. “That would entail hiring more colleagues to run this business. I’d simply have you continuing your vocation here. I’m just looking to expand my own venture; I’d just be taking a slice of the pie.”

“A significant slice,” Ellsworth acknowledged. “Isn’t that right?”

“Listen, Mister Harvey, my brother is right. We pay enough with property tax and keeping this place running, and the truth is, we already have business partners we pay that money to, so to pay you on top of that plus real estate and business taxes to the city and state would put a crutch on our finances. Frankly, would be stupid on our behalf. We’re a small shop woned independently and we can’t fold to a bigger business. We can’t afford to.”

Fred chuckled. He dropped his head, fickled with his face—his nose, the crease under his thin bottom and above his chin. When he looked up in a menacing snarl he said, “You can’t afford not to.” Immediately his movements turned predatory as he stepped forward between the two brothers and his escorts, his men, started to shadow him, still only before Fred halted their fiendish approach with a singular stare.

“The way I see it, you’ll fall under. You’re a startup; you’ll have good seasons and bad ones, months where you’re staying afloat and others where you’re drowning. And like most startups, these off seasons will crush you. I prevent businesses like yours from eating themselves away, yet when it comes down to it, you’ll need someone like me to be there. When the worst comes over like a storm, I can make you or I can break you.”

Emery didn’t like the dance of a strong-arming dynast. In fact, the idea of made him see red. “My brother may appear like some pushover,” he said. “But I assure you I am not.” He was not stepping forward in Fred’s face, less than a foot apart from each other. Emery was significantly taller than Harvey; he wasn’t a giant, but he was imposing enough. “I don’t take kindly to strange men treading foot-and-asshole into my brother and I’s business and threatening us now. I don’t give two shits how many men and how much muscle you have in your wallet; I assure you a Kolb will never be one of these men.”

“Is that so?” Fred clicked his tongue. It was the kind of noise that came with malevolent thoughts, silent thought, vicious thoughts that swirled his brain like stars in the galaxy. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Your brother has balls, so why wouldn’t you? Perfect pair. I’m certain your papa was a card-carrying brass motherfucker as well.”

A hearty laugh exploded from Fred Harvey. He whipped his stocky frame around, almost spinning like a dancer to face his own men where they echoed his gentle amusement, and then as Emery started to join in on the jubilation, Fred Harvey’s fist skirted 180 degrees and knocked the unsuspecting Emery on his ass, flattening the palm of his hand to the floor. He’d been hit so hard there was a moment of stillness and temporary blindness and stars before he spoke through the blinking of his eyes and saw the man standing over him, taking a second to hear his brother call out for him. Now, Fred had the high ground.

Ellsworth tried to remove himself from the back of the counter, but one of the men held him back. There was no helping his brother. As far as he knew, Emery was alone.

“It’s always roaches like yourself—you and your brother—coming here from some God knows where shit-place farm hoping to strike it rich, to find a new life away from your dirt hole existence,” Harvey spat. His eyes danced upon Emery Kolb. They were the eyes of a predator, the eyes of a man who had won the battle. “I refused to be talked down to by some hayseed swine, to be bested by some cactus-fucking yokels like yourselves, and if I have both of you gunned down to prove my point, by God and Throne, I will mow you bastards to an early grave just so I can piss and shit in every corner of this place myself!” Harvey was roaring. He had become unhinged, a man possessed, but as much as he hated being bested, he was about to be bested by Emery as the fallen clod shakenly shoveled into his front vest pocket and pulled out his brothers pistol and aimed it at Harvey, barrel aiming at his sternum.

“What the hell is this?” Fresh was guffawing. He was truly beside himself. “you’re going to shoot me?”

“I-I-if I have t-t-to.”

“You think you behold some killer instinct and can honestly pull the trigger on an unarmed man?”

Emery had the gun sighted on Fred Harvey. His brother, blocked behind one of the oversized goons, was also there with his eyes on the surrounding men that weren’t just there—they were all brandishing concerned shotguns and rifles under their long coats that, if aimed properly would put a wheel-sized hole in a bear’s asshole. And though, some of them were itching for Emery to fire, should he truly take down Fred Harvey, it gave them wherewithal to fill him head-to-toe like swiss cheese. A couple of them weren’t sure if he could do it. It was scary to guess the account of this kind of standoff. Still with victims like the Kolbs here, it was scarier because the weak, through all their bellyaching and chunter, were as tempted and treacherous as the malevolent.

“You don’t know us,” Emery said. “We’re not midwestern country folk—in fact we’re born right here in Arizona. Hometown boys. I may have not slaughtered an army, but I assure you I’ve killed snakes, Mister Harvey,” he pointed the gun higher lessening his arms of the shakes, tweaking his arm 90-degrees and popping a round at one of Harvey’s men square in the chest.

The pop was a thunderclap that shook every soul in the room. Emery watched as the victim of his gunfire looked at him for a second, surprised to see the smoke from the gun and the unwavering expression on the fallen man’s face. Then he dropped clumsily falling to his ass, almost like a child in class. Ellsworth jumped at the sound of the gun. Now he was looking at his brother with fear and respect. Fear because he didn’t think either of them would have ever used the gun and respect because now there would be no turning back from Fred Harvey.

Emery was so shocked by this turn of events that his shaken hand dropped the gun to the floor. All the men were fazed. In reaction, they dropped their rifles and shotguns. Ellsworth standing there had become shitless.

“I suggest,” Ellsworth tried his best not to stammer, “you get the fuck up on out of our store before you or another one of your men tastes the same fate of meeting your God and kisses his holy babies!”

