(…continued from parts one and two)

It was really quite a push. It had been years since being properly athletic. But we had to make it to the top.

But why? It’s a fair question. Maybe achieving a set goal, like climbing to the top of a tall object or calling one’s mother just to hear her voice, is an attempt to come in contact with a provable fact — some thing in direct opposition to the un-bordered, proportionless, shadowlands of our heads.

Once we were at a party and had taken too much of a dissociative. The feeling was like being a marionette, with our feet just barely touching the floor — and all the sounds we heard had the good parts removed — like there was music playing and we were walking, but just cardboard cut outs of “music” and “walking.” It was like life without any empiricism and it was awful.

Anyway, eventually we climbed off of the face and onto the crest. The surface area of the small summit was about 20 feet square. It was dotted with shoulder high boulders in between which was hard packed sand, with enough space to walk. There was an undertone of arrangement about it all, but seemed unlikely.

Peaking around the bottom of one of the largest boulders was the tip of a boot. It was western, pointed and made of snake skin. We thought we could see the edge of a sleeve (also snake skin) and a wrinkled hand sticking out from it.

“Hello?” We said with unstable emphasis — we had been taken aback. “Sorry. We didn’t think anyone would be up here. We were just…”

As we rounded the largest rock to make our address more directly, we discovered that there was no one there; just a small snake skin jacket draped over one of the rocks and similarly styled boots placed neatly at the base.

Just empty clothing in dying sunlight — but the initial suggestion lingered, uncomfortably.

We thought of our night as a marionette and decided we wanted to be in the security of our car.

Somehow our descent, in relative darkness, was easier — though we did manage to tear the knee of our pants and cut our cheek enough to drip blood onto our shirt. When we reached the dirt field and the ring of Palo Blanco trees, we involuntarily looked in the direction where the old man with the accordion had been sitting.

We could just make out a seated shadow and the flaring glow of cigar end.

A low, aged voice emanated from the silhouette: “Did you see her? The snake woman?”

“Who? What? No; but we did see…”

But we were cut off by the light heaving breath of the accordion.

We closed the car door and rolled down the windows. We sat for awhile, waiting to start the engine — listening to the sound of lilting crickets and the faint, distant music. Above these standard sounds we thought we could hear something more complex — something like a grito, but not human — a sound betwixt a hyena and a peacock.