The Curse of the Wendigo

SEVEN

“There Is Nothing to Fear”

“Holy Mother of God,” the sergeant whispered. He crossed himself. He looked at the empty oracular cavities, the mouth frozen wide in a voiceless scream.

“You know who this is?” asked the monstrumologist, then answered his own question: “It is Pierre Larose.”

Hawk wet his lips, nodded, turned away from the skewered corpse and scanned the clearing with a quick and frightened eye, finger quivering on the trigger of his rifle. He muttered darkly under his breath.

“Will Henry,” the doctor said, “run back to camp and fetch the hatchet.”

“The hatchet?” Hawk repeated.

“We can’t leave him stuck here like a pig on a stick,” Warthrop replied. “Snap to, Will Henry.”

I returned to find the doctor in that same attitude of quiet regard, pensively stroking his whiskered chin, while Hawk crashed and blundered in the brush on the far side of the clearing, his lamp bobbing between the trees like a massive firefly. I handed the axe to Warthrop, who approached the victim gingerly, as if being careful not to disturb the well-earned rest of a weary traveler. He motioned for me to bring the light closer. At that moment Hawk rejoined us, huffing for breath, twigs and shards of dead leaves clinging to his hair, the color high in his cheeks.

“Nothing,” he said. “Can’t see anything in this blasted dark. We’ll have to wait for daylight . . . but what are you doing?”

“I am removing the victim from this tree,” the doctor replied.

He slammed the sharp blade into the torso. Shards of stringy muscle landed on Hawk’s cheek. The poor man, unaccustomed to the methods of the monstrumologist, gave a dismayed cry and slapped the bit of meat from his face.

“Cut down the tree, God damn it—not him!” he shouted. “What is wrong with you, Warthrop?”

The doctor grunted, reared back, and swung again. The second blow ripped all the way to the wood; the body slid an inch or two, and then, in grotesque, heartrending slowness, the body pulled free and flipped, landing facedown at the base of the hemlock. The sickening thud as it hit the ground sounded very loud in the cold air. Though the body fell nowhere near him, Hawk recoiled.

“Come along, Will Henry,” said the doctor grimly, handing the bloody axe back to me.

I stepped up to the body, holding the light low. Warthrop knelt down, grunted, and observed dispassionately, “The upper dermis has been stripped from the posterior as well,” as if we were not deep in the wilderness but in the bowels of his laboratory on Harrington Lane. “Light closer, please, Will Henry. Some laceration of the underlying tissue. No evidence of serration. Whatever they used, it was very sharp, though here and there there is some indication of tearing.” He pressed his fingertips into the latissimus dorsi. A viscous puddle rose up, the blood closer to black than crimson. “Will Henry, try to hold the light still, will you? You’re throwing shadows everywhere.”

He dropped to his hands and knees and brought his eyes to within an inch of the corpse, moving his head back and forth, up and down, peering, prodding, poking—then sniffing, the tip of his nose practically touching the putrefying flesh.

It was too much for Hawk, who let loose a string of expletives and commenced to stomp in a furious ever widening circle behind us. In the space of a few moments their roles had been reversed. We had passed from the bucolic backcountry of Hawk’s youth into the land of blood and umbrage, the territory of monstrumology.

“What the bloody hell are you doing, Warthrop?” His panicky cry echoed in the indifferent air. “We shouldn’t be out here like this. We don’t know if . . .” He let the thought die unfinished. His voice betrayed how closely he teetered upon the edge. It was as if the world had lost all familiarity; he was the aboriginal man, alone in an alien landscape. “Let’s get him back to camp, and there you can sniff him to your heart’s content!”

The doctor assented to the wisdom of the suggestion. I led the way, the doctor and Hawk bearing our gruesome find behind me. The fire had burned down to a few ash-covered embers in our absence, and I used the hatchet to cut up some more wood. Hawk was dissatisfied with my efforts; he added two more armfuls of fuel, and soon the fire was blazing four feet into the air.

