David Hanrahan - Archon of the Covenant

In the frozen melancholy of the hunger moon, a low thundering would roll through the perihelion sky, rattling the tall pines and shaking snow from needles. Just as soon as the storm arrived, it would vanish in the dark. This went on through countless nights. As a sudden burst reverberated in the dusk, the living skittered along the icy soil, ducking under the brush as the echo of abnegation cracked through flurries gusting in the ether. Something was changing in the air, and the revins sensed it. They were nervous.

For weeks, the storm would appear in the evening, materializing from the smallest tufts of vapor in the night sky and blooming into a massive, black anticyclone. The air was consumed by the fury, lights streaking through the opaque veil from a fulmination rocketing through the shelf of the tempest, blankets of snow wafting down in violent winds. The revins huddled in their holes, sheltered in caves, and crammed into ruins, waiting out the wrath of the lost torrent.

Finally, one warm evening, as the revins began to brace themselves for the return of storm, they were surprised to see something else in the sky — the bright, full, lenten moon. It shone down on them like a lantern, illuminating the white sheet of frost and snow in the open ground. They came out of their hovels and gawked at the magnificent glow, basking in the calm which had returned to the high desert at last. They breathed in and smiled wide, rotten teeth and dry sockets gleaming in the warm light.

The next morning, as wisps of snow blew off the high canopies, as the twisted, gnarled bodies of the revins awoke from their slumber, a strange light appeared in the clear blue sky. A white contrail, splitting the empyrean. The feral minds were puzzled by this faint vapor high in the heavens. As the line stretched downwards, arcing into the distance, it picked up speed. The streak in the sky stretched out a great distance and, as the fore descended through a smattering of high clouds, it smoldered red like a flare falling through water. A laceration ripping downwards from heaven.

As the fireball careened towards the earth, it began to arc parallel to the horizon, leveling off and searing across the Sonoran dreamland. Other revins, huddling in their burrows or standing amidst the frost, looked up and were rapt with the ember burning across the sky. The oval-like cinder suddenly broke in two, each fiery piece of debris spinning wildly in different directions, and from the burning shell emerged a gray and white object that continued overhead in a straight vector.

The revins traced this thing as it raced across the sky. It looked to them like some sort of massive, pale vulture — but its wings didn’t beat. As it descended above the Coronado Forest, it came into view. It was a craft. The revin mind alighted with some recognition of its outline. They recalled the rusting hulks of A-10s that lay in heaps at AMARG, the Davis-Monthan plane graveyard nearby. The craft’s underside was gray but its topside was white. Four exterior engines — two aft and two forward, encased in cylinders like the old Fairchild-Republic Thunderbolt — carried the craft through the cold air above Apache Peak. From there, it began to circle and further descend. Strange black markings were painted on the stabilizers and, as it banked, the revins could see some sort of red, circular symbol on each wing. Dark smears streaked out of imperfect panel lines. As it nosed down, they could see the front of the craft had a protrusion, like a cockpit but opaque with a steely luster.

After circling in the midday sun for some time, it slowed, all four engines craning upwards. As it continued its descent, coming fully into view with the handful of revins just underneath, still no sound could be heard from the craft. It skimmed over the ponderosa canopy, heading east, until it came upon a clearing. Ahead was the flat, cracked foundation of a building that had disappeared in the harsh elements, the withered blacktop of a parking lot that had faded into the dirt, and a sign that was black with the soot of brush fire and years of soil blowing across the desert. As the craft hovered forward, it stopped just ahead of the weathered sign, which could just be made out:

An open chasm in the ground loomed in the distance, facing the nose of the craft as it quietly floated above the ground lightly dusted with snow. At first, the shuttle was alone in its vigil over the abandoned park. As the night crept forward, and the clear sky was bedecked with stars, a melancholy wail began to pierce the air, emanating from someplace within the mysterious contraption. Not unlike a whale song. A siren in Sonora. This echolocation blared out loudly across the expanse. For the first hour, it repeated a simple aria that rose and fell in a few notes. Like a car alarm slowed down and lowered in pitch, echoing across the hillsides. As the night grew dark, the frequency shifted. The song changed, but went on in perpetuity through the darkness. As this lamentation filled the woods, revins began to approach. Cautiously at first, but full of curiosity. They looked on at the strange trespasser floating before them, glimmering ashen in the moonlight.

Over the next several days, more revins came to gaze at this thing that had broken into their lives. Soon, there were hundreds of Sonoran revins gathered in the ruins of the park. They made makeshift hovels in the ground. They lined up against the crumbling walls of the amphitheater. They huddled together under piles of pine needles. They sank their jaws into cottontail ripped from nearby warrens. But no living soul approached the chasm. They woke up at dawn and cocked their heads, listening to this magnificent sound pouring out of the machine.

Among them emerged one that drew the craft in the ground with its bony digits. All gray hair and sagging skin. This proselytizer chided anyone who got too close, revering the arrival with wonder. The gathering turned into a cult. They looked to it for something. With each change of its song, they grew animated, expecting something to happen that so far did not come to pass. They drew in closer as the frequency halted then sighed, drooling, as the wail resumed and shifted slightly. A low, looping gospel. The naked, hairy revins shivered in the frost, beating their hands in the wet soil, pulling up clumps and shaking their fists at the metal craft. But they dared not smear it with their curses nor their handfuls of shit and sod.

Westerly winds blew into the cold mornings but hushed in the overhead sun. Days and nights passed by without the revins noticing. The snow melted into the shale and limestone, unveiling the red basin and range. The white-capped spire of the Whetstone Mountains hung over them, cropping the sunset in the west. A cold creek rushed past in the north, spilling off Apache Peak and colliding with the tributaries of the massive San Pedro River in the east. Ages before, Wyatt Earp shot and killed Curly Bill Brocius in this pass, ending a blood vendetta against the cowboys responsible for his brother’s death. Revins walked over the sunken bones and spent shells, unaware of the ancient vengeance that had unfolded before them.

One evening, the craft’s song ended and the whisper of the still night breathed through the thistle and sedge. Those gathered nearby hushed, their attention turned to the gray and white shuttle hovering silently in their midst. Their heavy eyelids drew back, pupils wide in the dark. They inched closer, jostling with each other to peer at what might transpire next. Hands shaking, steam rising from sweaty brows in the algid gloom. High clouds moved under the moon and the black veil lowered on the spectral wild. Everything was black. Everything was quiet save for the breeze in the reeds and the clattering of teeth. Naked feet teetering on sharp rock.