Such heated words were enough to put a smile on Harvey’s face, almost making him laugh had it not been so serious.

Fred’s eyes danced upon the Brother’s Kolb. Emery, who now had the barrel pointed at him, and crutch over next to him, Ellsworth, all before his head turned to the men behind him feeling some sense of a lost control. He ordered them to carry out their fallen man, who sat upright nearly leaning back and spilling even more blood beneath him.

He orchestrated them from the premises, but frequently dashing a mad eye back to his new rivals, without saying a word, without muttering a promise back to them. Though as they felt they’d bested Fred Harvey, this would not be the end of things. They knew it as much as Fred Harvey knew it.

Emery didn’t want the past to repeat itself. As much as the pair argued over it, the pistol stayed. It didn’t collect dust. Emery and his brother, although not as frequently, Ellsworth, used it on work-related ventures. Emery feared there would be a moment of retaliation. Men that wealthy didn’t just let things pass by, losses lingered and dwelled and tortured the psyche so much that it gave them nightmares, it made them mad with rage and doubt. Fred Harvey was too narcissistic to allow doubt to befall his great name. If he had ever returned, however, both of them needed to be prepare. Emery hated feeling weak. He hated feeling there were tougher men out there in the world who sought out to prey on men like him.

“We need to know how to defend ourselves,” Emery suggested to his better half. “His goons came in here and we had nothing but words!”

“But what if word is all we need,” Ellsworth bickered. “What if we just tell him to shove off one more time and he does it…or what if he’s found a new venture?”

“I know men like that,” Emery said, “they don’t just let a loss become a loss, it needs to be dramatic and with that spectacle comes flames.”

Although they looked similar to one another, Ellsworth was much different. He didn’t like that the gun was now a necessity. It had been brought along just-in-case, for security’s sake, but now it was a part of who the men were. If there was a traveling job in the Canyons, Emery brought along the pistol. When he was out, he kept it safely held back from eyeing customers, particularly the likes of eager and eyeful children. Without it, who were they? Were they strong? Were they safe? Or would they remain to be victims in the canyon, victims to the lurkers in the dark, victims to the greedy hearts of men that preyed on the vestal folks for a shiny coin. Or would they defend their place there?

Emery was all in to defend himself. He often thought about not being there and how Ellsworth would do the same. Though he often thought of his brother as still scared, though he never spoke of Harvey or started their day bringing up what had happened even if the stain of blood still varnished that part of the flooring. It was a bitter reminder, like a sign whenever he crossed the counter to open the store in the day time and close it in the late afternoon. Truth was, Ellsworth had seen the dread of bullets and what they could do. He had seen what they could do to beasts big and small. He and his brother had escorted plenty of wild game hunters, but when it came to man, it was another thing altogether.

The sound of it never went away. The stain of the blood never ceased to escape your mind and the whimpers of a man he was unsure survived that afternoon all festered.

The elaborate red scrubbed horizon gave birth to another work day when Reilly Verkamp and his wife Tabi arrived as the first customers of the day. The brothers knew little of the family that worked a few meters east of them, except Fred Harvey had his hands around their neck.

“Good morning,” Emery opened the door, setting up the shop. “What can I do ya for?”

There was a sense of stall and habitual temporization.

“We are not here…for business.” Reilly said. The couple looked forlorn, sad and pale, the bags under their eyes a sleek hue of yellow. “…We are not here as customers, but to indtroduce ourselves for the first and unfortunately the final time.”

The wife, Tabi stepped her head up to the sleepy man before her. “We have had to make a deal with a Mister Fred Harvey.”

“He came here, too.” Emery said. “We didn’t fold.”

“I heard,” Reilly said. Their act of defiance made him laugh and applaud. It was so uniquely American. “We heard and we were happy that you had, but it changed Fred Harvey.”

“Why are you here? We can’t help you.”

The Kolbs were fighting their own fight and to make their original fight and to make it a double fight where they were diving into a fight they weren’t prepared for.

“Why are you here?” We can’t help you.”

“Oh, you can,” Reilly said. “You can help us get revenge on him in the least likely of way.”

“How would—”

Tabi handed him a box it was a decorative box painted in green-blues with dissonant oranges that reminded him of the decorations of Indian garb. There were decorative and native feathers on the sides of the box so that they came up like turned up hands, and it was newly painted on the blues and oranges were still damp.

“What’s inside of it?” he wanted to know.

Curious hands started exploring the front box, touching the thick and sharp edges of the wood then the rear front followed by the top front where the copper metal latch was. He turned it open and inside was a figurine and a rolled-up piece of paper. The figurine was small enough to fit in Emery’s hand and was the same color as the box itself. Turquoise and orange. It had a large block head, bulging eyes, a crown of feathers behind its head, thick wooden legs and pegs as feet, thin cylindrical arms that went from shoulders to their hands and an elongated upside down revleaux triangle for a body. The wood of the figurine was smooth to the touch and had a soft sensation to it.

“This is Maasaw, he’ll bring you fortune and safety,” Reilly said. “The rolled-up paper beside it is a map where you can talk to him.”

Ellsworth was making his way down the stairs after brushing his teeth and getting himself clean for the customers. Like Emery, he wasn’t familiar with the Verkamps either. Even when they ventured out on hunts and mining, they never saw their shop nor saw any of their so-called “vast family” in the region of the Rim.

“What is this about?” Ellsworth said.

“These are the Verkamps,” his attention was down. He had unrolled the paper in the box to unveil it was a treasure map. “They…are leaving,” his attention came back. “They can’t afford to work for Fred Harvey anymore.”

