Chapter 1

Creation

They found the body sitting a wooden throne, half buried in sand, right outside of Yuma, on the California side. The three ATV’s rolled over the top of the dunes, the late afternoon sun making them appear totally white. Up, over and down over the sand, one arc would conclude as another arc began. The three of them had ridden for over an hour, no communication between the three, other than hand signals. When they had begun, throngs of dune buggies had surrounded them, ATV’s, and camps of RVs sprawled for several miles along Interstate 8, just to the west of the California/Arizona line. But as they drove deeper into the dunes, those other vehicles thinned out and along with them the vehicle paths that cris-crossed and scarred the dunes. The sand was now almost unnaturally smooth. From here on it looked as though a curtain of brown felt had descended and laid itself over rolling hills.

Each rider carried water. The heat was not abysmal this time of year, but a sun unobscured by clouds and the zero humidity can conspire to dehydrate you in an hour. After another twenty minutes, Darren pulled alongside Trevor and Aaron and waved. The three of them slowed to a stop. They sat there, their motors idling in a bowl between three dunes, each converging into and out of the other, co-hosting lines and arcs.

“I think it was around here…”

Trevor looked at Darren, feeling the same level of contempt as one might have towards a fishing partner who had put a mark on the boat to remember a great fishing spot.

“These dunes are interchangeable, Darren,” said Trevor.

“It was around here.”

“Even if you could remember these dunes, it wouldn’t matter because they shift so much.”

Darren turned towards Trevor, “So according to you there’s no chance of finding anything?” he asked testily. “Why’d you agree come out here then?”

“I thought you might have referenced some distant landmark like those mountains or something –” Trevor was pointing to a line of low peaks in the distance. “I didn’t think you were trying to remember a particular sand dune.”

“Maybe I did. They don’t change that fast.”

Aaron looked on, half-listening over the idling growl of the ATV’s, half messing with his helmet.

Darren pointed, “It’s over this dune. Let’s go.”

Darren jerked away, speeding up the steep face of the dune just ahead. He was halfway up before Trevor and Aaron followed.

Flying over the top of the dune and falling back down the other side created a one-second feeling of weightlessness more immediate than a roller coaster. Trevor couldn’t tell if perhaps if it was because he was in the driver’s seat or it was due to the more subtle realization that you were not safely locked onto some rail making disaster just a wrong move away. He looked up briefly, long enough to see something dug into the sand maybe half a mile away. Like a fleck of bread crust in cup of milk, anything that was not beige and made of sand, stood out. Darren gunned his engine and accelerated towards the object, closing quickly. Trevor could see that part of the half-buried object seemed to have a human shape. Revulsion drove hard into him. He tried convinced himself weakly that it must be a statue. This was no longer a lark to appease an eccentric friend, Trevor felt like he was being rousted out of bed in the middle of the night to be told some horrible news.

They were maybe one hundred yards away now. There was body sitting in a chair, a gigantic oversized chair. It was carved from dark wood, highly ornamented, red leather seat backs, arm rests a foot wide. It was a half-buried throne. If they had come just a few days later Trevor guessed that the whole thing would have disappeared beneath the sands. He remembered seeing paintings of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in the early 19th century, from the first time that Europeans had set eyes on the remnants of Egyptian culture, the now famous pyramids, temples and statues, so familiar now as to be cliches. These paintings depicted the famous sites as we see them at present day with great accuracy – but this was before the archeologists began streaming in to make their excavations and the one major difference was that each of the sites was half-covered with sand. When he saw these renderings Trevor remembered the bolt that snapped across this head. Seeing these great relics buffeted by the shifting sands made the romance of the place even more heightened. Trevor could imagine that here on the dunes, right off I-8, was also the site of some great lost civilization, this small artifact outcropping being only the tip of some mammoth temple resting quietly under the sand, a hundred feet down.

The three stopped in front of the desiccated figure slumped in the throne. The body was well preserved, the shirtless remains drying like beef jerky, the skin stretched taut, well on its way to being mummified. The facial features were barely recognizable. They turned off their engines.

“So, what do you think?” was all Darren uttered.

“Who’d drag a huge throne out into the middle of dune field?” said Trevor.

“This looks like those huge chairs they have at the Excaliber,” said Aaron.

Trevor got off his vehicle and walked right in front of the man in the throne. The dead man sat at attention, both arms on the wide rests. He stared straight ahead, the eyes gone. Any horror had already been sucked out, leaving just sadness.

“This is Sam Bauer. He was a detective in Mecca.”

“You know him?” asked Aaron.

“I'd see him around town,” Aaron replied.

“Like, you can tell who that is?”

“Yeah. It’s him.”

So this guy just decides he wants to just come out here and die?” said Darren skeptically. “Drag a throne out here, sit down and die?”

“I guess,” said Trevor as he circled the throne. His words were slow, “Why the hell would you do this?”

They drove the ATV's back to the car, loaded them up on the trailer and drove back to the Suzuki dealership in Brawley to call the police.