Timber Wolf

by Caroline Pignat

  I try to stand, but there is no way my leg will hold me, and I slump back onto my stomach. Scrabbling in the snow, dragging my injured leg behind me, I move a foot or two towards the wolf as he backs up, but the far edge of the clearing lies a good twenty yards away. As though the trees can save us. As though the bear can’t follow my trail of blood.

  On the next lunge, a shredding pain rips through my right leg and I cry out. A taut chain about three feet long tethers the steel trap to the ground. Something to keep the wounded prey from escaping. My heart pounds. This wounded prey has reached the end of his line.

  The creature comes to a stop in the shadows just beyond the deer. It turns its head to consider the carcass in the tree. Great misty clouds of hot breath hide its face, but even in the dim light, I see the shaggy body stands seven feet tall. Fear grips my stomach tighter than any cold metal trap. I’ve seen this creature before.

  Windigo!

  The wolf growls, hackles raised.

  “Go!” I pant, as the Windigo’s head turns from the deer’s bloodied body to my own. I shove the wolf hard. “Run, go on!”

  But the wolf won’t leave me. His loyalty chains him as strongly as any trap. Ears flattened, fur spiked, a growl deep in his throat, he moves his small body between me and the sinister creature. If only the wolf’s courage could cut like my knife or jab like my spear, but they lie where they fell in the snow by the deer. I’m defenseless, bloodied, and trapped, with nothing to save me but an angry pup.

  The creature takes another look at the deer, slung in the tree. Dear God in heaven, I pray, for prayer is all I’ve left. Make it go for the easy lure ...

  It is, I realize with horror, as the Windigo turns and lumbers towards me.

  CHAPTER 33

  Within seconds, the beast is upon us. The wolf jumps onto its shoulder, his fangs seeking purchase in the hairy hide, but the beast flings him off. Snarling, the wolf lunges for its legs, its arms; growling and barking, he tears at its fur. I’ve never seen the wolf so vicious. But this is a fight to the death. We both know it. It crouches, ears back and teeth bared, preparing for another attack, but this time when he leaps, the creature swings its thick arm, meeting the wolf dead on. With a sickening crack, it hits the wolf mid-leap and sends him flying across the clearing.

  “No!” I cry, as the wolf’s limp body hits the snow and rolls to a dead stop. But the looming creature steps into my view as it heads towards me. ’Tis then I see the bloodied, wooden stick in its grip.

  A club? Does a ghost use a weapon?

  I raise my eyes to the creature’s massive fur head as it trudges towards me, its wet breath heaving and ragged. What is it, this devil’s spawn? I’ve no idea but, in the core of my being, I know one thing for sure. ’Tis evil.

  Its great paw reaches up and pulls back its fur ... hood.

  “A man?” I shake my head, stunned.

  “I was,” his voice comes in deep shreds amid his wheezing, “once.”

  As he steps into the fading light, I see that his features seem contorted, misshapen, wrong. As though his face once melted and cooled, leaving him forever malformed. The right side of his face seems frozen in a wax grimace. Even his hair avoids his gruesome features, retreating off his skull to huddle at the back in long greasy strands. Animal skins hang from his broad shoulders, a shaggy coat of sorts, with a fur-lined hood, belted with a thick rope at his waist. Six leather sheaths hang from his belt, each holding a small knife. The one strapped to his leg runs the length of his shinbone.

  What sort of prey demands that kind of a weapon? I swallow. What sort of a man uses it?

  I flinch as he kneels beside me, but the motion only makes my agony flare. Even the slightest movement causes searing pain in my leg. It burns and blazes as though skewered on a roasting spit turning over a great fire. He pulls off his fur mitts and grips the jaws of the trap in his scarred hands. I whimper, but I know the trap has to come off. In the midst of my pain, I notice then how the fingers on his right hand have melted together, a gelatinous mass of flesh and bone. The handprint on the window!

  “You ruined it,” he growls through gritted teeth. With his fiendish grin frozen on his face, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Then he viciously wrenches the metal jaws apart, ripping its fangs from my flesh. The agony of it shudders through my body and I collapse back onto the snow.

  Lord, take me now.

