Frostbitten

FASCINATION

LYNN NYGARD LIVED in a neighborhood in west Anchorage, one with winding lanes and thick trees, sparsely dotted with eclectic homes that ranged from cottages to sprawling McMansions. Hers was one of the smallest homes-a tiny A-frame chalet. I'd called her again after we'd confronted Joey, and she'd said to come right over. Clay drove me, but stayed in the truck.

I must admit that when someone said "paranormal enthusiast," I pictured a tiny, dimly lit apartment, smelling of canned stew, the walls covered in yellowed newspaper articles. It could be a stereo type. Or it could just be that I've met too many who conform to it.

The neighborhood and the house were not what I expected. Neither was Lynn Nygard. She looked like a school-teacher-small and slender with sleek white hair. She ushered me in as she tried to wrap up a phone conversation, mouthing an apology to me and rolling her eyes.

"I haven't forgotten. I'm getting old, not senile. Now I have a guest… " A pause. "Yes, dear, I'll make all the arrangements." She waved me into the living room. "But right now… "

The person on the other end kept talking. A male voice. Judging by her tone, I was guessing a son.

"I really have to let you go, dear. There's a young woman here who wants to talk to me about the wolf kills." She widened her eyes. "Well, no, I didn't plan to mention my theory on the Ijiraat, but now that you mention it… "

A pause.

"No, that is an excellent idea. I'm so glad you brought it up."

Her eyes sparkled with mischief as her son's protests grew louder.

"Yes, dear, I promise to behave myself. But if something goes wrong, you will come visit me at the psychiatric hospital, won't you? Loosen the bindings on my straitjacket? Wipe the drool off my chin?"

She laughed at his reply, signed off, then turned to me.

"Do you have kids, Ms. Michaels?"

"Two."

"Well, eventually you reach the point where they aren't sure whether they're the children or the parents. One minute my son needs Mommy to arrange his wife's surprise party, the next he's trying to make sure I don't embarrass myself in front of strangers." She set down the cordless phone. "Coffee? Green tea? Red wine?"

I noticed an almost full wine glass on the kitchen counter behind her and said I'd have wine.

"So you work with Hope Adams?" she asked as she got down a glass.

"When she needs me. Otherwise, I freelance. Do you know Hope's work?"

"I'd be a poor paranormal fanatic if I didn't. With World Weekly News closing last year, True News-and Ms. Adams's column-is the only game in town for those of us who like the occasional vampire story with our daily doom and gloom. Not that World Weekly News was much competition. I stopped reading it back when they added a disclaimer that it was for entertainment only. Seemed like a license to give up even trying to uncover any truth."

She handed me a glass of wine. "Now, Ms. Adams? She's a professional. She doesn't take herself too seriously. After all-" She winked. "-we are talking about the paranormal, not world politics. But you get the feeling she really is looking for the truth. She strikes me as a young woman I could have a coffee with." She raised her glass to me and smiled. "Or a glass of wine."

The phone rang again. "The machine can get it," she said.

"No, go ahead."

It stopped ringing.

"Good. Now you wanted to know-"

The phone started again. She sighed and said she'd be just a moment.

I sipped my wine and turned to survey my surroundings. What I saw made me sputter, clapping my hand to my mouth before I sprayed my shirt. There, almost over my head, was a picture of me.

"Do you like wolves?"

I jumped. Lynn stood in the doorway.

"I didn't mean to startle you," she said. "I just asked if you liked wolves."

She pointed to the painting. It was me… as a wolf, in one of Jeremy's paintings. Nightfall, if I remembered right. It had been years since I'd seen this one. The public preferred Jeremy's more atmospheric pictures of wolves in city streets. This was the more natural style he liked better.

"It's a print," she said, as she sat. "I'd love an original, but I could never afford one. I must confess, wolves fascinate me, as they do many people these days."

"They are popular."

"From demonized to romanticized. No, my view of wolves is somewhat more realistic, I hope. True, they aren't the big bad beast of lore. But if I met one in the wild, I'd back away very slowly and get out of there as fast as I could."

"Not try to pet it?"

She laughed. "Exactly. But they do intrigue me more than other animals, which is why when those killings started, I took an interest-"

The phone rang.

