Skinwalkers (15 page)

“
Sweet Jesus
,“ Phillips said. Wilson and the bounty hunter traded uneasy glances.

Sanchez looked down to see he’d smoked the cigarette so quickly it now was a mere bud in his fingers. The men waited as he rolled a fresh one. “We were camped this side of Mesilla Valley when the monsters attacked. It was right before dawn.
Or when dawn should have been
. I awoke to the sound of barking and gunfire … and screams.“

Sanchez paused as tears began to leak from his eyes. After several failed attempts where the words caught in his throat, he resumed his tale.

“I got out of the rack just in time to see three of them tear the
sarge’s
arms and legs right off his body. I didn’t even try to shoot. I just ran. Took out for the horses.“

Sanchez lifted the cigarette to his lips to see it trembling in his hand. He grabbed his wrist, steadying himself, and then took a puff.

“I wasn’t alone. Even on horseback they picked many of us off. We made it out of the fog and prayed for the sun to rise. But it never did better than twilight no matter how long or how far we rode. We had a curse on us for what we done to that village, and it wasn’t about to let up to allow for daylight.

“Just before we hit town, they caught up to us for a bit and one of those things almost ended me, too.“

Sanchez dropped into a sitting position and ground the smoking cigarette butt out on the floor. “The rest you know.“

The bounty hunter poured the last of the moonshine over his shoulder as he considered the private’s words. He grimaced. “That still doesn’t explain shit.“

“They’re hell spawn!“ Phillips said. “Demons from the lake of fire!“

“Dear boy,“ Farnsworth said as he rolled his eyes, “please, spare us your sermons of fire and brimstone.“

“The preacher is more right than you know.“

The men turned to face Little Joe.

“What are you talking about?“ The bounty hunter asked. “Do you know what the fuck is going on? What those things are?“

Little Joe nodded. “They are
chindi
…
skinwalkers
.“

T
he copper-skinned boy sat cradling his knees in the corner of his home, a decrepit wooden shed. The shed had no furniture and was empty save for a bed of straw and a bucket brimming with dung.

How long had he been sitting there? The boy did not know. It could have been minutes, it could have been days. When the door to the shed opened to reveal Garrett holding a lantern, the boy showed no surprise. The boy had come to accept this happening as inevitable and constant as the evening tide. Since saving him from starvation in the wild, Garrett had become the boy’s sun, moon, and god—the thing around which his times of darkness in the shed revolved.

“Joe,“ Garrett beckoned.

Joe stood up and wiped his dirty, matted hair out of his eyes, letting them adjust to the lantern light. Garrett moved out of the doorway to allow Joe passage. Joe joined Garrett outside under the night sky and then followed him as they approached a shoddily constructed wooden pen. The pen housed a dog which began barking furiously at their approach. Joe saw it was a mongrel even more starved than he was.
How long had Garrett kept them both in their pens?
Joe wondered.
How long had Garrett been slowly cutting back their food until they were eating nothing at all? How long had Garrett been preparing them?

They reached the pen’s gate and halted. The dog was now in a berserker rage. Joe and Garrett stood staring at each other for several seconds without a word passing between them. Then Garrett lowered the lantern to the ground, opened the gate, and shoved Joe inside.

The dog was upon him within seconds. Joe screamed as the dog closed its jaws over his face. The starved mongrel began shaking its head from-side-to-side, Joe’s face held tight within its fanged mouth. Joe felt his arms close around the base of the dog’s skull. In desperation he rolled his body, forcing the dog’s torso in one direction and its head in another. There was a loud snap, like a tree branch breaking under the weight of snow. The dog yelped and then fell still.

Joe rose to his knees. He stared at the dead dog, blood pouring from the bite marks on his face.

I have killed you, my brother. For our white father’s love, I have killed you!

The gate opened to reveal Garrett’s silhouette surrounded by a corona of lantern light. Joe looked at Garrett, licked the blood off his lips, and screamed.

“W
hat the hell are you talking about, Little Joe?“ Wilson asked. “Some kind of Indian hoodoo bullshit?“

“It is not bullshit,“ Little Joe said. “Have you not seen Coyote’s medicine with your own eyes?
 
He has given them the bone-sickness. He has taken their souls and twisted them so they are
skinwalkers
. And now they walk the earth in his image.“

Farnsworth rose to his feet. “I grow weary of this heathen gibberish. Surely you are in agreement, Reverend?“

Phillips shook his head. “I don’t know what to believe anymore,“ Farnsworth exhaled in disgust. He crossed the room and then sat in the corner farthest from the group.

“Who is this Coyote you speak of?“ the bounty hunter asked. “Is he really the devil?“

Little Joe nodded. “He was once a Dine
yenaldooshi
, what you would call a Navajo witch. But that was long ago. Through the decades he has grown in power, becoming less a man and more
chindi
with every woman he rapes and every child he sacrifices.

