Event

NINE

Fort Platt was built in 1857 and served as a company-sized staging area for the U.S. Army cavalry patrols aimed at the raiding Apache bands led by Cochise and Geronimo.

The old fort was abandoned after a massacre in 1863 before the end of the Civil War when sixty-seven soldiers lost their lives in one of the Apaches' most daring and audacious strikes. The fort had been reduced to its present degraded state by the never-ending and relentless winds and sudden thunderstorms of the American Southwest. The eroded adobe walls whispered ghostly songs as these winds whipped through the low, broken foundations. The once manicured parade ground was now a dust bowl giving shelter to creatures such as Gila monsters and rattlesnakes.

Now, over a century later, the fort was occupied once again by modern nomads, visitors from Los Angeles.

A beer bottle barely missed Jessie's head. He had ducked at the last possible moment when he saw the gleam of the bottle in the light of the huge bonfire they had built. It hit the old adobe foundation and shattered, spraying beer and glass on the man it had narrowly missed.

"Hey, you son of a bitch!" he cried. "You nearly took my head off with that one."

"What are you doing over there, asshole? You too good to party with us or what?" a bearded giant of a man asked from where he was lying.

The others were around the fire leaning next to their bikes and drinking. The few girls they had on the trip were either on laps or lying beside them. Jessie wondered why he was on this trip in the first place. He didn't really like the guys he rode with on these long weekend trips, but found he just couldn't say no to that little bit of excitement that came into his life once a month. At the moment, what he called the biker wannabes were silhouetted, illuminated in a flickering light cast by the blazing fire.

Jessie walked over to the fire and knelt and held his hands out to the open flame and rubbed them together. "I was just thinking how weird this place is," he said, looking at the old adobe walls. "Man, think of it, the men that used to ride out of here after the Apaches must have been some bad motherfuckers."

The big man looked at Jesse as he twisted the cap off another beer. "Not as bad as this motherfucker right here," he boasted, tapping the fresh beer on his sleeveless Levi's jacket and sloshing beer all over himself and the man lying next to him.

Jesse just shook his head. Out of the fifteen people around the fire, he hated talking to Frank the most. Trying to exchange words with him about the history of anything was like convincing a dog not to be a dog. He felt the IQ points draining from his head every time he tried.

"I think I know what you mean, dude," one of the girls spoke up. She was one of the few chicks they had picked up in Phoenix. "I've lived in Arizona all my life and there's some pretty weird shit out here."

"Yeah, what would you know about weird?" Frank bellowed, kicking the girl's leg.

"I'm here with the likes of you, aren't I?" she said, slapping his large boot away. Then the young girl continued with her story. "I mean weird with the Indians and things like that. People say the desert's haunted. My dad said there were a lot of soldiers and settlers killed right here on this spot, and if you listen at night, when everything is quiet and still, you can hear them screaming." She lowered her voice in a conspiratorial tone. "And there's bodies buried right below us." She patted the ground. "So there!" she said as she turned toward Frank. "Besides, what would a bunch of jerks from L.A. know about it anyway?"

"Why do they say there are ghosts here?" Jessie asked, looking around into the darkness.

The girl was just grateful someone was paying attention to her, so she sat up and joined him in the heat thrown by the fire, squatting beside him. She looked the man over and liked what she saw.

"I mean, like this place we're camped in, the army used to have troops here, and my daddy said at night you can hear their horses cry and the men walking guard. While he was camped nearby one night in the seventies, he and his friends heard several horses with men whooping and hollering as they rode by, only according to my dad, there was no one there."

The man looked around him into the night again. "Really?"

"Uh-huh, that's what my daddy said."

"Did your daddy also tell you you're a fucking idiot?" asked Frank, standing up so quickly he let the girl who had been dozing with her head on his lap slide off and hit the ground.

"Knock it off, Frank, will ya?" whined the girl, rubbing her head.

"You're swallowing this shit, Jessie? Are any of you buyin' this crap?" Frank asked, walking away from the old adobe ruins while undoing his pants.

"I hope a ghost gets that asshole," the girl whispered.

"We couldn't be that lucky," Jessie mumbled, and they both laughed.

As Frank stumbled into the darkness, he looked up at the stars, then at the ground. He was regretting this trip. It wasn't turning out the way it was supposed to. One more day and then it was back to that damn Chevy dealership in Pasadena. Back to oil changes, lube jobs, and blow jobs from that ugly-ass girlfriend of his. Bike runs were supposed to be full of hell-raisin' and chick-banging. Shit, all they had so far on this ride was six dumb whores from a bar in Phoenix, warm beer, and a lot of fucking boredom.

He stopped and finished unbuttoning his pants outside of the firelight. Shit, you can't find anything exciting anymore in this country, he thought. Frank was concentrating on not pissing on his new engineer's boots when in the moonlight he saw the ground thirty feet in front of him erupt into the still night air. The big man was startled, his heart pounded hard in his chest, then the ground settled and became still once again. He squinted into the night, stopped paying attention, and pissed on his new boots anyway.

"You guys quit fucking around," he shouted, "or I'll stomp your asses when you come back in," he called into the darkness.

