Heather is grinning as she points her finger out into the desert, “Look, I see the devil out there.”
Anxiously, I turn and look. The soft and soothing blue skies surround the silhouette of a gray funnel-shaped cloud. It’s fifty feet high and twenty feet wide, twisting and moving across the horizon.
Fearful, “What is it?”
“It’s a spirit being. You call them dust devils, but Indians know better.”
Turning to Heather I say, “It looks like a mini-tornado.
“I’ve never seen a dust devil. We don’t have them back East.”
Heather speaks, as she looks deep into my eyes, “Spirit beings are the supernatural energy of the dead. There are good ones and bad ones just like people.”
I feel her stare go through me and exit the back of my head.
“Heather, how does the dust devil become a spirit being?”
Heather replies, “Legend has it that the dust devil passes over the dead body of an Indian. Then it lifts its spirit from the Earth into it. The spirit inhabits the dust devil. Now the spirit being can travel the Earth and look for a living creature’s body to possess. After having done so, it shifts its shape from the supernatural to the natural and is reborn, reincarnated. In its new body it must complete the mission. Which is to return home to its place in the sacred burial ground of our people. That is its goal, to be with its own kind in the Spirit World.”
Heather continues, “We call our sacred burial ground the Spirit World. It’s a place hidden from everyone but us. And where Indian spirit beings can be ‘At Rest.’ That is where all the spirits go when their human bodies die.
“Ghosts can materialize, move objects, and scare people. But they cannot take a body or soul, or return from the supernatural world to the natural world like spirit beings.”
Whistling sounds come from the dust devil. Its shriek gets louder and louder as it moves closer to us. The shrill sound is like an old factory lunch whistle piercing the air at noon.
The dust devil advances across the desert, kicking up clouds of dust, brush, and lots of sand.
“The dust devil is coming,” I screech.
The Medicine Woman shouts a warning, “It is an Evil Devil Spirit, a shape-shifting demon. It will destroy your body and your soul if it takes you.”
Jackie and I look at each other in disbelief.
Heather continues, “Evil spirit beings are devils spirits wanting to reincarnate in the mortal body of a human or animal. They are not my people trying to return home to us to be at rest in our sacred burial grounds. Evil spirit beings are the bad ones who destroy the soul they possess and cause the body to die.”
I almost fall over the steps and onto my head. My body stiffens as an array of goose bumps rise on my skin like chicken pox. The fuzzy hairs on the back of my neck stand up like soldiers at attention.
Jackie and Dad look at me, speechless.