Classics Mutilated

by John Shirley

  “I can trade you the laudanum and rubbing alcohol, but not the dogs,” the clerk said, pointing to the bottle of Dr. Rabbitfoot’s Tincture of Opium.

  “Can’t you extend us credit? You know we’re good for it. The dogs I got now aren’t enough to last the winter. If one or two go lame or die on me, I’ll be on foot until spring.”

  “I wish I could help you out, but the Company don’t allow credit,” the clerk said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Cash on the barrelhead or trade only—them’s the rules.”

  A sun-darkened hand suddenly slapped down onto the clerk’s open ledger, placing a gold coin atop the page.

  “I’ll buy thee the dogs thou needest, my friend,” Ahab said. “Granted I ride with thee to thy camp.”

  The clerk picked up the gold piece and turned it over in his hands, giving out a low whistle of admiration. The coin was a doubloon, the border of which was stamped Republica del Ecuador: Quito. On the face were three mountains: on top the first was a flame, the second a tower, while atop the third was a crowing rooster. Above the three mountains was a portion of the zodiac, with the sun entering the equinox under the sign of Libra. The coin seemed to glow in the dim light of the trading post, as if it possessed a life of its own.

  “What say thee, clerk?” Ahab said. “Is that coin enough to buy his dogs?”

  “But there’s a hole in the middle of it …” the clerk pointed out weakly.

  “It is gold, is it not?” Ahab said sternly, in a voice that could be heard through a hurricane. “Now give the man his dogs!”

  The clerk cringed as if he’d been struck with a cat o' nine tails. “Yes, sir,” he replied obsequiously. “As you wish, sir.”

  As the clerk wrapped the supplies I’d come for in a bundle of rags to protect them from breaking, I turned back to face the man called Ahab.

  “I appreciate your generosity, sir. And you are welcome to ride with me back to our camp. But I warn you, Buchan is extremely ill. In fact, I came to the post to trade for medicine in hopes it will save his life. There is a very good chance that he will be dead by the time we get back.”

  “All the more important that we leave as soon as possible,” Ahab said grimly.

  As I headed for the door, the sea captain fell in step behind me. There was a line of pegs on the wall just inside the door, upon which were hung several different outer garments, including my own. As I pulled on my gear, I was surprised to see Ahab reach, not for a coat, but for a harpoon that stood propped up against the doorjamb.

  It stood taller than the man himself, with a shaft fashioned from a hickory pole still bearing strips of bark. The socket of the harpoon was braided with the spread yarns of a towline, which lay coiled on the floor like a Hindoo fakir’s rope. The lower end of the rope was drawn halfway along the pole’s length, and tightly secured with woven twine, so that pole, iron, and rope remained inseparable. The harpoon’s barb shone like a butcher’s knife-edge in the dim light. It was indeed a fearsome weapon, made all the more intimidating by its incongruity.

  “Where is your coat, sir?” I exclaimed, when I realized that my new companion planned to step outside dressed exactly as he was. “It’s below freezing outside!”

  “Do not concern thyself for my comfort,” Ahab said calmly. “I have been in far more inhospitable climes of late.”

  “Why do you carry a harpoon on dry land?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief.

  “Where a shepherd has his crook, and the cowboy his lariat, this is the instrument of my profession,” the old mariner said matter-of-factly. “Wherever I go, it follows with me.”

  As we approached the kennel to fetch my team, the dogs set up an awful racket. However, it was not the snarling expected from sled dogs jockeying amongst themselves for dominance within the pack, but growling born of genuine fear. The lead dog, his nape bristling and ears flat against his skull, snapped at me as I moved to harness him. If I had not jerked my hand back when I did, I most certainly would have lost some fingers.

  Before I could unfurl my dog-whip, Ahab stepped forward and planted the butt of the harpoon in the frozen mud of the kennel yard, glowering at the wildly barking huskies with those strange eyes of his. One by one, the dogs fell silent and lowered their heads, skulking away, tails tucked between their legs, without the old sea captain having to utter a single word.

  “How did you do that?” I asked, amazed by what I had just seen.

