The Vanishing

by Wendy Webb

“It’s not a sweet and gentle tale, however,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Not all of it, anyway. I’ll just warn you of that. Are you sure you’re up to hearing it?”

  I nodded, eager to learn more about the man in the painting.

  Amaris Sinclair folded her hands in her lap, stared into the dancing flames, and began to speak:

  “The year was 1850, and unlike life on the East Coast of this country, things here in the wilds of Minnesota near the Canadian border were anything but civilized, at least by the standards of a young and rather spoiled Scottish nobleman sent here to run his family’s fur-trapping business. Despite a few settlements here and there, this was the wilderness, darling, pure and simple.”

  She paused to take a sip of her tea, so I asked a question. “You said he was a young man? I imagine coming here would have been quite an adventure back in those days. Probably not something that an older gentleman would have undertaken.”

  “You imagine correctly. As the eldest son of an aristocratic family, Andrew stood to inherit his family’s considerable wealth and position. But his father simply couldn’t bear for that to happen, not to the man that young Andrew was at the time.” Mrs. Sinclair’s eyes sparkled. “He was what we might call a wild child. Gambling, drink, women—if there was a vice possible to have, Andrew succumbed to it. By all accounts, he was a spoiled, self-centered, entitled playboy with no sense of direction and no sense of responsibility, either. I’m sure you know the type.”

  I wondered if she was referring to my husband, and at the thought of him, my stomach curdled. “It sounds like he needed to man up a bit,” I offered.

  “Indeed,” she said, raising her eyebrows and taking another sip of her tea. “Andrew’s mother, Marcelline, was French Canadian, the daughter of a prominent fur trader in Montreal. Her father had given her a line of his business, the fur trade along the Canadian border with Minnesota, as a dowry when she married Andrew’s father, Hugh. And when the wild Andrew turned twenty, Hugh charged him with a task: he was to run the fur business and make it successful, before he would be eligible to inherit the family fortune, lock, stock, and barrel. Hugh thought the experience would make a man of his son. He had no idea.”

  Mrs. Sinclair chuckled and looked into my eyes, as though we were sharing a joke. “Andrew came to this land, sailing from Scotland to the East Coast, up the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes, and finally making landfall in Duluth. From there he went on horseback, and what he found, my dear, was like nothing he could even imagine in his wildest dreams. Or nightmares.”

  My arms tingled. I wondered how dark and twisted this tale might become. She had warned me, after all.

  “Unlike what was happening in other parts of the state at that time, the native tribes in this area were friendly and welcoming,” she continued. “Andrew settled into a modest cabin north of Duluth and began, as his father had instructed, to learn the business with the goal of one day taking it over.”

  “Obviously, he achieved that goal,” I said, gesturing to the opulence around me.

  Mrs. Sinclair smiled. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, my dear. You haven’t heard the full story yet.”

  I snuggled deeper into the sofa and curled my legs under me.

  “It’s my opinion, Julia, that the voyage itself and the rustic, and one might say harsh, living conditions began to work their magic on young Andrew. One might think this spoiled, rich young man would have rebelled against his circumstances, but in fact the opposite occurred. I suppose he had a good deal of time to think on the voyage over here. Or perhaps he was awestruck by the beauty of this land, which was wild and untamed and like nothing he had ever seen. Whatever the case, by all accounts Andrew was a fast learner who embraced his new life. In no time he mastered the business and accounting side of things and was itching to get out into the field, so to speak. Soon he asked the business’s manager to go on a trapping run with the Voyageurs.”

  “Voyageurs?” I had heard the term before, but I wasn’t quite sure what it meant.

  “These were the men, many of them French Canadians like Andrew’s mother, who got into canoes and paddled up and down the lakes in the region. They worked the traps, bringing in the pelts that drove the business,” she explained. “They were savvy about the surroundings and very friendly with the native people, who shared secret knowledge about the land and the rivers and the lakes. Andrew wanted to know what they knew, and after several months of asking, he was finally allowed to go on a trapping run with them. It was an experience that changed Andrew’s life.”