“Fred Harvey bought you out?” Ellsworth asked.

“When?”

“Some time ago.” Reilly sobbed on the brink now.

“I’m sorry,” Ellsworth said. “Is there anything we can do for you? Any way we can help?”

Reilly shook his head while his wife remained bowed at the neck, like a woman broken and unfixable.

“All we ask is you put that trinket in your store so the customers can see it.”

“Oh okay,” Ellie said, looking at the gaudy thing, unsure if they’d get anything just having this eyesore around. “We’ll do that for you. Is it a family thing?”

Tabi shook her head. “No, it is a thing from a group of savages, the natives, who promised it would protect us. Keep it for us, let it protect you.”

“And the map?” Emery asked.

“Maasaw will like to see you now that represent him in your store, this is where you can find him, and he is close, everything you need is on that small piece of paper to assist you on that search.”

Ellsworth was making his way down the stairs when he saw his brother clutching the case of the idol with his eyes on the couple. He appeared somber, his shoulders slumped rather pathetically and his posture appearing weak, as though the air was sucked from his lungs.

“Why hello,” Ellsworth said.

It was in a sense to make his presence known, but Emery heard his looming footsteps from the mewled creaking of the stairs behind him. Tabi gave him a soft and dour hello and, having never seen the brothers in person, gave them a compliment on being quite identical.

“Mom’s genes, I’m afraid.” Ellsworth said.

It was half a joke and half a way to inch his way into the conversation.

“What’s this?” he pointed to the box.

“It’s a gift, a custodian of sorts,” Reilly said. “After a year of living here we met with the natives and they told us of this great guardian of the Hopi people that believed He was the son of the Sun Katsina Tawa giving permission of the dead to enter the Fourth World.”

A look of shock and perplex came over the Kolb brothers’ faces.

“They call him the Skeleton Man,” Tabi butted in, “and as this Guide of the dead, he teaches these Hopi to be simple and self-sufficient.”

Emery opened up the box again.

“That is the Death Katsina Doll and it will protect you as long as you do not disappoint Him.”

Emery and Ellsworth looked at each other and like a dual breath of a joining voice, Ellsworth said, “And what about you? Did you disappoint Him?”

The word that came from Tabi was an undertone, a rustle of sound and had they not seen her lips move it would have just gone by as a hushed sough of words as she said, “Yes,” before clicking the forearm at her husband and exiting the building.

Neither Emery nor Ellsworth said a word, neither had an idea of what to say next, at least for a full hour after. There was much that could have been said to prevent them from leaving, but they watched them get into the carriage and were hoisted away. Afterward, Emery sat at the window on a wooden stool looking over this curious totem watching the sun rise up fully, burning away at dusk ‘s blue lugubrious hue once again.

It was Ellsworth that spoke after a few hours before their first actual customer came through.

“What are we supposed to do with this thing?”

Emery didn’t have an iota.

Unembellishingly, he didn’t know what the map was for. But from what he feigned, it was a depiction to a destination that had something to do with the Hopi and this totem. Still, he hadn’t felt right chasing ghosts and savage folklore. He feared what was on the ‘x’ of the map heading northeast. He’d read pirates books as a child of nearly similar treasure plots where the ‘x’ was the destination of a booty of gold and rubies. He didn’t believe that they’d find booty on the other end. What he mostly feared was that they’d find something sinister, perhaps left by the Verkamps.

There was a curiosity to the damned thing for Emery. Throughout the day, where they assisted venturing customers, he found himself often crossing the counter and giving the box a passively inquiring eye, glaring at the box before his attention was interrupted by customers. The first? A wife of a miner who wanted to commission the brothers for a picture out by Havasu Falls. She was eager, a woman under five foot and as round as she was cheery, big bright smile, with the excitement of a child.

“How much would it be?” she asked him.

“Um,” his mind was blank.

As present as his body was his mind was focused on the contents of the box, the ugly totem with its big bulbous eyes. Under any other circumstances, he was normally quick about these things. Take the distance of the trip, packing all the needed materials, the time of travel to the time of arrival and departure, and the effort of their duty and that was the price.

“It’s uh…” but right now it felt like something was blocking that part of his brain. What was it? He could ask himself this over and over again, still he’d not have an answer.

“$120.00 per hour,” Ellsworth said coming downstairs to set up some new two-foot pictorials in the window.

It was in that moment that Emery blinked before coming out of his ephemeral confusion.

The woman almost protested, grumbling under her voice, even letting out a piggish squeal from under it. The price was steep, it was the kind of price a woman like her (with a husband that she had) wasn’t able to maintain. But Ellsworth gave her a rundown of the price, trying to establish some digestion of their business. Even this didn’t change her attitude. Not until Emery stepped in, “Naturally, ermm, you’d be charged per hour, though on account you’re a wedded couple, and we can offer a flat rate deal,” the woman lit up in joy. “How does that sound?”

Her chubby smile lit up two cherry tomatoes for cheeks that let out a musical wail.

Emery looked over his brother and Ellsworth gave him a gentle nod as if to say: there you go, get your head back in the swing of things. Even if he truly hated this little arrangement he had for this couple.

When the woman shambled over—her oddly stumpy body like those porcelain Russian dolls and her hips swaying like a seesaw—to her gangly lurching figure of a husband, Ellsworth walked over to his brother to give him a soft, yet stern whisper: “Are you out of your gourd? $120 for a trip out to Havasu? It’s over 100 miles and horseback it won’t be kind to the nags.”

