Seventeen Poles

The phone played the Candy Man by Sammy Davis Jr. It was Dave.

He said, “Dude, it’s an ounce of Black Bat Shrooms. Let’s throw a Halloween boonies party for the gang. We’ll get a keg and some good weed. It will be like the old days. We can go to Seventeen Poles. No one will bother us there.”

Halloween, late in the afternoon, thirteen of us headed out to Seventeen Poles. We were the unholy coven. We went by the seventeenth pole to the party place and set up. We had a bonfire and chairs. One of the trucks had a sound system that you could talk to and ask to play songs. We set it up on a real rock station.

We all took a couple of the mushrooms. They were Black Bat Shrooms because on their cap was a black bat.

Deb and Jan were dancing. Everyone else had a beer and was talking around the fire. There must have been three doobers being passed around. It was fun in the Saguaro Forest in the desert outside of Tucson. As the shrooms took effect, the strangeness of fifteen-foot-tall cactus everywhere was just eerie.

I said, “I’ll take the doober.”

I took a big hit, and there was an earthquake. The ground shook. There was a great thud as one of the multi-ton giant cactus fell.

“Look out,” Frank said.

He grabbed me and pulled me out of the path of a falling cactus.

“Thanks,” I said, as it bashed the ground with a great blam.

Then the shaking stopped, and everything went back to the way it was. The giants were standing.

I said, “Woe, that was strange.”

Frank said, “No what, I thought there was an earthquake.”

I said, “So did I.”

Everybody was looking at a strange column of smoke. We went to the smoke under a late afternoon sky to see it.

“What the hell,” I said.

There seems to be a chasm into the ground, but nothing would pass through the opening. Rocks bounced off, yet a column of smoke was coming out. Curious, but we soon got thirsty and went back for a beer. As we gathered at the beer keg to refill our cups, there was an ungodly cry from the area of the strange pit. It sent a chill through my spine. Kelly grabbed me and would not let go. We backed to the fire as its light was barely chasing away the dark.

Frank said, “There! Something moved behind that saguaro.”

Everyone strained to see, but there was nothing.

A couple of doobers were lit and passed around. After about a half-hour, we heard a great ripping and a huge saguaro arm slammed into the firelight.

Kelly screamed, and we got as close to the fire as we could.

“Oh my god,” Frank said. “I can hear it moving through the creosote. It’s mammoth.”

In the starlight, I thought I saw a shape. It reared its head and let out an unearthly cry. It was afraid of the fire, and that pissed it off that it couldn’t get us.

“Did you see that,” I said?

Kelly would not let go. The pounding of small feet came from the darkness. You could see eyes glowing in the firelight. Suddenly a band of seven Coyotes and three Javalina raced by. Kelly jumped and cried out.

I said, “Something scared the hell out of them. Coyotes and Javalina don’t run together.”

I was terrified to step out of the firelight. I threw on more wood.

We heard a Cougar roar. There was a loud smack, and the Cougar screamed as it hit something hard. The next sound was terrifying. I would describe it as the sound of the Cougar roaring as its head was ripped off. Then there was the sound of crunching bone as the thing ate the Cougar’s body. When it finished, it let out an ungodly cry. I shivered in fear.

Then the bloody Cougar’s head landed at the edge of the firelight. The girls screamed.

Then I heard something that could only be described as an evil laugh.

Someone said, “Holy Mother of God. What do we do?”

Frank said, “It seems afraid of the fire. We keep it stoked all night if we have to.”

I said, “Then what? It ate a Cougar!”

Then there was another earthquake, and there was a glow from the crack. Then a sound only made by the devil himself struck fear into my heart, and the creature called back. I shivered. It moved back into the pit, and the glow went away as the pit sealed back up. Then there was nothing.

Frank said, “It’s gone.”

Kelly said, “How do you know?”

I said, “You can feel it’s gone.”

Jan said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“That’s fine with me,” said Frank.

So we left, and we never did Black Bat shrooms again.