Lynn sighed. "This time, I am letting the machine pick up." The answering machine clicked on, and we could hear that the caller was a young man who said he was in town on a logging contract and looking for a place to let.

"I'm getting a lot of interest," Lynn said when the message ended. "But not the sort I was hoping for."

"You're renting out a room?"

"Or two. My husband died a couple of years ago and I'm ready for some company. I was thinking of a stripper."

I can imagine my expression because she laughed. "That didn't come out right, did it? I meant I was hoping to rent rooms to girls on the exotic dance circuit. We get a lot of them through here and their living accommodations are less than ideal. I thought I could offer something nicer, more secure. A safe place to stay is hard to come by in that field."

"I heard a few girls have gone missing lately. They weren't strippers, though. At least, I didn't get that impression."

"No, they weren't. Not officially, that is. The first one was a part-time prostitute, though you won't see that in the articles. And rightly so, in my opinion. One whiff that those girls were less than saintly… "

"And they're dismissed as doped-up whores who took off with the first guy who promised them a new life in Seattle."

"Precisely. The second girl, now she was the type who should make headlines. Joy Sataa. An A student. Came from a fly-in community to attend college. But it's that 'fly-in community' part that moves her down the priority list."

"Native, as was the third girl, I think."

"Right again. Adine Aariak. Seventeen and living on the streets. Maybe turned a trick now and then, though no one on the police force recalls picking her up. Grew up with the three A's: alcohol, abuse and abandonment. She came to Anchorage hoping for a break, but we all know how that works out."

I sipped my wine, waiting for her to go on. When she didn't, I prompted her with, "And you think… I heard something about aliens."

She grinned. "Ah, yes, my alien abduction theory." She leaned closer and lowered her voice. "It's bullshit."

I laughed.

"I don't believe in aliens. Well, no, I do, but not in alien abduction. Can you really imagine a recognizable alien race traveling thousands of light years to impregnate humans? I just like to get folks going. They expect me to come up with outlandish theories, so I do, then have a good chuckle as they humor me and pretend to play along. A monster did get those girls-but one with a very human face. Again, an old story, too often told." She drained half her glass of wine. "Enough of that. You came to talk about other crimes. The ones in the woods."

"You don't think wolves are responsible."

"I will admit it is possible, but I very strongly doubt it. I've taken photos of the sites and the bodies, and while there is evidence of wolf activity, there's no proof that a wolf actually killed or even participated in eating the corpses. A wolf in winter won't kill something and leave it for scavengers. They can't afford to. My guess is that they visited the site, took a look, and left it alone. Wolves don't kill people. They just don't."

"Wolf attacks are rare. Deaths are rare to the point of being unheard of."

She smiled. "Good, you've done your research, which means I can skip the lecture and jump straight to the good stuff. Do you know anything about Ijiraat?"

"Just that they're shapeshifters from Inuit mythology."

Lynn explained that Ijiraat were a lesser known type of shapeshifter, indigenous to the Arctic and the Inuit. They were believed to be spirits of the land who could take on the form of any creature native to that land, from raven to wolf, and even human. As with most such myths, the Ijiraat were commonly believed to be evil creatures, hell-bent on deceiving and destroying humans. Another branch of the myth, though, claimed they weren't inherently evil-just wild creatures that would, if threatened, defend themselves. One common thread in the stories was that the Ijiraat could influence memory. If you saw one, you'd forget all about it if you didn't tell someone else right away, which coincidentally explains why they aren't seen more often.

"Now, as with most legends, there are regional variations. The Inuit say that the type living here can only shift between three forms-human, bear and wolf. There's a rich history of sightings dating back over a hundred years, from tourists to weekend warriors to folks who only leave the woods when they absolutely have to."

She reached onto the table behind her to grab a folder, then handed it to me. I opened it to find a thick sheaf of typed pages.

"Those are all the accounts I've been able to find, both written and oral sources. I typed them all up into a database. You'll see notations on each account-a color and a number. The color indicates the reporting party's credibility. Green would be a group of trust worthy locals all reporting the same thing. Red would be a kid who admitted he was out in the woods drinking. Yellow is in the middle, and you have all kinds of variations in between. There's a legend on the first page. The numbers show how I rank how close the accounts are to the most common core story. Ten means it's dead on the money. One means it's so far off I only included it to be thorough."