“You didn’t see her face,” Emery hissed back, “she wasn’t going to go for it. Hell, she wouldn’t have asked her husband. This way when we’re out there we can look for the trail on the map.”

Ellsworth eyes turned perplexed, blinking like he’d just heard a jumble of word vomit that pierced his skull. “You’re serious.”

He was.

“Aren’t you, at all, the least bit curious as to what it leads to?”

“No,” Ellsworth shook his head.

He was lying through his teeth.

Take Emery’s curiosity and double it, that was where Ellsworth was with this whole thing. His trick: denial. He could fake not giving a shit. Emery walked by the box and thought about it and battled with focus around its contents, however Ellsworth felt a voluming surge in energy when it touched the box, even opening the base and running his explorative fingers through the well-carved totem to feel a sensation that he’d never felt in all his years of living.

“What do you think is out there anyway?”

Emery shrugged.

“Whatever it is, it helped the Verkamps for a significant amount time, til Harvey kept tunneling up our asses,” he presumed. “Can’t be any worse than it is now.”

Ellsworth, much more engrossed in what was under the soil of that ‘x’ on the map. He simulated thinking it over and his acting wasn’t half bad. It was good enough to have his brother on the ropes with anticipation.

“I don’t know,” he restated walking in a circle until his words were only a fossil of sound.

Then the woman came back with $120.00 and her husband, the lurch, shadowing her trail. She handed the money to the nearest Kolb, Emery, who gave his brother a glare—that quick glare of surety that said ‘We’re ready’.

Ellsworth looked up, miffed, sighed—all part of the act—and dropped his eyes back on his brother and said, “Let’s go.”

After taking the horse trail down the ridge east, the trek led the four of them through twenty minutes of venturing up to Pima Point where they were surrounded by the redder-sandstone of the upper crags while the calls of the red-tailed hawks flew overhead by a mile above.

“What beauty! Isn’t it, Roy?” the wife said.

Roy didn’t give a shit.

He was silent the entire twenty minutes. He didn’t care to express himself to his wife, let alone these unwonted strangers. He just wanted to put a smile on her face, have that under his belt and get back on the road home so he could get back to bed. He was a stern man. A working man who wanted to work until he died. When Ellsworth tried to give guide directions before snapping a few pictures for the couple, Emery stopped him, pointed at old Roy and shook his head without saying a word. His brother knew. And in that veil of silence knew to keep his mouth shut.

He kept on with the pictures.

Ellsworth kept up the perk and pep for this trip. 112 miles of this trek would be passed over into the next morning. The brothers had done this countless of times over and over again, camping over night, but rarely did they ever go as far as Havasu. The money had to be right for this long of a trek. But Emery had fucked that entire cash grab up. Normally from South Rim to Havasu, all the way to North Rim, it ran way over $500 and that was beneficial.

“What brings you to look at Havasu, ma’am?”

“Oh, Mister Kolb, don’t call me ma’am, call me Janelle,” she giggled. “I want to take a picture with my lovely husband.”

Emery looked at Roy. He could pretty much see a snarl forming on his face when she spoke, like a stink that came over his nostrils. If he ends up killing her at the end of this, he’d better not start looking at us as snouts, I’ll put a hole in his damn chest and pocket the rest of the money we’re owed.

The horse trotted at a steady pace. He couldn’t allow them to gallop for fear that it would kick up and knock their customers into the dirt. Janelle was a gentle woman. Sure, she was the size of a humanoid armadillo with her stocky stature and rounded back, and her husband a flamingo, but that didn’t mean that her falling on her ass was part of the deal. Although when Emery thought about it, kind of made him giggle a bit. Something about a fat gal taking a tumble that brightened a day.

They had managed to pack up most of the camping materials they needed. It was required for them to camp overnight. It took the horses eight hours to hit thirty-two miles and sixteen for sixty-four. By the hundred plus miles, it would be the next morning and the pictures would be taken and the trips would be commenced. In this moment, Ellsworth didn’t think of the future of this.

When a guide takes a pairing of tourists along the trial of maundering and inquisitive couloir land, the ground begets turmoil and the gullies of rock and dross get narrower as their mares tread with mousy precision through the tapered spoors. The stones outside of these tracks bet larger and larger and the wildlife on the distant ground and in the distant air seem too rare and deviant and the far-flung roots and weeds in the dirt procure a fecundity not found within the resolve of these ochre expanses.

Simultaneously, the winding scarps surrounding them are no more alive with animateness than a cemetery as the creatures here were only here to scavenge. The paltry signs of civilizations in the distance were unvarying to facets of senility, neglect and decay. Without knowing the reason there is a temporization when it comes to the knobbly, lonely aesthetic that make these trips chaotic and at the same time seemingly natural to the rest of the planet. This aesthetic is so peaceful and wily that it’s easy to feel challenged by hidden things in which it would be better to have no regards to the outside lands at all. A rise in the trail to Pima Point that a feeling of strange anxiety is surged. When a soar of the mounds brings the promontories in view above the winding slopes, a feeling of odd tension is intensified on account the summits are too annular and consistent to give a feeling of coziness and genuineness. And the skies, more than often, delineates with a singular clearness that peculiar happenings are bound to take place in broad daylight.

Gulches and passes of paradoxical extent converge the way and an amass of obelisk bridges always appear of unsettled safety. When the trail souses again there are quarters of barren lands that it’s easy for newcomers to dislike and, indeed, one could almost fear among the afternoon when unseen birds-of-prey crow and caw and canyon bats chirp and squeal in the subterranean dwellings beneath the high ground to the adamant rhythms of harsh and chirruping chuckwalla and collared lizards.

