Demon Dancer

By Alexander Valdez

With the discovery of a young girl’s body by a group of young neighborhood boys, it became the starting point for what would be a lifetime of adventure. This adventure would be filled with the unexplainable and one that would become all-consuming for the young boy named Alex. The old wives’ tale of a crying woman who threw her children into the river became a search for answers and a journey to discover if the events actually occurred.

The old dance hall sat boarded up for over twenty years as it stood across the river from the brick pits, the area that served as the playground for the boys. When young Alex began hearing all the legends about a man in black—a man who would kidnap women from dances—curiosity got the best of him.

With this curiosity came obsession, one which would be the force that led the young man and his childhood buddies into pursuits beyond their imaginations. The further along they went into the realms, it wasn’t long before characters from past times began to manifest into his world—characters with malevolent intentions and an agenda that required the total destruction of the young man’s bloodline. The young boy came to know and understand that he was the focus of all that was evil and that it began many centuries ago in the holy land.

He learned of the man from the past whom people throughout history would refer to as the Demon Dancer. It would be the pursuit that would lead to…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646543182

Book preview

Chapter 1

Fire

I had just sat down for my Saturday morning breakfast that mother would always insist on my eating. I loved breakfast, but I was more excited to start my morning with the neighborhood riffraff I called friends. They were gathering at my front gate, yelling for me to hurry up. Taking my last bite, I was already half out of my chair racing toward the door when my mother made me go and brush my teeth. She knew that my friends and I would ride out to the brick pits and not reappear till lunchtime. This day, however, would turn out to be much different.

Racing out the door and jumping on my bike, we now felt that sensation of strength in numbers. My little gang of miscreants consisted of six boys, all sixth graders, all with mischief on our minds.

As we raced toward the brick pits, we swapped insults about one another, laughing as we discussed the previous night’s TV shows that we mutually all seemed to enjoy. Of course, back then, there were only three channels to pick from, and our dads pretty much dictated what the house would be watching.

That suited us boys fine because we all liked Westerns and detective shows or boxing and wrestling. Even the variety shows were great, because television was a new thing, and we sucked up all the visuals we could digest off the three channels.

Today, the quarter-mile ride was interrupted by the fire truck down at the corner fire station and the unmistakable bell clanging from the monstrous water truck that would lumber along behind the actual fire trucks. Fire hydrants in the ’50s were not commonplace, thus the need for this twenty-mile-per-hour slug, filled with a thousand gallons of water, to be on hand for a blaze.

Looking up and glancing over the treetops, we could see the thick smoke rising up higher and higher in the sky. A sudden course change as we now sped off in the direction of the sirens and the smoke. I ask you, what kid doesn’t love a good fire? Not anyone I know of.

As we rounded the corner and saw the event taking place, we noticed that it was a house fire—and a house we all knew so well.

We watched for what seemed like hours until the fire was pretty much extinguished. What happened next made my crew and I sick to our stomachs. It was Sally and Billy Perkins’s house, and both had been inside during the fire. Billy made it out with third-degree burns, but Sally came out draped in a death sheet stretched out on a gurney carried by two firemen. We never saw Sally again but caught a brief glimpse of Billy with his significant burn injuries.

We knew Billy well from school and some classes that we shared. He was a likable kid, but not cut from the same cloth as my crew of ne’er-do-wells. He was kept indoors mostly because his parents felt his being red-haired and freckled-faced, along with living in a barrio, might not be his best foot forward. Though we were somewhat diversified in our ethnicity, we were primarily upper-middle-class Hispanic. We were not the type of kids who wouldn’t accept you, not if you truly wanted to belong. We were kids, for Christ’s sake, and only fought with the kids from outside of our turf.

Each one of my friends and myself, at one time or another, had gone over to Billy’s after school to play or just hang out. I liked Sally well enough, and I’d watch her with her red pigtails flopping around as she jumped rope at recess. Billy would invite me over to play model cars after school, and Sally would keep to herself in her room. Seems that typical sibling rivalry was alive and well at the Perkins’s home.

