The Curse of the Wendigo

EIGHT

“I Have Come for My Friend”

His real name was Zhauwuno-geezhigo-gaubow—“He Who Stands in the Southern Sky”—or, according to records of the Hudson’s Bay Company, with whom he traded, Maisaninnine or Mesnawetheno, Cree for “a stylish person.”

He was the son of the chief, Peemeecheekag (“Porcupine Standing Sideways”), and he was the tribe’s ogimaa, or shaman, respected to the point of fear by his clansmen for his skill and power, particularly over the evil spirit that possessed his kinsmen in times of famine. He claimed in his lifetime to have killed fourteen of these creatures that “devour all mankind,” the last in 1906—Wahsakapeequay, the daughter-in-law of his brother, Joseph. His reward for this selfless act of altruism was his arrest by the Canadian authorities the following year.

After being convicted of murder and sentenced to death, Jack Fiddler escaped—from prison and from the indignity of the white man’s justice. He carried out the sentence himself. The day following his escape they found him hanging from a tree.

He was a bit shy of his fiftieth year when he met his spiritual brother—Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, expert in the natural philosophy of aberrant species—though in appearance he seemed far older. Season after season in the brutal cold, and the unimaginable hardship and deprivation of the harsh subarctic wilderness, had taken its toll; he appeared closer to seventy than fifty, his skin cracked and laced with deep wrinkles, his face as dark and worn as old shoe leather, in which the eyes dominated, dark, deep set, intense but kind. His were the eyes of one who has seen too much suffering to take suffering too seriously.

As night fell, we reached Jack Fiddler’s primitive kingdom hacked out of the Canadian bush on the shores of Sandy Lake, after the most grueling day of our long trek from Rat Portage, pushed by Warthrop’s eagerness and Hawk’s unease to the limit of our endurance. The latter’s agitation grew as the day aged, his eyes flitting back and forth along the trail, seeing menace in every shadow, bad omens in even the most minor of delays.

“Have you noticed, Doctor,” he said when we halted briefly for lunch, “that we haven’t seen a single animal since leaving Rat Portage? Not a moose or a deer or a fox or anything. Nothing but birds and insects, but I don’t count them. I’ve never been up in these woods without seeing something. Even the squirrels—this is the busiest time of year for the squirrels—but not even a squirrel!”

Warthrop grunted. “We haven’t exactly been as quiet as church mice, Sergeant. Still, I agree it is unusual. They say the animals of the island rushed pell-mell into the sea just before Krakatoa blew.”

“What do you mean?”

The monstrumologist was smiling. “Perhaps a great disaster is upon the horizon and we are the only animals stupid enough to remain.”

“Are you saying a moose is smarter than us?”

“I am saying a larger brain comes with a price. Our better instincts are oft put down by our reason.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. But there is something odd about it. Now, a single wolf will clear the woods for miles—but what is there that will chase a wolf away?”

If the doctor had an answer to that, he kept it to himself.

As the sun sank into the dark waters of the lake, painting the surface with fiery bars of expiring light, a group of elders appeared at the shore to meet us. Our arrival, it appeared, was not unexpected. We were greeted with great solemnity and were offered fresh fish and cured venison, which we gratefully accepted, supping by the roaring fire a stone’s throw from the lakeshore, with the gift of warm blankets thrown over our laps, for the temperature plunged dramatically with the quitting of the sun. The entire village turned out for the meal—though we were the only ones eating. The villagers stared with intense, if mute, curiosity. White people were a highly uncommon sight this deep in the backcountry, Hawk explained; even the missionaries rarely visited here, and the few that did left heavyhearted. It seemed the Sucker people had no worries about the fate of their immortal souls.

They knew Sergeant Hawk and spoke to him in their tongue. I could make out hardly any of it, of course, except the words “Warthrop,” “Chanler,” and “Outiko.” The adults kept a respectable distance, but the children gave in to their fascination, easing closer and closer until they had clustered around us, and one by one they reached out with hesitant fingers and stroked my white skin and felt the coarse wool of my jacket. An elderly woman rebuked them, and they scampered away.

Another, much younger, woman—one of the shaman’s wives, I later learned—escorted us to the wigwam of our host, a dome-shaped structure composed of woven mats and birch bark. The shaman was alone, sitting upon a mat near the small fire in the wigwam’s center, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and draped in a ceremonial blanket.

