“We still have to catch and kill the Wendigo,” said Lily. “I tried to leave the country . . . I was going to take my children to Europe. But it wouldn’t let us. It came after us when we were driving to the airport.”
“It’ll come after you no matter where you go,” said Thomas Bear Robe. He sounded completely unsurprised. “Once a Wendigo’s looking for you, there’s no escaping it, ever.”
He blew smoke out of his nostrils, and then he said, “There are so many different stories about the Wendigo, and most of them are not true—or only half-true. But let me tell you something for certain: the Wendigo is a spirit of the woods. And anything that lives in the woods, or is of the woods—whether it’s a man or an animal or a spirit or a tree, or any mixture of any of those four—has one common enemy. One thing that terrifies them above all things. Fire.”
“But I thought that the Wendigo were actually supposed to cause fires,” said Lily. “Don’t they swoop down and snatch hold of people and make them run so fast that their feet burst into flame?”
“That’s right,” said Shooks. “It’s all in that Algernon Blackwood story, isn’t it? ‘Oh, my poor feet of fire!’ And they leave a trail of burning grass and trees, all the way through the forest, for miles.”
“That’s where Algernon Blackwood got it ass-about-face,” said Thomas Bear Robe. “When he was researching that story, he talked to some senile old Ojibwe up at Mille Lacs, who couldn’t remember half of the tribal legends, and the ones that he could remember he was too drunk to remember straight. Apart from which, he talked to Black-wood in Ojibwe, which was translated for him by some nine-year-old kid.
“Like I told you, the Wendigo is afraid of fire. About the only thing it is frightened of. Not only is it a tree spirit, with a close physical kinship to wood and leaves, it exists in a highly volatile state between this world and the world beside us. Two dimensions here, a third dimension there . . . so it’s almost like a vapor. That’s how it can slide into your house without even opening the door.
“But if you can catch hold of the Wendigo, and hogtie it, and drag it along the ground, it’ll catch alight eventually, and burn, and it won’t stop burning, and all the water in all Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes won’t put it out.”
Shooks thought about this, and sniffed. “So . . . what you’re telling us is, that’s the mistake that Algernon Blackwood made. It wouldn’t have been the guide, burning like that. It would have been a Wendigo.”
“That’s right.”
“And you know this for sure? I mean, there are reliable eyewitness accounts of Wendigos being offed like that?”
“No. But a chief called Red Thunder, who lived around the late 1660s, claimed he killed a Wendigo up near Fond du Lac someplace, and his account of that was written down by a French fur trader. And the story goes that a Wendigo was caught and killed in the Koochiching Forest in the 1880s.”
“Oh, yes? What happened then?”
“Well, it seems that there were two trappers, one by the name of Renville and the other by the name of Giddings. They were deep in the forest when they accidentally shot an Ojibwe boy mistaking him for a deer. The boy’s father was so angry that he went to the tribal medicine woman and had her send a Wendigo after them.
“Renville and Giddings were tracked down by the Wendigo and it attacked them when they were sitting by their campfire. Of course it approached them edgewise and they couldn’t see it coming. Giddings was torn open on the spot, clear back to his spine—but Renville held the Wendigo off with a burning brand, and managed to get a rope around it, and bring it down to the ground, and lash its arms. Then he got on his horse and rode through the forest dragging the Wendigo behind him.
“Now a Wendigo can run as fast as the fastest man, and when it isn’t tethered it can fly above the treetops, but Renville rode that horse flat out and the Wendigo couldn’t keep up with him. After three or four miles the Wendigo’s feet caught fire, and it started to blaze, and there was Renville riding hell-for-leather through the forest with this fiery apparition running after him.
“Then the Wendigo fell apart, and lay there burning, until there was nothing left but silvery ash. And that is the only known account of a Wendigo being caught and destroyed in what you might call modern times.”
“This Renville got a rope around it, and tied its arms?” asked Lily. “How on earth did he manage to do that?”
