Page 4 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
She filled a cup and pressed the cool glass to her forehead, the condensation trickling down her cheek. This place was a dump.
In the back of a high cabinet, she found a bottle of mezcal, label faded and peeling. A dead scorpion curled at the bottom like a bad omen. She wiped the dust off the bottle and took a long pull, the burn clawing its way down her throat but settling warm in her stomach.
“Here’s to you, Pops. You always did like your shit strong and weird.”
She carried the bottle out to the porch and dropped onto the front step, stretching her legs into the warm sand. The air was cooler now, but still thick, and the stars stretched wide and careless above her.
The desert always looked better at night. On the roof with her grandfather, tracing constellations in the velvet sky, it had felt almost magical. Back then, her grandfather used to say the sky was clear because the desert took everything else away.
He’d said it like a joke, but it had always felt like a warning to her.
A tear slid down her cheek. She quickly wiped it away with the back of her hand and took another swig. It hadn’t been all bad. The old man had done his best. When Nora’s mother had gotten sick, he had taken her in. And when her mother dieda couple of years later, she stayed there permanently. But she hadn’t adjusted well to life in the desert, or really, to life without her mother. The townspeople called her a wild child. A bad seed. She knew it hadn’t been easy on her grandfather either, but Nora couldn’t see past her own problems.
And when his mind started slipping, Nora had to get out before the desert swallowed her, too.
She’d left to save herself. She hadn’t expected to never see him again.
She looked out across the desert, searching for something to anchor her thoughts. To the left, the land rolled out into sand and rock, broken by boulders and the clawed arms of Joshua trees. Somewhere out there was the place her grandfather used to hike. The Hollow Watcher, a large rock formation shaped like a leaning man. He’d always said that’s where the Yucca Man passed through when he was nearby.
She hadn’t thought about that name in years. Yucca Man. A joke, a boogeyman, a local legend people trotted out to scare newcomers. The Bigfoot of the Mojave. A desert cryptid. Big as a bear, built like a man, with eyes that burned like dying coals and skin like bark.
She’d even written a paper on it once: “Myth Convergence and the Persistence of Regional Lore.” It had been clinical. Detached. Cultural anthropology at its most boring.
But now, staring out into the dark, she felt a little on edge. Like someone or something was watching her.
She shook her head. “Nope. Not doing this.”
She realized just how vulnerable she was, out in the desert, completely alone.
“This is insane,” she muttered. “It’s probably some desert creeps.”
She didn’t wait to find out. She went inside, to where she knew Orin kept his gun, fingers trembling as she loaded it. She wasn’t about to let some weird desert stalker freak her out.
“What the hell did you find out here, Pops?” she whispered to the empty room.
But the answer was already there, stuck in her chest like a thorn.
Whatever it was, it had found her too.
CHAPTER 2
THE MORNING LIGHT spilled across the cracked desert like a crime scene photo, harsh and revealing. Even through her sunglasses, the sky looked scorched, bleached to the edges. Nora decided that she’d been overtired yesterday. There had been far too much travel, stress, and heat stroke. Today would be a new day. A monster-free day. A day filled with rational thought and scientific explanations. But first, she needed some coffee.
She drove with one hand on the wheel, the other gripping a sweating bottle of water. The air inside the car was stale, thick, and metallic. The AC wheezed out pathetic puffs of barely cool air, fighting a losing battle against the oven-dry heat outside. Sweat trickled down her back as the radio host declared that the day would be a real scorcher.
Nora felt dead on her feet. Last night’s dreams wouldn’t let go, the strangeness and electricity still lingering. She’d woken up wet between her thighs, with the vague memory of gold eyes whispering things that bypassed her ears and sank straight into her bones. She was having a hard time shaking them off.
She still hadn’t checked in with the university, or Eli. She’d do it later, when she didn’t feel so personally tangled in all of this. When the desert didn’t feel so heavy around her.
The road twisted through dust-choked streets, past the same bleached-out trailers and rusted fencing she remembered from childhood. Stacks of boulders bore the graffiti of visitors passing through. The taxidermy shop still displayed that desert fox with the chewed ear, its eyes looking a little more faded but just as dead.
The Hollow Saloon was shuttered, windows dark behind warped plywood and faded hand-painted signs. A cracked “OPEN” sign dangled on one rusted chain, swaying softly in the heat. Her grandfather had called it the gossip hive, a place where stories festered like cactus rot. She half-expected to see him leaning against the doorframe, squinting into the sun.
The Desert Spoon diner looked worse for wear, the sign half-dead and listing to one side. Only half the neon tubes worked, so it just read:
DE_RT _POON
Nora parked under a frayed tarp that looked like it had given up trying to shade anything years ago. The heavy smell of frying oil, scorched coffee, and lemon-scented cleaner hit her as she walked in and looked around the familiar place.