“Tansi, Jonathan Hawk,” he greeted the sergeant. “Tansi, tansi,” he said to Warthrop, and waved us to sit beside him. Our sudden appearance in his village did not seem to faze him in the least, and he regarded the doctor and me with mild curiosity and little else. Unlike many of their displaced, hounded, and murdered brethren, the Sucker clan had been, but for the occasional visit from the well-meaning but misguided missionary, left alone by the European conquerors.

“I heard of your coming,” he said to Hawk, who translated for our benefit. “But I did not expect you to return so soon, Jonathan Hawk.”

“Dr. Warthrop is a friend of Chanler’s,” said Hawk. “He is ogimaa too, Okimahkan. Very strong, very powerful ogimaa. He’s killed many Outiko, like you.”

“I have done no such thing,” protested the doctor, deeply offended.

Jack Fiddler seemed bemused. “But he is not Iyiniwok,” he said to Hawk. “He is white.”

“In his tribe, he is called ‘monstrumologist.’ All evil spirits fear him.”

Fiddler squinted in the smoky light at my master. “I do not see it. His atca’k is hidden from me.”

His fathomless dark eyes lighted upon me, and I squirmed under their quiet power.

“But this one—his atca’k is bright. It soars high like the hawk and sees the earth. But there is something . . .” He leaned toward me, studying my face intently. “Something heavy he carries. A great burden. Too great for one so young . . . and so old. As old and young as misi-manito, the Great Spirit. What is your name?”

I glanced at Warthrop, who nodded impatiently. He seemed annoyed that the renowned medicine man had taken an interest in me.

“Will Henry,” I answered.

“You are blessed by misi-manito, Will Henry,” he said. “And a heavy burden is this blessing. Do you understand?”

“Don’t you dare say no,” the doctor whispered ominously in my ear. “I didn’t come two thousand miles to discuss your atca’k, Will Henry.”

I nodded my counterfeit assent to the old Iyiniwok.

“What he loves does not know him, and what he knows cannot love,” said the ogimaa. “Eha, like misi-manito—that which loves, which love knows not . . . I like this Will Henry.”

“I understand it’s a nearly inexhaustible topic, but if we are quite finished singing Will Henry’s praises, can we get to the point, Sergeant?” asked the doctor. He turned to Jack Fiddler. “Pierre Larose is dead.”

Fiddler’s expression did not change. “I know this.”

“That is not what you told me, Okimahkan,” said Hawk, startled by the admission. “You told me you didn’t know where Larose was.”

“For I did not know. We found him after you left us, Jonathan Hawk.”

“What happened to him?” Warthrop demanded.

“The Old One called to him—Wi-htikow.”

The doctor groaned softly. “I understand, but my question is why was he mutilated and left for carrion? Is this the way of your people, Jack Fiddler?”

“As we found him, so we left him.”

“Why?”

“He does not belong to us. He belongs to Outiko.”

“Outiko killed him.”

“Eha.”

“Flayed the skin from his bones, impaled him upon a tree, and did this.” The monstrumologist dug into his rucksack and removed the organ that had once animated Pierre Larose. Sergeant Hawk gasped; he didn’t know Warthrop had kept it. Calmly our host accepted the macabre offering, cradling it in his gnarled hands as he studied it in the firelight.

“You should not have done this,” he chided Warthrop. “Wi-htikow will be angry.”

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn if he’s angry,” said the doctor. He gestured impatiently to Hawk, who had hesitated to translate the remark. Then he continued in a voice tight with indignation. “It is none of my concern what really happened to Pierre Larose. That is a matter for Sergeant Hawk and his superiors. I have come for my friend. Larose took him into the bush, and only Larose came out again.”

“We do not take what belongs to Wi-htikow,” said the shaman. “Did you leave the rest for him?”

“No,” replied Hawk. “We buried the rest.”

Fiddler shook his head, dismayed. “Namoya, say you did not.”

“Where is John Chanler?” persisted my master. “Does he belong to Wi-htikow as well?”

“I am ogimaa. If you are ogimaa, as Jonathan Hawk has told me, you understand. I must protect my people.”

“Then, you do know where he is?”