I’d never forget the one time being at Billy’s, one day after school, when he motioned me over to the bathroom door where Sally was taking her bath. He let me peek at her through the keyhole, and all of a sudden, I had found a new appreciation for Sally. The image of Sally’s newly forming titties were emblazoned on my mind, and that served me well when I beat myself to euphoric bliss. When I told my friends what happened, I became an instant hero to all the guys.

I should have kept my mouth shut because now Billy was inundated with new best friends inviting themselves over for a playdate at his house. Poor unsuspecting Sally, I thought to myself, but who is gonna listen? So I kept quiet and continued playing at Billy’s from time to time. Or should I say, when he had a free space in his new busy schedule.

Now this terrible tragedy has happened, and Sally is gone forever. It is not even possible to think about her in the same perverse manner we used to. Each of us was filled with an inexplicable emptiness and sorrow, like we had never felt before.

We all had too many questions that needed answering, and the morning newspaper had nothing to offer. In the next few days, bits of info poured out, and it was determined that somehow, Billy had accidentally started the fire on Sally’s dress. She was near the drapes, which, as I remember, were of a brittle lacy fabric. They probably would have practically exploded like burning tissue paper. Anyway, the house was a very old stone house with lots of wood paneling and flooring, all gone up in smoke now.

The Perkins family had moved across town, and after some time, Billy healed. We never ran into him much anymore. Although once downtown, I ran into him, and we talked for a while. I learned that he didn’t care much for his sister, and he had purposely set her dress on fire. Billy, being so young, couldn’t have possibly realized the severity of his actions and what the end result would lead to.

He was remorseful though and felt the guilt about what he had done. He had to go through life with burns on his neck and some slight facial scarring—payback, I guess. I never ran into him again.

As for our group, we were back to playing in the brick pits.

I suppose I should give a description of these brick pits before I go any further. In my neighborhood, there was a brick-making company that occupied a piece of property, ½ mile by ½ mile or 160 acres or a quarter section of land—big. These were of the variety called fire-baked red bricks.

Along the eastern border of this brickyard ran the Santa Cruz River, which is dry year-round. This land, two hundred years ago, had lakes and marshes in abundance. Now it is just Southern Arizona, a virtual dry desert climate. One-half of this brick company property was pockmarked with many areas that had the soil removed to make these bricks. The soil consistency was a dehydrated loam, which when hydrated could be reconstituted as clay.

Thus, these pits were ideal for our bike trails, and it had jumping hills for our competitions. So as young kids, we had a paradise to play in free of charge.

Realize that this area was ¼ mile by ¼ mile in size, or 80 acres. We could get lost in there for hours of fun.

There was also a swampy area in there, a miniature lake, so to speak. It was the deepest area in the acreage and was surrounded by trees. A variety of birds inhabited the swamp, and I’m also sure that there were other animals in there that would stay hidden from sight. It was a marsh that was chock-full of cattails and quicksand. We never went in there. The rumor that the neighborhood parents had spread was that of a young boy who was swallowed up by the quicksand, never to be found again. That was enough to keep us boys from ever going near that place.

Some years later, I had come to learn that most of the land along the river was once very fertile with many small lakes. There was even a grotto with rental boats for rowing through the little mazes of the lake. The public could enjoy the grotto and the picnic tables for weekend gatherings. A large dance floor with a small stage was available for weekend fiestas, and all the other amenities could be had for a small fee. I was told that the place was closed up after an incident that occurred at a wedding reception where a young woman was abducted, never to be found again. As the years went by, the lakes dried up, and the buildings were set ablaze by vandals. I only saw photos of what it was like back then before my time.

I would conjure up an evening in the past and what it would’ve been like to swim in the lakes. As I would stand in those places, I just couldn’t conceive of the barren dirt beneath my feet as being any sort of Eden-like mini paradise. Now if you stood still in one spot for too long, your shoes would start to heat up.

