Thunderhead

“I’m sorry to bring this up again,” Nora said, “but if you know anything about who might have killed our horses, I’d like to hear it. It’s possible our activities might have offended someone.”

“Your activities.” The man blew a cloud of smoke into the still twilight. “You still haven’t told me about those.”

Nora thought for a moment. It seemed that information was the price of his assistance. Of course, there was no guarantee he could help them. And yet it was critical they find out who was behind the killings. “What I’m about to say is confidential,” she said slowly. “Can I count on your discretion?”

“You mean, am I going to tell anyone? Not if you don’t want me to.” He flicked the cigarette butt into the fire and began rolling another. “I have many addictions,” he said, nodding at the cigarette. “That’s another reason I come out here.”

Nora looked at him. “We’re excavating an Anasazi cliff dwelling.”

It was as if Beiyoodzin’s movements were suddenly, completely arrested, his hand freezing in the act of twisting the cigarette ends. Then he was in motion again. The pause was brief but striking. He lit the cigarette and sat back again, saying nothing.

“It’s a very important city,” Nora continued. “It contains priceless, unique artifacts. It would be a huge tragedy if it were looted. We’re afraid that these people might want to drive us away so they can plunder the site.”

“Plunder the site,” he repeated. “And you will remove these artifacts? Take them to a museum?”

“No,” said Nora. “For now, we’re going to leave everything as is.”

Beiyoodzin continued to smoke the cigarette, but his movements had become studied and deliberate, and his eyes were opaque. “We never go into Chilbah Valley,” he said slowly.

“Why not?”

Beiyoodzin held the cigarette in front of his face, the smoke trickling between his fingers. He looked at Nora through veiled eyes. “How were the horses killed?” he asked.

“They were sliced open,” she replied. “Their guts pulled out and arranged in spirals. Sticks tipped with feathers were shoved into their eyes. And pieces of skin had been cut off.”

The effect of this on Beiyoodzin was even more pronounced. He became agitated, quickly dropping the cigarette into the fire and smoothing a hand across his forehead. “Skin cut off ? Where?”

“In two places on the breast and lower belly, and on the forehead.”

The old man said nothing, but Nora could see his hand was shaking, and it frightened her.

“You shouldn’t be in there,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “You should get out immediately.”

“Why?” Nora asked.

“It’s very dangerous.” He hesitated a moment. “There are stories among the Nankoweap about that valley, and that other valley . . . the valley beyond. You might laugh at me, because most white people don’t believe in such things. But what happened to your horses is a kind of witchcraft. It’s a terrible evil. What you’re doing, digging in that city, is going to kill you if you don’t get out, right now. Especially now that . . . they’ve found you.”

“They?” Smithback asked. “Who’s ‘they’?”

Beiyoodzin’s voice dropped. “The spotted-clay witches. The skinwalkers. The wolfskin runners.”

In the darkness, Nora’s blood went cold.

Beside her, Smithback stirred. “I’m sorry,” he spoke up. “You said witches?”

There was a faint tone in his voice that the Indian picked up. He gazed at the writer, his face indistinct in the growing darkness. “Do you believe in evil?”

“Of course.”

“No normal Nankoweap person would kill a horse: to us, horses are sacred. I don’t know what you call your evil people, but we call ours skinwalkers, wolfskin runners. They have many names, and many forms. They are completely outside our society, but they take what is good in our religion and turn it upside down. Whatever you may think, Nankoweap wolfskin runners exist. And they are drawn to Chilbah. Because the city was a place of sorcery, cruelty, witchcraft, sickness, and death.”

But Nora barely heard this. Wolfskin runners. Her mind fled back to the shadow- knitted ranch house: the dark matted form that had towered over her, the furred thing that had kept pace with her truck along the rutted dirt road.

“I don’t doubt what you say,” Smithback replied. “Over the last couple of years, I’ve seen some pretty strange things myself. But where do these skinwalkers come from?”

Beiyoodzin fell silent, arms propped on his knees, dark hands clasped. He rolled another cigarette, then turned his gaze toward the ground and fell motionless. The silence grew as the minutes passed. Nora could hear the faint cropping sounds of the horse grazing in the draw. Then, eyes still fixed on the ground, cigarette held loosely between two fingers, Beiyoodzin spoke again.

“To become a witch, you have to kill someone you love. Someone close, brother or sister, mother or father. You kill them, to get the power. Then, when that person is buried, you secretly dig the body up.” He lit the cigarette. “Then you turn the life force of that person to evil.”

“How?” Smithback whispered.

“When life is created, Wind, liehei, the life force, enters the body. Where the Wind enters the body, it leaves a little eddy, like a ripple in water. It leaves these marks on the tips of the fingers, toes, the back of the head. The witch cuts these off the corpse. They dry them, grind them up, make a kind of powder. And they drill out the skull behind and make a disk, for throwing spells. If it is a murdered sister, the witch has sex with the dead body. He uses the fluids to make another powder. It’s called Alchi’bin lehh tsal. Incest corpse powder.”

“Good God,” Smithback groaned.

“You go to a remote spot at night. You strip off your clothes. You cover your body with spots of white clay, and wear the jewelry buried with the dead, the silver and turquoise. You place wolfskins or coyoteskins on either side of you. Then you say certain lines of the Night Wind Chant backwards. One of those skins will leap off the ground and stick to you. And then you have the power.”

“What is this power?” Nora asked.

Beiyoodzin lit the cigarette. The repeated hoot of an owl echoed mournfully through the endless canyons.

“Our people believe you get the power to move at night, like the wind, but without sound. You can become invisible. You learn powerful spells, spells to witch people from a distance. And with the corpse powder, you can kill. Oh, can you kill.”

“Kill?” Smithback asked. “Witch people? How, exactly?”

“If a skinwalker can get something from their victim’s body—spit, hair, a sweaty piece of clothing—they place it in the mouth of a corpse. With that, they can cast a spell on the person. Or on his horse, his sheep, his house, his belongings. They can break his tools, make his machines refuse to operate. They can make his wife fall sick, kill his dogs or children.”

He lapsed into silence. The owl hooted again, closer now.

“Witch people from a distance,” Smithback repeated. “Move at night, without sound.” He grunted, shook his head.

Beiyoodzin glanced at the writer briefly, his eyes luminous in the gathering darkness, then looked away again.

“Let me tell you a story,” Beiyoodzin said, after a moment’s hesitation. “Something that happened to me many years ago, when I was a boy. It’s a story I haven’t told for a long, long time.”

A hot red ember flashed out of the dark, and Beiyoodzin’s face was briefly lit crimson as he drew on the cigarette.

“It was summer,” he went on. “I was helping my grandfather bring some sheep up to Escalante. It was a two-day trip, so we brought the horse and wagon. We stopped for the night at a place called Shadow Rock. Built a brush corral for the sheep, turned the horse out to graze, went to sleep. Around midnight, I woke up suddenly. It was pitch black: no moon, no stars. There was no noise. Something was wrong. I called out to my grandfather. Nothing. So I sat up, tossed twigs into the coals. As they flared up I caught a glimpse of him.”

Beiyoodzin took a long, careful drag on the cigarette. “He was lying on his back, eyes gone. His fingertips