  Hot blood gushes from six or seven deep gashes on the front and back of my thigh, soaking my shredded pant leg. He scoops a handful of snow, to staunch it, or perhaps, to cool the burning pain. But instead, he sits back on his haunches using the snow to clean each tooth on his trap.

  “No use. No use. It’d smell your blood a mile away.” Cursing, he throws the trap on the ground and walks back to the deer. He stops to pick up my knife, raising the blade to admire it in the dim light before running his thumb along its sharp edge. Satisfied, he tucks my knife in his belt with all the others and sucks the blood off his thumb. Whoever that man is, whatever he is, he’s no help to us. In fact, he is more dangerous than any animal in the forest. Bears are driven by hunger. They follow their natural instinct. But what dark madness, what twisted instincts guide this man—I don’t know. Nor do I want to find out.

  “Wolf,” I call, pushing myself up to sit. But his body doesn’t move. I can’t tell if he is living or dead. I have to get to him. We have to get out of here but, first, I need to bandage my leg. Using my scarf, I bind the wounds the best I can, but within seconds, even the scarf is sodden with red. Just the effort of tying it wears me out and I lie back, trying to clear my head.

  The man cuts a rope round the back of the tree and lowers the deer onto his shoulder. Then he comes for me.

  I want to fight him, to go to my wolf, to get us out of here, but all my strength has seeped into the snow. He reaches for me with those melted hands and I can do nothing. Not even cry for help. But, sure, who will hear me in this endless wood? Slinging me over his other shoulder, he walks past the wolf’s still body and I can do nothing. For I am nothing, nothing but another bloodied carcass carried off into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 34

  I open my eyes to the familiar crackle and snap of a roaring fire. A long knife shifts the blazing logs, exposing their underbellies, making them blush orange-red.

  Home.

  “Da?”

  “I can’t do it,” a voice wheezes, waking me to this nightmare. The man from the woods. He crouches at the crude hearth—a circle of stones in the middle of the floor—and, resting the tip of the great blade in the embers, turns to the corner. “Don’t ask me to.”

  Who else is here? And where is here?

  I lie on the dirt floor of a tiny wooden log shack, a shed, really, for ’tis only eight or nine feet wide and just as long and high. Turning my pounding head, I notice hides of all shapes and sizes cover the walls and a great mound of them lies heaped in the corner. Over what must be the door, the only exit, hangs a thick, brown, shaggy skin. Next to it, on three rough pegs, hang the clothes he’d worn in the clearing: the cloak of skins, the furry leggings, and the belt of knives. The longer blade’s sheath, the one I saw strapped to his leg, hangs on a hook all its own.

  “You were right. You said he’d come,” he whispers, his back to me. Even without the thick coat on, his size amazes me. I glance at the covered doorway and back at his broad shoulders filling the tiny shack. Knives or not, he’ll have no trouble keeping me captive.

  He looks over his shoulder at me and I see then who he is talking to. On the back wall hang dozens of animal skulls. Rabbits, deer, beaver, and God knows what else. The gathering of their bleached heads unsettles me. I’ve seen animal skeletons before, in the woods, in Mahingan’s tree. I’m sure I’ve even saved a few bones myself, but not like this. My stomach twists at the sight. For it isn’t the skulls that truly unnerve me, just the empty space waiting in the center of them.

  “All right! All right! I’ll do it.” Hushing the silent bones, he stares a
t me, his frozen grin and vacant gaze as unsettling as their bared teeth and gaping sockets. He rolls up his sleeves, baring his thick forearms. The left is scarred, but not like the white-pink blotches on his hands. Instead, it is seared by fierce red welts, three triangles. He clenches his warped jaw.

  His eyes shift to the hilt of his knife sticking out of the fire pit. I strain to reach it before him, but the pain in my leg pins me in place. And I’ve neither the strength nor courage to fight it. Had I the great knife, what would I do with it anyway?

  More importantly, what will he?

