Trouble
called when the phone beeped. It was Embry Hamilton. A chill ran down my spine
when Embry asked me to meet him at the Happy Valley Hilton in Arizona. I was
back in Boise and had delivered my Colorado trip report to Louise Hamilton, an
accounting of my Boulder journey to look for her husband who had disappeared
seven years ago. Before Louise officially declared Embry dead, she had hired me
for a last search.
Three months before, I had started my
investigation with a trip to Las Vegas. Louise then directed me to a former girl
friend in Boulder, Colorado. When I met Becky Sue in Boulder, she admitted that
Embry had come to see her that summer. He was depressed and fearful, so Becky
arranged for an isolated retreat by a stream in the Flatiron foothills
northwest of the college town.
According to Becky, Embry had been caught in the September
100-year Colorado rains and swept away, his body not yet found. I visited the
site of the ranch house and a local told me he had seen a man struggling in the
flood waters, and the man managed to emerge downstream, vanishing into the
forest.
I called Louise after Embry’s strange phone call and she
urged me to visit Arizona. As I had friends in Scottsdale, I planned a trip in
late January with mixed emotions. Perhaps the phone call was a hoax.
It
was a day and half drive from Boise to Happy Valley, a sprawling mall on I-17
at the northern edge of Phoenix. I checked in at the Hilton and tried Embry’s
number, but no one picked up so I left a voice mail and my room number.
After a restless afternoon walking the
vast complex, I returned to the Hilton and found a note under my door. I opened
it, seeing a crude, hand-drawn map that ran north on I-17, turned east on I-40,
and then exited to US 89 north through Northern Arizona and Utah. To the west
of Delta, Utah there was a square marked, “Wauneta Inn”. There was a notation
for a 5PM meeting the next day. The paper was signed EH, Embry Hamilton?
Studying the map, I concluded Embry wanted
a meeting at the Wauneta Inn. I did a quick Google search and saw the trip was
about 550 miles north. The inn appeared to be a solitary spot in the Great
Basin Desert close to the Nevada border.
I left the next morning and soon was
in Hopi land, which melded into the sprawling Navajo Reservation. I was about
30 miles south of Page, Arizona when I ran into a roadblock, a crude sign saying
89 was closed due to a landslide, so I took the winding 89A which runs through
the colorful Vermillion Cliffs.
Stopping for snacks, I entered an
Indian trading post and noted an attractive, sharp featured woman in a leather
dress at the cash register. She eyed me suspiciously as I asked about the US 89
landslides, replying it was a geologic event.
I inquired if the handicrafts were Navajo and she
frowned, saying they were Paiute. And then added: “We are Aztecan and before
the Spanish came, the Paiute Nation included Arizona, California, parts of Nevada,
Idaho, and Oregon. The west coast was Paiute.”
I nodded, impressed.
“If only…” she started, and then let her
thought float.
I bought a Paiute braided belt, a
drink and a sandwich as I did not want to stop for lunch. I followed the old
Mormon Wagon Trail, passing through Jacob Lake into Kanab, Utah where I found 89
once again, which skirts between Zion to the west and Bryce to the east. The
scenery in Southern Utah is dramatic as on my right were the Vermillion pink
and white cliffs, and then the Escalante Petrified Forest.
Linking up with US 50 I headed west
through the small town of Delta, Utah for the Nevada border. It was dark now
and after an hour, I saw in my headlights a small, red structure which
announced itself as the Wauneta Inn, eerily alone in the high desert. There was
a light on in the last room on the right of the inn, but otherwise the place seemed
deserted.
The room door was open, so I settled
myself in the Spartan setting, using the small bathroom, splashing my face and
wondering what to expect next. I was jolted when suddenly I heard a roar and
banging outside where I saw bright lights. Exiting cautiously, I turned the
corner of my room and was blinded by what I thought must be a diesel pickup
truck with spotlights.
As I stood shielding my eyes, a
silhouetted figure appeared in the glaring lights. I started to back away, but
he spoke.
“Tell them Embry is gone,” the man
said in a deep voice. “They should forget him. Embry Hamilton is with us now.”
Before I could reply there was a
strange “whoosh” and I was catapulted backward, my head hitting the ground,
then blackness.
It was early morning light when I groggily
awoke to find myself in the bed and under the blanket. It was bitterly cold and
I shivered as I looked around warily, finding the room empty. I cautiously went
to the door and peeked out, but all was quiet. I went outside and around the
corner, but there was nothing, no tire tracks. I rubbed my head, feeling a bump.
A few feet from where I had been standing there was a large stone. Apparently I
had fallen backwards and hit my head. But who had taken me into the room and
put me to bed?
I was unnerved and jumpy so I got in
my SUV and headed west. Once I got to Ely, Nevada it was a straight shot north to
Boise. I drove for an hour and found a sign announcing the Great Basin National
Park. Ahead near the park entrance was a lone Conoco Station and I pulled in,
needing a coffee.
Inside I found a tallish man with a
blond mustache and a wispy goatee flashing a friendly smile. He bid me good
morning and asked where I was coming from.
I told him the Wauneta Inn and his
eyebrows rose in surprise.
“You must have seen the lights last
night.”
I hesitated and he continued.
“There were strange lights in the sky.
My girl lives near the Wauneta and saw them. We think it must have been one of
those experimental planes from Area-51. Of course the old timers around here
think …” and he put a finger in the air, circling it while making a “whoo-whoo”
sound.
We laughed and then a voice sounded from the back:
“Strange lights can be from here or from the night sky.”
We turned to see a young man in cargo pants and a khaki
shirt with a backpack over his shoulder emerging from the rest room. He struck
me as a Wanderer, one of those that can pass seamlessly between the parallel
universes theorized by quantum mechanics.
“But maybe it was something else, he added with a
smile.
The attendant leaned
forward and asked. “Like what else.”
“Magic”, the young man responded.
I got a large
coffee with a doughnut, and then I was back on US 50 heading to Ely, thinking
about the service station encounter. Had I really seen a pickup truck at the
Wauneta?
The central
question was why? And who or what had taken Embry Hamilton?
