by DG Wood
“You didn’t answer my question, Uncle Ennis.”
“Snow blindness, frostbite, dehydration, hunger, isolation. All these things play tricks with the mind. You can see things that aren’t there. I once thought I saw a McDonald’s drive-thru in the middle of the tundra.”
“And did you ever think you saw sasquatch?” Darkly pressed.
Ennis gave in.
“Yes. I was with your dad one summer. The feds were moving a tribe off contaminated land. Relocating them. The tribe had seen a generational spike in leukemia, which was associated with chemical deposits left behind during a local strip-mining operation. A settlement resulted in monetary compensation and new homes in a safer area. Only, the elderly people didn’t want to move. They said the spirits of their ancestors lived in the surrounding woods. And these ancestors would become angry if we carried on with the removal of the tribe.”
Ennis took a break in the story and walked over to another case. He removed a plaster cast of an immense footprint and placed it on top of the case for Darkly to inspect closely.
“Your dad and I were sleeping in a trailer the mining operation had left behind. We found these prints one morning. They circled the trailer. That was night one. Night two, we woke to the whole trailer rocking back and forth.”
“Did you go outside?”
Darkly was sucked in.
“Yes. We ran out with guns drawn and shone our flashlights into the trees. The night was pitch black. Your dad’s beam caught the reflection of eyes. Eyes that were well above our heads and looking down at us. I caught a glimpse of a face. It was no bear. Then we heard the thing stomp away, breaking trees as it left to make sure we were aware of its power.”
“Did you have any more problems?”
“We forcibly removed the last hold-outs from their homes the next day and torched the houses, so they couldn’t return. I still remember the looks in those people’s eyes. Not mine or your dad’s finest hour, that’s for sure.”
“You saved their lives. That’s something,” Darkly offered.
“More than a few of the elders died soon after the relocation. The stress of being forced out of the only home they had ever known got to them before any disease could.”
“Was that the only time you think you saw the…”
“Sasquatch? Yes. Your dad and I never reported that bit. But, there’s something else. Something I never told even your father.”
Darkly knew this was going to be important. She was getting goosebumps already.
“My grandmother was 100% First Nations. She would teach me the words of the Haida. Her people called the man of the woods the Gagiit. And it was something to be feared. But it was also a creature that could be controlled.”
“Controlled? For what purpose?” Darkly needed to know.
“My grandmother said the Gagiit could be called through song. Not all, but some of my grandmother’s people believed it would come out of the woods to attack the enemy of the Haida, as they also believed the Gagiit were their ancestors who remembered familial bonds.”
Okay. Now, Ennis was in familiar territory. Darkly had heard this before.
“Like grandparents?”
“Many times removed. During times of extreme famine in winter, when people turned to cannibalism to survive, the cannibal would become almost immortal from the life he had eaten. But, it would also transform the eater into the primitive version of man.”
“This is helpful, Uncle Ennis. Is there anything else you can remember your grandmother saying?”
“Only that they avoid water at all costs. They never bathe. Water is the conduit of life, and they are something not quite alive. So, the stench when they are around is the mother of all skunk attacks.”
Ennis drifted off into the land of reminiscence.
“In the water I drink, bathe, baptize and hide. The Lord God will save me from being eaten alive. My grandmother would recite that poem to me when she wanted me to take a bath.”
Ennis smiled. He was imagining his grandmother’s face for the first time in a long time.
“Did she ever say how you kill it?” Darkly scattered the memory.
Ennis looked deeply into Darkly’s eyes and did not answer for a couple of minutes. When he did answer, it was with a rather poetic response.
“Like I said, some see it as the protector. A creature of the light. Divine even. In that case, how do you kill the divine?”
“You don’t,” Darkly answered the rhetorical question.
“Others see the sasquatch as something born in the darkest moments experienced by the human soul and tied to this world through a tenuous strand of descendants. Maybe when the descendants are gone, the creature disappears back into the woods, never to be called out of hiding again.”
