by J. P. Sloan
I add, “It’s what the old man called them. Wendigo.”
“What old man?”
“Old Shoshone fellow. Said they’re demons of hunger that possess the bodies of shit-lucked sumbitches who end up in a bad way.”
She shakes her head and continues up the trail. “Did he say how to kill them?”
“Long story, there.”
“Then we shall discuss it inside.”
We ease up a trail gentle enough to bring carts down, though the last few years have seen the forest try to reclaim it. Boughs rustle overhead time and again. We have an escort, and I doubt they ever set foot on the ground if they can avoid it.
When we reach the old mine entrance, splayed open like some Egyptian tomb receiving a short length of cart rail into the afterlife, I dismount Ripper and move to tie him to a tree. Katherina reaches out and stops my hand.
“You should not leave him outside.”
“Why not?”
“The newcomers have been… hungry of late.”
A screw my brow up in the middle. “Strigoi drink animal blood?”
“It is not preferred. But the new arrivals are often desperate and starving.”
I think on the corpses of the Hitchenses… and their horse. “Why is it any safer inside?”
“Those with greater control watch over those who yet struggle.”
“I’ll take your word on that, I suppose.” I lead Ripper toward the mouth of the mine, and he jerks back on me. I don’t blame him. “You definite sure you got these orphans under control?”
Katherina gives me a sharp smile over her shoulder. “I am in perfect control of myself, Mister Odell.” She turns and holds the cleft stone wall as I coax Ripper forward into the mine. “Nothing is certain. I cannot control everyone in my life.”
“Not without breaking their minds?”
Her smile drops fast. “So it seems.”
When we turn the first corner, I spot a tiny point of orange light flickering in the distance. As we move down a slight decline, the light seems to approach us, though it’s likely my eyes are simply adjusting to the darkness.
Ripper makes unsteady noises, and I reach up and give him a few reassuring slaps, wishing he could return the favor.
I start to noticing the eyes. They’re inside the walls all around us, popping open here and there. When my eyes soak in enough light from what appears to be a torch slung in the wall ahead, I realize the walls are hollowed out into tiny alcoves. Strigoi perch in most of these alcoves, crouching like gargoyles, just staring at us.
“Can they understand me?” I whisper.
“Yes. Most were born on this continent, turned either during the War or just before. They lack the ability to speak, but they understand your words.”
“There’s a lot more to you people than I’d figured on.”
She sniffles. “Is it not amazing what one can learn, when one takes a breath before resorting to violence?”
That was deserved.
We finally reach the torch, and Katherina stretches out her arm to bar my progress.
“What?” I ask.
“Careful.”
“Why?”
She slips around the corner. By the time I coax Ripper to follow, I turn to a scene that makes my stomach lurch. I reach out and grab Ripper’s neck. With a grunt, he pulls back, keeping my feet from giving underneath me.
I gaze out over an expanse. A chasm, spangled with tiny pinpoints of torchlight. The scene spins before me, and I steady myself against the nearby rocks.
Katherina steps near the edge of a precipitous drop-off, folding her arms in front of her with satisfaction. “It is nearly complete.”
I catch my breath and finally release Ripper’s mane.
“That’s… that’s a sight.”
“Five years in the making. Five years of constant labor.”
I step next to her, checking my footing, and take a good look. Several ramps climb up the opposite face, with doorways and back-lit windows of leaded glass set in place. The archways are chiseled with designs fitting an old cathedral. The stonework resembles rope in places, reeds in others, the rough skin of tree trunks in yet others. The bustle of chisels clinks in the distance, rising from below, near the bottom.
Midway down, I spot an impressive structure cut into the rock face. Mighty twisted-rope columns rise beneath halves of gilded onion domes set into the cliff, like some ancient temple sliced thin and stamped into place. Several shadowed figures huddle by the arabesque entrance, reaching for one another in doting gestures.
A short Strigoi hops toward us from below hefting two burlap sacks of what must be chewed rock. He pauses by Katherina with a nod and slips between Ripper and me without a word.
“Where does it all go?” I ask.
“The rock? There is a pit nearby. I believe they simply dump it and move on. These hills will become a plateau if they carry on like this. Edward’s men sometimes go panning out in the pit for gold. We have little need for it.”
“That explains where Richterman gets his coin.”
Her face pinches into a sneer.
I prod, “You don’t approve?”
“I approve of the industry. I approve of the life these orphans have been given.” She turns to me with sad eyes. “I do not approve of the cost.”
“And what is the cost?”
“Fealty. Absolute, unquestioning loyalty to Lars. He throws their lives away fighting these… you call them Wendigo?”
“Why ain’t the townsfolk dealt with him, yet?” I ask. “Richterman. I mean, Denton. They all know. That much is obvious.”
“Scarlow knows how to preserve his position,” she replies. “He is a sharp man.”
“Not as shiftless as I’d reckoned.”
She turns back to the grotto dropping down below our feet. “I brought you here, Odell, so that you could see the beauty of our culture. That we even possess a culture. This is, in reality, only a shadow of what we could be.”
“Far sight better than squatting in a plantation house, I wager.”
