JAMIE FORD

The tone of his voice, that had seemed helpless and benign, now had been sharpened, topped with her name as a spearpoint. Her boyfriend called her Abby, as did her coworkers at the hospital. Only one person called her Abigail, other than her parents, and he’d been dead for years. She watched his body get airlit ed to a hospital in Durango.

“How do you know my name?” She asked as she glanced down at her phone and saw two words that made her feel more alone than she’d been all day: NO SIGNAL. She froze as his eyes, which looked sapphire blue like her ring, turned black.

The man sat up, then stood, dusting himself of , his bones creaking, joints popping.

“That was quite a ride we had back then, remember?” He smiled and the stranger’s features changed, became something familiar, someone familiar.

Abby looked at the setting sun on the horizon, her heart racing, as she wondered if she’d been the one who’d taken a hard spill, l ipped over her handlebars, her helmeted head careening of boulders and l atrock. 9

Or perhaps she’d skidded through a patch of spineless cacti, dripping with psychoactive alkaloids — that she was tripping, literally and iguratively. How else could he be here? She hadn’t seen her mentor since grad school, since they’d had a torrid afair the summer before graduation. A summer that ended with his lifeless body lying in the high desert, and Abby lying atop his grave in the rain, an hour ater the mourners had let, which had included his wife and family. She’d cried tears of loss and tears of guilt and tears of shame.

“Professor Naughton?” Abby asked. She thought about her phone and how she would have signal atop Peregrine Point. She wondered how long it would take at a dead sprint. The thousands of dollars she’d invested in her bike, with carbon and titanium everything, meant nothing now.

The man touched the gash on his forehead, regarded the blood on his ingers, then looked back at her nodding.

“You let me,” he said. “Remember? You let me for the coyotes and the crows, the catamounts and the maylies. You let me because you loved your reputation more than you loved me.”

“I didn’t…” Abby said, her voice trembling, her heart racing. She replayed that day in her mind, images of smiles, kisses, sweet words and wildlowers, then metal and breaking bone, and her riding frantically for help. She’d tried her best. But by the time she reached the parking lot, someone had already found him, someone with a phone, someone who called for help even though all the Mercy Flight paramedics could do was strap the professor’s lifeless body into a litter and signal for him to be hoisted into the air.

He nodded and squinted his black eyes, as though reading her thoughts. He looked into the sky which was darkening, tendrils of crimson and ruddy orange

changing into shades of umber and coal.

“I remember them taking me away. I remember lying. That was the closest I’d ever get to Heaven.”

“I was young,” Abby said, slowly backing away as he stood and stepped in her direction. “I thought I was in love. I was reckless and foolish, but I didn’t leave you, I went for help…”

“And I found help,” the man said, smiling. “Do you remember the scary stories we used to tell the undergrads? The tales we’d spin by the campire ater the sun went down and the stars came out. How we’d all lie on our backs and listen to the wind?”

“But those were just stories,” Abby said. “The pumawha aren’t real.” She felt the tall grass brush her calves, she smelled something burning, like sage, but sweeter. The crickets began chirping, the grasshoppers sang, and then all went silent. That’s when she remembered the name westerners used for desert tricksters. They called them skin-walkers.