“That’s one of the questions that I was asking myself, too,” said Shooks. “All the Wendigo had to do was turn sideways, and he wouldn’t have been able to see it, let alone tie it up. And I was also saying to myself, if I was deep in the forest and I had a drunken dispute with my companion and accidentally or purposefully killed him, how would I explain it? Nothing like blaming a Native American forest demon, wouldn’t you say, of which there is now no trace, except for some ash?”
Thomas Bear Robe shrugged. “You can either believe it or not believe it.”
“Are these the only accounts you know of?” Lily asked him.
“Of course not. Many tribal legends tell of similar encounters with Wendigos, but they were passed down by word of mouth, and all of them fancifully elaborated with each telling, the way these legends are.
“All I can tell you is that every legend and every story is in agreement when it comes to how to kill a Wendigo. You tie it up, you drag it behind your horse, and you keep going until it bursts into flame—praying all the time that it doesn’t catch up with you before it does.”
They drove back to Lily’s house. Tasha and Sammy had gone out snowboarding with their friends the Lutmeyers from across the street, and so Lily and Shooks had some time to themselves.
Lily poured Shooks a whiskey. He knocked it back, and then he shook his head. “I’m too damned old for this, Lily. Too damned tired and too damned drunk.”
She poured him another one. He looked into the glass and said, “All the same, I’m going to do it. I got you into this fuckup. It’s my duty to get you out.”
They sat down together at the kitchen table. “How do you suggest we go about it?” Lily asked him.
“Well . . . you have a power winch on the back of your SUV, don’t you? We can pay some wire out, and make a loop of it on the ground, and hide it with snow. Then we set fire to the woods. When the Wendigo comes out, one of us is going to have to stand there and act as bait. A Judas goat.
“As soon as the Wendigo steps into the loop, you put your foot down and drive like hell.”
“That sounds to me like you’re volunteering to act as bait.”
“I’m a lot older than you, Lily—a whole lot more wore out. And I don’t have two kids to take care of.”
He leaned back in his chair. “All the same, I won’t pretend that this won’t be highly goddamned risky for you too. Anything goes wrong—you hit a tree or something—and you’re royally screwed. And who knows?—the Wendigo might run faster’n that truck of yours can travel, and catch up with you. Those stories that Thomas Bear Robe told us . . . they were passed on by people who survived. How many others didn’t?”
Lily looked around the kitchen. On the dresser stood a large color photograph of the three of them—Tasha and Sammy and her—all dressed up in their best clothes for Tasha’s last birthday. Shooks saw where she was looking, and reached across the table and laid his hand on top of hers. He had a heavy silver ring on his wedding finger, with a human skull on it.
“Let’s do it,” said Lily. “I’ll go over to Marjorie Lutmeyer’s and see if she can look after Tasha and Sammy for a few hours longer.”
“You’re sure?”
“I don’t have any alternative, do I?”
“You realize—if something goes wrong—those kids might never see you again?”
Lily looked at him for a long moment, saying nothing. Then she nodded, and whispered, “Yes.”
They both dressed up warmly. Lily put on her thick black padded jacket with the nylon fur hood, and she gave Shooks an old windbreaker that Jeff used
to wear when he went snowmobiling, and a green woolly hat.
They went outside and checked the power winch in the back of Lily’s Rainier. It was installed under the rear bumper, with a wire cable that could pull 2,500 pounds without breaking. Most of her friends and neighbors had one, to rescue anybody who might have skidded off the highway in the middle of winter.
She opened up the garage and Shooks carried out a five-gallon can of gasoline, which he loaded into the back of the SUV. At about four-fifteen they were ready to leave.
“Do you have a gun?” Lily asked Shooks as she steered out of the driveway.
“Sure I do. But I can’t say that I’m America’s greatest shot. And what good is a gun going to do us against the Wendigo?”
“I wasn’t thinking about the Wendigo.”