Darkly could tell Ennis was chomping at the bit to ask her about the last couple of weeks. But, to his credit, he didn’t pry. Darkly ate again and rested again. She would leave at nightfall. After all that she had spoken with Ennis about, she was growing very concerned about Marielle’s condition and safety.
Ennis packed Darkly’s jeep with supplies, including a couple plastic containers of gasoline, two big tins of bison jerky, and a 48-pack of bottled water. He then hugged his surrogate daughter and offered his help.
“Darkly, do you need me to come with you? I’m happy to come out of retirement for one more mission.”
Darkly kissed Ennis on the cheek.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m not alone.”
After watching Darkly drive off, Ennis went back into his house and called Darkly’s father, William.
As she pulled onto the highway, Darkly wondered if the sasquatch was alone, or if there were many of the old Indian’s ancestors circling the hotel at this very moment. The wind blew through Darkly’s hair, and she felt a great sense of purpose. If she could not yet face the monster within, the one without would do. She understood now that to hold the beast at bay, she must take on the old Indian. Once Marielle was well enough to travel, she would say goodbye to Wolf Woods for good. Maybe she should take a page from her father and Ennis’s book and burn the godforsaken place to the ground.
Sunrise was a couple of hours away when Darkly made the turn off the highway onto the final few miles stretch into Wolf Woods. She had filled up with gas two hours before, so she could make the final run with full confidence. But, she still felt vulnerable in the open jeep. She had good reason to feel that way.
Darkly felt unnerved as she drove the incline up to the point that looked out over the town and prayed silently that the turn-off to the right that led down to the ford in the Moon River was just seconds away.
All of sudden, something swooped down in front of Darkly’s face, brushing her cheek. Startled, she swerved the jeep to the left, driving off the edge of the dirt road, but managed to regain control of the vehicle and return to the road. Was it a bat?
Darkly gunned the engine. She was creeped out now and was making a run for it. She was convinced the creature was watching her from the forest. The headlights picked up the turn in the road ahead. At that moment, black claws descended from the sky, dive bombing the jeep. Darkly screamed and slammed on the brakes, as a raven came to a landing on the top edge of the windshield.
Darkly sat there not breathing as the raven gave out a low croak.
“Holy fuck.”
The bird tilted its head, then looked into Darkly’s eyes, then looked behind her. It took off, croaking repeatedly. Darkly looked behind her, following the raven’s flight. The wings disappeared into the darkness. She took a moment to collect herself and breathe. She instinctually hummed a tune from her childhood to calm her nerves. Something about teddy bears going out into the woods to enjoy a picnic. It was quiet. Except for the occasional pinging of the jeep’s engine and the crickets. Then there was her breathing. It was a lot heavier and louder than she realized.
Only, the breathing wasn’t coming from her. It was behind her and growing louder. Darkly peered into the d
arkness where the raven’s wings had disappeared. The darkness seemed to be moving. Coming closer. Then it emerged. The face of the creature. The whites of its eyes and teeth. The slobbering. The stench. It was almost inside the jeep. The humming had been a bad idea.
Darkly hit the gas, and the jeep leapt forward and sputtered out. In her terror, she had forgotten to put the jeep into first gear. She slammed her left foot down on the clutch, shifted into gear and turned the engine. The jeep raced forward just as the beast leapt onto the back of the jeep. The sasquatch, the cannibal, was directly behind Darkly, ready to rip her head off.
Darkly summoned all of her resolve and drove forward, swerving the jeep violently from left to right, forcing the sasquatch to grab hold of Darkly’s seat. She could feel its god-awful, blood-soaked breath on her cheek. It was no use. This was the end.
But, then, a howl of pain from the thing. Darkly looked in the rearview mirror and saw the raven bouncing off the creature’s head, clawing at its face, puncturing its eyes. It was forced to leap up, and Darkly seized her chance. She turned the vehicle sharply to the right and dove down the hill toward the crossing in the river. The beast went flying, falling out of the jeep. Darkly was in the clear. Or so she thought.