The hefty, netid rise of sarsen higher passages has a kinkily curving submission as the trails weave close to the pates of the arched roofs among which it mounds. As the rising ground comes nearer one heeds their bosky rustle more than their sandstone crowned crests. Those sighs soar up so arcanely and so vertiginously newcomers wish they would keep some distance, though there is no road in which to evade them. Across a sandstone-covered bridge the guides come across a small camp ground put forth by the government who seek to drive away the natives that once claimed this land as their own and spaces for tents, campfires and hitching their horses are located here for the gamble through this land was treacherous and with a wager of death for those who sought such an ending. It was not reassuring to know that the natives that once lived here kept out the more fickle of wildlife such as coyotes and snakes and scorpions while the government let them roam freely while the canyon would be left deserted and soon abandoned to ruin had money not been a factor in keeping its format stabilized. Newcomers fear the crepuscular shaft of this overpass as there was no way to avoid it.

Once beyond this point there is no way to give a wide berth to a vague inimical aroma of the winds within the South Rim as if concealing framework of centuries gone. It was always a reassurance to get clearance of this place and to escort the tapered route nearby the rest of the rise and from one side of the flushed native soil beyond until it reunites with Pima Point’s end. Afterward, one will know they are in the breadth of the South Rim, fresh from the mercantile district shanty businesses and in the arms of its ungoverned wilds. Gatecrashers scarcely ever enter the South Rim during this time when the sun has fallen to its closing hue and the eve gives an opening to its true nature as nighttime can be a stage of terror. The landscape, believed by any common exquisite tenet is more than ordinarily breathtaking, however, there is no inundation of begetters or seasonal tourists to drive away the natural disquietude.

Centuries ago when fables of cannibalism, human sacrifice, and queer wasteland divinities were more than objects of ridicule, it was habit to heed avoiding the territory. In the prudent age, following the South Rim’s acquisition of 1879 was put right by white colonists and the land’s welfare at heart folks shun it without understanding why. Maybe on the grounds, though it cannot expand to uninvolved bystanders, is that the residents are now emetically rakish having now strayed far along the route of avatism now so common in Southwestern slades. They have come to establish an ethnicity with a roundedly expound physical and mental reproach of familiarity and perversion that the par of their trenchancy is remarkably low and their muniment stinks of undisguised cruelness and of mysterious fratricide and interbreeding and feats of nearly unparalleled barbarity and mulishness. The checkpoints of camps came from the old gatekeepers representing the major Rims of the Canyon which came from the settlers in the old days have kept something shy of order though many think that the intervening has soiled the state of this land so deeply that only the natives’ name remain as the only key to the history of their ignominy.

Before Emery and Ellsworth, they were told of uncles and grandfathers who assisted in the settlement of the campsites, having to resort in putting down men and women in these tribes. No one, not even those historians who have illustrated the dread of the Canyon’s past can say what occurred with these natives and what soils these grounds. However, old myths speak on forgotten sacraments and relinquished assemblies the natives orchestrated, in which many called The Cavorting of Shadows out of the great sloping ravines and making shimmering bacchanalian orisons that were said to be returned by great cracking and rustling from the basins below.

Both of the Kolbs knew this story from their own forefathers. They knew of the devils that were said to live in the kernel of every sand of dirt. But they were practical men who didn’t fear such unfounded ideas until recently. But even the stories of natives sending prayers of great devils was enough to make them chuckle, knowing such knowledge was absurd because these were the legends that fell from divided generations since these lands were, indeed, fatuously primordial, more primordial than other lands south of the Canyons 100 miles from it. South of the campgrounds where the moonlit rays upon the ebony sky as the crackling fire burns the black into indigo, past the ruins of rock and tor, form the most modern piece of vestal framework to be witnessed.

The next morning, they continued the trip. After eating breakfast and drinking the day’s coffee, the trip south east proved fruitful. There were many beasts out in the open, but far enough that when Ellsworth pointed out a herd of bison, Janelle gasped, calling for her husband in one yelp and demanding a picture from the Kolbs in another. Emery obliged. Setting up the camera, focusing on the shot while the heard of a dozen or so of them drank from a stream of the Colorado River.

“I hear the Indians eat those things!” Janelle said.

“They do, some vagabonds do as well.” Emery said.

“They don’t look too appealing,” Janelle laughed. “They look like they’d taste the way elephants smell.”

Emery politely chuckled. “They’re actually quite tasty, not what you’d expect when you bit down into the meat.”

“You’ve eaten them?” her voice had turned revolted.

“Yes,” both the brothers said.

“Maybe we’ll get to have some one day, huh, Roy?”

Roy just nodded mounted on his colt.

Ellsworth pointed out the color of the river water. The blue meant they were getting closer to Havasu Falls.

She asked about the color of the water, asking had it been as blue as advertised. Ellsworth told her it was. Bluer than a summer sky and on a beautiful plot with a lovely waterfall that makes the background of a photo magical. This made Janelle ever more eager to get there. She climbed up on her mount and with the brothers guiding her and Roy, followed along for the next few hours until she started to hear the wash of a distant waterfall by the time the early morning long haul turned into a mid-afternoon discovery.

“That it?”

“You bet!” Emery said.

She squealed like a pig.

“The only thing now is that we talk to the surrounding natives,” Ellsworth said.

“What do you mean?” she became wary.

“This is their land, but we’ve made a deal with them.”

