The Curse of the Wendigo (7 page)

“I’m certain you heard nothing of the kind. May I give a piece of advice, Will Henry? In everyone’s life, as the apostle said, there comes a time to put away childish things. What happened between Muriel and me is one of those things.”

On the night she had arrived at our house, it seemed to me he had put nothing away, childish or otherwise. He might have told himself so—even believed it to be so—but that did not make it so. Even the hardest cynic is gullible to his own lies.

“So you’ve known each other since you were children?” I asked.

“It is an expression that refers to the thing, Will Henry, not the person. I was not a child when we met.”

“She was married to Mr. Chanler?”

“No. I introduced them. Well, in a manner of speaking. It was because of me that they met.”

I waited for him to go on. He picked at his venison, sipped his tea, stared at a spot just over my right shoulder.

“There was an accident. I fell off a bridge.”

“You fell off a bridge?”

“Yes, I fell off a bridge,” he said testily. “Why is that surprising?

“Why did you fall off a bridge?”

“For the same reason as Newton’s apple. Anyway, I wasn’t injured, but it was February and the river was cold. I became quite ill with a fever and was laid up for several days in the hospital, and that’s how they met, more
over
me than
through
me, I guess you could say.”

“Over you?”

“Over my bed.”

“Was she your nurse?”

“No, she wasn’t my nurse. Dear God! She was—we were engaged, if you must know.”

I was stunned. The thought of the monstrumologist betrothed to anyone was beyond my poor power to comprehend.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he demanded. “It was a fortuitous fall into that river. Barring it, in all likelihood I would have married her and suffered much more than the discomfort of a fever. I am not constitutionally suited for it, Will Henry. Think of it—a man like me, married! Think of the poor woman
in
it. I am not opposed to marriage in principle—it is, at least in our culture, necessary for the survival of the species—only as the institution relates to monstrumology. Which is why I told both of them not to do it.”

“Not to do what?”

“Get married! ‘You will live to regret it,’ I told her. ‘He will never be home. He may never
come
home.’ Obviously, neither listened to me. Love has a way of making us stupid, Will Henry. It blinds us to certain blatant realities, in this case the spectacularly high mortality rate among monstrumologists. Rarely do we live past forty—my father and von Helrung being the exceptions. And now time has proven me right.”

He leaned forward, bringing the full force of his formidable personality to bear upon me. Involuntarily, I shrunk back, slipping down in my chair to make myself the smallest possible target.

“Never fall in love, Will Henry.
Never.
Regardless of
whether you follow in my footsteps, falling in love, marriage, family, it would be disastrous. The organism that infects you—if the population remains stable and you do not suffer the fate of your father—will grant you unnaturally long life, long enough to see your children’s children pass into oblivion. Everyone you love you are doomed to see die before you. They will go, and you will go on. Like the sibyl cursed, you will go on.”

Sergeant Hawk was waiting for us in the lobby the next morning. We shared a hearty breakfast—our last proper meal for many days to come—and then stepped outside under a sky blanketed with clouds, into a brisk artic wind, reminders that the brutal Canadian winter was fast approaching. Our gear lay piled beside a hitching post: two bulging rucksacks, each festooned with tools and implements—shovels, hatchets, pots and pans, and the like; a smaller bag containing our provisions; and a pair of Winchester rifles.

“Traveling light, Doctor,” our guide said brightly. “Make the best time that way.”

The rifles reminded Warthrop he had left his revolver in our room, and he ordered me to fetch it for him.

He dropped it into the pocket of his duster and said, “Shall we snap to, then, Hawk? I’ll take the rucksack and a rifle. Will Henry can port the rations.”

Startled, Jonathan Hawk said to him, “Your boy is coming with us?”

“He is not my ‘boy,’ and, yes, he is.”

The young policeman frowned. “It’s none of my business, of course—”

“Of course it is not.”

“He could wait for us here.”

“Will Henry is my assistant, Sergeant Hawk; his services are indispensable to me.”

“What kind of services might those be?” He was having some difficulty picturing it.

“Of the indispensable variety.”

“He’ll slow us down.”