“And you would lose your wager.” She tightens her grip on own arms. “Our strength has been in our society. And these orphans have never known that society. For the weak to learn their strength, they must be protected and shepherded by Masters. And Richterman is no Master.”
“Tell me,” I ask, guiding her shoulder to face me. “How does he do it? Denton, I mean. How does he walk in the daylight while still being a Strigoi?”
Her eyes widen. “Who said he was Strigoi?”
“Sorry?”
She unfolds her arms and reaches for mine, pressing me back away from the ledge. “Why do you say this?”
“Well, er…”
“He is no Strigoi.”
I take a moment. I’ve seen Richterman move with the demon speed. I’ve heard his voice in my head. He’s as clever and as powerful a Strigoi as Katherina, and the panic in her face gives me a powerful need to watch my words.
She pushes harder. “Tell me. What have you seen? Has something happened to him? You must tell me!”
Her face has taken a monster cast, but I still see her fear in it. Her nails dig through my sleeves.
With a good clearing of my throat, I answer, “He seems to possess peculiar speed.”
Her eyes draw together a little as she whispers, “No.”
“I hear his voice sometimes, inside my head. One of your Strigoi tricks.”
Katherina’s face wilts, and she leans forward to put both hands on my shoulders. “What you are saying is not possible.”
“Ain’t it?”
Her face drops a little.
“Maybe you’re right,” I add. “But I think maybe you should brace yourself. Hell, these Wendigo things ain’t playing by their own damn rules. Why wouldn’t this valley play loose with the Strigoi, too?”
She turns away. “There is a reason Magner’s creatures are not what the folklore suggests.”
I feel Richterman close by. Per
haps not physically, but there he is still. Always listening.
“Do tell.”
“Leave your horse.”
I turn to Ripper, then back to her. “No way I’m doing that.”
She sweeps over to Ripper, lays hands on the side of his face, and locks strong eyes with him. His head droops slowly, and he closes his eyes. His flanks reduce to a slow breathing.
“He will be safe,” she whispers.
“You just put my horse to sleep? In a cave full of Strigoi?”
“I told you he will be safe, and so he will.”
She storms down a ramp, and I ease away from Ripper before following. By my word, if anything happens to that horse, I will have my fill of killing.
Katherina rushes gently down the same ramp that gives me no end of treachery. I choose my steps careful, what with the odd rock slipping under my heel. She finally stops about midway down, pointing to a series of double-wide arches leading to the last thing I expect to see down in a carved-out mine.
A library.
Books sit cradled in a neat carpentry of dark wood shelves, floor to ceiling, or what passes as such. Some books look new, others look older than Jesus. Some are nothing more than a few folded-over sheets of words tucked between boards.
“What’s this for?” I ask, stepping carefully near the bookshelves.
“Reading, you lummox.”
“Ain’t that something?”
She runs a finger along spines as she says over her shoulder, “Do you think we are illiterate? That is more the purview of the living.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She pulls a book and leans against the shelves. “I have no interest in arguing with you.”
“I wasn’t arguing.”
“Do you want to know how to kill these Wendigo?”
I give her a slow nod.
“Then you must know how it began.” She steps closer to the archways, staring down into the chasm. “The cave-in happened near the bottom, where we do not dig. The orphans are afraid of the site. It feels… stained. Something happened to Magner in the darkness. This spirit of hunger you speak of? If it entered into his body, it did so in the depths below. I do not know if it was before or after he ate human flesh. Perhaps that does not matter.”
“Redhawk says these things are solitary. They don’t breed, or whatever Magner’s doing to hammer out these bone-chewers. He seemed surprised by it all.”
Katherina turns to me, cradling her book. “After Denton dragged Magner out of the rubble, they both collapsed. They brought Denton home, and a young woman named Claudia took Magner to her home. She had been a nurse in the War, and her husband was one of the miners who had fallen. She tended to Magner, a few cuts and what she thought was a stomach complaint. All the while, I tried to salve Denton’s mind. Neither of us knew what had become of the men in our charge.
“A farmer had returned to the mine site to try and clear more rubble and shore up the entrance. He slipped and broke his arm. They took him to Claudia’s, and he stayed in the same tiny room with Magner for a day. Then, the following day, he disappeared. Magner professed ignorance when they questioned him, and the people of the town assumed he had wandered off.
“Then Claudia went missing. That was when they searched the house.”
“What did they find?” I asked.
“The smell was what led them to pry up the floorboards. Both bodies, or what was left of them, were stuffed in a hole Magner had clawed up with his bare hands. They barred the outside of the door and boarded the windows. It wasn’t long before Magner had torn the door off. It took six men to force him into the jailhouse.”
“Did the bars hold?”
“Not long enough. He clawed at the walls. He was changing.”
I turn a slow circle, rubbing my neck. “This all sounds like Redhawk’s Wendigo legend. Only according to the legend, he would have haunted some secluded spot in the forest all hermit-like, changing until the demon couldn’t use the body anymore.”
“He tried.”
“What stopped him?”
Katherina sets her jaw, and answers, “I did.”
I squint at her. “That a fact?”