  CHAPTER 35

  Hilt in hand, the crazed man raises the blade to his face and blows on the smoking tip. Its orange glow flickers in his dark eyes. He grunts, satisfied, and kneels beside me, gripping the knee of my injured leg. I try to squirm free, for whatever he’s got planned, it can’t be good, but his scarred fingers hold me with all the strength of his metal traps. He slips the smoldering blade under the scarf I’d tied as a bandage and with a quick jerk slices it off. The edges of the wool melt and ignite as it falls free. With his razor-hot edge, he cuts along what’s left of my trouser leg, and bares my leg to the firelight. The wounds are worse than I thought, for three livid gashes pierce my leg and four others pulse on the underside. My pounding heart gushes new blood through unbound punctures, spilling it in puddles on the dirt floor. I’ll surely die from them if they’re not seen to, but, right now, the madman with the knife seems more fatal.

  What is he going to do? Is he going to kill me? To cut me into chunks for trap bait?

  My heart drums in my ears. “Don’t …” I whimper. “Please.”

  But he avoids my eyes, the same way I do with any prey, as he lowers the fiery blade to my bare skin. The pain is unbearable. It sears through my leg, indeed through my whole body, as I clench and scream, writhing on the dirt floor. The white pain seems to last forever, but moments later it ebbs to a red hot pulse.

  My leg. My leg. He has surely cut it off.

  I don’t want to look, but I have to see. I have to know. As he turns to put the knife blade back in the fire, I swallow and look down my trembling body. I’m whole. I blink and shift my head to the side for a better look. Sure enough, my leg is still there, still a bloody mess, except for the largest puncture just above my knee. Blackened blood surrounds a crimson shape, a smear of scalded skin three inches wide. I know then what he wants, the truth of it drifting to me on the smoke of my singed skin, for the burn mark is a triangle the exact size and shape of his knife’s tip. The exact size and shape of the burns on his forearm.

  Branded.

  He wipes his melting face with the back of his scarred hand, then picks up the knife and turns me. I won’t let him torture me like this, even if it kills me. I’ll die fighting, so I will. Before he grabs my bare knee, I kick him hard with my good leg drawing on whatever dregs of strength I’ve left. It catches him by surprise and knocks him back into the fire pit. His howl fills the tiny shack and I know he’s burned, but I don’t wait to find out how badly. Rolling to my stomach, I push to my knees and try to rise. The doorway. Freedom waits just a few steps away. But I can’t stand, much less step. My right leg gives and I cry out as I collapse to the ground. I’ll have to crawl out. Heaving my body across the dirt floor, I push with my arms and my left leg, flopping like a fish, but it moves me forward until my fingers graze the door’s wood. I know another two or three good shoves will free me. But I never get the chance to find out.

  A hand yanks the scruff of my shirt and drags me back. I fight with all my soul, but no matter how I flail, I’m no match for him. He tosses me beside the fire and grips the knife once more.

  “Don’t,” I beg, for ’tis all I’ve left in me to do. The tears come then, for I know all is lost. I sob in great heaving breaths, exhausted from the fight. From all the trials that led me to this cursed place.

  “I have to.” His voice is thick. “It’s for your own good.”

  “Please ... please ... don’t burn me.”

  He hesitates, looks at the skull wall, and finally turns his dark eyes to mine. Be it the fire’s glow or my own desperation playing tricks, for a moment, as we hold each other’s gaze, I’m sure ’tis sympathy I see. But not for long.

  Instead, I see his teeth grit; I see the hilt in his thick fist bearing down on my head and, with a sickening crack, darkness spills out and I see no more.

  CHAPTER 36

  The next few hours are just a sweltering blur. I slip in and out of consciousness, unsure which one is the real nightmare. Images flicker before my eyes. The red-hot blade. Watchful skulls. But always I see that twisted face. Its grotesque grimace is seared into my brain. My head throbs and my thigh screams as though the blade is there, scorching still. I don’t know where I am, why he’s captured me, or who this crazy animal skinner is—all I know for sure is that I’m injured, captive, and sweltering. This must surely be hell.

  I moan and raise a hand to rub my forehead, surprised to find a hard lump. He hit me. I try to rise but the room spins and I lie back down, though not before glancing at my leg. Each puncture wound is a red-raw burn in the shape of his knife tip. They weep and blister, rimmed in blackened skin and crusted blood. He burned me. But I’m surprised at the feeling of relief. He didn’t kill me. Not yet, anyway.

  I glance around the small shack. There’s no sign of him. A cup of water and a few strips of dried meat sit next to me. I should try and escape while he is gone—but I know I haven’t the strength. It takes me all I have to get up on one elbow and bring the cup to my parched mouth. I can almost hear the hiss of the water as it hits my lips.