“I will tell you, monstrumologist Warthrop. Larose, he brings your friend to me. ‘He hunts Outiko,’ he says. And I tell your friend, ‘Outiko is not hunted; Outiko hunts. Do not look into the Yellow Eye, for if you look into the Yellow Eye, the Yellow Eye looks back at you.’ Your friend does not listen to my words. His atca’k is bent; it is crooked; it does not flow cleanly to misi-manito. They go anyway. They call to Outiko, but you do not call Outiko. Outiko calls you.

“I have seen this. I am ogimaa; I protect my people from the Yellow Eye. Your friend is not Iyiniwok. Do you understand, ogimaa Warthrop? Do my words reach your ears? In truth, I ask you: Does the fox raise the bear cub, or the caribou suckle the gray wolf?

“Outiko is old, as old as the bones of the earth; Outiko was before the first word was spoken. He has no name like Zhauwuno-geezhigo-gaubow or Warthrop; ‘Outiko’ we have named him. His ways are not our ways. But our doom is his and his is ours, for when you wake on the morrow, will you say, ‘Since I have eaten last night, I need eat no more’? No! His hunger is our hunger, the hunger that is never satisfied.”

“Then, why leave him Larose to snack upon?” the doctor asked, and then he waved away his own question. “With all respect, Okimahkan, I have no desire to discuss the subtleties of your people’s animistic cosmology. My desire is far simpler. You either know what happened to John Chanler or you do not. If you do, I hope in the name of all human decency that you will share that information with me. If not, my business here is done.”

The ogimaa of the Sucker clan looked down at the lifeless heart in his hands.

“I will protect my people,” he said in English.

“Ah,” the monstrumologist said. He looked at Hawk. “I see.”

We were shown to a wigwam several hundred paces from Fiddler’s, a guesthouse of sorts—and a mansion compared to our quarters for the past two weeks, large enough for all three of us to sleep under one roof without rubbing against one another. The beds were made with fresh balsam boughs, and I swear no feather mattress could feel as soft or as comfortable after one has been marching double time through the wilderness; I was sorer and more tired than the most tender of tenderfoots. I fell upon my bower with a satisfied moan.

The doctor did not go to bed, but sat in the open doorway, hugging his knees and staring across the compound at the glow from our host’s abode.

“Do you think he’s lying?” asked Hawk, trying to draw Warthrop from his reverie.

“I think he isn’t telling everything he knows.”

“I could arrest him.”

“For what?”

“Suspicion of murder, Doctor.”

“What is your evidence?”

“You’ve been carrying it around in your rucksack.”

“He denies having anything to do with that, and neither the body nor the scene yielded anything to incriminate him.”

“Well, somebody killed the poor bastard. Within a day’s hike of this village, and in a way that no white man might do it.”

“Really, Sergeant? If you believe that, then you do not spend enough time around white men. I have found there is very little they’re incapable of.”

“You don’t understand, Dr. Warthrop. These people are savages. A man who boasts of killing his own people—boasts of it! Kills them to save them! Tell me what sort of person does that?”

“Well, Sergeant, the God of the Bible leaps immediately to mind. But I shan’t argue the point. What you do about Jack Fiddler is your business. Mine is discovering what happened to my friend.”

“He’s dead.”

“I’ve never had much doubt about that,” said Warthrop. “Still, our interview with the Okimahkan has raised the possibility . . .” He shook his head as if to chase away the thought.

“What? That Jack knows where he is?”

“Correct me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t it the practice of the ogimaa to isolate the victim of the Wendigo’s attack in the hope of ‘curing’ him? Are there not certain spells that must be recited, prayers and rituals and the like, before all hope is abandoned and the victim sacrificed?”

Hawk snorted. “Seems to me you’re clutching at straws, Doctor. He said it himself—he doesn’t care what happens to us. We’re not Iyiniwok.” He sneered the word.

“He would care if one of us endangered his tribe.”

“Right! So he strips off our skin and chops up our heart and sticks us on a pole in the middle of nowhere. No more troubles for the tribe. Larose is all the proof we need that Chanler’s dead.”

He threw himself onto the bed beside me. “Turn down your atca’k, Will,” he teased me. “It’s shining right in my eyes.” He glanced over at the doctor, who had not budged from his post.

“I’m quitting this godforsaken place at first light, Doctor, with or without you.”

Warthrop smiled wearily. “Then you had better get some rest, Sergeant.”

“You should too, sir,” I piped up. He looked twice as tired as I felt.

The monstrumologist nodded toward the orange glow flickering in the ogimaa’s wigwam.

“I’ll rest when he does,” he said softly.