  “I have stared down my share of mutineers in my day,” Ahab replied. “There is not much difference between a dog and a deckhand; if they smell the slightest whiff of fear, they will tear thee limb from limb.”

  I added the three new dogs Ahab had staked me to my existing team and harnessed them to my sled. I served as musher, while Ahab sat in the basket. With an old horse blanket draped about his shoulders for warmth, and his harpoon held across his lap, the dour sea captain looked like some grim Norse king preparing for his final battle.

  As we exited through the trading post’s gates, I looked up at the night sky to find it filled with the shifting radiance of the Aurora Borealis. It was by this light that we made our way back to camp.

  Once we were off, Ahab did not utter a single word, but instead stared into the darkness, lost in whatever thoughts he kept locked inside his head. As a man who turned his back on the predictability of city life in favor of a wilderness as isolated and unknown as the uncharted ocean, I felt a certain kinship toward the taciturn Quaker who had forsaken the certainty of solid ground for a pitching deck and the vast horizon of the open sea, despite his strange demeanor.

  The weather for the return trip was cold but otherwise clear until a mile or so out from our destination. Suddenly the wind picked up and quickly grew to gale-force, accompanied by increasing snowfall. Once more, I heard the eerie wailing within the storm, which grew stronger the closer we got. I could not escape the sensation that somehow the blizzard sensed our approach, and was not at all pleased by the intrusion.

  The snow was so heavy I could barely discern the outline of the cabin. Despite my heavy boots and fur-lined gloves, my hands and feet felt like blocks of ice. I was looking forward to warming myself by the fireplace, the humble chimney of which jutted from the roof of the shanty like the bowl of a giant’s pipe. Given my own chilliness, I could only imagine the discomfort Ahab was experiencing. He’d said that he’d lost one leg to a whale, which I had no reason to doubt, and now I feared he might lose the other to frostbite, as well as some fingers. My concern proved to be ill placed, however, for he climbed out of the basket as easily as if he was stepping out of a carriage. Using his harpoon as a walking stick, Ahab made his way toward the darkened cabin without so much as a backward glance.

  “Come back here!” I shouted over the howling wind. “I need help putting up the dogs!”

  If the sailor heard me, he made no show of it, but continued his beeline to the front door. I grabbed the lantern from the sled and hurried after him, cursing loudly the whole way. I knew Martin well enough to easily envision what his first reaction would be to the sight of an unannounced stranger armed with what looked like a spear entering his abode in the middle of the night. I caught up with the Quaker before he could put his shoulder to the door.

  “Are you daft?” I growled. “If you go barging into a trapper’s cabin like that, you’re apt to get shot for an Indian or a poacher! And I am in no hurry to clean your brains off my walls!”

  “Forgive me, friend,” Ahab said, stepping aside so I might go ahead of him. “The prospect of concluding my business has made me … incautious.”

  Holding up the lantern so that its light would illuminate my face as well as the darkness, I pushed open the door of the shanty. The interior of the cabin was as dark as a well digger’s snuffbox.

  “Martin! Hold your fire and sheath your knife! It’s me!” I called out. “And I have brought a visitor.”

  I expected to hear my partner’s voice in return, telling me to close the damned door before I let in a p
olar bear, but there was no reply. I crossed the threshold into the darkness, Ahab’s ivory peg-leg tapping against the rough-hewn planks of the cabin floor close behind.

  I hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps before I collided with a piece of furniture. I lowered the lantern so I could see where I was going and was shocked to find the interior of the cabin in utter chaos. The table on which my companions and I ate our meals had been reduced to kindling, along with its accompanying chairs, as if demolished in a brawl. My heart sank at the sight of several sacks of flour and sugar—provisions for the entire winter—dumped amidst scattered traps, furs, cookware, and clothes. The fire in the stone hearth had gone out, its ashes kicked out into the middle of the room, and the cabin was nearly as cold as the wilderness beyond its walls.

  “Martin! Buchan! Where are you?” I cried, swinging the lantern about in hopes of it illuminating some sign of my friends. My mind rushed about in circles, as if caught in one of my traps. Had poachers broken into the cabin, looking for furs to steal? Or was this the result of an Indian attack? Perhaps Jack had returned, and he and Martin got into a fight?