“You’re quite right, Sergeant,” Warthrop said, kneeling beside the corpse, as a penitent before a patron saint. “This is much better.” He cupped the head gently in his hands and pulled the chin back. The empty eye sockets rolled toward the canopy. “Look closely now. Are you quite certain it’s Larose?”

“Yes. It’s him. It’s Larose.” Hawk dug into his rucksack and removed a silver flask, unscrewed the top with shaking fingers, gulped down a few swallows, and shuddered violently. “I recognize the red hair.”

“Hmm. It is quite red, isn’t it? Curious how the face has been left untouched, except for the eyes.”

“Why did they cut out his eyes?”

“I am not certain anyone did.” The doctor brought his face close. “My guess would be carrion, but I can’t make out any marks in this light. We’ll have to wait for morning.”

“All right, but what about the skin? No animal strips off the skin and leaves the rest—and where the hell are his clothes?”

“No, whatever flayed him was no animal,” the doctor said. “At least, not of the four-legged variety. The skin has been sliced off, with something extremely sharp, a hunting knife or . . .” He stopped, hovering over a large hole that yawned in the middle of the man’s chest, the only obvious wound visible other than the spot lower down where he had been impaled, and then hacked free from the hemlock. The monstrumologist laughed under his breath and shook his head ruefully. “Ah, my kingdom for some real light! We could wait, but . . . Will Henry, fetch my instrument case.”

I scooted around our consternated guide and retrieved the doctor’s soft canvas field case. He tugged free the leather ties, flipped it open, and pulled out the desired instrument, holding it up for Hawk to see.

“Or a scalpel, Sergeant. Will Henry, I’ll need more light here—no, take the opposite side and hold the lamp low. That’s it.”

“What are you doing?” demanded Hawk. He drew closer, curiosity getting the better of his revulsion.

“There is something very peculiar. . . .” The monstrumologist’s hand disappeared inside the hole. Operating by sense of touch and his knowledge of anatomy, he made several quick slices with the scalpel, then handed the instrument to me.

“What is?” asked Hawk. “What’s peculiar?”

“Ack!” the doctor groaned. “I can’t do both. . . . Will Henry, set down the lamp a moment and pull this apart. No, deeper; you’ll have to get hold of the ribs. Pull hard, Will Henry. Harder!”

I felt someone’s breath upon my cheek—Hawk’s. He was staring at me.

“Indispensable,” he whispered. “Now I understand!”

The doctor’s hands disappeared between mine. Then, with a dramatic flourish, the monstrumologist hauled out the severed heart, cradling it in his hands and holding it high like a bloody offering. I plopped onto my backside, the muscles of my forearms singing with pain. Warthrop turned toward the fire and allowed the light to play over the organ. As he pressed on the pericardium, thick curds of arterial blood dribbled over the severed lip of the pulmonary artery and fell into the fire, where it popped and bubbled, steaming in the intense heat.

“Most peculiar . . . There appears to be denticulated trauma to the right ventricle.”

“What?” Hawk fairly shouted. “What to the what?”

“Teeth marks, Sergeant. Something bored a hole through his chest and took a bite out of his heart.”

There would be no sleep that night for the monstrumologist. Around three in the morning he shooed me to bed—“You’ll be no use to me in the morning otherwise, Will Henry”—and urged Hawk to get some rest as well. He would take both watches. Our shaken escort did not take kindly to the suggestion.

“What if you fall asleep?” he asked. “If that fire goes out . . . the smell of . . . It will draw all sorts of things. . . .” He was hugging his rifle as a child might his favorite blanket. “Not to mention whoever did this is still out there. They could be watching us right now, waiting for us to fall asleep.”

“I assure you, Sergeant, I will not doze off, and I shall keep my rifle close. There is nothing to fear.”

Hawk would have none of it. He did not know the doctor as I did. When the hunt was on, he could stay awake for days. Now Warthrop’s eyes were bright, and all fatigue had fled. He was in his element now.

