“I do! I detest him! But he’s still the father of my children! And no matter what he’s done wrong, no matter how callous and cruel he’s been, he’s still a human being!”
“Hmm. It seems we have something of a dyelemmer here.”
“There’s no dilemma, Mr. Shooks. You have to get in touch with George Iron Walker and call the Wendigo off, right now, before it’s too late.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to do such a thing, Mrs. Blake. Once the Wendigo sets off on its hunt, there’s no stopping it. Remember that a deal works both ways. You asked the Wendigo to find your kids for you, no matter what it took. And what the Wendigo takes is human beings.”
“You’re playing with words, Mr. Shooks! I didn’t mean that at all! If I’d known that the Wendigo was going to kill people, I wouldn’t even have considered asking it for anything! Call George Iron Walker and tell him to stop it!”
“I can try, Mrs. Blake. Don’t hold out much hope of success, though.”
“You want me to call the FBI and tell them what you and George have been doing?”
“Oh—summoning up a Mdewakanton forest spirit and sending it off to eat people? I wonder which particular federal statute that’s in contravention of?”
CHAPTER NINE
She drove around to see Bennie. Concord Realty occupied a large open-plan office on Hennepin Avenue South, carpeted in plum, with potted palms and soothing music and scenic photographs of Lake Harriet and Lowry Hill.
Fiona saw her as soon as she came in and waved. Fiona was fortyish, with blond upswept hair and huge dangly earrings. She had taught Lily almost everything she knew about closing a property sale. Never take “I’ll call you tomorrow” for an answer. Don’t even take “Let me think about it.”
Bennie came out of his office carrying a stack of brochures. As soon as he saw Lily, he put them down and came over and kissed her. “Good to see you, Lil! How are things shaping up? Got any news?”
“Kind of. Look—I need your help with something. I was wondering if you could tell me how to get in touch with your brother Myron.”
“Myron? What for?”
“Well, you know what you said about him and John Shooks. I’d like to talk to him about it.”
“John Shooks is not giving you any trouble, is he? If so, he’ll have me to deal with.”
“Not exactly. I just need to talk to Myron, that’s all.”
“Lil—if there’s anything wrong . . .”
She took hold of his hand. “I know, Bennie. And thanks. And thanks again for what you did with Philip Kraussman.”
“Hey, it’s nothing. Really.”
Myron was manager of a winter-wear store on Cedar Avenue called Cold Comfort. When Lily called around, he was in the stockroom at the back, checking through boxes of Bugabootoo children’s boots. He was thinner than Bennie, and going bald, but there was no mistaking that he was Bennie’s brother.
“Lily, this is some surprise!”
Lily smiled. “Bennie told me where to find you. Boy, this is like Aladdin’s Cave in here.”
“Just having a stock clearance. We’ve got some great ladies’ windbreakers if you’re interested. Artificial fur-lined hoods. Give you a real big discount.”
“Actually I wanted to talk to you about John Shooks.”
Myron took off his heavy-rimmed eyeglasses and stared at her with a serious expression. He had a slight cast in his right eye, so that she wasn’t quite sure if he was looking at her directly.
“John Shooks? Well, he got my kids back for me, when nobody else could. He’ll find yours, too, believe me.”
“Did he find your kids himself, or did he have some help?”
“Any particular reason for that question?”
“There is, as a matter of fact. I’m beginning to wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.”
“Well . . . first couple of times Velma took them away, Shooks found them himself. Didn’t take him more than two or three hours. First time, they were around at her friend Gussie’s house. Second time, they were staying at the Best Western University Inn. Don’t ask me how he knew where they were.”
Lily didn’t say anything, but she could imagine how Shooks had found them. He would have listened to the conversations that Velma had left behind her, still suspended in the air, telling her children where they were going.
“What about the third time?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t really want to talk about that, if you don’t mind.”
“Myron—I need to know. I’m worried that something really bad is going to happen. To tell you the truth, I’m worried that somebody’s going to get hurt, or even killed.”
