Winter's Night

The four of them got into the car. The year was 1988 and the car was newer but tonight a blizzard was supposed to hit the city of White Rock.The night air had steamed when they got into the car. Mother and Dad and Raynauld. Sara didn't like driving down the mountain in the dark even though the Episcopal church was so pretty. It was decked in red and gold because Christmas was coming in a few months. Just two and a beautiful tree was going to decorate the church.

Sara was eight years old but firmly believed the land was haunted. It was ephemeral in it''s desert beauty but at night Sara was afraid of the big looming mountains with their black as soot caves and expanses full of trees. She dreaded the drive home in the dark. Raynauld would sleep and Mom and Dad would talk in the front of the car. They would not look out the sides of the windows or see the empty caves high up in the dark haunted mountains. The Aztecs had lived there 2 thousand years ago but nobody knew where they went. Nobody knew they just vanished one day? Or did they go away to another place over the mountains. Past the big mountain with the stars gleaming on a clear night but tonight was not a clear night and they were racing to beat the blizzard home. Dad refused to stop or stay in Albercurque. The wind was howling past and the big empty cave mountain loomed ahead. Sara dreaded going by the mountain. Legends said that on dark nights a white figure could be seen crying from a cave. She was said to walk with wolves and wore a thick torquiose necklace but her black soot eyes that sucked the light and soul from the body were all people saw before they died on the mountain in fiery car crashes.

Soon they rounded the mountain but Sara was afraid to look up at the cave as they passed. The night shook and a blinding white descended but on they drove. Stopping only when they reached the town of White Rock New Mexico. Sara shivered as she walked into the warmth of the house. Nothing made that drive better two long hours in darkness down a steep evil mountain and trees that had limbs that clawed the sky like empty hands. The darkness on that mountain was just too ripe and there in the darkness somewhere were the trails of what happened to the Aztecs. They must somehow walk in the haunted lands that stood between the cities. Sara couldn't help but wonder how a whole people could vanish but the hungry caves made her shutter. She imagined spirits chasing the car in the wintery wind with hands like the icy tree limbs bare and clawing.

Not a soul on those dark road in the middle of the night.

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