He quickly pulled himself back into his pants and buttoned up. He started walking backward, first looking toward the camp, then at the area where the ground had just done that funny dance. He had to calm himself down before he returned to the fire so he took a deep breath.

The hard-packed sand and dirt did it again, but now it was about five feet closer. He froze with his eyes wider than a moment before. This time the sand and dirt didn't settle but rushed toward him like a bow wave when a boat slices through water. The dirt being tossed to the side was thrown ten and fifteen feet in the air. He could feel the tearing of the earth through his now entirely wet boots. He screamed, then turned and ran.

The dirt eruption then disappeared as fast as it had exploded.

He had almost made it back to the ring of firelight when the ground fell out from underneath his stomping feet. He frantically grabbed for the edge but missed, tearing most of his fingernails down to the quick. He hit bottom with a bone-crunching thump. He hissed in pain, then took a deep breath and started to shout for one of the others around the fire to help, but was suddenly grasped around the waist as two giant claws cut deep into his midsection, cutting off the scream before it could form. His brain continued to function even as he was squeezed like a tube of toothpaste and his entrails forced out upon the ground amid the sounds of snapping and breaking ribs.

The men and women around the fire had ignored Frank's call for someone to knock it off and had gone on talking and making out.

"Anyway, the desert gives me the creeps most times, unless I'm with someone like you who'll protect me," the girl said, inching closer to Jessie.

Jessie was about to comment when a large object hit the bonfire and exploded, tossing flames, sparks, and burning embers into the star-filled night sky. The object hit with enough force to throw burning wood on those lying idly by their bikes, and shouts and screams filled the night air as people jumped up and started brushing burning embers from themselves and each other.

It was the girl speaking with Jessie who saw it first. The mass that had been thrown into the fire was the gutted torso of Frank. The beard and long hair had already sizzled down to nothing, and the eyes had exploded from their sockets and were hanging, one on the right side of his head, the other on his left cheek. The blond girl started screaming the screams only professionals made in the movies.

The ground around the old fort started to shake and shimmer in the remaining light cast by the now dying fire.

Faster than they were able to follow, dirt around the adobe walls started to part and cave in on itself. It was like a child drawing a large circle with a stick and was scratching faster and faster, digging a deeper trench with every rotation. It looked and felt as though the flying dirt and sand were encircling them. Finally they reacted and started running for their bikes.

Jessie pushed the girl away from the fire, trying to guide her toward the bikes, but she stumbled and fell, then rolled the wrong way. That was when her screams turned from terror to real agony as she rolled into what remained of the fire.

"God!" Jessie shouted. "Help me, somebody!" But the rest were busy running or getting on their bikes.

One biker had his Harley-Davidson quickly started and was moving toward a break in the adobe wall, but his front wheel caught in the depression caused by the swirling sand and he went flying over the handlebars.

Kneeling on hands and knees beside the girl, Jessie started to throw sand on her in an attempt to smother the fire. The others watched their companion who was thrown from his bike beyond the wall. The long-haired man was just starting to rise when the dirt parted about ten feet to his right and something unseen rushed toward him. The others screamed for him to run, but he was busy rubbing his knee and cursing. He was suddenly speared by something and pulled down. He was yanked so hard the others heard his back snap. His legs and arms were jolted into the air as his entire body disappeared into the earth. Then the terrifying tide of sand and soil rushed at those who had watched their friend's death in horror, exploding the lowest portion of the adobe wall upward as if dynamite had been placed under it.

Jessie had managed to put out the flames that had engulfed the girl, missing the horrible spectacle outside the adobe walls. She now lay on the ground moaning in shock and pain, burned the entire length of her once young body. Her long blond curls were burned away and she was left with what looked like burned and charred plastic against her scalp. He grimaced as she hissed and looked up at him. He mouthed the word sorry, then ran for his bike. He just wasn't brave enough to endure the horror that was exploding around him.

Without warning, the fire and the girl vanished. The only trace that there had been a fire was the line of smoke and a few floating embers rising out of a large rip in the earth. They were now, except for the setting moon, thrown into total darkness.

Jessie heard the other men and women screaming as they were pulled under the surface. What was happening? Caves? Mine shafts? That must be it, the ground was caving in. Jessie thought for a second about the ghosts of old, long-dead soldiers, but then the real cause of the terror of that night showed itself for the first time. It rose in front of him. Dirt, rocks, and desert grass slid from its armored back as it was framed perfectly in the yellowish glow of the low moon.

Jessie was sitting slack-jawed on his bike, his mind unable to comprehend what he had just seen. He didn't really feel the animal slice him in two. It did feel however as if he had been hit with a rather large pillow. But he did think just before dying that it was amazing, his hips and legs were still astride the bike as his torso was first lifted into the air, then plunged into the earth. His legs tipped over with the motorcycle, trapping one twitching leg under the heavy machine, and even those items were eventually claimed by the new master of the valley.

A few minutes later, the desert was still and quiet again. The old adobe fort once used by the U.S. Army to chase renegade Indians had again become a silent witness to another massacre in this forbidden piece of land, and a few more ghosts joined those already there.

When I look up to the skies, I see your eyes, a funny kind of yellow.

--"PICTURES OF MATCHSTICK MEN," STATUS QUO