  I was silent, sipping my tea and waiting for Mrs. Sinclair to go on.

  “After days of paddling in the massive canoes with eleven other men, portaging from lake to lake, sleeping under a canopy of stars each night, and seeing all manner of wildlife along the way, they reached what is now known as Gunflint Lake, not far from where Havenwood is today. There, they were invited to join the natives for a meal. The Voyageurs brought fish they had caught earlier in the day; the natives had venison and wild rice. After they had eaten, they sat around the campfire and began to tell young Andrew a tale. It was a warning about a monstrous being that roamed these woods.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Not Bigfoot…?” I hoped this wasn’t where the story was going. I didn’t believe that old legend. Science would have discovered the creature by now if it existed.

  She shook her head. “Nothing as benign as that, I’m afraid. They told him the legend of the Windigo.”

  She visibly shuddered as she said the name. I knew I should know what this was; I had heard the name of this creature before. My mind reached back into the dusty recesses where it stored all of its not-often-used information but couldn’t grasp it.

  “The Windigo, darling, is a Native American legend. It is said that there is a beast that roams this area that is, well, for lack of a better term, Julia, a cannibal. It is a monstrous thing that had once been human. But now it feeds on human flesh.”

  I shivered. “I have heard about this,” I said, the long-forgotten ghost stories told around campfires when I was a child seeping back into my brain. “So, Andrew learned about the Windigo from the natives?”

  “More than learned.” There was a dark sheen in her eyes. “As the story goes, Andrew became obsessed with the beast and aimed to catch it and kill it. He had grown to love this land and wanted to rid it of this evil.”

  “So he thought the Windigo was real? But it’s just a legend.”

  “Where do legends come from, Julia?”

  I held her gaze. Surely she didn’t mean to suggest this old fairy tale was true, that a monstrous cannibal was roaming these woods.

  “In any case,” she said quickly, “real or not, Andrew set out to find it.” She took a sip of her tea and stared into the fire. “That was a mistake.”

  “A mistake? What happened?”

  Mrs. Sinclair turned to me and smiled. “We’re not quite sure. After a month or so alone in the wilderness, he returned to his business’s base, and then came the news that his parents had died in a stagecoach accident. The family fortune was now his. But instead of returning to his beloved Scotland, as everyone thought he would do, he built a replica of his family home right here. At incredible expense, I might add.”

  “So, he loved it here enough to stay.”

  “That’s one way to look at it. He certainly had success here, and by all accounts became a good man. After several years, he fell in love with a local girl and got married, and they had children. And once the house was completed, he began holding salons for the arts—he brought in musicians and artists and writers from not only the East Coast of the United States but from all around the world.”

  “I sense there’s a ‘but’ coming right about now.”

  Mrs. Sinclair nodded. “Exactly right, my dear. He never left. Never again did he venture beyond the estate.”

  “He never went back to Scotland, even for a visit? Why?”

  “That’s the interesting question, isn’
t it?”

  I sensed she was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. “Was he compelled to stay?”

  “Or prevented from leaving… by someone or something. There is more magic, both good and evil, in the woods beyond this house than you could imagine in your wildest dreams.”

  “Or nightmares,” I said, shuddering.

  “As the story goes—and this is just pure speculation, now, nobody really knows for sure—Andrew did indeed encounter the Windigo one lonely night in the woods. He saw the creature—tall, thin as a skeleton, sunken eyes, with an insatiable hunger for human flesh, the remains of its victims strewn around it. Andrew froze in terror as it turned its horrible gaze toward him. He surely would’ve been killed but for a Native American shaman who had also been hunting the Windigo to rid his people of its menace. He used dark magic to kill the beast, saving Andrew’s life in the process.”

  As she took a sip of her tea, I noticed her eyes were twinkling with delight. She set her cup on the end table and continued. “It was a magical gift, but a price came with it, as is most often the case. Andrew McCullough could indeed live on, but only where he was. Here.” She opened her arms wide. “And that is how he came to own this property. That is why he reconstructed his beloved family home here, brick by brick. That is why he never left. He chose the name of the house for that very reason. This was Andrew’s haven in the woods. If he ventured one foot beyond the estate, he would fall dead. If he stayed, he would live on, charged with protecting the estate and all who live here from the same menace that almost took his life.”