Chapter 2

The Mighty Santa Cruz

Tucson in the summer was brutally hot and could be unbearable. We never knew better as young teens. It was what we were given, and believe me, we lived it to its fullest.

This mighty river is only mighty two to three months every year in the summer. Though it is a wide river, it is bone-dry most of the year. In Tucson, there is a monsoon season in the summer when it can rain like holy hell, with the river flowing to the top of its banks becoming a scary sight. Standing at the edge, one can become mesmerized and drawn to the muddy water as it roils along at a faster-than-normal flow. If you fall in, there is no salvation for at least forty miles to where it peters out to a manageable flow.

There were tamarack trees that lined the bank on the east side of the river that slightly obscured the old dance hall next to it. My gang found no real interest in the river because there was no real entertainment to be had. The sandy bottom was no place to pedal a bicycle, and it was just too damn hot to play in.

The dance hall had long ago been closed up and just sat there abandoned for many years. It had windows that were whitewashed over, but they were seven feet off the ground and not appealing to us curious ne’er-do-wells. Amazingly, the windows were intact, and looking back now, I ask myself how could that be. Every other building that I ever found abandoned in my travels had the windows broken out from rock-throwing contests. I guess they just held no appeal. The dance hall was a two-story structure probably, as best I can recall, measuring about 250 feet by 120 feet. Simply a large pale-yellow building made of brick.

It would be a few years later before the old dance hall, the lakes, and the bridge that spanned the Santa Cruz River on Congress Street would be of a profound significance to me.

One Saturday morning, the fellas and I came up with the notion to walk north in the riverbed for a change in our routine. I couldn’t say why we all agreed, because it never once held any appeal in all our years tramping about.

Unlike today, water was never a consideration for a trip. When we got someplace, we’d tap a neighbor’s spigot and be on our way.

I myself, and still to this day, do not require water. Now and then, my body will scream for water, and I will gorge myself till my stomach aches, but that doesn’t happen very often.

We six vagrants took off down the sandy river bottom for the first mile of miserable heat, with nothing exciting taking place. Then we realized where we were, and a small dose of fear came over each of us. We had crossed into the next neighborhood’s turf and were praying that no one would be out by the river that day. We didn’t get along at all with those guys, and they had an official gang which boasted some sixty of their neighborhood hoodlums as members.

I thank God that those guys, like us, found the river unappealing and seldom ventured there in the daytime. We all knew one another because we attended the same school together. We got along for the most part. It was at recess and lunchtime that we competed at softball or other sports.

So getting along was fine, but when the school bell rang, all bets were off. They would exit through the north gate of the school to their barrio, and my bunch left through the south gate to our slightly more upscale neighborhood. I think they resented us because of economic disparities. Our parents chose to assimilate and learn the King’s English, whereby their parents spoke Spanish solely and passed on their laborer’s trades to the kids. So I was not liked out in the streets.

Anyway, it was mutually decided upon that we should turn around and go back to our piece of heaven or hell, as it were. We had turned about, and an object caught my friend Blackie’s eye. It looked like a shard of glass with fabric attached to it, and it was barely exposed being buried in the sandy bank. Each of us took to digging around the object, and as we cleared away sand, it became apparent that they were human remains. They clearly had been there for some time, and they were the remains of a young girl, maybe fifteen or so years of age.

We were shocked and sickened by the sight. None of us had ever witnessed death before. We had to run and tell the police or the first adult we ran into, and run we did.

The fire station was our first stop as some of the men there had come to know us from our playing around the station. Big Dave was polishing up the fire truck as we approached him with the breakneck speed of a crazed horde. He probably thought to himself, These little bastards are gonna mob me and take the fire truck. Dave had seen us crazy at play before, using slingshots against one another and other roughhouse tactics. We always kidded him about taking his fire truck down the street, although none of us knew the first thing about starting the engine, much less driving it away.

