The nights in this part of Manitoba were cold, silent and, to Rose, threatening. She listened for whispering voices or the whistling calls, but heard nothing. Rose pulled her blanket tighter and recited songs of protection for herself and the group. Her repeated chants lasted until the first grey streaks of false dawn.
∆ ∆ ∆
On the fifth morning, a damp haze of fog hung over the forest and camp blurring the outlines of everything it touched. The men sat huddled around the central fire.
Martin spoke to Peter and Uncle Alex. “Ain’t no moose for three day’s walk. I say we go up past Rabbit Lake. What you think?”
Old Alex rubbed his hands together and held them palms outward to the campfire. “Good idea,” he said. “That lake has a big bog at the north end. There’s a big sinkhole in the middle of the bog you gotta watch out for, but it’s a safe enough place to camp and hunt.”
Peter said, “I heard nobody goes up there.”
“That sinkhole has a bad name, that’s why some hunters don’t go there,” Uncle Alex said. “It’s called the ‘death hole.’ Been there before. It’s a strange place.”
Auntie Rose stared at Alex and shook her head vigorously in negation. Martin saw the old uncle telegraph a quick message with his eyes.
Auntie Rose slammed her hand down on the earth and shouted, “No! Never – you can’t go there. Something bad will happen!”
Prunie was surprised when her auntie spoke out with such emphatic anger. When Rose disagreed with anything or anyone, she usually turned silent and never shouted.
Alex turned to Rose. “Not the time to speak of visions and deaths.” To the other men he said, “It is nothing. Get ready to leave.”
Uncle Alex acted as if the harsh exchange had not taken place and said, “We will leave when the sun stands directly over us and camp out by Rabbit Lake.”
It was obvious that old Rose did not like this plan at all. She went silent in her sulky manner. This time her silence seemed to convey something more than just disapproval.
Prunie saw a different expression on her auntie’s face – a look of fear. It flashed quickly like a burst of flame from bear fat dropped in a campfire. The old woman’s expression filled Prunie with a sense of dread.
At noon, the men packed their gear into three small canoes. When the hunters started paddling away, Martin shouted to Rose who stood apart from the others.
“Keep prayin’ for us and we’re all gonna come back.” Martin could not hear the words the old woman whispered to the wind.
∆ ∆ ∆
The hunters arrived at Rabbit Lake before nightfall. Peter built a large fire. The bright blaze illuminated the shelters made from tarps and branches. They ate smoked fish and talked.
Nikolas sat close to the fire ring, squatting on his haunches, his arm draped about his dog. He stared north in the direction of the bog. “Uncle Alex, you said people didn’t come up here. Is there something you didn’t tell us about this place?”
Alex swallowed the bite of smoked pike before he spoke.
“Your Auntie Rose is a superstitious old woman,” Alex said. “There was a flat space where the bog is now; a burial site for murdered Cree and Ojibwe people. Generations ago the Dene people from up north fought our people over that flat place – good hunting land. The Dene pretended to leave but came back before dawn and slaughtered all the men in the camp. Old ones say they left the bodies unburied and put a Dene curse on the corpses. The spirits of the dead were unhappy.”
“What did our people do?” Martin asked Alex.
“Stories say our people came up here and buried all they could find and built spirit houses over the graves. Maybe it was too late to calm the spirits of those dead men. I don’t know. But no one from our tribes ever came back here much after that.”
“But that happened years ago,” Nikolas said.
“Yes,” Alex said. “Right after the bodies were buried, a big fire came through and burned all the trees and brush as well as the grave houses. The rains and heavy snows created high run-off and filled the creeks to overflowing. Creeks changed course and turned the burial ground into a lake for a few years until most of it dried up. Now it’s nothing but a bog with that deep sinkhole in the middle.”
Uncle Alex knocked tobacco ash from his pipe. “Now it’s grown back. Where there’s willows and water, you got moose. We’ll have good luck tomorrow.”
Martin heard gravel crunch and saw Nikolas and his dog leave the fire and walk to the edge of Rabbit Lake. A swift gust of wind grew the fire’s embers into flame. In the sudden fire-flare, Martin saw the man and the dog clearly. What Martin saw on Nikolas’s face was terror. Nikolas returned and knelt beside his dog and stared into the fire.
