Topanga Canyon

For rock star Colton Smith, it’s like the past, or his vision of it, was a continually evolving parade that never closed for the weekend, only to move on someplace else shortly the next day. For the reticent recluse who spent most of his time these days hidden away in Topanga canyon, his view of the world continually shifted, as to his direction in a forgotten time cloistered away where everything around him stunk of the patchouli-drenched late 1960’s.

His band the broilers had enjoyed hits steadily throughout the 1960s, played mostly on AM radio, squawked three-chord bar chords that made hairy people raise their fists into the air and make a devil sign, the forefinger and pinkie extended out, the thumb ready for some serious hitchhiking. But he hadn’t had a hit in years, and there was talk of a reunion by some of the band members that actually went further out into pop culture to discover there was a whole different world out there then the one in Topanga Canyon.

The moist, burned out joint in the ashtray, the felt posters emblazoned with reflective stripes, all added to the Brian Wilson décor. He still had a sunken living room, and he had mirrors on the ceilings.

At night, when the lights dimmed to all but the faintest glow above the rooftops, Colton would go out to the porch – afforded to him by the string of minor hits that turned him into a minor celebrity almost overnight – kick back in his big easy chair, and rock, listening to the wails of the coyotes that sounded like vampires preying on those alive, squandered between the boulders and craggy inlets that dotted the canyon.

At this time of night, the light fading, standing up and stretching, he would go in search of his prey, the silver hairs in his mane becoming more illuminated as the evening wore on, waiting for the eventual emergence of the moon, whose arrival triggered additional organic rhythms to change, diurnal churnings that led him to further flights of distortion and monstrosity.

Its not that his entire face changed, or that he grew hair everywhere, for he was already quite hairy to begin with, but that his presence took on a far more menacing weight than before the moon crept up and burned off what few clouds remained after dark.

And the hunt always made him feel better, more secure at his role in this environment. In the bushes, silver moonlight drifted down upon the shadows, emanating sounds that brushed past his whiskers that now protruded six inches off of his face, he looked up at the moon and its crevices, valleys and rock, it was like staring into a refection, with the ball of rock in the sky in the middle of millions of tiny needles.

He felt that significant, a man with a deeper connection to the canyon, the thrill of a night’s feeding, the hatred locked in his heart all day, the rage turned to the natural urges of hunger and desire.

The first deer that night barely made a sound when he quietly took its life from him, feeding on the carcass several meters away from the Safeway parking lot, at the edge of the canyon, and acting as a portal from which he could safely store the bones of the victims.

Because if they ever found the remains, ones scattered in ash cans, display tables, barrels of oil from fast-food restaurants, the discoverer would know true horror, not in a phantasmagorical way, or in the gothic writings of Graham Stoker, but they would see what man was capable of, and during one summer of 1989, when the wildlife had migrated, and the chill of a summer night left Colton needing a good feed, for not even rare steak tartar could satiate the beast in side him, the daily hunger pangs disturbing sleep, putting off the band practice. But they never knew, until the victims would have to become human, because feeding becomes the most important thing when its taken away.

The authorities were unaccustomed to finding human remains anywhere around Topanga Canyon, and so Deputy Dan Falchick found himself baffled at the state of the remains found tied up in cheesecloth at the base of a canyon. And while initial beliefs yielded the usual suspects, Satan worshippers, cultists, serial killers, there was a chilling accuracy to the remains that spoke of something more organic, something closer to the primal needs of man coupled with the rabid accuracy of nature.