  A shiver ran up my spine, thinking of a creature as horrible as the Windigo on the estate.

  “So what happened to Andrew in the end? He married and had children, you said, right?”

  She nodded. “He did indeed. But what ultimately happened to Andrew is a bit murkier than that.” She leaned in toward me and lowered her voice. “Around the time of his fiftieth birthday, he walked into the woods and was never seen again. Some say he still roams through the forest to this day, playing his beloved bagpipe, keeping the Windigo at bay. You can hear the music of the pipes buoyed by the wind on the deepest, darkest nights of the year.”

  I shivered but was delighted all the same. That, I thought, is how a master of the craft spins a ghost story.

  “And now, my dear, I’m going to make my way up to my rooms,” Mrs. Sinclair said, pushing herself up from the sofa. “We usually have cocktails before dinner, but I think we’ll skip it tonight if you don’t mind. I’m a bit tired.”

  “Not at all,” I said, rising with her. “I enjoyed the story.”

  She put a hand on my cheek. “I knew you would, darling. One can’t possibly be a part of Havenwood without knowing its founder.”

  She made her way upstairs, and I settled back onto the sofa in front of the fire. I gazed up at Andrew McCullough—the very sound of his name sizzled through me—and wondered what had really happened to him. Windigo indeed.

  “Miss Julia?” I was so lost in thought that the sound of my own name made me jump.

  “Oh!” I said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  She smiled. “I’m just letting you know that Mrs. Sinclair will be dining in her suite this evening,” she said. “Might you like your dinner upstairs as well?”

  Dinner? I had no idea it was so late. I glanced out the window and the fading glow of twilight told me I had been sitting there longer than I thought.

  “Sure,” I said, pushing myself up. “That’ll be fine.”

  “Very good,” she said, turning to go. “I’ll have one of the girls bring it up at six thirty, along with a bottle of wine and a few books for you to read. The evenings can get a bit long at Havenwood if we don’t have a formal dinner.”

  “Thank you, Marion.” I smiled at her, pleased that I remembered her name.

  After finishing the dinner of roast beef, vegetables, and crusty bread, I poured a glass of wine and tried to open one of the books Marion had sent up. But I found that my imagination swirling around everything that had happened to me that day was much more entertaining. I closed the book and set it in my lap, and spent the rest of the evening looking out my window into the dark woods, strangely lit by the moon and stars on the new-fallen snow, wondering about poor Andrew McCullough out there, somewhere. I squinted into the falling darkness, hoping a monster didn’t lurk just out of sight.

  As I was turning off my bedside lamp, I could’ve sworn I heard the strains of bagpipe music in the distance. But I knew it was just my imagination playing tricks on me, and certainly not an ancient, immortal Scotsman patrolling the grounds.

  A small, faraway voice awakened me in the middle of the night.

  “Sing a song of sixpence / A pocket full of rye…” And then it dissipated into the air, as though it hadn’t been there at all.

  I sat up and flipped on my bedside lamp, looking around the room, my heart pounding hard and fast in my chest. It was the same singsongy voice I had heard earlier. I slipped out of my bed and peeked underneath it. Nothing was there. I turned on the overhead light and approached the closet door, throwing it open—nothing but my clothes, hanging in neat rows. The bathroom was empty as well. This was silly, I told myself. I had probably just dreamed it. Trying to calm myself, I poured a glass of water, but my hands were shaking terribly as I lifted it to my lips.

  I turned off the light and slipped back down under the covers, but now I was fully awake, a heightened sense of terror overtaking me. I couldn’t explain it—I knew it was probably just a dream—but I lay there feeling more frightened by this tiny voice than I ever had been of anything. I pulled the covers over my head and shivered, deep in my core.