“More money?” Roy finally said after a day and a half of not saying a word.

“No,” Ellsworth said.

Money wasn’t their concerned. It was white man’s evil. They wanted other things that meant more to them than cheap paper and copper and nickel. They were quite amicable, especially to the brothers who always came at them with respect and understanding.

The first of the Havasupai came up at the other end of a bridge, almost blocking them from entering.

“It’s the Kolbs,” Ellsworth said. “We got some business.” He pointed out the couple.

The tribesman looked at them and loosened his tautness of his shoulders. Ellsworth opened his satchel on the rear of his horse and offered the man one bag of apples, one bag of potatoes, and one bundle of bananas. A smirk of acceptance came over this tribesman.

“Can we talk,” he gestured. “I need to talk to your elders about something.”

Janelle over heard him, but Ellsworth took her attention and led her through the path leading to the Havasu Falls. It wasn’t far along now. But still the conversation happening between Emery and the native piqued her interest.

“What is going on with those two?”

Ellsworth told her not to worry. He gave her half of the truth. Surely, he couldn’t give her the whole run down of everything—the box, the trinket, the idol, and the map—but he just told her what she needed to know to pacify her curiosity.

“We were given this ornament by these fellow neighbors that’s native to these lands, so he’s going to get some answers.”

“Oh,” she trailed off. “Will he be joining us?”

“Hopefully if the encounter goes well.”

There was a thick and impregnable vaguery in his words, one that told he wasn’t going to divulge any definition of his imprecision. They left while Emery rode over on his horse before being stopped by one of the tribesmen. He stopped when he was ordered, but only to dig into his satchel and pulling out the box with the idol inside. It would have been best to hand it over, but Emery didn’t want to lose it in the hands of these savages. Instead, he opened it up and with his eyes he watched the man draw back in fear, like he’d just seen the devil Himself and started snarling not at him but at the existence of such a thing. Then he watched the wide-eyed tribesman order for others, pointing at the box, snapping and bellowing in their unclear tongue.

“What? What is it?” Emery said.

There were one of them that spoke the language, but his competence barely made due. His brown, tanned skin and their tawny and red war paint over his face, violet and gray over his arms and left side of his body. His curvy and crooked lips bending in disgust before saying, “Box!”

“I got it from the people in the South Rim near us,”

“Box holds devil, holds what you call fiend,” the tribesman said.

“The Skeleton man, the Katsina Doll? It’s bad?”

He nodded.

“The people, the nation—all wiped out—killed by Him.”

“They were here? What happened?”

“War for Him. Against a benevolent tribe, friendly tribe, to show fealty.”

“He had them killed. All of them?”

None survived, he was told.

“Where did you find this? From the people?”

The Verkamps, he told him.

“White people worshipping new beasts for gold and pride.”

“They told us he protected them. Can he protect us if we hold him to the box?”

Emery was hopeful. But the tribesman was not.

“He’ll trick you,” he was told. “He is smarter than you. When you least expect it, he will get you to show you he is control.”

Emery felt defeated. It was obvious they weren’t going to let him pass for fear that he would unless this devil god. He must have looked beat because this tribesman asked him, “Why do you want his help?”

“A rich man…a rich white man wants to turn this into a playground for white people for travelers and sightseers and grockles and pilgrims.”

“White man?”

“Fred Harvey,” he nodded.

By the way the tribesman snarled, it spoke volumes that he knew this man and they had no fond feelings of him either. His eyes dropped as he was in mid-thought thinking in on this whole thing. Whatever he was thinking appeared that it was going to be in Emery’s favor. His head turned away as he was mumbling under his breath. Whether it was in English or their native tongue he couldn’t tell.

“Whatever you accomplish, whatever happens, you or your brother can’t run to us when it gets bad. This is your onus.”

Just as he thought on it, Emery did too. He could have turned away at this moment and he and Ellsworth would have been out of the mess of it, but they would still be in the conflict with Harvey.

“We’ll honor this agreement.”

Emery followed the trail within the village. He passed the outskirts and gingerly crossed a rope bridge with the horse before entering a land of archways and escarpments. He followed the path on the map until he was within 300 feet to the ‘X’ and he was staring at a small entrance to a cave bedded by a small river. Hitching the horse, he grabbed his rifle, a satchel of food and a lantern.

The map led him just past the entrance. There was a fork manufactured by a splitting of wall in the middle of the egress. He was directed to the left and found this space that smell of spoiled milk and felt just as stuffy. He placed the lantern at his feet to give a little light to the expanse before making his way to where the actual maker sat.

The map gave directions on the back: dig through the loose soil until it turns hard.

He did so with the shovel in his satchel. Hitting the stony soil felt like hitting coarse rock and almost jerk his shoulder out of socket going as far as he was going.

The next order: place the box inside the hole, with top opened, allowing the idol to seeing the world around it, the inside of the cave.

Done.

Next: wait.

For how long? He didn’t know. It was written on the map that the wait could take up to one minute to one day. Perhaps devils and deities alike didn’t know the aspects of time and their importance. But if he was on this thing’s clock, who was he but a tourist guide and an assistant photographer? He waited. He waited. And when the sun went down, he waited some more. When he was sure that his brother was done with taking the couple to Havasu Falls and was making their way back to the South Rim, he waited and listening to the sounds of the Canyon’s twilight. The remote wails from carnivorous wildlife perked him from the comfort of seeking slumber, so that he remained wide-eyed and present.

“Wolves,” he whispered to himself. “Coyotes, snakes, lizards, scorpions, creepy crawling and hooved and horned monstrosities. These are what surround you. These are what you have to look out for.”