“Nothing to fear! Sweet Mary and Joseph, listen to the man!”

“Yes, I would beg that you do, Sergeant. Now is not the time to lose our heads and submit to our baser instinct. How far are we from the Sucker encampment?”

“A day . . . a day and a half.”

“Good. We are of the same mind here. The quicker we reach our destination, the better. You know these people, Sergeant. Have you ever heard of anything like this?” He nodded toward the body, its arms outstretched as if waiting for a hug. “Is there anything in their culture to suggest such desecration, perhaps for shamanistic reasons?”

“You’re asking if they’d ever skin a man and eat his heart?”

The doctor smiled wanly. “There are certain indigenous beliefs about taking on the spirit of what one consumes.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, Mr. Monstrumologist, but I’ve never heard of the Cree doing anything like what was done to poor Larose here. They say they’ll chop off the head sometimes—chop off the head, cut out the heart, and burn the body to keep it from coming back.”

“To keep what from coming back?”

“The Outiko—the Wendigo!”

“Ah. Yes, of course. Well, whatever snacked on Monsieur Larose’s heart was no Cree—or anyone of any color for that matter. The bite radius is too large, for one thing, and every cut is jagged—an indication that the mouth that bit him lacked incisors.”

“Lacked . . . ?”

“The cutting teeth. These here.” The doctor tapped his front teeth with a blood-encrusted fingernail. “In other words, whatever bit him had a mouth full of fangs.”

The night wore on, and Hawk wore down, at last throwing himself upon the ground beside me with an agonized moan. Warthrop remained outside the tent, keeping watch over his special charge while keeping the fire stoked. If not in actuality, at least the fire gave off the illusion of defense against whatever might lurk just beyond the range of its beneficent light.

Soon my tent mate’s moans were replaced by the pleasant drone of his humming, perhaps to comfort himself in the way a man might whistle in a graveyard, the same haunting voyageur song he had sung before:

J’ai fait une mâtresse y a pas longtemps.

J’irai la voir dimanche, ah oui, j’irai!

A gentle lady charmed me, not long ago . . .

I’ll visit her on Sunday, it shall be so!

I was roused from my restless slumber by something tugging upon my boot. I sat up with a small cry.

“Easy, Will Henry; it’s only me,” the monstrumologist said. He was smiling. His face had taken on the same feverish glow I had seen a hundred times before. He gestured for me to join him outside. The cold, moist air made my lungs ache, but my heart sang with the shimmering bars of golden light streaming through the welcoming arms of the trees. The fire had all but died, and now in its smoldering ruin sat the coffeepot, steam rising languorously from its spout. The doctor gave a soft clap of his hands and desultorily asked how I had slept.

“Very well, sir,” I said.

“Why do you lie, Will Henry? Have you never heard that a person who will lie about the smallest of things will have no compunction when it comes to the largest?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“‘Yes, sir.’ Again with the ‘yes, sir.’ What have I told you about that?”

“Yes . . .” I hesitated, but now I was somewhat committed. “. . . sir.”

“Come, I’ve found a suitable spot.”

A suitable spot for what? I followed him a few yards into the trees, where I found a shallow trench; the camp shovel lay abandoned beside it.

“Finish up and be quick about it, Will Henry. You may break your fast afterward. If Sergeant Hawk is correct and not indulging in some wishful thinking, we may reach Sandy Lake before sundown.”

“We’re going to bury him?”

“We can’t very well bring him with us, and it wouldn’t do to leave him here exposed to the elements.” He sighed. His steamy breath roiled in the cold air. “I had hoped the morning light would reveal more clues as to what happened to him, but there’s little else I can do without the proper equipment.”

“What did happen to him, sir?”

“It appears from the evidence that someone impaled him upon the broken trunk of a hemlock tree, Will Henry,” he said dryly. “Snap to now! Remember, he that would have fruit must climb the tree.”