“Some of the Dine tribes have tolerated his existence out of both greed and fear. Greed for the spoils his medicine brought to them in battle. Fear of what he would do to whoever dared oppose him.“

“Outside of town, we seen a blind old Navajo,“ the bounty hunter said. “
Hell,
old’s
not the word.
This sonofabitch was fucking ancient. He seemed …
wrong
. You could feel the bad coming off of him like heat from a cook stove.“

Little Joe nodded. “Coyote.“

The bounty hunter paused, considering. “Has this ever happened before? Have the
skinwalkers
ever attacked on this scale?“

“No,“ Little Joe said. “Until tonight, no one would have said there were this many.
Skinwalkers
and their dark medicine are considered evil by the people. They must live in secret and seclusion. But a group of
skinwalkers
this large would never have been able to do that. While Coyote cannot be found unless he wishes for it to be so, even his medicine could not have kept such a large group hidden.“

“Which means,“ the bounty hunter said, “these
ain’t
your normal
skinwalkers
, and something else entirely has happened.“

The bounty hunter turned to Sanchez. “Private, that village—“

Sanchez hung his head.

“You said there were women and children,“ the bounty hunter said. “You said the men were gone?“

“There were old men,“ Sanchez said, his words coming slowly. “One attacked me. I shot him, but he just kept coming—“

“What about their braves? Their warriors? Did you ever find them?“

Sanchez looked up at the bounty hunter. “No. I told you, we were attacked—“

“By a company-sized pack of
skinwalkers
, yeah, I heard you.“

“What are you getting at, stranger?“ Wilson asked.

Farnsworth clanked back to his seat among the group. His face had gone white and his eyes held the light of dawning realization. “
When we saw the troll, uh, Coyote, he was with a Navajo war party.
It would’ve been around the same time the private said they were butchering the Navajo village.“

“If those Indians came home to find their women and children murdered …“ Wilson began.

“They would’ve been shit-storm mad,“ the bounty hunter finished, “and likely so crazy and ate up with hate they would’ve done anything to get revenge.“

“Even sell their souls to the devil,“ Phillips said. He put his face in his hands and began to pray. But the reverend’s supplications faltered as shrill howls began to rise into the night sky outside the church.

From
Myths and Monsters of America
, by Fred Newton…

Lycanthropy, or Werewolf Disorder, is the term for a genetic mutation that causes hair to grow all over all over one’s body. The term Lycanthropy comes from the combined Greek
lykoi
, meaning “wolf,“ and
anthropos
, meaning “man.“ The gene causing this disorder is passed through the X chromosome and may lay dormant for years.

Its psychological counterpart, clinical lycanthropy, is a neurosis resulting from the delusional belief held by the affected person that they are, or have in the past, transformed into a wolf. Many of history’s infamous mass murders and serial killers, such as Vlad
Tepes
Dracula and Jack the Ripper, are thought to have suffered from clinical lycanthropy.

In folklore, lycanthropy is the magical power of a human being to undergo transformation into a wolf or other animal—generally the most dominant predator of the region. The legend is consistently found in various forms across the globe.

The version of the werewolf best known to modern society is the one portrayed in film and television
—
that of the tragic figure, typically a man, cursed to become a monster when the full moon rises. This is in contrast to the legends of Eastern Europe regarding witchcraft in which this particular manifestation of the myth is rooted. Typically in such lore, a person would, by choice, don the pelt of a wolf in order to physically become the animal in question, the purpose for doing so being to enact revenge or partake in evil for evil’s sake.

In Scandinavia, tales of Viking berserkers became the basis for werewolf myths. Berserkers were savage warriors said to take on the superior strength, speed, and ferocity of a wild animal by wearing its hide. Before battle, these fighters would work themselves into a frenzy, even cutting themselves before enemies to show their immunity to pain. With the use of such demonstrative intimidation tactics, it is easy to understand how the superstitious peoples of the day would have come to associate berserkers with shape-shifting and other forms of black magic.

The American offshoot of the werewolf myth is the skin-walker legend found in the native tribes of the United States. While tales of skin-walkers exist in numerous forms among many Native American cultures, the most sensationalized occurrence of the myth comes from the Navajo of America’s southwest.

Relatively little is documented about the Navajo skin-walkers as the topic is taboo among the Dine, or as the Navajo are also called, the People. However, what follows are the facts as generally accepted.

A skin-walker, or
yenaldooshi
—often called a witch by outsiders—possess the supernatural talent to change shape into a
chindi
, a type of demonic spirit typically endowed with animal characteristics, the most infamous being the form of a coyote. In this
chindi
shape, the skin-walker would prowl at night wreaking havoc and death. Once again, this holds true to the werewolf myth as coyotes were the predominant predators of the region, and often a nuisance to the Navajo of the Old West.

The skin-walker supposedly gains his or her ability to transform into a
chindi
by murdering a close relative. The skin-walker is also feared for his or her ability to perform black magic, or “bad medicine,“ through the use of bone sickness. By bringing a person into contact with corpse powder made from human cadavers, or shooting a bone pellet from likewise origin into a person’s body, the skin-walker is said to be able to inflict illness and ultimately death upon victims of his or her choosing.