“What’s the matter?” Martin waited for an answer. None came. “You think maybe bad things live up in that bog?” Nikolas still did not answer. The dog crouched at his side whined and shifted his ears.
Peter put his arm around Nikolas and said, “You’re not afraid of an old tale about some things that died there a long time ago, are you?”
Again Nikolas did not answer. He pushed Peter’s arm from his shoulder and stood up abruptly. Nikolas stepped out of the ring of firelight; his dog followed at his heels, whimpering. They faced the forest and the bog, watching and listening.
“I need some sleep,” Martin yawned. “I’m shootin’ moose tomorrow.” Martin, Peter and Alex went to the spruce bough shelters.
Freddie stood beside Nikolas. “Don’t be payin’ any heed to long ago stories. There ain’t no such things around today.”
“What makes you so sure, Freddie?” Nikolas muttered.
“Because nobody’s seen anything for almost a hundred years, that’s why I’m sure.”
“Maybe they weren’t lookin’ in the right places, Freddie.”
“You’re actin’ crazy, Nikolas. I’m goin’ to bed. Don’t let the spooks and matchi men get you,” Freddie laughed and walked away.
Nikolas stood alone staring into the darkness. The dog growled low in his throat, lifted his ears and pointed his muzzle into the air, sniffing. Nikolas moved back towards the fire. Some innate memory struggled to access ancient warnings. His senses became acute. He heard sounds. They came out of the black night, swirling to his ears on the mists rising from the sinkhole in the bog. The sounds were high-pitched whistles, dropping in tone and fading away to nothingness.
With shaking hands, Nikolas tore open his pouch of sacred tobacco and cedar and offered the contents to the coals. He chanted his prayer so quietly his ears did not hear the words. He prayed, because he now knew the old tales were true. The creatures lived. Dead souls walked the brush forests of Rabbit Lake; the hunting party had invaded their homeland.
∆ ∆ ∆
Ephraim tended the fires circling the camp while the women talked story by the big campfire. Rose was over her pouting spells. She told stories of family foibles and escapades which made everyone laugh out loud. The laughter echoed back from the ringing, low hills. The echoes brought a sudden quiet to the gathering of women.
“I think I’d better get to bed before I laugh myself to death,” Nettie said.
“Nobody ever dies laughin’,” Auntie Rose grumbled. “Death ain’t funny at all.”
Young Nettie stopped giggling abruptly. “That was a dumb thing to say, Sister Rose.” She hurried away.
Prunie put her arm around Rose. “We all say dumb things sometimes.”
“You think I’m just a foolish old lady when I tell you what the bones show me. Huh?” Rose sniffed.
“No Auntie. I don’t think that.”
“You don’t believe what I tell you?” Rose followed a spark’s skyward flight from the fire with her eyes.
“I didn’t say that. It’s just that—”
“It’s because you’re one of these modern Indians hanging around Wekusko or Flin Flon, listening to what white people say. You believe their stories more than our old stories? Our stories kept Ojibwe people prot
ected more than a hundred generations.”
“Auntie Rose, it’s a different time.”
“Don’t I know that? Four generations separate you and me.”
The young girl touched the weathered hand of her old auntie. “But I do listen, Auntie.”
“But do you believe? What I’m gonna tell you now, about things in the bog, you gotta believe. They are real livin’ creatures out there that are waitin’ to kill someone. I had visions. They are dead things but still alive and eatin’ living flesh.”
Prunie stiffened at the thought.
She paused and formed her words carefully so as not to anger the old woman. “Auntie, those bog things that could kill our men…What are they?”
“Like a man, but not a man. They are all nibo, dead – for long, long time, but still alive somehow. Got hands like ours, but with claws. They are mask, ugly gi-mask, disfigured.”
“Now you’re trying to scare me with those old stories about the wendigo boogeymen of the woods,” Prunie said.
“I’m not tryin’ to scare you, child!” Rose pulled away. “I just want you to know there are dead things that walk.”
