Editor’s Note: This story is a work of fiction published in the fun spirit of Halloween. This story is on the opinion page and is a work of fiction, not a factual account of events in Cibola County.
On a new-moon night, the road to the old neighborhood stops pretending to be a road.
Anaconda is a narrow seam of gravel stitched through blackness. The tailings ponds breathe their sour breath over the fencelines; it slicks the tongue, turns “hello” into a cough. To the west, Mount Taylor is only a heavier piece of dark, a mountain-shaped absence. The wind canters down Ride Runner Road and rattles the dead cottonwoods like bones.
I park where a porch used to be.
The dirt remembers— a square of foundation, the seam where a gate swung. If I look too long, I can almost see it: a yellow bike on its side, a blue kiddie pool belly-up from last year’s wind.
Coyotes start up somewhere south, their voices carrying. When people lived here, you could mistake that for laughter.
Tonight, no such confusion.
I click off my headlights and let the dark rush in.
First comes the sound: claws on gravel. Not one set—many. Tags jingle. A buckle taps against ribs. A soft huff, then another. Shapes gather just beyond my hood: tails wagging that don’t stir dust, paws that leave no print. A dog sits, ears forward, waiting like it has waited every night since the last back door closed. Its eyes do not catch light. There is no light to catch.
“Hey there,” I say, ridiculous.
The dog cocks its head as if remembering a trick. More arrive—small shadows and taller ones, a sway-backed shepherd, a barrel-chested mutt, a rabbit that hops without sound, a cat whose bell rings though it’s crushed flat with rust. They smell like dry grass and hosewater, like earth where children buried secrets with two hands and a garden trowel. Their shadows all fall the wrong way.
Something else comes with them.
I feel him before I see him. The air cools sweetly, the way it does a second before a monsoon hits. A man steps through the fence that isn’t there and rests his palm on the shepherd’s head. Work clothes the wind can’t muss. An unremarkable face, except for the eyes—watchful, measuring the way you’d measure a skittish colt.
“You’re late,” he says. “For what?” “For the walk.” The pack parts and reforms around my legs. Their bodies pass through my jeans like tall grass through water. I should run. Instead, I follow.
We move down Anaconda, past driveways that end in weeds, a mailbox with no lid, a porch light that still burns though there’s no meter to feed it. The man keeps pace, one hand resting in the air where a leash would be. Somewhere in the fields, wind chimes sound where no porch stands.
“Were you lonely?” I ask.
He smiles. The pets lift their heads together, every ear pricked. From the black fields, the coyotes answer—softer now, like a choir outside a church.
“Not here,” he says. “Not here.”
At the far edge of Ride Runner Road, the shepherd stops. The pack lines the ditch like sentries. The man points toward the highway, toward Grants, toward all that’s still noisy with living.
“This is as far as we go,” he says. “We keep the road.”
The dogs turn as one. Tags ring. Paws whisper. The cat rubs its ghostbody against my shin and leaves a stripe of cold that will not warm.
Behind me, the mountain waits. Ahead, the tailings breathe.
“Good night,” I say. “Say it louder,” the man says gently. “They listen.”
“Good night,” I call to the empty lots.
Rows of porch lights I can’t see flick on in my mind—from the foundations, from the yards, from the places where screen doors once slammed and names were hollered at dusk.
I reach for my keys to leave. My pocket is full of cold metal. None of it fits anything I own.
“We keep the road,” the man repeats, almost kind. He lifts his hand from where the leash isn’t, and the shepherd’s tag swings in the dark.