“No more than standing on a sidewalk holding a pointless debate, Sergeant. I guarantee you that he is more useful than he looks.”

Hawk considered my “looks” dubiously for a moment.

“I’ll take your word for that, Doctor, but he strikes me as a little on the delicate side. You’re not in New England anymore; this is the backcountry we’re talking about.”

Sergeant Hawk turned to me. “There are no monsters in the bush, Mr. Will Henry, but there are other things just as eager to eat you. Are you sure you want to come?”

“My place is with the doctor,” I said, trying to sound resolute.

He gave up after that. With a shrug of his broad shoulders and a lopsided grin, he slung his rifle over his back and
bade us follow. He was a tall man, and his stride was long; he was used to hiking long distances over difficult terrain; and in the days to come the doctor and I would be taxed to our limits, both physically and psychologically, for he was right. We were not in New England anymore.

“A Different Species Altogether”

We made camp that first night on the northern shore of a vast lake, after a hike of nearly twenty miles along a fairly well-trod path. Canoes had been left on each side of the lake, a courtesy for local hunters and the native peoples who used the trail as a trade route to Rat Portage. The lake crossing took the better part of two hours, so vast was the water’s expanse and so deliberate was our passage, for with the three of us and all our gear on board, the little canoe rode alarmingly low in the water. While Warthrop helped Hawk pitch the tent—he had packed only one, not expecting a party of three—I was dispatched into the surrounding woods to gather kindling for our fire. In the twilight shadows I thought I heard the rustle of some large creature slinking, and I cannot say if that was truly the case, only that the fruitfulness of
my imagination seemed to grow exponentially as the daylight faded.

Night had not fully come on, however, before Sergeant Hawk had a merry fire going and a pan of fresh venison sausages frying, and he was happily chattering on like an excited schoolboy on the eve of the summer holiday.

“Now you must tell me something about this monstrumology business, Doctor,” he said. “I’ve seen some pretty strange things in the bush, but they can’t be nothing to what you’ve seen in your travels! Why, if half the things my mother said are true . . .”

“Not knowing what she told you, I cannot speak to your mother’s truthfulness,” replied the doctor.

“What about vampires—have you ever hunted one of those?”

“I have not. It would be extraordinarily difficult to do.”

“Why? Because they’re hard to catch?”

“They are impossible to catch.”

“Not if you find one in his coffin, I hear.”

“Sergeant, I do not hunt them because, like the Wendigo, they do not exist.”

“What about the werewolf? Ever hunt one of them?”

“Never.”

“Don’t exist either?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What about—”

“I hope you aren’t about to say ‘zombie.’”

The man’s mouth closed. He stared into the fire for a
few moments, stirring the flickering embers with the end of a stick. He seemed somewhat crestfallen.

“Well, if you don’t hunt any of them, what kind of things
do
you hunt?”

“In the main, I do not. I have devoted myself to the study of them. Capturing or killing them is something I try to avoid.”

“Doesn’t sound as fun.”

“I suppose that depends upon your definition of ‘fun.’”

“Well, if monstrumology ain’t about those things, why’d your friend Chanler come up here looking for the Wendigo?”

“I can’t be entirely sure. I would say, though, it was
not
to prove their nonexistence, since failing to find one would demonstrate only that one was not found. My suspicion is that he
hoped
to find one, or at least irrefutable evidence of one. You see, there is a movement afoot to expand the scope of our inquiries to include these very creatures of which you spoke—vampires, werewolves, and the like—a movement to which I am very much opposed.”

“And why’s that?”

Warthrop tried very hard to remain calm. “Because, my good Sergeant Hawk, as I’ve said, they do not exist.”

“But you also said
not
finding one don’t prove they don’t exist.”

“I may say with near absolute certainty that they do not, and I need venture no further than my own thought to prove it. Let’s take
the Wendigo as an example. What are its characteristics?”

“Characteristics?”

“Yes. What makes it different from, say, a wolf or a bear? How would you define it?”

Hawk closed his eyes, as if to better picture the subject in his mind’s eye.