"You definitely are thorough."

She laughed. "I might be a nut, but I'm the best organized nut around."

"Would I be able to borrow…?"

"Oh, that's a copy for you to take."

As I flipped through a few pages, I caught familiar phrases and felt a surreal sense of déjà vu. Or maybe not so much déjà vu as spooky coincidence. I'd seen some of these pages… just a couple of hours ago.

"Do you give out a lot of copies?" I asked.

"Not as often as I'm asked for them. I don't advertise my research-I bring my children enough grief as it is-but people find out about my interests, as you did. With most, I prefer not to encourage their fantasies. Give them these and they'd be scouring the country side looking for proof and shooting anything that moves-and not with a camera."

"So this is the only copy?" I tried to say it casually, absently even, as I scanned the pages.

"I did give them to someone else recently. A friend of mine." She blushed. "I suppose friend is being a bit hopeful. An acquaintance really. He's interested in the Ijiraat myth and he knows someone on the police force. My name, and my theory, came up when they were discussing the deaths and he got in touch with me."

"He's interested in the myth? An academic?"

"No, no. He's an electrician. This is just a hobby, but he's quite serious about it. Not obsessive, mind you. Just a scholarly interest in a nonprofessional way. Like mine. We hit it off quite well."

She sipped her wine. "Which reminds me that I haven't heard from him in a while, and I found a book he was asking about. I should call him. Perhaps invite him to dinner." She glanced at me. "Does that seem too forward?"

I'd developed a good poker face over the years, but it was hard to keep it as I said she should do it… knowing that the date would never happen. I couldn't help thinking that it would have been nice for Dennis and Lynn to have that dinner.

"Do you know what got him interested?" I asked. "People who suddenly take a serious interest in the paranormal… Well, in my experiences, it screams 'encounter.'"

I could tell by her expression that she was uncomfortable with the question.

I hurried on. "Sorry, I didn't mean for the article. Hope has a policy of never reporting anything that isn't a firsthand account. I was just being nosy. When you work with this stuff, you can't help… looking for proof, I guess."

"I can imagine. Well, Den-he seemed to have had a sighting, but he never told me about it. I've learned not to push. There are some who are eager to pour their tale in any sympathetic ear, and those who need to work it through themselves first. He did say he has a cabin in the region reputed to be Ijiraat territory. He asked about the Ijiraat's forms, specifically. Whether they shape-shifted into bears or wolves, or perhaps into something that simply resembled both, depending on the witness."

"Like two people seeing an animal in a city alley, one saying it was a cat and one a rat."

"Exactly. It's a fascinating idea that I hadn't considered. If a human is going to change into an animal, a full shift into a bear or a wolf seems rather unlikely. It would be more logical to change into something bear-like or wolf-like. A beast on two legs."

"Like those old Hollywood wolf men."

"Yes, exactly."

CLAY WAS HUNGRY. I told him what I'd learned as we picked up burgers at a drive-through.

"Maybe these creatures do exist," he said as he took the paper bag and drove away without waiting for his change. "But I don't see any evidence that they're shapeshifters. I finished going through those accounts while you were inside and there's not one mention of the usual signs of a shape-shifting human-footsteps go into a thicket and paw prints come out, shoot an animal and see a wounded man later. Not a credible mention anyway. I'd say it's more likely to be a single-form humanoid like Bigfoot."

"Good point."

"Whatever Dennis saw could have been this Ijiraat, either a humanoid creature or a shapeshifter. And whatever attacked you last night was definitely no bear. The Inuit say these Ijiraat have been here for generations and people have been reporting sightings for a hundred years. But only now does it start killing people? When a pack of mutt thugs rolls into town?"

"Well, I think Lynn was missing that bit of info."

"Dennis must have seen something, and I agree there might actually be something out there. What I'm not buying is that the two-this creature and the killings-are connected. Except that if such a beast exists and this is its traditional territory, it's not going to be too happy about werewolves turning it into a killing ground."

"True. That might also explain why it didn't like us being on its territory last night." I unwrapped my burger and glanced at him. "We need to go back."