I was locked up for fifteen years. There was a skinwalker with us.

First, a little history. I was in a prison in southern Arizona, where I was serving a 15-year sentence. Why I was there doesn't matter. Anyone who went there didn't want to know more about or understand a lot of the things that happened.

It all started with a story set in jail. A long time ago, we were woken up and told to stand at the front of our cell while guards looked at us to make sure we were there. A man with his own cell seemed to be out of it during one of these regular checks about a year before I was sent there. When a guard came over to help, they saw that it wasn't the prisoner they thought it was. This man was wearing the skin of another man, so he was not the same person. He looked like a monster because he was too big for him and wrapped over his body. The worst part was that the person who was wearing the skin wasn't locked up. They had no idea how he got into jail or into a cell. He wasn't written down anywhere. Even worse, they never found the man's body.

I know it's a sick story, and that's not the usual way to describe someone, but that's what they called him in prison: "The Skinwalker." And the fact that he never spoke didn't help. That's what started the skinwalker beliefs in the yard. After about a month, the guy was sent to a different place, and most people in genpop were happy to hear the story. The story was told to me on my second day there, and it will stay with me forever.