Myron actually flinched. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know what happened myself.”
“Did John Shooks take you to meet George Iron Walker, and a blind Native American girl called Hazawin?”
Myron said, “That last time, Shooks tried to find Velma, but he couldn’t. He said that she hadn’t left any clues behind that he could follow.”
“But he knew somebody who could find them?”
“That’s right.”
“Somebody or something.”
Myron nodded, looking miserable. “I didn’t really believe in it. But I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to involve the police—Velma had a restraining order against her and I didn’t want to see her get into any more trouble.”
“So George Iron Walker said that he’d send the Wendigo to look for her?”
“That’s right.”
“And what did he ask for, in return?”
“Hardly anything at all. Just some old Native American blanket that we used to have in the window, as part of our display. I don’t think it was worth very much.”
“So you went to Black Crow Valley and met George Iron Walker and Hazawin? And they took you into the woods, and you saw the Wendigo?”
“I don’t exactly know what I saw. There was some kind of a flickery light, that’s all.”
“Then what happened?”
“Three days later I had a phone call from my daughter Ellie. She said that she and her sister were in Seattle. Velma had taken them there, to a house that she had rented near Richmond Beach. Velma’s folks originally came from Seattle, so I guess that was a natural place for her to go.”
Lily said nothing, but waited for Myron to continue. Myron seemed to be very jumpy. He kept glancing around the stockroom, as if he were half-expecting somebody else to appear, out of thin air.
“Ellie said that Velma had taken them to the seashore, for a walk. Sometime during that walk Velma disappeared. Ellie didn’t know how, and neither she nor Ruthie saw anything unusual. As far as they knew, they were the only people around.
“Ellie and Ruthie searched that seashore for hours. They called for Velma over and over, but there was no reply. When it started to grow dark they went back to the house. They didn’t want to call the police because they knew that Velma would get into trouble for taking them.”
Myron paused again, and then he said, “I caught the first flight to Seattle and brought them home.”
“You didn’t tell the police either?”
“Velma was unstable. She was always unstable. That was why she lost custody of Ellie and Ruthie in the first place. How the hell was I supposed to know what had happened to her? Maybe she walked into the ocean. More likely she just wandered off. Why make things more complicated than they already were?”
Lily said, “You’ve never heard from her since?”
“Nothing. Not a word. It was like she’d vanished off the face of the earth. After two months I stopped paying her alimony into her bank account.”
“No reaction?”
Myron shook his head.
“What do you really think happened to her?” asked Lily.
“I don’t know, Lily. I don’t want to know.”
“Did George Iron Walker tell you what the word ‘Wendigo’ means?”
�
�Look,” said Myron, “I have no way of finding out what happened to Velma and neither does anyone else. If the Wendigo took her, there’s nothing I can do about it. And even if I was sure that the Wendigo took her, who would believe me?”
“I would.”
Myron said, “Yes, but nobody would believe you, either.” He paused, and put his eyeglasses back on. “As far as I’m concerned, Lily, things have turned out for the best. I’ve got the kids back, I don’t have to pay alimony. I’m sorry for what happened to Velma. I won’t be able to get her off my conscience, ever, but that’s the price I have to pay.”
She tried calling Shooks again, but all she got was that infuriating voicemail response: “Leave me a message, or leave me alone.”
“Mr. Shooks,” she said, “I’m going out to Black Crow Valley myself, to talk to George Iron Walker. Give me a call back as soon as you can.”
It was only a quarter after noon when she climbed into her Rainier and turned out of her driveway, but the sky was so dark that it could have been a quarter after midnight. Huge snowflakes began to tumble across the highway, and she could see people hurrying for shelter. Normally she never would have ventured out in weather like this, but she didn’t know how much time she had left before the Wendigo found out where Jeff had taken Tasha and Sammy. It might be too late already.
