Broken Souls by Stephen Blackmoore

Author:Stephen Blackmoore [Blackmoore, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Every year L.A. burns. Brush fires from too much heat and too little moisture sweep through the canyons, rampage down the hills. Flames chew through the landscape, an inexorable force that eats everything in its path. Thousands of people displaced, millions in property damage. All because of the wind.

Raymond Chandler called it the Red Wind. To some of the locals they’re the Devil Winds. Good name for them. You know how to tell when L.A.’s about to burn? The air moves. They’re the Santa Anas. Sometimes hot, sometimes cold. Always dry. They blow through the Cajon Pass, Banning, Santa Clarita. Funnel in from the desert. Set everything ablaze.

The winds blow through the streets, in through windows, cracks in doors. They go everywhere and they see everything. So if you absolutely, positively need to track something down there’s really only one thing to do.

Ask the winds.

I stop at my motel to pick up a few things, get a change of clothes. When I told Tabitha what I was planning she got that same look on her face she had when I told her about Santa Muerte. One more chip out of that wall of Normal she’s looking for.

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going. When I get onto the road the sun has already set. I take the stolen Hummer up the 5 Freeway and cut across the 14 toward Palmdale, tasting the magic as I crawl through traffic. The flavor shifts from the heavily Latino magic of North Hills and Sylmar to a sort of suburban kitchen-witch magic from the new subdivisions in Santa Clarita. Nothing big, nothing old.

When I get up by Vasquez Rocks it changes completely. You’ve seen the place in old western serials and Star Trek episodes. Massive jutting rocks angled toward the sky. Before Hollywood came knocking it was a hideout for a bandit name of Tiburcio Vasquez. And before that it was a home to local Indian tribes like the Tataviam, Chemehuevi, Serrano, Kitanemuk.

It’s a tourist spot now, but you can taste all that history in the place’s magic even as far out as the freeway. I get off at Agua Dulce. The park’s closed, a chain running across the entrance road. I park across the street, grab a knapsack and a flashlight and draw SUPPOSED TO BE HERE in big letters across the side of the Hummer. Don’t need some County Sheriff towing it when I don’t have a ride back.

I haven’t been to Vasquez Rocks in almost twenty years. Place is still a pit. Dry desert air, dirt and scrub brush. Nearby houses look down from the distant hills. Further out in Mojave at least you get the sense you’re in the middle of nowhere. Here it feels like you’re in somebody’s shitty backyard.

There’s a trail that loops around the park, hits that big Star Trek rock everybody’s seen. Plenty other rocks like it here. High ground is good for what I need to do. There’s no moon and it takes me about an hour to pick my way along the trail with a flashlight until I find a nice rise with a flat top.

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