There’s a stretch of road that winds through the Arizona desert. It’s a lonely two-way road. The traffic is sparse, the asphalt unusually black. It runs west to east. It dips and then flattens out, it curves and runs straight — the pattern is monotonous. The Arizona Atlas & Gazetteer designates it as Highway 60. About 54 miles separates the towns of Salome and Wickenburg, the communities between these two places are few and desperate looking. During the sunlit hours the road is just boring, the scenery dead. Dust devils thrive along this highway. People have told stories about this road. They have claimed that even as they traveled the roadway with the sun high up in the sky an overwhelming feeling of being followed, of being watched, fell upon them. They whispered of something being concealed inside the whirlwinds of dust, that something unseen was driving its movement. A family of travelers spoke of a spiral running close and parallel to them. “It seemed like it was chasing us,” the mother was reported to have said. 

 

          Then there’s the talk of tumbleweeds. Large and small tumbleweeds have been seen lining the two-way at various points along the 60. Long lines of them on both sides of the road. An old hazy black and white photo seems to verify this. They appear purposely gathered there, as if they are alive, and are waiting for a particular prey to come along. And if the chosen victim fulfills an unknown requirement, they are taken. At least, the victim is never seen again. No clue or hint of a clue of their whereabouts has ever been discovered.

 

          Nighttime can be a nightmare on the “Ribbon.” Folks tend to avoid nighttime travel on that road. Who can blame them?

 

          Death occurs on the “Black Ribbon.” Death occurs on all highways, of course, and it is always a tragedy. But the manner of death on the “Black Ribbon” is strange indeed. As are the sudden, unexplainable vanishing of humans. An Arizona State coed traveling home for Thanksgiving was found with her throat and belly clawed open. She had been disemboweled. She was traveling alone, at night, the car radio still pumping out hits from a station out of Phoenix when the wreck was discovered. The remains of what looked like huge tumbleweeds surrounded her car, all shattered into a million pieces. A doctor and his young son vanished one late February night. They found the doctor’s vehicle wrapped around a power pole the next morning. No clue as to what had caused the accident. No sign of the doctor or his son was ever reported.

 

          Shall I go on? No, I cannot. I am fearful. I do not travel Highway 60 ever. I travel only during the hours the sun is up and shining, my eyes trained on any and all dust devils and tumbleweeds. Evil lives in them. This I know.

 

***Fiction from the Notebook Files of Gloria Esquerra.     Photo from imagelib.com

 

Note:  It’s a 5 hour drive from Tucson to the reservation, and 5 hours back. Lots of time to think and allow your imagination to go crazy. There are plenty of dust devils to keep you company as you roll along Interstate 10. I placed an Apache Marine — a Shadow Hunter — in the deserts of the Middle East in my novel “I’ll Kill You Later.” There he encounters and kills such a demon that hides itself in the heavy dust storms that occur there. That idea came from the many back and forth trips I made during the last years of my mother’s life.