He looked to the map again against the lamp light. For some reason, looking into that map, searching for further directions, time seemed to stop. He didn’t know how it got to that. Maybe he dropped off to sleep that he didn’t know about. Whatever had happened, it caused the lamp light to shrink, the moon to consume the sun, and the wildlife to swell in volume. But this was when it happened. Sitting in his place in the small cavern, he saw a figure distant and bleak. Its eyes glowed a phosphorous blue looking at him faraway at the entrance of this cave.

“Who are you?” Emery gasped.

The image didn’t respond. It just stood at its place. Erect, tall, and static. The man repeated himself. The image did not faulter. But it did step forward. Emery started to writhe in fear. He wanted to get up, but the more he tried to shuffle himself up, the soil beneath him started to sink him deeper into its pool, allowing him to swim among its loose grains and billowing turf. The closer it got, the more the lamp light started to dim at its presence. The white burn started to turn a deep blue as if the figure called for it, so that what light remained was only beneficial and not jarring.

And before he knew it, he was staring at its eyes. Its face staring back at him, those lined eyes glaring upon him, burning through him, and expanding like a spacious plane of existence. Wide and uncompromising, thick against reality, allowing its black to become unfathomable.

The nervousness of Emery almost begged him to speak, to give a break of tension while he stared into this black space before him.

“Katsina…” he said.

A raucous laughter broke from the black space.

Emery screamed, he screamed so loud that it caused a shaking so bad it caused the horse to kick up, neighing and braying wildly. Fear had come for it, forcing the hitch to break from the ground. Then it dashed off into the night. The distant tribesmen had seen the horse dashing off in the southeast, neighing an exhortation and cantering wildling along the indigo interspace. They had seen the other Kolb brother had been gone hours ago and now that the dusk had turned to midnight by the passing hours, it was likely he wouldn’t see his brother this night.

Ellsworth had not heard the screams of his brother and after taking the return route back to the South Rim after a day and a half, with routine stops for water and nighttime camp rests, they were able to make it by the late afternoon and take the couple’s money and see them off and close the store for the remainder of the day.

“Where are you Emery?” he said.

After 6 p.m. he sat at the counter waiting for his brother’s horse to ride on up to the building, but he wasn’t awarded such a satisfaction. If anything, there was another visit that came to him just before he was to close up for the night and go to sleep when one of the tribesmen came to the door. They never came up to the South Rim. He almost questioned if this was legal, but he wasn’t hesitant in answering the door.

“It’s late…”

“This is about your brother,” the tribesman said.

“Where is he?” Ellsworth said.

He looked around through the night of the Arizona dusk but saw nothing in the evening.

“He was taken,” the tribesman said.

His wildering words were cloudy, but it was the best he could muster at this moment.

“Taken?”

“By Katsina, by the Skeleton Man, by the Tithu devil.”

A shudder went through Ellsworth’s body that came from the bottom of his heels and slithered up to the back of his spine with the quickness of lightning and from the tribesman’s point of view, he’d seen Ellsworth’s shoulders lurch up and his eyebrows furrow in dreadful concern. He’d turned cold. He wanted to go out there to search for his brother, but even the Canyons were not safe spaces to search at night or else the animals that lurked the evening would come for the white man and leave him to decay to the following day. His head lowered. He looked around the ground trying to think. He had to think this all over. Then he thought about it.

“Can you and your men search for him?”

The savage shook his head. The tribes were not going to go about searching for the white man when the Hopi devil had him. They were not the Hopi people; they would be interlopers and by their own want would fall victim to the Katsina just as Emery Kolb had.

“No,” the tribesman said. “We will do it. But we cannot do it tonight.”

“Then I’ll do it in the morning,” Ellsworth said.

That’s when Ellsworth saw it for once. It was the fear in the tribesman’s eyes, the same he saw in the Verkamps’ eyes when they spoke of the idol. A part of him thought it was the sadness of leaving the South Rim. But it wasn’t that at all, was it? The Verkamps were terrified and they were forced to pass the curse upon the Kolbs.

It was hours after the tribesman fled on his horse, after promising he’d send a cavalry out to the shop to assist in searching for Emery Kolb, when Ellsworth heard clanging downstairs. It sounded like pots and pans banging against one another. The sound of hollow metal bashing in war. The noise was loud enough to reach on up and wake him up. When he crawled out of bed, he did so with no intent to grab the pistol downstairs. The damn thing wasn’t even on his mind. He knew where it was—just where he’d put it prior to getting sleep—but when he took the descent of the stairs to the sunless entrance of the shop, only lit by the distant moonlight, he heard the noise getting louder, only thig time it was swelled by the grunts of an animal. He checked the door to see if he was sure he’d locked it. While it was closed, it was unlocked.

“I know I locked it,” he said He cursed himself over and over again, tracing his steps before taking off to bed. He always locked the door.

He curved over to the counter where he put the gun, just underneath the cash register. He pulled it from its cubbyhole. It was heavy in his hands meaning that the chamber in the gun was fat and filled, feeling efficacious in his hand.

He crept further to the noise. What if it was a bear? He didn’t know if bears made their way out here in the middle of the canyons. What if it was a wolf? He was sure wolves were a part of the chasm, but he’d at least shut the door. He was sure of it. While it may have been unlocked right here and right now, wolves didn’t dare barge into homes and vocations like this. He marched to the kitchen where the noises grew and grew. His heart paced and his arms and neck pricked with goosepimples. His breathing grew heavy. Even his tongue felt heavy against the roof of his mouth before ever seeing it in the kitchen.