She drove as fast as she dared, sliding sideways around corners and running red lights if she could see that there was no other traffic around. It took her less than twenty-five minutes to reach the turnoff that led to Black Crow Valley. The snow was falling so furiously now that she almost missed it. She jammed on her brakes and the Rainier skidded for thirty yards before it stopped. She backed up, with two fountains of slush spraying from her front wheels.
The track that led to George Iron Walker’s house had been thickly blanketed with freshly fallen snow, so that it was almost impossible to follow. Six or seven times Lily drove into the ditch that ran alongside it, or up on the verge, and the Rainier’s suspension jarred and banged.
Off to her left the forest looked even more forbidding than the first time she had come here, with Shooks. She was beginning to regret that she had come here. Supposing she turned around, and said nothing, like Myron? Nobody would ever know how Jeff had been killed, or by whom. And didn’t Jeff deserve to be punished, after he had sent those men from FLAME to burn her alive?
But she kept on driving. She couldn’t behave like Jeff and Myron. It wasn’t in her nature. Her father and mother had always brought her up to respect other people’s lives, no matter who they were. She remembered her father paying for an old woman’s groceries, when she discovered that she had lost her purse. Not only that: he had driven her all the way back to her home. “What did it cost me?” he had said to Lily afterward. “Eight dollars and fifteen minutes.”
Lily peered ahead of her with narrowed eyes. Her windshield wipers were whacking wildly from side to side but they could barely keep up with the rapidly falling snow. She couldn’t yet see George Iron Walker’s house, and she wondered if she might have taken a wrong fork. She seemed to remember that the forest had gradually risen up on a gradient on her left-hand side, yet it was still level, and the trees seemed to crowd together much more closely than they had before.
The Rainier jolted over a series of spine-jarring ridges, and Lily had to wrestle to keep it on the track. As she straightened it out, she thought she glimpsed something running through the forest, about fifty yards away—something large, and gray, and very fluid, like a wolf. She wiped the side window with her glove. She saw it again—only for an instant, but as it disappeared behind the trees it appeared to be rising up onto its hind legs.
For some reason she felt a deep sense of uncertainty. This wasn’t natural, this place. It wasn’t normal. She wasn’t afraid of wolves, especially since Shooks had told her that wolves never attacked people. But what kind of wolf could stand up and run like a man?
She carried on driving, but every few seconds she glanced anxiously into the trees. Now the forest began to rise, and she realized that she was on the right track after all. The snow began to ease off, too, and she adjusted the windshield wipers to a less hysterical speed. She crested the hill, and there below her was George Iron Walker’s house, with smoke pouring listlessly out of the chimney, and George Iron Walker’s SUV parked outside.
As she drove slowly down the hill, though, she saw an explosion of snow burst out of the forest, off to her left. In the middle of the snow, barely visible, was some kind of animal, with hunched-up shoulders. It was black, although she thought she saw some brown brindling as well. She thought it might have been a bear, but it was running so fast that it had disappeared behind the back of the house before she had time to be sure.
She parked, and climbed down from her Rainier. This time, nobody came out to greet her. Well, she thought, they didn’t know that I was coming. She mounted the front steps, keeping her eyes open for the “bear,” or whatever that animal had been. Wolves might hesitate to attack humans, but bears had no compunction at all.
In the middle of the door hung a tarnished brass knocker, with a face like a snarling wolf. She lifted it up, and was just about to knock when Hazawin opened the door. She was wrapped in a dark maroon blanket, and her hair, which had been tightly braided when Lily had last seen her, was flowing glossy and loose over her shoulders.
“Hello?” she said, her misted purple eyes staring at nothing at all. “Who is it?”
“It’s Lily—Lily Blake. I’m sorry. I really should have called ahead, shouldn’t I?”
“Don’t worry about it, Lily. We’re always pleased to have visitors. Why don’t you come along in?”
Hazawin closed the door behind them and said, “How about something hot to drink?”