Today was different. He saw in our eyes a sight he had never seen before. He yelled to his firemen mates to come out as he held up his hands as one would do if trying to stop a stampeding horse. I was the elected spokesman for the group whenever a serious event needed discussing or having to talk one of us out of a tight spot. I had a way with words and rationalizing things in a manner that seemed to always make sense. The consummate bullshitter.

After explaining to the gathering firemen what we had discovered, they got on the telephone with the police department and relayed the claims we were making. Dave assured us that if we were making this all up, there would be hell to pay, and we would be restricted from ever playing around the firehouse again. We assured them that we were dead serious.

The police arrived at the station in two cars and asked that Blackie, Tommy, and I accompany them to the location. Oh boy, I was riding in a cop car, and I really thought I was something. We went by my house where my mom was out front sweeping off the porch. She saw me riding in the back seat and turned pale, dropping the broom to run inside and call my father. I felt kinda good knowing that a whipping wouldn’t be called for, and I would be a hero in the next day’s newspaper.

Arriving at the scene, we pointed to the body’s location and were instructed by the police to remain on the bank and not to go down into the riverbed. Meanwhile, more policemen and investigating detectives had arrived to the area. As the medical examiner and his team totally excavated the body from the bank, members from the rival barrio gang arrived. First, they asked what were we doing there and then asked us what was going on. I explained that there was a dead body and that we had discovered it earlier that day.

Furthermore, we told them we were brought there by the police, and if they wanted to start something, the police would come to our side. This was big news to them, and they forgot about territorial rifts. We kibitzed about all the possibilities surrounding the girl’s death just as if we were on the school playground. My guys and I were getting hungry and decided we would head home.

I gave the officer all our addresses and told him where we could be found if he needed more information from us. He let us go and thanked us for our service that day. We said our goodbyes to the gang guys, and they said their goodbyes as well, with a cordialness we weren’t used to.

Getting home was a fun experience. By now, all the neighbors were in my living room with my mom ready to put the switch to me. I told her to cool it and take a seat for one of my out-of-this-world stories.

After telling her the complete story, she had the nerve to call me a liar. Of course, on almost any other occasion, she might have been right. I liked bending the truth or exaggerating it; it lent a certain flair to what were normally tedious events.

Thank God that at that moment, a police car pulled up in front of the house, causing my mother to look at me in horror. She told me to go out the back door and run to my nana’s house a block away and not come out till she came for me.

Chapter 3

The Police

I guess she assumed that I had escaped from police custody. When she saw me in the squad car earlier, she did call headquarters to see what I was being charged with. Of course, they didn’t know my name yet or that I was even with the police.

I ran to answer the door and asked the officer in. My mother was petrified and close to a faint, but she gained back some sense of composure as the officer started asking me questions. Listening in, my mother started believing in the tale I had spun a few minutes earlier.

The crime unit had identified the girl as one who went missing seven years prior. Her dress and other items were identified by her father. Distraught over the loss of her daughter, the mother had committed suicide two years after the disappearance. My mother seemed to be relieved, as only I could detect in her facial expressions as she did the math. I would have been four years old when the girl disappeared.

Thank God he’s not a suspect.

My mother knew deep down that I could never commit such a crime, but she would never be surprised by anything involving her son. I guess I really was a hellion, but causing pain to another soul? Never. What a mother, I swear. God bless her though.

My aunts were around all the time it seemed, and they just loved me and the antics I would provide. The neighborhood women were glad that I belonged to my mother and not to them. They only had gossip and rumor to fill their lives, no e-mail or Internet. Their children just weren’t as smart as me, so tales of Alex and what he was up to on any given day were plenty. The telephone, with a nice party line, would fill an otherwise boring evening and load ’em up for the following day’s across-the-fence bullshit among the hens.

I think many of the surveillance, black ops tactics, and disinformation techniques used by the CIA are a result of observing women in their everyday lives, all the way back to the days of the cave.

The police officer told me that I had provided all he needed and thanked me once again as he made his way out to his car.