The monster landed on its feet and swatted at the bird with one fist, hitting its body as a bat to ball. The bird was knocked into the forest with such ferocity, Darkly thought she could hear its bones breaking. It couldn’t be anything else but dead.
Then the sasquatch began running again. Darkly had made it furious.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Maggie never imagined herself in the arms of a Mohawk warrior. But neither had she imagined herself a widow in a war with her own father’s people. The people who had killed her husband and occupied her land. Americans. And now she served them food and ale as a barmaid at the Angel Inn.
The landlord had taken pity on her and given her a cot in the cellar among the casks. He’d also taken in an Indian with a bounty on his head. Raton, he was called. It was not his given name, but it was all the landlord could manage in the translation of a name he couldn’t spell. And it sounded remotely French. It stuck and was shortened to Rat during the occasional condemnation from employer to employee.
Raton watched Maggie. He watched her while he was cooking the soup. He watched her while he was washing the dishes. He watched her while she was on her knees scrubbing the floor. She could feel his eyes touching her.
He scared Maggie at first. Twice the size of her, with one eye scarred from when a British soldier had tried to pluck it out. Raton cut out the man’s heart and disappeared into the wilderness before they could hang him. Lieutenant Fitzgibbon sent Mohawk warriors with no love loss for Raton after him. He slit both of their throats and found sanctuary in American-occupied territory.
To say the Mohawk was a hard man was an understatement. As a boy, he had witnessed his father forced to watch, as his mother was raped multiple times by French trappers. At the end of the long night, the trappers hanged Raton’s parents and enslaved the boy as a mule. For eight years, he lugged beaver and muskrat pelts, until at age fifteen, he found his moment for revenge. After a night of drinking, Raton tied the trappers up in their sleep and, one by one, cut their cocks off and shoved them in their screaming mouths. Then he gutted each one of them like a salmon, and they bled to death. Raton was free, yet never free of the pain of his past.
When he looked at Maggie, he saw a kindred spirit. Everything she had hoped and planned for had been reduced to enduring the gropes of slobbering boys fighting a war that none of them could recite the reasons for the start of hostilities.
Maggie had gone from avoiding Raton’s gaze at all times to stealing a look when she thought Raton was not aware to catching her breath and wiping sweat from her upper lip when he brushed against her in the kitchen. Until one night, after the last pissed American soldier had been pushed out the door to take his chances with snipers and locals prostituting themselves, Maggie made her way down to the cot amid the wine and beer.
She undid her hair and set to brushing out the tangles. It was when she put the brush down on the top of a cask, that Raton stepped out of the shadows. Maggie reacted as she would be expected to. She backed herself into a barrel, as her eyes darted to the cellar steps, planning her escape.
But, then, Raton reached his hand out for Maggie’s. It rested there, unshaking on thin air, with Maggie’s eyes fixed on Raton’s. To her own surprise, she accepted it. She pulled his hand to her waist, and then turned to brace herself against a barrel of port. She felt Raton’s rough hands run themselves up her legs and lift her petticoat, and she gave herself to him.
Even more of a surprise was it to Maggie when she discovered she loved Raton. But as strong as her love was for her kindred spirit, the Mohawk, stronger was her hatred for the men who had struck down her husband. The most Raton could hope for was that the war would last years rather than months. For, the inevitable silencing of muskets to come would end their relationship. War tolerates strange bedfellows. Peace does not. But, Maggie would come to ask more of Raton before it was all over.
It was during the serving of supper at the Angel Inn, when Maggie’s opportunity for revenge revealed itself. She had placed the legs of turkey down in front of the captain and the beautiful corporal sitting across from him – a young man for whom the officer carried a decidedly un-fatherly affection – when the captain said too much. With his fingertips almost touching the boy’s, the captain mentioned that the undermanned and underprepared British Lieutenant Fitzgibbon was about to receive the surprise of a bayonet up the backside.
