So at least we had that board back in our possession. Uncle Dave was especially pleased, as there was a decent amount of sentimental value associated with that damn thing.
He’d come home with it after spending a few weeks out in Chilchinbeto, building relations with the locals he said. That was about two years back. Ain’t told no one where he was goin’ or for how long, then he come rolling back into town with two pounds of dried peyote buttons, a cooler full of the best mutton stew you ever tasted and this here talking board.
We’d been havin’ issues all around the county that Spring with livestock ending up jack ‘o lanterned, their privates and eyeballs knifed out just as clean as you please. No blood, no tracks, no nothin’. There was talk of UFOs, but all us more reasonable folk knew it was bad medicine comin’ outta the neighbors’ land, but ain’t no one gonna say that out loud lest they get more of the same. Ute Mountain and Navajo nations both come right up on either side of Mud Creek, and it weren’t no secret that the two of them peoples had more than just a few issues with each other, and plenty more with us.
Such was the origin of our skinwalker problem. Thanks to Uncle Dave I got a bit of protection from them critters now. He managed to use that board as an early warning system for when them bastards would approach and try to harvest someone’s herd. Uncle Dave would keep that board and planchette set up in his kitchen, and iff’n it so much as moved half a letter without him touching it he would get naked and drape an old elk hide over his head and shoulders, walk out in the fields and let whatever was comin’ know that this here land was off limits. And for a good long while we ain’t seen no trouble from them sumbitches.
But then them coyotes started showin’ up, one by one. Seemed to be a new breed of shapeshifter that didn’t give two shits about Uncle Dave’s mojo. We weren’t seein’ any more cattle mutilations, but other nonsense started to manifest. Shotty Denton pulled a two headed calf one night that supposedly spoke latin for five minutes or so before it spontaneously combusted. Ball lightnin’ was dropping outta the sky and rolling along the ground a couple times a month it seemed. Once it went right down main street and into the post office where Jennie Morelli got her damn head caught on fire thanks to a combination of that high temperature plasma and an obscene amount of hairspray.
It was due to all this nonsense that Uncle Dave and I decided to go one level deeper, (starting with some jimson weed), in order to get one step ahead of these little bastards who weren’t recognizing the truce Uncle Dave had negotiated on behalf of our entire community. Then things got pretty out of hand. More coyotes, then Bandini, then them crows and now Hagerty. That’s where we’re at. That’s how we got here. Time to do a bit of problem solving I reckon.