  “You are awake.” His raspy voice makes me drop the cup and spill what’s left. “You slept for days,” he adds, entering the shack, carrying a great hoop stretching some kind of animal skin.

  Days?

  “Yes, yes. I know,” he whispers at the skulls on the wall. “Quiet! Let me talk to him.”

  “You burned my leg,” I say. It’s meant to sound like an accusation, but it comes out more like a whimpering question.

  He clenches his jaw. “Had to.” Sitting on the other side of the fire, he begins to undo the lacing, pulling the hide taut across the sapling frame. “They said there was no other way.” He rocks slightly as he speaks. “Had to.”

  The man is clearly mad. And I’ll not be hanging around, waiting for them skulls to tell him it’s time to do me in.

  “I need to go now,” I say, “back to the shanty.” I speak slowly, clearly, as though talking to a young child. “They’ll be looking for me.”

  Truth be told, I’ll bet no one is looking for me, but he doesn’t know that. I’ll bet he doesn’t know anything.

  “Away,” he says, pulling the rope through as he rips the stitches with his twisted fingers. “Logs are on the river.” He nods as he rocks. “Only me, now.” He stops then and looks at me with that frozen smile. “And you. Me and you.”

  My gut is screaming to get out of here, but the pain screaming in my leg is much louder. A few more days, that’s all I need, and I’ll be strong enough to escape. If he wanted to kill me, he’d have already done it. Right? But somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.

  He finishes with the unlacing and tosses the frame aside, before laying the skin on the ground, fur side up. Despite the heat, a cold shiver ripples up my back. I’d know that fur anywhere—black-tipped and creamy.

  No!

  I can’t speak.

  He strokes the fur with his mutilated hands, picks it up, and flicks it like a rug before rolling it and piling it on the great mound of animal skins in the corner. He must have forty or fifty, at least. But all I can think of is the last one on the top. I can’t take my eyes off it.

  “What—is that ...?” There isn’t enough air in this tiny shack. “ Is it ...?”

  Then he turns back to me with the answer on his scarred lips.

  Don’t say it! Don’t say it!

  But through the puckered mask he rasps one word,
wet and dreadful. “Wolf.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Today is the day. I’m breaking out. I’ve watched this Skinner’s habits; I know his routine. He’s going to check the traps today. He’ll be gone the better part of the morning and when he is, I’m grabbing my knife and getting the hell out of this godforsaken place.

  Skinner. That’s what I call him. For that’s all he is. All he does. He’s consumed with his furs and traps. Hoarding his pelts in his darkened corner, hides he’s stolen from the Wawaties. ’Twas him Mahingan saw pilfering the foxes. I’m sure of it. Each night Skinner sits in the dark corner, counting and stroking all his furs as he mutters to himself. He’s skinned every kind of animal. Well, almost every kind. One remains. So he talks to the skulls about his plans to get it. To put its skull in the empty spot on the wall. At first, I thought he was talking about me—but ’tis the bear he’s after. Still, my skull won’t feel safe until it’s resting on my shanty bunk, or better yet, in my bed back home. Wherever that may be.

  My leg isn’t healed. Far from it. But I’ve been practicing walking on it. Every day when he leaves, I get up and stagger about the small room for hours. It kills me, so it does, and I can’t put much weight on it for long, but one of the y-sticks used for the spit over the fire makes a fair crutch. There’s no way I can outrun him, but with a few hours head start and a good snowfall like there is now, to cover my tracks, I may just make it. I have to.

  I keep my eyes shut in the morning, pretend to sleep. Sure enough, after he eats his porridge, and straps on his blades and gear, I hear him leave. As soon as the door shuts, I hop over, open it a crack, and watch him tromp into the woods. I wait a few more minutes despite the sharp draft cutting through the gap. I want to be sure he’s good and gone.

  Now’s my chance!

  I tie a strip of hide around the leg of my breeches where the trap and trapper had ripped them asunder. Boots and coat on, I limp to his wall of weapons and take my knife back. I’m half tempted to take one of his bigger knives just to have it for protection, but God knows what he’s killed with it. I don’t want those dirty blades anywhere near me.