“It was Denton’s idea. No, it was Lars. I am sure of that, now. He suggested I turn Magner, that the Strigoi change would somehow force the curse out of him.”
“I thought it took a fair space of time to turn someone into a Strigoi?”
“So it does. And I refused, at first. But I was unaware that Denton had become someone else. I was not prepared for his force of persuasion. Lars can be persuasive.”
I nod. “So you did it? You turned him?”
“I tried. It was a bad idea from the beginning. It was our only idea.” She sighs. “It is a process, not something that just happens. It was I who broke Magner out of the jailhouse. I took him to a cave in the forest hills, a place to prepare him. And I drank from him. I did not know what to expect. I was only convinced it would work. His blood was bitter. Tainted. It made me ill, but I continued the process.”
She trails off, staring into space.
“And?” I prod.
“It began normally. He hid from the sunlight. It blistered his flesh as it does all Strigoi. I stayed with him, forcing him to speak, to count out loud, to repeat his name, to remember his childhood. I kept his mind alive while his flesh decayed. Then… it stopped. The curse inside him fought back. All he could do was complain about the hunger. Then he attacked me.”
“He bit you?”
“He tried. He had remarkable strength, but lacked my speed. I resolved to kill him but found I could not. He was too strong.”
“How did it end?”
“The sun rose, trapping us both in the cave. He stepped out into the light. I thought perhaps he was trying to end his life. That happens from time to time, the newly turned killing themselves by sunlight. But he did not burn. He stood in the sunlight, clutching his stomach. I could not leave. He had me trapped. Then, he just walked away.”
Katherina strokes her own arms. The memories rattle her sure enough. I have nothing to say to help her. This was a nightmare into which she had been more deeply stitched than I had reckoned.
What had she created in that cave?
She clears her throat. “Five years of silence. Magner stayed in the forest for almost five years. Most assumed he was dead, but I could smell him on the wind. He was the creature haunting the woods, just like the legend.”
“So what changed?”
“I came back home when night returned to find Denton was gone. He had moved into the old assayer’s office. And he had a new name. He had run off the mayor, the officers of the mine company, and two of the ranchers. Lars had taken the town while I was in the cave with Magner. He immediately started drawing his map. This master plan of his.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“First he needed muscle. Which is when he found Edward and his cronies creeping along the outside of the valley toward Broad Creek.”
I imagine the scene, Scarlow hunkered with his crew, drawing up on one lone man standing in the forest. I imagine Richterman’s voice echoing through Scarlow’s skull, giving him a vision of living a law man’s life.
“Then he and Scarlow took over?” I ask.
“Edward was a quick study. He learned how to keep Richterman at an arm’s length while remaining in his protection.”
“He’s a survivor,” I add with a nod.
Katherina sweeps a free arm around her. “It was this place that drew Magner out of hiding. The work. The chiseling and dumping. Edward’s men scavenging the rubble for gold. I found two orphans wandering the valley. I tried to hide them here, but Denton had returned home in this half-life. Before I drew boundaries with Lars, he spotted them and encouraged them to live in the mine. Then he sought more out. Before long they were streaming from the cities to the east, desperate for a place of belonging. They were the labor force he needed, and he was the Master they needed. But he was no Master. Only a ty
rant.
“And Magner was offended by it. Perhaps he felt some kind of ownership of the mine. The demon inside him was protecting its birthplace. One of the living workers tasked with panning the dumped rubble for gold came into town. He had been bitten, he said, by some creature half as tall as a tree.”
“Magner had transformed.”
“Instead of eating the man, he just took a piece from his leg and let him go. He must have known there was a change. He must have seen it happen to another victim, perhaps on the western slope where the Comanche live.”
I nod. “Let me guess. The bite turned the man into a cannibal.”
“It was Magner all over again. He killed two people, wounded one. That person underwent the change as well. Lars gathered enough men to run the two out of town, and they retreated into the hills, as if Magner had called them. Their numbers grew, and they attacked the town every week or so. The last of the raids were devastating. They destroyed the church and took Parson Uriah when Denton had taken a trip to Broad Creek to acquire his new press plates. Which meant Richterman was in Broad Creek, along with Edward. They returned to find the church in ruins and the town in a panic.”
I tap the stone archway with a flat hand. “So Richterman sends a posse into the woods, which is when I stumbled into all this horseshit.”
Katherina blinks, then nods with tight lips.
“Then Magner and all his creatures are actually mongrels? Half Strigoi, half Wendigo. The strengths of one, the weaknesses of the other. That would explain the silver and how he’s spreading the curse.” I sigh and face the chasm. “And they’re fighting for this mine.”
“Magner wants it. It has cost us dozens of lives. Mostly orphans, a couple of Edward’s men, protecting this underground city. I fear we are losing this war.”
“Then,” I say, turning to her,” we kill them all. To the last one. Each can spread their curse, and they ain’t weak to sunlight. Richterman’s right about this… There ain’t enough silver in this valley to put them all down. If they share the Strigoi weaknesses, then maybe there’s another way.”
She heaves her book into my chest.
I grip it loose until she releases it. Its weight is surprising. Some old leather-bound book. Expensive, too, by its feel.
“What’s this?” I ask.