It was that night, after making love, that Maggie asked Raton to help her find her way to the people who would burn him alive if they caught him. And because he loved her, he did not hesitate with his answer.
But, to the captain with the loose lips, Maggie’s interest in what he had to say had not gone unnoticed. Pubs had been the preferred hangout of spies since Marlowe’s day. And the captain knew that women made the best spies.
It was just before dawn, when Maggie and Raton took provisions from the larder, said goodbye to the Angel Inn, and walked quietly from house to house until reaching the edge of town. It was at the end of town, where the road turned toward Queenston Heights, that the captain’s men were waiting for Maggie.
It all happened so fast. No warnings were given; no questions were asked. A shot ran out. Standing fifty feet in front of Maggie in the pale blue of pre-dawn and the smoke of musket fire, were two men. When she turned to Raton, she realized he was not standing at all.
As the men slowly approached, Maggie knelt next to her lover. The musket ball had caught him in the neck. His carotid artery was severed, but Raton had enough strength left to remove a knife and slide it into Maggie’s hand. By the time she lifted her lips from Raton’s, he was gone, and she was being hoisted to her feet.
Maggie now possessed the rage of two loves lost. She turned and plunged the knife she was hiding into the captain’s gut, and ran.
She heard the captain scream through his pain, “Shoot her!”
The beautiful corporal fumbled with his loaded musket at first, but successfully fired.
Maggie felt the searing pain in her side, but the adrenaline coursing through her body kept her going. She ran. No soldier could stop her now.
It was mid-morning when Maggie reached the Secord house. She knew, as she collapsed onto the porch, and Laura Secord came rushing to her side, that she had lost too much of her blood to recover. There was only one rest that could cure her.
But before that, she would ask the loyalist Secord to fulfill what she would now be unable to complete.
Leaving Maggie’s burial to her husband, whose war wounds were too severe to undertake any journey, Laura Secord set off for DeCou House, some twenty miles away. And as the American contingent approached her home, Laura knew she could not hope to beat the US soldiers on horseback. She repeated the name DeCou to herself over and over as she ra
n through the woods that surrounded her homestead.
With the cavalry horses’ hooves felt in the ground below her, Laura collapsed to all fours. The name DeCou swam laps through her head until even that repetition gave way to the mind of the wolf. But the wolf knew she was being chased. And she knew where she was going. She had been there before. This time, she brought information that could change the tide of the war.
Like Laura Secord, Darkly knew what was chasing her, ready to strike her down. Something big that shook the ground, and only yards behind. Unlike Laura, as much as she wanted to at that very moment, there was no spontaneous metamorphosis onto all fours. Darkly had only the steel chassis and four wheels below her. Looking behind her at the gaining creature, Darkly also knew they would not be enough.
The headlights reflected off the ripples in the river and wet stones ahead. If she could get to the water, then she’d be safe for a time. It was then she saw the figure standing in the middle of the ford.
So, it was true, she thought, there is more than one. And this one had overcome its fears. She had no choice but to run it down. She suspected it would be like hitting a tree. At least the end would be quick.
The jeep left the bank and hit the slick rocks at over fifty miles per hour. It was only a split second she had to determine that the figure in front of her was not a corruption of nature, but a simple man.
Darkly swerved the jeep at the last possible millisecond and plummeted into deeper water, causing a wave to reach up over the windshield and wash her out of the jeep. The figure standing in the river was no sasquatch. It was Buck.
Darkly spluttered to her feet and watched as Sheriff Buck raised the biggest shotgun she’d ever seen and empty its barrel into all that hair and muscle. The barrel of the firearm opened up at the end into what looked like a trumpet. It was the kind of gun that brought down big game in Africa. This particular North American game also succumbed to its power.