Lily looked around the living room. It was gloomy and cold. None of the table lamps was switched on, although Hazawin wouldn’t have needed them. But the log fire had burned right down and a bitter draft was blowing down the chimney, stirring the ashes into little dancing ash-devils. Lily had the feeling that nobody had been in here for several hours.
“Is George here?” she asked.
“He won’t be too long. He’s been on the phone all day today. Casino business. Are you sure you won’t have anything to drink?”
“OK . . . maybe a cup of that verbena tea?”
“Of course.”
Hazawin went into the kitchen while Lily sat down beside the fire and held out her hands toward the fading warmth of the last few embers. She had felt uncomfortable on her first visit, but this time she felt distinctly uneasy, although she couldn’t have clearly explained why. This house had a feeling of unreality, out here in the middle of the forest, surrounded by wolves. It was like Grandma’s house in Red Riding Hood, or a dream from which she couldn’t wake up.
“Did John Shooks get in touch with you?” Lily called out.
“John Shooks? No.”
“I asked him to get in touch with you.”
At that moment, George Iron Walker appeared from the direction of the bedroom. His hair was wet as if he had been taking a shower, and he was buttoning up a red-and-black flannel shirt.
“Lily! Good of you to call by.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. His lips felt cold. He even had an aura of cold around him, as if he had just come into the house from outside.
“Sorry to drop in without notice,” said Lily. “I thought that John Shooks would have called you.”
“He probably tried, but I’ve been tying up the phone all day. Hey, look at this fire! Let’s stack some logs on here!” He knelt down on the diamond-weave hearth rug and started to riddle the ashes.
Lily noticed that there were small scratches on the backs of his hands, like briar scratches. “Did you hear what happened?” she asked him. “Somebody broke into the offices of the Fathers’ League Against Mothers’ Evil, and killed one of them. Tore him apart.”
“Yes, I heard about that.”
“The police can’t wor
k out who did it. Apparently the door was locked.”
“Maybe it was one of their own. They’re all psychos.”
Lily hesitated, and then she said, “I’m not stupid, George.”
“Did I say you were?”
“You’re not stupid, either. You know why I’m here.”
George bowed his head for a moment, and then turned to look at her. “You want me to call off the Wendigo.”
“I didn’t realize it was going to kill people. For God’s sake, George. Those men from FLAME, they tried to kill me, but that doesn’t give me the right to kill them—not without a trial, not without proper justice. And Jeff. My ex-husband. I don’t want him hurt. Whatever he’s done, he’s still Tasha and Sammy’s father.”
George carefully placed a log on the fire, and then balanced another one on top of it. “There is no way that I can call off the Wendigo, Lily. It’s not like a bloodhound. Once it agrees to hunt for somebody, it will go on hunting them right to the ends of the earth, until it finds them.”
“Isn’t there something that Hazawin can do . . . some kind of incantation? Some kind of spell?”
“Hazawin can call the Wendigo out of the woods, but once it’s been summoned she can’t control it. You made a deal, Lily—you made a deal with me and a deal with the Wendigo, and you can’t go back on it now.”
Lily said, “Tell me something: what’s really in this for you?”
“I don’t understand what you mean. I was trying to help you to find your children—nothing more than that.”
“You wanted that spit of land from Mystery Lake. That’s worth a quarter of a million dollars, at least. Yet when you helped Myron Burgenheim to find his children, all you asked for was a blanket from out of his store.”
George looked serious. “That was no ordinary blanket, Lily. That blanket was once wrapped around the shoulders of Oye-Kar-Mani-Vim, the trackmaker, and the greatest ever taker of Chippewa scalps. It means as much to the Mdewakanton as that spit of land.” He crumpled up a sheet of newspaper and tucked it under the logs. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to give my people the dignity and the independence that was taken away from them by the white man. That was why I fought so hard for that casino, so that they could have economic freedom. But it’s not just about the present, and the future. It’s about the past, too. I’m trying to bring together as many sacred artifacts as I can, and recover as many sacred places as possible, to give us our identity back.”
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