And many hands make light work, I thought as I snapped to with the shovel. The handle was half the length of a proper shovel’s, the ground was rocky and unyielding, and blisters soon formed on my hands and a dull ache set in between my shoulders. From the campsite I heard my companions arguing—Hawk must have gotten up—their disembodied voices sounding ethereal and tinny in the labyrinthine halls of the arboreal cathedral.

Presently I spied them stumbling along the crooked path toward me, bearing between them the body of poor Larose, the sergeant holding the upper half, Warthrop the legs. Hawk, who was forced by the narrowness of the passage to walk backward with the load, lost his balance on the dew-slick ground and fell, pulling the body sideways and down as the doctor remained upright. The gash inflicted by Warthrop the night before split wide with a sickening crunch, and the corpse broke completely in two. The top half came to rest in Hawk’s lap, the head with its shock of red hair nestled in the crook of Hawk’s neck, the open mouth pressed under the sergeant’s jaw in an obscene mockery of a kiss. Hawk dropped the torso, scrambled to his feet, and cursed Warthrop roundly for his failure to “go down” with him.

As the possessor of the sole shovel, the honors of the dead guide’s internment fell to me. Hawk grew impatient; he seemed nearly mad with the desire to quit this part of the forest. He fell to his knees beside the grave, dragging handfuls of earth into the hole, all the while muttering obscenities under his breath. Then he collapsed against a tree trunk, his gasps all out of proportion to the difficulty of his efforts.

“Someone should say something,” he said. “Do we have anything to say?”

Apparently we did not. The doctor absently wiped bits and pieces of tacky viscera from his duster. I twirled the tip of the shovel in the dirt.

Wearily, with words that struck me as hollowed out of all import, Hawk recited the Hail Mary prayer:

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. . . .”

Something stirred in the bush. A large crow, its ebony body as shiny as obsidian, its black eyes brightly inquisitive, was watching us.

“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb. . . .”

Another crow hopped out from the shadows. Then another. And another. They stood, motionless, balanced upon their skeletal legs, four pairs of depthless black and soulless eyes, watching us. More appeared from the tangle of vine and scrub; I counted a baker’s dozen of crows, a mute congregation, a deputation of the desolation, come to pay their respects.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Overcome, Hawk began to weep. The monstrumologist—and the crows—did not. The birds commandeered the rite when we left. I looked back and saw them hopping about the makeshift grave, pecking at the offal Warthrop had flicked from his coat.

After a hurried breakfast of dried biscuit and bitter coffee, we broke camp. Though both men were anxious to finish the final leg to Sandy Lake, they recognized the necessity of exploring the clearing and its environs in the daylight, and so for an hour we tramped the grounds, looking for any evidence that might help solve the riddle of our macabre discovery the night before. We found nothing—no tracks, no scrap of clothing, no personal belongings or trace of anything human. It was as if Pierre Larose had dropped from the sky to land in an extremely infelicitous spot.

“It’s not possible,” mused our guide, standing before the broken spine of the hemlock tree.

“It happened, so it must be possible,” replied the monstrumologist.

“But how? How did he heft the body eight feet off the ground like that—unless he stood on something—and if he did, where is it? I’d say there were at least two, maybe more. Hard to imagine a single author to this story. But the more bothersome is not how it was done but why was it done? If I were to murder a man, I would not go to all the trouble of skinning him and heaving him onto a pike. What is the point of that?”

“There seems to be a ritualistic aspect to it,” said Warthrop. “The author, as you call him, might have been getting at something symbolic.”

Hawk nodded thoughtfully. “Larose was in debt to half the town. I’ve dealt with more than one complaint of his swindling.”

“Ah. So perhaps an angry creditor kidnaps him, hauls him miles into the wilderness, skins him—how poetic!—then takes a bite out of his heart.”

Hawk chuckled in spite of himself. “I like it better than the alternative, Doctor. I suspect our friend Jack Fiddler would say the Old One of the Woods got a little clumsy and dropped him from on high!”

The monstrumologist nodded grimly.

“I am very interested in what our friend Jack Fiddler has to say.”