“Oh, you were thinking about George.”
“When we’ve gotten rid of the Wendigo, I want George and Hazawin to help me find little William for me, wherever he is. I just wanted to make sure that we had the wherewithal to persuade them, if we need to.”
“You bet. When I point my gun at people—believe me, they’re persuaded. I think it’s the wildly shaking barrel that does it.”
The sky was so dark that it could have been midnight. As they drove south-westward out of the suburbs, however, a diagonal streak of reddish light appeared over Black Crow Valley, almost as if a wound had opened up, and the clouds had started to bleed.
“Red sky at night . . . Isn’t there a saying about that?” said Lily.
“Sure. Something to do with staying at home, burying yourself under the bedcovers, and not annoying Native American spirits with a penchant for tearing people open.”
They turned off on to the track that led past the forest toward George Iron Walker’s house. They jolted and bumped through the crimson-tinted gloom, with Shooks softly whistling “Hotel California” between his teeth: “You can check in any time you like . . . but you can never leave . . .”
At last they saw the lights of George Iron Walker’s house over the ridge. Shooks said, “Turn off here, up the hill a ways. We don’t want him to know that we’re here. Not yet, anyhow. He’s going to, soon enough, when we start our little bonfire.”
Lily drove the Rainier up the slope at a sharp angle, as near to the trees as she could. Then she made a three-point turn, so that the SUV was facing back the way they had come. Even though she had snow-chains on her tires, they whirred and slithered on the snowy ground, but at last she managed it.
John Shooks climbed out and walked around to the back of the vehicle while Lily pressed the button that paid out the winch cable. He laid the cable in a ten-foot circle on the ground—fastening it with a running cleat so that when it was sharply pulled, it would tighten up like a slip-knot. Then he took out Lily’s shovel and carefully covered it with snow.
Lily got out of the Rainier and went up to him.
“Listen,” he said. “They say that it’s silent in the woods. But just listen.”
Lily could hear the soft rattling of branches, and the fluttering of birds, and all kinds of crackling and pattering noises. And, very faintly, she could hear music from George Iron Walker’s house—a samba, which was so incongruous that it made her shiver.
“Want to dance?” asked Shooks, though he wasn’t smiling.
“I think we’d better just get on with it,” said Lily.
“Okay . . . you get back in the truck. Keep the motor running. I’ll torch the woods, and then all we can do is wait for the Wendigo to show up. That’s if it does show up, but I got a feeling in my water about this. This is where it lives . . . this is where it hangs out. If we threaten its natural habitat, it’s going to come after us.”
“I’m really worried about little William. The Wendigo has him here someplace. I don’t want him to get hurt.”
“Lily, I really don’t know. I don’t understand this other-reality stuff any more than you do.” He hefted the gasoline can out of the back of the SUV and levered open the cap.
“John,” said Lily, “you’ll be careful, won’t you?”
“Of course I’ll be careful. I may be reckless, but I’m not stupid. How do you think I’ve survived for all of these years? You be careful, too. When I tell you to, you drive twice as fast as you’ve ever driven in your entire darned life, and don’t stop until that thing is totally incinerated. You can come back for me later.”
Lily climbed back into the driving seat. In the rearview mirror, she could see Shooks tramping this way and that, sloshing gasoline all over the trees. When he had finished, he came back and stowed the empty can in the back of the SUV.
“Just remember,” he told her. “As soon as I give you the word, you go like a bat out of hell.” Then he slammed the rear door shut.
Lily sat waiting, with the window open. The wind blew a soft coda to “Hotel California,” as if it had picked it up from Shooks and couldn’t stop whistling it.
She looked at her eyes in the mirror. This is all madness, she thought. But at the same time she felt a determination far stronger than any emotion she had ever felt before. She was going to finish this thing for good. She was going to protect herself, and protect her children, and she was going to have her revenge on the Wendigo for Agnes and Ned.