My father came home and saw the calm in my mom’s eyes, so for now, his prepared tirade had to be put on the back burner. His comment, though, gave me a start.

This girl was from seven years ago? he asked.

My father had recalled an incident seven years ago that involved the disappearance of a young fourteen-year-old girl. The more he thought about it, the closer it began to hit home. There was a man he had worked with back then at the flour mill who had lost his teenaged daughter under mysterious circumstances. The man had quit within the year, and my father lost touch with him, never giving him a second thought. My dad asked me where we had discovered the body, and I told him that it was in the bank of the riverbed just past the St. Mary’s street bridge.

Now I could sense the wheels starting to turn in ole pop’s brain. He then told me that seven or so years ago, coming home late one night, driving over the St. Mary’s bridge, he saw a man carrying something draped over his shoulder jump over the side of the bridge. That would be about a thirty-foot leap onto the sand. He promptly stopped the car and got out to look over the edge. There was a small amount of moonlight, just enough to see that there was nothing there. I pressed him on as he further recanted.

I don’t care who you are. That high jump will break something, he stated.

The next morning, he decided to go and give a look down in the sand for obvious prints that should be there. As he walked around the approximate spot where the person would have landed, he saw no interruptions in the sand, with the exception of hoofprints, which could have been from a deer. The vision always perplexed him until eventually, he gave it no more thought.

Now I asked him for specific details about what he saw and to give his first gut-feeling response to the question of who did it.

Dad was a pretty sharp fella who came over from Mexico as an orphan. Upon his arrival in this country, he determined the most important thing upon getting here was to master the King’s English.

He told his children, If you can erase the Spanish accent, you will be taken seriously and have a better chance of melding right into the gringo’s society. He did just that, and all his children did as well.

Now what was it you saw that night? Were you drinking? I asked.

Chapter 4

The Wedding and Him

With these new occurrences and the dead little girl, my father felt able to make assumptions of his own.

First, I have to tell you a story of something that I witnessed firsthand back in Mexico forty years ago, Dad said. He began to tell a tale that I thought was a stretch for a sober and sensible man. According to my father, he was about my age when he and his buddies went out to the country club one Saturday night. They would peer through the windows and pretend they were part of the festivities.

That night’s dance was a celebration for the newlywed couple who graced the dance floor, he said. "This country club dance hall sat atop a hill off to the side of the golf course, a bit remote, but still, it lit up like a mansion on the hill every Saturday night. As we hid in the bushes, a carriage pulled up, delivering a man that was completely dressed in black, dressed in a long black coat with tails that softly brushed the ground as he proceeded up the walkway to the hall entrance.

If I ever wanted to look like somebody when I grew up, I was watching him now. He wore a beautiful black silk fedora, and he had the most perfect mustache and Vandyke beard any man would want. He approached the entrance and walked right into the midst of the crowd. We noticed how all the ladies seemed awestruck when he walked past them. The men couldn’t help but admire him with an envy that was obvious but kept in check.

Who was this fine caballero?

Nobody knew him, or at least had not made any advances or greetings of recognition. He was at this party, and he was the main attraction. It didn’t take long for him to select someone that caught his eye. It just so happened he fancied the newlywed bride, who was the most beautiful woman in the ballroom.

My father was getting fidgety as he told the story. I knew it was dinnertime, and we would have to continue the tale after dinner. I just hoped I could coax him into it before his favorite mini-nap time. He would dent the old recliner after a meal with his portly frame, and all bets were off till after he got his snore on.

The next morning, as I rode off with my chums, I started telling them about my dad’s experience and the tale he was telling me. I had everybody’s attention as we all pedaled off together in a squadron formation. When we got to our brick pit diggings, we stopped and discussed what kind of adventure was scheduled for the day. We caught our breaths after our race to the pits, and I finished giving them the rest of my story. All my friends were now intent on getting more information. I assured them all that later in the evening, I would pester my pop for more details.

