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Mark spoke in low tones. “Hey Bill, you know where we are going, right?” He looked at me with a serious, steady stare. Mark had a reputation of being made of stone under pressure, but there was a tightness around his eyes now.

“Yeah, I know. I heard the same stories,” I replied.

“Look, no disrespect, but you heard some stories. White Man stories—Yukon Fisher and Angus Scott. But you are an outsider, a Cree. And White, kind of,” Mark said.

My dad’s family had lived in the North around Great Slave Lake for three generations. My mom was Native, but we were not Dene, we would always be outsiders to people who had lived there for millennia. 

Mark continued, “To me and my people we call those ‘stories,’ history. The Nahanni is michili – bad medicine. We don’t go there…we never go there. For very good reasons. The main one is that it belongs to someone else.”

I was skeptical. “Mark, the North has these legends everywhere. The Dogrib have the Edàelii— “enemies”—who would come out of water and snatch people. The Mohini and Weetigo, these were all just boogey men to scare kids into staying close to the village.”

“Not this. My people have avoided that Valley since before the Whites showed up. It is a dangerous and deadly place. The only people who lived up there were the Naha, and they have been gone for almost a century. My grandmother told me stories her grandmother told her about the Naha. They were savage bastards, who simply disappeared into the mists one day.”

“Savage bastards you guys traded with for centuries. Then they came down one year and got smallpox or tuberculosis and went back into the mountains and died. So what?” I asked.

“Sure, we traded with them, but it was never normal. They never left the trees and people always went missing when they came. And that was after they calmed down. Before that, they just raided us…everyone raided us.” Mark spat on the ground and took out another cigarette. “Look, who the fuck cares about local politics? It is about the land itself. We didn’t avoid that place just because of the Naha…well not entirely. The whole place is forbidden, and for good reason.” He spoke slowly like he was explaining something to a frustratingly simple child. “My grandfather used to say that our world was not alone. It existed alongside many others. We, people, were stuck in our world for a good reason, because we would just go to war with anyone from somewhere else. But he said that spirits could travel between and acted as both messengers and agents. In some places, the distance between worlds becomes thin… The Nahanni Valley is one such place.”

“Mark, what do you want me to do with this? Tell these Americans and the rest of the team that the mission is off because we are jumping into some sort of Land of the Lost with Indian spirits and monsters? C’mon. I don’t really believe it anyway. The ‘Headless Valley’…fuck.” I shook my head at this. The last thing we needed was a whole “spooked Indians” vibe in a crew that was just getting to know each other.

Mark slowly smiled, shaking his head. “Bill, the way I see it, these guys are totally fucked if the Valley decides to see us. I know the music and where the dance goes, I will be fine. You are in the middle, caught between worlds—probably fucked too, but you might get lucky.” Mark paused and took a drag from his cigarette. “Look, maybe we can do something. My grandmother said to never go into the Valley, then reinforced it with a slap on my head. But she said if I ever did, do not take anything, pick up anything off the ground, or breathe basically. Then maybe the spirits that guard the place will not notice me.”

I let out a long breath. I would have dismissed the idea entirely, but my grandfather said the exact same thing. “Okay, I will see what I can do. Maybe if I play the race card on archeology or anthropology, or some bullshit, I can keep it to a minimum. We are supposed to keep the footprint light anyway because of the Soviets.”

Mark simply shrugged. “Anything is better than nothing. I am not hauling all your dead asses out if things go wrong.” Mark started to walk away. “But I will make sure to tell your people in Pine Point that you died well. Even if that turns out to be a lie,” he said over his shoulder.

I shook my head and went back to my gear to figure out how to work this. Then Mark called out in the darkness, “Hey Bill, you know the name of that offshoot valley we are headed into? To get this whatever-the-fuck thing?”

“No, it doesn’t have a name. It just peels off north of the South Nahanni River.” I called back.

Looking back, all those years ago, I can still see Mark shaking his head as he field-strips a cigarette. “It has a name. The Valley of Broken Skulls.”