Chapter 3: Footprints of Steam

Chapter 3: Footprints of Steam

The silence in Silas Kane’s truck was as vast and heavy as the desert itself. Eddie sat stiffly in the passenger seat, the smell of sun-baked vinyl and old tobacco filling his nostrils. The springs groaned with every rut in the barely-there dirt track, a rhythmic protest that did nothing to soothe his frayed nerves. Albright's voice, dripping with derision, still echoed in his head: No more monsters in the machine. But the machine was telling the truth. The rhythmic pulse from deep within the earth was still there on his tablet, a slow, steady breath he could no longer deny. He was choosing the monster.

“Where are we going?” Eddie finally asked, his voice sounding small against the engine’s rattle.

“To read an old report,” Silas replied, not taking his eyes off the shimmering horizon. “Older than your papers. Older than the words for them.”

They drove for another twenty minutes, leaving the main road and the distant speck of the fracking rig far behind. Silas guided the truck into a narrow, winding canyon Eddie would never have found on his own. The temperature dropped a few precious degrees as sheer walls of red and ochre rock rose on either side, swallowing the sky. The silence here was different. Deeper. Sacred.

Silas parked the truck and got out. He poured the last of his water onto the ground at the canyon’s mouth. “Best to be polite when you enter someone’s house,” he said simply.

Eddie followed, his sturdy hiking boots crunching on the loose scree. He felt like an intruder, his scientific gear a sacrilege in this ancient place. They walked for several hundred yards until Silas stopped before a wide, smooth wall of dark rock, protected from the elements by a deep overhang.

The wall was covered in petroglyphs. Spirals that mimicked galaxies, stick-figure hunters chasing long-horned sheep, handprints of people long since turned to dust. Eddie’s analytical mind began to categorize them by age and style, a desperate attempt to cling to the familiar.

“Most folks see the history of a people here,” Silas said, his hand hovering just above the stone, not daring to touch it. “But it’s a user’s manual, too. A warning.”

He pointed to a section of the wall that was clearly the centerpiece. Chiseled deep into the dark desert varnish was a figure that made the breath catch in Eddie’s throat. It was immense, towering over the other carvings. Its body was a chaotic swirl of lines, its form humanoid but elemental. From its torso, jagged bolts—lightning—shot inward, not from the sky. At its feet, wavy lines depicted both churning earth and raging water. It was him. It was the Shaker of Dust, exactly as Eddie had seen him in the storm, rendered in stone by hands that had withered a thousand years ago.

“They saw him too,” Eddie whispered, a profound sense of validation and terror washing over him. He wasn't crazy.

“They saw him, and they knew what he wanted,” Silas confirmed. “Respect. Balance. They knew where he slept, in the deep places. They knew not to disturb him.” He turned his piercing gaze from the rock to Eddie. “That fracking company, they’re not just drilling for gas. From here,” he gestured vaguely to the east, “their drills are angled deep, trying to fracture a shale bed right over the Canyons Aquifer. They think it’s a shortcut.”

Silas traced a finger through the air, following the line of a deep crack in the stone wall. “To The Shaker, that ain’t shale. It’s bone. And the aquifer isn’t just water. It’s the heart of his memory, the last dream of the ocean he used to be. They’re not just drilling. They’re stabbing him, right in the heart, trying to break his bones to get at the marrow.”

The metaphor was so visceral, so horribly perfect, that Eddie felt a sympathetic pang in his own chest. He stared at the ancient carving, at the raw power it depicted, and understood. This wasn't a god of moods. This was a being of pure, physical reality, and it was being wounded.

That night, the proof came.

Eddie was back in his trailer, the image of the petroglyph burned into his mind. He’d taken a photo with his phone, a pathetic digital copy of an eternal warning. He was trying to formulate a report for Albright, a version of the truth that might sound sane, when the alarms shrieked.

It wasn’t the rhythmic breathing. It was a single, violent convulsion. A sharp, brutal spike on the seismograph that dwarfed the tremor from the storm. But this time, the epicenter wasn’t on top of him. The triangulation data flashed on the screen, a precise set of coordinates six miles to the east.

Right on top of the fracking rig.

It was targeted. It was a response. A spasm of pain and rage. He watched the aftershocks ripple through the system, a furious tremor that lasted a full minute and then vanished, leaving only the slow, steady pulse of the god’s breathing, now slightly faster, more agitated.

The next morning, Eddie was up before the sun. He didn’t bother with coffee. He grabbed his tablet and his phone and drove, not toward his sensor array, but toward the fracking site. He parked a mile away and hiked the rest, using the low ridges for cover. He could see increased activity at the site—security trucks patrolling the perimeter fence, men in hard hats gesturing and pointing. Something had happened.

He circled around to the north, to an area of open desert near where the main drill head was located. And then he saw them.

The ground was disturbed. Not a crack or a fissure, but a series of immense depressions in the sand. Footprints. Each one was the size of a small car, pressed deep into the earth. The sand around the edges of the nearest print had been superheated, fused into a dark, glassy crust of fulgurite.

Eddie approached with a reverence he didn’t know he possessed. The air still felt charged, humming with a residual energy that made the hairs on his arms stand up. As the first rays of the sun crested the mountains, they caught something rising from the bottom of the footprint.

Steam.

Faint wisps of vapor curled up from the compacted sand, a sign of some impossible, subterranean heat. The Shaker hadn't just walked here. He had burned his way across the desert floor in the night.

With a trembling hand, Eddie pulled out his phone. He brought up the photo of the petroglyph, the ancient carving of the god’s foot. He held it up, framing it against the enormous, steaming impression in the earth before him.

They were a perfect match.

The abstract data, the old man’s stories, the fleeting vision in the storm—it all crashed together into one, undeniable, terrifying reality. The god was real, he was angry, and he had just left his footprints at the scene of the crime.