Prunie whispered, “Auntie, don’t you think if something like that did exist, we would have seen them?”
“They been seen but those who saw them never lived to tell about them. The dead men live in the cursed bog by Rabbit Lake.”
“Well, every one of the men has a rifle. If they see any of them up there, they can shoot them and kill them.”
“There are some things that can’t be killed – by guns, anyway. It’ll take more than bullets to kill them bog creatures.”
“Why do they live in a bog?”
Rose leaned towards Prunie. “They den in the bogs like beavers and muskrats.”
“How could they do that?”
“They go down under the water and dig dens into earth banks at the edge of deep water.”
“How do they get out in the winter when the ice freezes thick on the bog?” Prunie asked. “Wouldn’t they be trapped with nothing to eat?”
“Them creatures take moose and anything else that wanders into their bog, then stores the meat up for winter. Just like a beaver does with green poplar branches.
“They got holes and tunnels dug up into the woods. They sneak out and roam around whenever they want. Don’t make no nevermind if the bog is frozen over or not.”
“I see,” Prunie said. She smiled at her eighty-eight-year-old auntie and leaned over and kissed her on both cheeks and smoothed the old woman’s straggles of coarse white hair back under her floral-printed babushka. “I love you, Auntie Rose.”
“I love you too, Prunie. I wish you would send Ephraim to talk the men into comin’ away from that bog.”
“They’d laugh at us for worrying. The men plan to get winter meat and think that’s the place to do it.” Prunie stood. “I’m going to get us each a mug of hot coffee. It’s getting chilly. Aren’t you cold, Auntie?”
The old one shook her head. “I will have a cup anyway.”
Rose reached for the spruce root basket of divining bones. She shook the basket vigorously before she dumped the bones on the blanket folded into a square.
“Waugh!” the old woman cried out. “Again it is two who will die!”
∆ ∆ ∆
At daybreak, Martin found Nikolas curled up in a ball, next to his dog, his special hat pulled down over his ears, sleeping by the embers of the fire.
When the group woke him, he seemed to be surprised that he was still in the encampment and said, “Waugh! I am still alive!”
The men chuckled. A light dusting of snow in the earliest hours of the morning powdered Nikolas’s clothes.
Nikolas shook his head, brushing off the snow with his hands.
“This is good. Snow helps us track moose now,” Alex said.
“Today I don’t hunt,” Nikolas said. “It was foolish of me to fall asleep outside. I couldn’t shoot straight today. I’d spoil your hunt. Go without me. Maybe River will help me get some ducks or geese.”
“Geese are good eatin’, too,” Martin offered.
“You get us some geese, Nikolas,” Alex said. “We stay with our plan. I go up the east side of the lake with Freddie. Martin and Peter can take the west shore.”
Freddie and Alex climbed into their canoe. The pair paddled into fog. Martin and Peter followed in the second canoe. They drew abreast of Uncle Alex’s canoe.
“We will return with meat,” Peter whispered.
“We’ll get two moose apiece,” Martin whispered just as Peter had done. Prey could hear a hunter’s plans and so they must keep their voices low. The two canoes separated and headed to opposite sides of the lake.
∆ ∆ ∆
Nikolas sat by the fire and watched the sun dissipate the fog. The sound of geese honking low overhead brought him to his feet. River jumped up, whining and wagging his tail.
“Stragglers heading to the far end of the lake,” he told his Labrador. “They’re tired. Let’s go get us some geese, River.”
The excitement of a hunt pushed the fears of the night from Nikolas’s mind. He slid the canoe into the water and River jumped in. He paddled in the direction the geese had flown. Nikolas pushed his leather hat with all its trinkets and totems firmly on his head and bent into his paddling, propelling the canoe forward.
∆ ∆ ∆
Peter and Martin paddled the shoreline. No tracks were visible from the shore into the bush. They stopped paddling and let the canoe drift. They searched the willow thickets near a bend. Peter made a sudden hissing sound and pointed to the thick brush near a flat point of beach jutting into the water. The hunter made another sign for “listen” and cupped his hand to his ear. Martin did the same.