This tale opened a new can of worms for the crew. We looked across the river and through the tamarack trees at the old dance hall that has been a part of all our lives since we were able to start roaming the streets. We then toyed with the idea of returning to where we had found the corpse. Curiosity was really burning in our jeans but decided we would need to be careful, lest we ran into the hoodlums from the next barrio. The dance hall building now loomed before us in the distance. Well, for now, that’s another story.

Starting off toward the riverbed, we set our bikes down and ran down the bank and across the sandy bed to climb the other bank. We never had the occasion to go near the building because it had windows that were not friendly to prying eyes. They were seven feet off the ground and whitewashed over. There were no doorways or columns or anything that you could hide in or around. So it held no value to us, and as a result, we never bothered with it.

The reason the windows were intact and not busted out was simple. The owners, in their infinite wisdom, had all the rocks picked up and removed from around the perimeter of the building. That didn’t occur to any of us geniuses until I had a dream one night in my later teens. Go figure.

Chapter 5

The Ballroom

Patrolling the entire area around the dance hall was a new adventure for us, albeit a boring task. The four sides were flat blank walls rising up maybe thirty feet or so. We were kids, so everything was exaggerated until we grew into adulthood and really got a grasp of the proper perspective. For now, though, we were walking around the Lincoln Memorial , or so it seemed.

The west side of the building held the windows, and the south side had the entrance doors and ticket window. Not much to see at all. It was a big block of cheese sitting there. We stood at the entrance doors, each of us handling the thick chain and padlock that were securing the double doors. Maybe today would be the day that the lock would just plop open for us, and we could gain entrance. Each one of us, over the course of years, had occasion to jangle the chain as we passed the building on the way home from school. It would never open, of course. Why today would be any different is anyone’s guess.

The cars were whizzing by right next to us, and it seemed unusually that the street was so near to the doors. I guess the widening of the street came later, and they grabbed up any and all available space. Well, we all walked back around to the west side to see what we could make of the windows and how we would get inside. This was a thought none of us had ever had before, and like I said, this building was of no interest ever before. Now it had piqued our interest, and we were gonna go in for the kill.

It was evident that we needed a ladder to gain access. So off to our respective houses to gather the materials and tools for the job.

We were now a driven bunch, and nothing was going to stop us.

Nails, scrap lumber, and tools were gathered up for the next day’s project as we called it a day and went to our separate homes.

Chapter 6

Shadow Demons / Mayhem

Dad had arrived home from work now, and I paced behind him, quietly waiting for the time when I was sure he had wound down sufficiently from the day. Then I would get the information I needed to finish telling my friends in the morning.

You have to finish telling me the story of the elegant man at the wedding dance, I asked. He sat me down and began his tale of an event that would become a part of my life even into adulthood.

As my father spoke, I stared intently at his eyes for any hint of deceit or fabrication on his part. His eyes took on a look of trepidation as he spoke, and I have to admit, that gave me cause for concern, now believing everything he told me. It was as though he were unloading something he had kept close to the vest his entire life thus far. This made me feel a chill as he continued.

This strange guest to the ball moved with grace as he flowed across the floor when he danced with any young woman who had sought him out for a dance, my dad went on, seemingly still enchanted with this mysterious man he witnessed so many years ago.

The stranger had his eyes on the new bride. Soon it seemed her eyes were fixed on him, and she was becoming intoxicated by his very visage. Newly married, she felt a shame in her heart, but it was becoming harder to deny the warmth rising up inside her as the stranger’s eyes fixated on her. She immediately excused herself from her wedding party’s table and slipped off to the ladies’ powder room.

My father then said that he and his friends who had never taken their eyes off the stranger no longer caught sight of him among the crowd. They had started to focus on the dessert table, salivating over the cakes and other goodies, when they noticed the stranger was now gone from view.

Where did he go? they asked one another.

A few minutes passed, then all hell broke loose. The groom was missing his new bride, and he also became aware of the fact that the stranger was nowhere to be found. The groom