The sudden explosion of fire caught her by surprise, and gave her a sick little jolt in her stomach. The chair, the kitchen, the men in masks. Within seconds, at least fifteen pine trees were blazing—the flames rippling up their trunks and shriveling their branches.
Shooks shouted out, “Woo-hooo! Woo-hooo! Come on, Wendigo, your woods are on fire! Come on out, you two-dimensional piece of crap! You want to see your whole forest burn down? Wind’s in the right direction, feller! Come on out!”
He was right about the wind. It was blowing sharply from the northwest, and it had been rising ever since they had arrived here. The fire turned tree after tree into a hundred-foot torch, and as it reached the upper branches, it seemed to run from one branch to another, like hordes of blazing squirrels.
The air was becoming thick with the aromatic smell of pine smoke, and the popping and snapping of burning twigs was almost deafening.
“Wooo-hooo! Come on, Wendigo! Come on out!”
Lily looked down toward George Iron Walker’s house. As she did so, the front door opened, and she could see light shining on to the porch. She just hoped that the Wendigo appeared before George Iron Walker could get up here and discover what they were trying to do.
As the pines burned more fiercely, the wind seemed to blow more strongly too, as if it were eager to feed them with oxygen. After only a few minutes, all that Lily could see behind her was fire, and John Shooks’s silhouette dancing in front of it, waving his arms.
“Come on, Wendigo! Come on out of there!”
She glanced back down the hill. George Iron Walker’s house was too far away to see him clearly, but the brake lights of his Subaru Forester suddenly lit up, and the vehicle began to back up and turn in a circle.
“John!” she shouted. “John! George is coming up here! John, can you hear me?”
“What?”
“George is coming up here! George!”
Shooks cupped his hand to his ear to show her that he couldn’t hear her. Lily could see George Iron Walker’s headlights now, and he was definitely headed this way. Every pine tree along the top of the ridge was burning now, and the flames were jumping fifty and sixty feet into the air. In spite of the snow and the coldness of the wind, the blasts of heat were enormous, almost enough to take your eyebrows off.
Lily didn’t know what to do. If the Wendigo failed to appear before George Iron Walker reached them, he would probably try to stop them—or Hazawin would, if she were with him, and God alone knew what she would do. After the wolf-pack hallucination, Lily was seriously frightened of her.
“John!” she shouted, but he still couldn’t hear her.
She started to climb out of the SUV. Shooks momentarily disappeared in a great swirl of sm
oke and sparks.
“John! George is coming!”
Shooks reappeared. This time he heard her shouting, and he turned around. As he did so, however, Lily saw a flicker of silvery light through the smoke. It vanished again before she could be sure what it was.
“What’s wrong?” Shooks called out.
Lily stared into the smoke. She glimpsed another flicker of light, and then—over the rifle-fire crackling of the burning trees—she heard that distinctive hissing noise.
“Wendigo!” she screamed, pointing.
“What?”
“John, it’s the Wendigo! It’s there! It’s right there beside you!”
Shooks spun around. For a split second Lily saw a tall figure approaching him—a figure with antlers and a long, animal-like face—yet with arms that appeared to be jointed all the wrong way. It was no more than a glimpse, and then the figure turned sideways and vanished.
“It’s there! John—it’s there!”
“Back in the truck, Lily! Get ready to go!”
Lily scrambled back into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and gunned the engine. She looked frantically into her rearview mirror, and she could see Shooks ducking first to the right and then to the left, and then back again. She twisted around, trying to see if there was any sign of where the Wendigo might be, but the flames were too bright and she had to shield her eyes with her hand.
Shooks was jinking around behind her like a football player trying to find a way through a tight defense. He jabbed out his right hand, and then his left, and it was obvious that he had no idea where the Wendigo was, or how close.
Lily looked into her rearview mirror again, and this time she saw to her horror that the figure was only two or three feet away from him. She could see it, because it was face on to her, but it was edgewise to Shooks, and invisible.
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