Both heard the sound of breaking twigs as something moved quickly away from their canoe. Martin pulled towards the thicket on the shoreline. A louder crashing followed as the something took off running at top speed through the brush.
“Moose,” whispered Martin, and beached the prow on the sand. Peter grabbed his rifle and leapt onto the shore. He made signs telling Martin to go upwind and frighten the moose back where he would be waiting. Martin understood and back-paddled. He moved the canoe forward in silence some two hundred metres up the shoreline, jumped from the beached canoe and started inland, making noise to scare the moose back towards Peter.
∆ ∆ ∆
Taller hemlocks among the spindly spruce created a thick canopy of interlocking branches. There were no tracks. Peter could hear the snapping of branches and crackling of twigs. He thought more than one animal hurried away. Suddenly the sounds stopped. Peter stopped, dropped to one knee and pointed his rifle in the direction where he had last heard sounds. Peter listened. The sounds he heard were like whispers children make. Over the whisperings came a series of short, low whistles.
∆ ∆ ∆
Martin checked the rifle he had slung over his shoulder. He released the safety and began to walk towards his hunting partner. He saw or heard nothing as he sneaked through the thick brush and deadfalls.
∆ ∆ ∆
Peter held his rifle at the ready for some time. The animals in front of him had not changed position. He had heard no sounds of movement, just murmurs. The muscles in his left forearm twitched with the strain of holding the heavy weapon. He lowered the rifle to relax his arm.
There was a snap of a twig behind him. Before he could turn something hard and heavy struck the back of his head and he pitched forward, unconscious.
When the hunter came to his senses he was being carried by the grasping hands of many strong creatures that moved at great speed. The creatures held him by the arms and legs and made whispered, lisping sounds and murmurs. As they ran, they called to each other with low whistles.
∆ ∆ ∆
Martin heard the sounds of running animals directly ahead. They seemed to be going away from him. He heard murmurs, soft burbling sounds and whistles and could not imagine why, or how, an
y running moose could make such noises.
∆ ∆ ∆
Alex sat on a fallen log and wondered why he had failed to spot any moose.
“The moose is hidin’ from me,” he told Freddie.
“I’m wonderin’ where they went, Uncle Alex.”
“Freddie, walk along the shore and see if you can find any tracks. I’ll sit here and wait for you.”
Minutes passed and Freddie came back. He stood in front of Alex and shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t figure it out. I saw moose tracks and they all led up to that bog – the one with the big sinkhole in the middle. Didn’t see any moose, though. I did see lots of moose bones and three sets of skulls and antlers all bleached out white.”
“Was the tines on the antlers all chewed up by porcupines eatin’ on em? Was the bones scattered like bears and wolves had got to them?”
“Nothin’ like that. They was all stacked up neat-like. The leg bones in one pile, the skulls in another and the ribs in another pile.”
“Why’d anybody stack up moose bones like that?”
“Beats me,” Freddie said.
At that moment two shots from a twelve-gauge shotgun rang out.
∆ ∆ ∆
Martin stopped in his tracks. The sound of the gunshots echoed. It was Nikolas’s shotgun. He pushed his way through the willows towards the gunshots. Martin heard a muffled scream. The tangled branches pulled at his clothing, as if trying to prevent him from reaching Peter.
∆ ∆ ∆
Peter could not scream again. One of the creatures pried open his mouth with insistent claws and forced a chunk of lichen-moss into his open mouth. The creatures scurried through the willow and aspen growth towards the bog. Peter’s eyes bulged in fear and panic. The choking moss barred the air from his lungs.
Peter heard the whistles grow in volume and the lisping sounds increased to an excited pitch as the creatures dragged Peter into the water. He felt the cold splash against his legs and back as the creatures propelled him feet first into the sinkhole.
The grasping creatures swarmed over his body, forcing him upright in the icy water until only his head remained above surface. Suddenly the whistles reached a crescendo and the things that held him pulled his head under the water. Peter gulped in a last breath of air and choked on the lichen and brackish bog water that rushed in. The grasping claws pulled him down, down…
Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction Page 13