  I don’t know how long I lay there frozen still, not wanting to move a muscle, but at one point, I tried to do my own personal version of counting sheep—piecing together the events of the previous day that might have been blurred as a result of my medication. Only then did it occur to me—I hadn’t taken any. The only thing I forgot yesterday was to take the pills that made me forget everything else.

  I slipped out of bed and into the bathroom, fishing around in my travel kit for the pill bottle. I couldn’t pop one right then—I was supposed to take them with food. Instead, I set the bottle on the vanity so I wouldn’t forget to take one just before I went down for breakfast.

  As I crawled back into bed, something hit me. I had been told there could be side effects from stopping this medication too abruptly. I took stock of how I was feeling after just one day off the pills—no shaking, no withdrawal symptoms of any kind that I could discern other than a slight headache. I tried to remember what the side effects were supposed to be… Sleep disruptions? Well, it was the middle of the night and I was wide-awake. What else? Depression? Hallucinations? That word hung in the air as though I had said it aloud. “Hallucinations.” Was that all this singsongy voice was? Something I was making up in my own head? That had to be it.

  Satisfied with that explanation, I felt the tension in my body begin to melt away. I lay there focusing on how comfortable the bed was and how safe and warm it felt to be nestled there under the blankets. Before I knew it, I was opening my eyes to a new day.

  I stretched and yawned, marveling at how different life seemed from what it had been just two days before. No angry victims stalking me, no bill collectors, no banks threatening to foreclose, no former friends giving me the ultimate cold shoulder. Instead, I was in a magnificent old house with a fascinating, if a little odd, lady and servants to attend to my every need. How did I ever get so lucky?

  I glanced at the clock. Six fifteen. I had lots of time before breakfast, so I thought I’d shower and head downstairs early. Maybe I could find a copy of the morning newspaper.

  It wasn’t until I was out of the shower and toweling off that I noticed the pill bottle. It was floating in the toilet, its contents spilled and at the bottom of the bowl. I stood there staring at it for a while, not quite believing what I was seeing. I rem
embered putting it on the vanity in the middle of the night, but did I open it? I must have. I fished the bottle out of the water and flushed, watching the pills go down the drain, thinking there surely must be a pharmacy in town where I could get a refill.

  Only then did it occur to me: I couldn’t do that. How does a woman who has vanished get a prescription filled? One call to my doctor’s office and my opportunity to leave my past behind would be ruined. I shook my head and told myself Adrian could handle it for me somehow when he returned. That was the best I could do. I’d simply have to go without my medication until then. I’d already gone twenty-four hours without it, slightly the worse for wear, but nothing I couldn’t handle. For now, maybe coffee could ease my headache.

  I dressed and headed downstairs. After a few wrong turns, I found my way to the kitchen and poked my head around the swinging door. Marion and two other young women I hadn’t met were buzzing around the stove. The aroma of coffee filled the air, and one of the women was pouring batter into muffin cups while the other was cracking eggs into a bowl.

  “Hello? I don’t mean to bother you,” I began, still not quite sure of the etiquette of dealing with maids.

  “Yes, Miss Julia,” Marion said. “What can we do for you?”

  “I was hoping for a copy of the newspaper and some coffee?”

  “Of course. Go on into the breakfast room and I’ll bring them to you.”

  I sensed the slightest hint of irritation in Marion’s voice. I was varying the routine, it seemed. I wondered how frowned upon that sort of thing was. But in any case, a few moments later I was sitting with the morning paper and a steaming cup of coffee, reading the day’s news, so it couldn’t have been too big a breach in protocol.

  As I turned the page from the local headlines to the national news, a photograph caught my eye. And then the headline above it made my blood run cold.

  “Bishop House Burns to the Ground. Arson Suspected.”

  My house? I held my breath and scanned the story:

  Last night, Chicago firefighters were called to the Lincoln Park home of Jeremy Bishop, a.k.a. the Midwestern Bernie Madoff. Neighbors reported the house had gone up in flames around 2 A.M. The house was engulfed by the time they arrived. Firefighters are calling it a total loss.