Gun it, man! Gun it!
They grew up in Winslow, in northeastern Arizona, about five miles south of the Navajo Nation. Skinwalkers were a big topic of conversation around there, and people took them seriously. Plenty of locals had stories. By the time they left, they had a few of their own.
The first was in the early 90s, at about nine. The family was camping at Hart Canyon near Wiggins Crossing, a spot they'd been to twenty-odd times, so the kid was allowed to wander. After dinner they went back to the creek with a flashlight to fetch some forgotten G.I. Joes. Crouched at the water's edge, they suddenly froze with a fear they'd never felt before. Across the creek, about ten yards down, something stood upright. Not a deer, not a bear; too skinny. It slipped behind a tree and peeked out at them. They eventually got their legs back and ran to camp. Their parents put it down to imagination.
A couple of years later, the family's two outdoor dogs went berserk one night, barking at something in the alley, then whimpering. One leapt at the kid's slightly open bedroom window, chewed straight through the screen, forced its way inside, and wouldn't leave the house for three days.
At thirteen, they and two friends were out doing what bored kids did in that town: acting suspicious so the cops would chase them through the alleys. Running from a patrol car, they had to swerve around a man standing in the alley behind the house. Three minutes later they ran back the same way. The man was gone. Sitting in the exact spot was a coyote, calmly watching them. They ran right past it, feet away, and it held its ground. Coyotes never let you get that close. All three of them stayed indoors for a month.
The last one came at fifteen or sixteen. Their older brother had a girlfriend in Starlight Pines, a little community about 25 miles south of town, through nothing but desert and forest. About fifteen miles out, they passed a man standing by the side of the road in a flannel shirt and jeans. Odd, out there, but he looked normal enough.
They stayed with the girlfriend's family until late, then drove home the same way in the brother's Chevy S10. The man was standing in the exact same spot, hours later. As they passed him, something hit the back of the truck with a loud bang. The brother started to slow down, worried about damage, and in the brake lights the younger sibling saw the man running after them, in the road, feet from the tailgate, at 55 or 60 miles an hour. 'Don't stop! Gun it, man! Gun it!'
The brother floored it, all the way to the S10's governor at 80. For two miles, the man kept up. Then, suddenly, he was gone. They got home, ran inside and told their parents. The next morning, looking over the truck, they found a handprint smeared in the dust, running across the tailgate to the right taillight. They never drove that road at night again.