“Well, they’re big. Over fifteen feet tall, they say, and thin, so thin that when they turn sideways, they disappear.”

The doctor was smiling. “Yes. Go on.”

“He’s a shape-changer. Sometimes he’s just like a wolf or bear, and he’s always hungry and he don’t eat anything but people, and the more he eats, the hungrier he gets and the thinner he gets, so he has to keep hunting; he can’t stop. He travels through the forest jumping from treetop to treetop, or some say he spreads out his long arms and glides on the wind. He always comes after you at night, and once he finds you, you’re a goner; there’s nothing you can do. He’ll track you for days, calling your name, and something in his voice makes you want to go.

“A bullet can’t take him down, unless it’s made of silver. Anything silver can kill him, but it’s the only thing that can, but even then you have to cut out his heart and chop off his head, and then burn the body.”

He took a deep breath and glanced at my master with a chagrined expression.

“So we have covered most of the physical attributes,” the
doctor said in the manner of a headmaster leading a class. “Humanoid in appearance, very tall, more than twice the size of a grown man, extremely thin, so thin, you say, as to defy physics and become invisible upon turning sideways. One thing you failed to mention is that the heart of
Lepto lurconis
is made of ice. The Wendigo’s diet consists of human beings—and, interestingly, certain species of moss, if I may append—and it has the ability to fly. Another attribute you failed to mention is its method of propagation.”

“Its what?”

“Every species on the planet must have some way of producing the next generation, Sergeant. Every schoolboy knows that. So tell me, how does the Wendigo make little Wendigos? Being a hominid, it is a higher order of mammal—putting aside the issue of how a heart made of ice can pump blood—so it is not asexual. What can you tell me about its courtship rituals? Do Wendigos date? Do they fall in love? Are they monogamous, or do they take multiple mates?”

Our guide laughed in spite of himself. The absurdity of the thing had become too much for him.

“Maybe they do fall in love, Doctor. It’s nice to think we’re not the only ones who can.”

“One must be careful not to anthropomorphize nature, Sergeant. Though, we must leave room for love in the lower orders—I am not inside Mr. Beaver’s head; perhaps he loves Mrs. Beaver with all his heart. But to return to my question about the Wendigo: Are they immortal—unlike every other
organism on earth—and therefore have no need to reproduce?”

“They take us and turn us into them.”

“But I thought you said they
ate
us.”

“Well, I can’t say exactly how it happens. Stories come out of the bush, a hunter or trapper or, more often, an Indian ‘goes Wendigo.’”

“Ah, so it’s like the vampire or werewolf. We are its food as well as its progeny.” The doctor was nodding with mock gravity. “The case is nearly unassailable, isn’t it? Much more likely than the alternative, that the Wendigo is a metaphor for famine and the taboo of cannibalism in times of starvation, or a boogeyman to frighten children into obeying their parents.”

Neither spoke for a few minutes. The fire crackled and popped; shadows danced and whirled about our little camp; the lake shimmered in the moonlight, its waves sensually licking the shore; and the woods reverberated with the song of crickets and the occasional snap of a twig underfoot of some woodland creature.

“Well, Dr. Warthrop, I’m almost sorry I asked about monstrumology,” said Hawk wistfully. “You’ve darn near taken all the fun out of it.”

The men flipped a coin to see who would take the first watch. Though we were but a day’s hike from civilization, we were already well within wolf and bear country, and someone
would need to keep the fire going throughout the night. Warthrop lost—he would have to be the last to sleep—but seemed pleased with the outcome. It would give him, he said, time to think, a statement that struck me as rich with irony. It was my impression he did little else with his time.

The burly Sergeant Hawk crawled into the tent and threw himself onto the ground next to me; so small were our quarters that his shoulder rubbed against mine.

“Sort of a queer fellow your boss is, Will,” he said quietly, lest Warthrop hear him. I could see the doctor’s silhouette through the open flap, hunched before the orange glow of the fire, the Winchester propped against his thigh. “Polite but not very friendly. Kind of coldlike. But he must have a good heart to come all this way after his friend.”

“I’m not sure if all of it’s about his friend,” I said.