Prelude

There is a phone. It doesn’t look like much: just a nondescript tan pay phone from some bygone era. But no phone company ever serviced this one; no one comes to collect the quarters. The phone is in the middle of the desert, at the bottom of a box canyon, propped up in the soft sand next to an ancient gnarled mesquite tree.

Getting there isn’t easy. It is a dozen or so miles off of Interstate 40 right at the Arizona-New Mexico border. You have to drive down rutted dirt roads that have been designed by nature to break car axles. Then you get to the canyon, and you have to start hiking. The soft sand at the bottom of the canyon pulls at your shoes like mud and shifts under your feet, so you are out of breath after just a few steps.

But people do it. Hundreds make this messed up pilgrimage to the phone because it is special. Some say it is a hotline to the other side. Some say it is a party line to hell. You pick up the phone, deposit the quarter – don’t ask where that goes – and listen.

You may hear the voices of angels and demons and old gods that melt your brain. You may hear your dead relatives tell you where the family fortune is buried or, more likely, how disappointed they are in you driving the family name into the ground. You may hear abductees begging for mercy from aliens or aliens begging for mercy from . . . well, probably better not to know who aliens beg for mercy from. You may hear secret societies plotting to kill presidents from the past and future or cult leaders ranting apocalyptic prophesies in disturbing detail.

Not me. I heard 15 minutes of static and scratching noises. Then Bugs Bunny came on the line and told me, “Aaahhh, go fuck yourself, doc,” and the line went dead. That was the low point. That’s when I knew just how screwed the universe really is, and I made my decision.

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning. They all had their own reasons for finding their way to Black Oak . . .