It was in the shape of Emery.

He called for his brother and when he turned around, the damn thing’s eyes were not the eyes of a man who belonged to God. They were wild and burned with a turquoise that reminded him of a myth or harrowing legend that lived in the sea.

“E-E-Emery?” Ellsworth gasped.

His eyes were upon him. Feral, unbroken eyes that called against hunger and against safety and begged for death. Ellsworth called for his brother once again. Still the hulking image beneath the gloom of the kitchen remained.

“Flesh,” Emery said. His voice finally breaking in a thunderous bellow. “Flesh gnarled and blood consumed, provender of the innocent, soul gorged to the damned.”

“Who are you?” he said. “You aren’t my brother.”

The body stepped forward.

In its left was a body and a fisting of cloth wrapped in his tight grip. In it was Fred Harvey’s lifeless slab, being dragged forward by Emery’s possessed body. When he moved a foot forward, Harvey’s head rolled backwards, looking at Ellsworth, eye-to-eye, before rolling off his neck to the other end of the kitchen.

Ellsworth shrieked, almost becoming so afraid that he dropped the pistol, but it hung at his grip when he ran off, running to the front of the building to the doorway that led to the entrance. When he reached, he drew the door open and was greeted by the tribesmen outside, all who were with their horses, armed with their bows and arrows and torchlights.

“My brother!”

“He’s been possessed!” the shaman said.

“B-b-by what?”

“The demon.”

“How do I get right of him?” Ellsworth said. He’d turned to look back at the inside of the building, looking at the image in the windows looking back upon them all like a fierce creature snarling at its feed, sniffing at their beating hearts, their warm coursing blood, and their succulent salted flesh.

“You have to kill it on your own,” said the shaman. “This is your brother.”

Ellsworth looked back at the Shaman, whose eyes were as plain and matter-of-factly. He wasn’t just serious about this; he was willing to sacrifice for this. He just stared at the white man who complained about having to kill his own flesh and blood. The only family he had left in this empty world. But none of them would budge.

Ellsworth walked to the door, ever so cautiously, his steps creaking against the wood of the stairs. It seemed to be the first time he heard such a cacophonous noise. At the top of the stairs he opened the door as the shell that was once his own flesh and blood looked out the window at that natives. He started to stutter Emery’s name. But it was too hard to think what he had to do next.

1976, the year of our lord and the day that the man named Emery Kolb was said to have passed away. His grandchildren and great grandchildren take to his home. His grandson and caretaker of the Kolb Photography building in the South Rim of the Grand Canyon took his wife and their children to help clean up Grandpa Em’s home. This was his second home, the one away from the photography studio in Arizona. His wife, Beth, took one of their sons to the attic and he took Charlie to the boathouse.

“Want so see Grandpa’s boat?”

Charlie, the ever-ecstatic child, nodded his head.

He knew as much as he could remember from spending time with his grandpa. He would come out to Gilbert Arizona and in his feebled state, the old man would take him out to Val Vista Lakes and tell him old stories of the wild west when he was as young as he was now. One day, he’d tell his kids these stories. That was what he told himself.

Cleaning took them less than an hour to box up all the small objects of the boathouse, little inconsequential trinkets the old man had lying around. As far as Howard Kolb was certain of it, he could fetch a pretty penny for most of these little toys. Pieces of gold, boxes of wood-carved men and figurines, and old newspapers and documents. But this wasn’t everything. While Howard and Charlie had cleaned up the shelves and wiped them down and cleared the wood of any dust particles, he had Charlie help him with the tarp on grandpa’s canoe. It was a red-painted, recreated canoe that had a sour smell and a probably hadn’t been cleaned up since Em got sick. The old man had a heavy heart, a broken heart some would say, and all the stress of a long life was what killed a man who’d some would say lived free.

But the moment he and Charlie took off that tarp, that was when they saw it, its pale long face at the canoe staring back at them with its blackened eye sockets piercing back at them a void of death. Surrounding this skeleton were rags of clothes. This was a corpse. A boned cadaver. Howard was frozen, but only for a second. Then he heard his son whimper.

“Close your eyes, Charlie!” he said.

Quickly he rushed his son out of the boat house and told him to get to his mother. When his boy was gone, he went back and looked at this haunting find. Slowly his hands moved against the clothing of this bag of bones. He ran his hands up to the shirt where he saw a note hanging out the breast pocket. He pulled it out. It was a note written by Emery Kolb. He unfolded the note and inside was a polaroid of a picture taken of a picture that read: Take a picture, it’ll last longer. The picture was of Emery and Ellsworth Kolb at the South Rim.

He crumpled the polaroid and looked at the white note. In black ink it read:

To those who have to witness this, I am sorry.

This is my brother Ellsworth Kolb.

He was a victim of a demonic possession.

I have placed precious trifles and bibelots in my boathouse.

In order to prevent the evil from getting back out, please do not remove any of them or else you will unleash a nihilistic god that had come after us.

Don’t let my brother’s death and my fight with living with this agony, this weight be in vain.

“What the hell?” Howard said in a breathtaking gasp.

Then he heard a soft footstep behind him. He turned, thinking it was Charlie, the damn kid never listened when he was supposed to, but when he turned, with the words: “Charles, I want you to—”

And he saw it. It was black. It was the shape of a naked man, oozing a black fluid with red veins running throughout its anthropoid body. Standing over him it breathed with an animalistic intensity before striking Howard over and over again until blood splattered from his skull on to the face of the skeleton.