By: Mac Cole (Narrator)

The body was posed like an offering.

She knelt in the sand, arms draped low, wrists limp — as if in surrender or prayer. Her skin, once weathered by sun and time, was washed pale by something chemical. Her eyes, those sockets now polished and replaced with turquoise stones, stared out into nothing.

A tumbleweed crown rested atop her bowed head. Her mouth was open, dry and cracked, a permanent hymn of horror carved in silence.

And around her — a spiral of bones, small and delicate: rabbit, bird, rodent. A perfect helix etched into the sand like a ceremonial seal. Like scripture. Dried sage had been burned in a halo around the spiral’s edge, but beneath it all was that same stench Ramirez noted on Ashton — a synthetic tang, acrid, unnatural.

Not fire. Not decay.

Something manmade.

Something made for this.

Earlier that night, I’d come back to question János Henderson, the old Hungarian recluse who lived in a slumped cabin by Dead Elk Wash. Locals called him “The Prophet,” half in jest, half in caution.

He met me at the door with silence and a trembling hand.

“She used to bring me food,” he whispered, eyes misted with memory. “Sister Ellen. Moreno. From the mission. Every month.”

“You saw her recently?”

He nodded, a small twitch of pain crossing his weather-beaten face. “Two days ago. She told me they’d been seeing things near the arroyos. Lights. Voices. I told her not to walk alone.”

He turned, motioned toward the paddock. “Then tonight, the coyotes wouldn’t stop howling. But they wouldn’t come near. Just…stood there. Like statues.”

And that’s when I found her.

Or what she’d been turned into.

Sister Ellen Moreno. Mexican-Italian. Forty-nine years old. A woman known for her kindness. I’d met her once — calm, quiet, but fearless in that way only those with deep faith manage.

She hadn’t just been killed.

She’d been chosen.

Back in the truck, I sat with the engine off, windows rolled up, trying to will the chemical scent from my clothes. The darkness outside seemed thicker than usual. Too still. No wind. No chirps. Just the pressure of silence, like something holding its breath.

The desert wasn’t dead.

It was watching.

I radioed it in. “Sandy, we’ve got another one. Female. Identification probable — Sister Ellen Moreno, based out of the Las Cruces Mission. Notify the clergy. And get Ramirez.”

A pause. Then: “Jesus, Mac.”

“Not tonight,” I murmured. “Tonight, we’ve got something older.”

Dr. Lúcia Ramirez arrived an hour later, breathless, hair wild under a knit Peruvian cap. She crouched by the effigy, tracing the bone spiral without stepping inside.

“This isn’t a copycat,” she said. “This is a progression.”

I nodded.

“Ashton was experimental,” she went on, pulling nitrile gloves tight. “Geometric placement. Minimal symbolism. But here…”

She paused, her flashlight skimming the spiral edge.

“This is ceremony.”

She pointed to the tumbleweed crown. “That’s not random. In old pagan rites, thorns or brambles were used to mimic divine suffering. The crown of mockery.”

“And the eyes?”

“Turquoise. Sacred in Navajo tradition. Spirit stone. Used to summon protection — or banishment.”

I swallowed. “So what’s being summoned here?”

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she pointed out something I hadn’t noticed. Carved into one of the animal skulls was a symbol: three vertical lines intersected by a single arc.

“A glyph?” I asked.

She nodded. “It’s in no known symbology database.”

I bent down. “Could be a signature.”

“Or a sigil.”

She stood. “Mac, this isn’t just murder. It’s invocation.”

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I kept seeing the bones. The turquoise eyes. And the shape of that spiral — it wasn’t just random. It mimicked the topography of something I’d seen before. I pulled out a map of Luna County.

There. Between the dry riverbeds and the old mission grounds.

The spiral matched the arroyos.

Not roughly.

Exactly.

I followed the path with my finger. Four major turns — four sites of past disappearances over the last six months. All undocumented. All chalked up to exposure, or missing hikers.

At the center of it all was an unmarked patch of desert: old federal land, abandoned decades ago.

I called Sandy.

“Run property records on Section 8-E, near the Washakie Basin. Anything weird, I want to know.”

“Define weird,” she muttered.

“You’ll know when you see it.”

At dawn, I drove out toward the center of the spiral.

The air was dry. Unmoving.

About a mile from the basin, I noticed strange formations — wooden effigies, like scarecrows without faces, leaning at odd angles. One had been dressed in what looked like clergy robes, singed black at the hem. Another had a crow skull stitched to its chest with wire.

Then, something behind them — a structure half-buried in the sand. Not a cabin. Not a chapel.

A shrine.

Inside, the walls were covered in symbols. More spirals. More sigils. More bones, hung like wind chimes. And in the center, a stone altar, freshly stained.

That same chemical smell coated everything — thick and sharp. And underneath it, the scent of rot.

But it wasn’t until I looked up that I understood.

The ceiling had been painted — not with brush or hand, but with blood. A vast circle. A face.

Not human.

Too long. Too thin. Eyes like stars blacked out. A maw like a wound opening wide.

And carved beneath it, in careful etching:

She watches where the bones align.

I stepped back into the light, and for a second, thought I saw movement at the edge of the dunes.

But it wasn’t human.

It stood too still. Too tall. Like a shadow without a source.

Watching.

They say the desert doesn’t keep secrets.

They’re wrong.

It keeps them in spirals. In silence. In blood.

And I think we’ve only begun to read the verses.

Because this isn’t murder anymore.

This is scripture.

And something ancient is listening…

Part 2 Coming Soon…