  I fell silent, hoping I might detect a response. Instead, all I heard was a low, grunting noise, like that of a rooting hog, coming from the back of the cabin, where the shadows were the darkest. Lifting high the lantern, I moved to investigate the sound.

  I found Buchan—or rather, what had become of him—crouching in the corner. His back was turned toward me and I could see not only that he was completely naked, but every vertebrae along his spine as well.

  “Buchan—what happened? Where’s Martin?”

  In response, Buchan spun around to face me, growling like a cornered dog. Save that he was covered in skin, which was by now ash-gray and fairly bursting with weeping sores, he was little more than a skeleton. He was so gaunt the ribs in his chest stood out like the staves of barrel, and his diseased flesh was pulled so tautly across his pelvis it looked as if it was wrapped in leather. But the worst of it was that Buchan’s face was smeared with gore and saliva, and in his bony, claw-like hands he clutched the half-devoured remains of a raw liver. I was so shocked by his wretched condition, I did not at first realize that Martin lay sprawled at Buchan’s feet, split open from anus to throat, his guts scooped out and piled beside him like those of a field-dressed deer.

  Suddenly, strong, iron-hard fingers dug into my shoulder. It was Ahab. I had been so horrified I had forgotten he was there.

  “Stand aside, friend,” the sea captain said grimly. “For this is the business I must attend to.” Ahab hoisted the harpoon, his voice booming in the close confines of the cabin like ocean waves breaking against the shore. “Wendigo! Cannibal Spirit of the North! I am Ahab, hunter of fiends! And in the Devil’s name, I have come to claim you!"

  I do not know if the light from the lantern held in my trembling hand played tricks on me, or if what I saw was what indeed happened; but as Ahab hurled the harpoon, the thing I knew as Dick Buchan seemed to grow, like a shadow cast upon a wall, becoming taller and even thinner than before. He then turned sideways, seeming to disappear, causing the razor-sharp harpoon to sail past harmlessly and imbed itself into the wall of the cabin.

  Buchan reappeared just as suddenly as he had disappeared, but now he was standing in front of the hearth of the fireplace. With a terrible shriek, more like that of a wounded elk than a man, he raised his arms above his head, causing his body to elongate yet again, and shot straight up the fireplace chimney. I was so dumbfounded I at first did not believe my own eyes—until I heard the sound of footsteps on the roof overhead, followed by a wild, maniacal laughter.

  Ahab snatched the harpoon free and hurried for the door, moving as fast as his missing leg allowed. He charged out into the snowstorm, bellowing curses in seven different languages with the heedless bravery peculiar to those who have hunted down and slain creatures a thousand times their size. The dogs—still in harness and attached to their gang line—frantically barked at whatever it was that was stamping back and forth across the roof over their heads.

  As I crossed the threshold to join my companion, I felt something snag the hood of my parka. I looked up and, to my horror, saw a long, bony arm reaching down from the eaves above. I tried to tear myself free of whatever had hold of me, but was unable to break its grip. The thing on the roof gave a single tug, as if testing the strength of its hold, and I found that my boots no longer touched the ground.

  As I was dragged upwards to whatever awaited me on the roof, my mind flashed back to Martin’s fate, and I began to kick and scream as hard as I could. Suddenly Ahab was there beside me, jabbing at the thing on the roof with his harpoon.

  “Leave him be, wendigo!” he shouted angrily. “Thou hast feasted enough for one night!”

  The creature cried out in pain and released its hold, sending me tumbling into a snowdrift. As I got to my feet I saw it squatting on the roof like a living gargoyle. It no longer bore any resemblance to Buchan, save that it was roughly the shape of a man. Its arms and legs were as long as barge poles, and the horns of an elk grew from its skull. Its eyes were pushed so far back in their orbits they at first seemed to be missing—until I caught a flicker of reddish light in each socket, like those of a wild animal skulking beyond a campfire. Its lips were tattered and peeled back from its gums, revealing long, curving tusks the color of ivory. Even from where I stood, I could smell its stink—that of death and decay, just like the horrid freak that had bitten poor Buchan.

