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feet. “Don’t be frightened”, don Juan said imperiously. “Keep your inner silence and it will move away”. I was shivering from head to toe. I had the clear knowledge that if I didn’t keep my inner silence alive, the mud shadow would cover me up like a blanket and suffocate me. Without losing the darkness around me, I screamed bats c . ar a4 wots 2 tom at the top of my voice. Never had I been so angry, so utterly frustrated. The mud shadow too another leap, clearly to the bottom of the valley. I kept on screaming, shaking my legs. I wanted to shake off whatever might come to eat me. (Castaneda, 1998, pp. 231-233) Something was obviously missing in David’s recollection of events, so Barbara asked him more about what he had seen by the fir tree. “T’m looking at a shadow”, he replied. “Maybe it’s the cat, he likes that tree. Rustling, pomegranate tree. At the bottom? But how? This, there’s something moving, but I can’t see it. It’s a dark spot, a black spot, moving around the tree. And it’s gone.” “T saw, it looks irregular. Is it a shadow? It’s black. It’s on the ground. It’s moving around and away, quickly, rustling. Like walking on leaves. And it’s very faint with a whisper... a snake sound, real faint. [...] My brain’s not working”, he said. “I’m just tramping behind her to the car. Ah, ah. But I want to go look at that. I heard a noise.” “A rope, pulled real fast”, he replied. “Whoooo, kind of like a top. But soft, so it was muted. And that’ when I see the thing. The black. It’s just blackness, on the ground. Very quick. Something hit me before.” “Shocked me”, he answered. “In the back. In my hip, at the bottom of my spine... I’m bouncing, mechanically, towards the satellite dish, I think. .... It’s big.... It hurt, all over, the shock. Tingles real loud. All over my bones it’s tingling, shaking. [...] I’m walking around the tree, and I hear a noise. Like a top, a spinning top. It starts high-pitched and goes lower, and goes away pretty fast. So I look towards it. I can’t see very well. ...It’s like a blot on the ground, ... a black towel? Or a garbage bag? Kind of odd-shaped. It’s flat, flat-flat. It, it is on the ground, it’s no different than the ground, but it’s just black and moving fast. And it’s making a little noise. ...I’m looking at the thing. ...A blackness. A ‘not.’ Like a ‘not-there.’ Like a moving oil puddle on the ground. ...And it’s moving, but changing, too. Not much, just the edges, 319 High Strangeness — Part Three Juan and me to the core - a gigantic black mud shadow had just landed by our Now, let’s go back to the excerpt from Karla Turner’s book: Barbara asked him to expand his description, so David continued. “What did the noise sound like?” [Barbara’s question. ] “Where?” Barbara inquired.