  “Laugh all thee like, monster!” Ahab shouted at the ghastly apparition. “Thou shalt not escape! I did not drown thirty good men to be bested by the likes of thee!”

  As if in reply, the creature shrieked like a wild cat, its voice melding with the whistling north wind. It got to its feet and jumped from the roof of the cabin to a nearby pine tree, clearing a distance of thirty feet as easily as a child playing hop-scotch. As I watched in amazement, the creature darted to the very top of the towering pine, which swayed wildly back and forth in the wind, climbing with the agility of an ape.

  Ahab drew back his arm and hurled his harpoon at the abomination a second time. It shot forth as if fired from a cannon, the towline flapping behind it like a pennant, only to fall short of its target. Apparently unfazed, the beast leapt into the uppermost crown of the tree beside it, and then the one after that. Within seconds it had disappeared from sight, its scream of triumph fading into the distance.

  “Come inside,” I said. “The thing is gone. It’s over.”

  Ahab shook his head in disgust as he trudged back into the cabin, his harpoon slung over one shoulder like a Viking’s spear. “It will not wander far—not while there is still meat on our bones.”

  I did not argue with the man, but instead busied myself with releasing the dogs from their gang line. As I returned them to the kennel, I decided it would be wise to keep them in their harnesses, as I foresaw a need to leave camp in a hurry.

  Upon returning inside the cabin, I found a fire set in the hearth and saw that Ahab had draped a length of canvas over Martin’s savaged corpse. The old sailor sat on a stool that was still in one piece in front of the fireplace, sharpening his harpoon with a piece of whetstone.

  “You owe me an explanation, old man,” I said sternly. “Whatever your business with Buchan, it now concerns me.”

  “Fair enough,” Ahab replied. “Ask me what thou wilt, and I will answer thee true. But I warn thee, friend—thou might find this truth unbecoming to reason.”

  “You seem to know what that thing is—you called it wendigo. What is it?”

  “It is a spirit, of sorts. The Indians of the North—the Cree, the Inuit, the Ojibwa—know it well,” he explained, pausing to light his pipe. “It comes with the winter storms and is driven by a horrible hunger for human flesh. Some say it overtakes those who stay too long alone in the wilderness, while others claim it possesses only those driven to cannibalism. Of the last I have my doubts, for I have known many a cannibal in my travels, som
e of whom were men of good character, if not Christian disposition.”

  I stared at Ahab for a long moment, trying to determine if he truly believed what he had just told me. Under normal circumstances I would have laughed and called him a lunatic. But things were far from normal, as evidenced by poor Martin, lying there under his makeshift shroud.

  “How is it you knew poor Buchan was afflicted by the wendigo?”

  “My friend, are thee sure of thine desire for knowledge?” Seeing the steadfastness in my gaze, the old sailor gave a heavy sigh. “Very well, I shall answer thee, as promised. It is my business to know the unknowable, for I have been set a task unlike any since the labors of Hercules. Where once I hunted the great beasts of the ocean, now I stalk the fiends of Hell.”

  I could no longer hide my incredulity, and responded to this declaration with a rude laugh. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “I was once mad, but no more,” Ahab said sadly. “Would that I had the balm of insanity to allay my suffering; for I am just as sane as thee, my friend, if infinitely more damned.”

  “What are you babbling about?” I snapped, my patience finally worn thin.

  “Once, decades ago, I bragged of being immortal on land and on sea. Now I find I must bear the burden of that boast for all eternity.”

  As I listened to the old sailor’s rant, the hairs on my neck stood erect. The dark fire deep in Ahab’s eyes frightened me in a way the wendigo’s did not. It was one thing to be stalked by a fiendish creature, quite another to be trapped with a lunatic.

  “Ah, I see the look in thine eyes,” Ahab said with a grim smile. “Thou hadst seen what thou hath seen, and yet thee still deem me mad? What of this, then?” He pulled aside the cravat about his throat, revealing the marks of a noose no man could have survived. “Aye, I am dead. I have been such since long before your birth. I was once a righteous, God-fearing man, but I was made wicked by my pride and blasphemous by my wrath. I was determined to avenge myself on the whale that took my leg, and offered up my immortal soul in exchange for its annihilation.