Edgewise

by Graham Masterton

  Close beside her, Lily saw a brief flicker of light.

  “Nathan!” she warned him.

  Special Agent Kellogg reached inside his coat and hauled out a massive Desert Eagle .50-caliber automatic. “Hold it!” he ordered. “I have a very large gun here, lady, and it’s pointing directly at your head.”

  “You think that a gun can stop the Wendigo?” said Hazawin, and spat on to the rocks in contempt. “Even if it could, how can you shoot something which you cannot see?”

  George Iron Walker started to approach them too. “Lily,” he said, shaking his head, “you don’t know what you’ve done.”

  “Oh I do, George, and believe me, I feel as guilty as all hell. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be punished for what you’ve done.”

  “I liked you, Lily. I liked you from the very first day that we met. But now I have to watch you being torn apart. You—and your friend here—and your children. The Wendigo will hunt down your entire family and it will eat them all.”

  “Wendigo!” called out Hazawin. “Wen-dee-go!” She came nearer and nearer, clattering her bones, and her purple eyes staring at nothing at all. Lily backed toward her Rainier, and Special Agent Kellogg backed toward his Jeep.

  Hazawin threw her head back and let out a long ululation that made Lily’s skin prickle. Then she cried, “Wendigo, you can take these people! You can drag them up into the sky and feed off their flesh! The promise has been broken, and they must pay for their trickery!”

  Lily could hear the Wendigo softly hissing but she couldn’t see it. Now and again she thought she glimpsed a dancing pattern of light, but when she looked again it had vanished. She started to breathe faster and faster, which made her feel light-headed and giddy. She knew that the Wendigo must be very close now, but she was terrified that when the moment came for her to act, her arms and legs simply wouldn’t obey her.

  The day went completely still. Except for the hissing of the Wendigo there was no sound at all. No wind blowing, no lake rippling. A crow flew over them, but it flew silently, not even a fluttering of wing feathers.

  “Wendigo! Take them!” Hazawin screamed, in a voice so high that it sounded more like an animal howling than a woman.

  “Lily!” shouted Special Agent Kellogg. “Now!”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lily released the catch and the Rainier’s rear door sprang upward, lifting the mirror upright on its wires. Special Agent Kellogg opened up his Jeep, too, revealing the mirror that he had wedged into the luggage space at the back. Both mirrors showed all four of them on the lake shore, like characters seen through two different windows.

  In her mirror Lily could see Hazawin screaming at her, and George Iron Walker a little way behind her in his long black oilskin, and the lake. But when she looked at the double reflection in Special Agent Kellogg’s mirror, she could clearly see the Wendigo—a stretched-out creature made of restless lights and complicated shadows, with a rack of up-curving antlers and a narrow, insect-like skull. It was already raising its arms to seize her, and its glistening white lips were peeling away from its teeth in anticipation of biting into her head.

  Lily jerked backward, jarring her hip against the side of her SUV. It’s all gone wrong. I’m going to be torn to pieces, and die. Her dread was so intense that all she could do was make a hopeless barking sound, like a clubbed seal.

  She felt something like a huge serrated lobster claw tear into the shoulder of her coat, and another claw seize her left arm just above the elbow. At that moment, though, she heard Special Agent Kellogg yell out, “Lily!” and a sharp, pressurized crack.

  A fine mesh net billowed in the air above her, and the next thing she knew the net was full of lights and antlers and pincers, struggling wildly on the ground in front of her. It was the Wendigo, completely entangled. It hissed so loudly that Lily couldn’t even hear Kellogg shouting at her, but she knew what she had to do. She limped to the open door of her Rainier and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Special Agent Kellogg ran over to the back of her vehicle. He looped the strings of the net around the tow-hook, using its heavy black handle like a tourniquet to pull them tight. As he did so, the Wendigo was hissing and screaming and thrashing furiously from side to side. Parts of it appeared and disappeared as it twisted around in the net, and every few seconds its face changed, from human to animal to insect, as if it were trying every possible manifestation in its fight to get free.

  Hazawin and George Iron Walker were already hurrying toward them, but in her rearview mirror Lily saw Special Agent Kellogg lift his Desert Eagle. George Iron Walker stopped, and held on to the strap of Hazawin’s shoulder bag to stop her too. Kellogg banged the back of Lily’s SUV with his fist and Lily slammed her foot on the gas pedal. The Rainier took off in a shower of dirt and stones, dragging the hissing, battling Wendigo behind it.

  Lily drove as fast as she could back up the hill toward the logging road. For a two-dimensional creature made of light and shadows the Wendigo felt impossibly heavy. The SUV’s transmission whined in protest as Lily neared the crest of the hill, and it was all she could do to keep her speed up to thirty-five m.p.h. In her mirrors she could see the net slewing wildly from side to side, and now and then she saw a claw emerge from the mesh as the Wendigo tried to tear its way free.

  In the backseat little William suddenly started to cry. “I want my mommy! I want my mommy!”

  “William—we’re going to see mommy now! But sit down, darling, please! Just sit down and I’ll take you home as fast as I can!”

  But William continued to cry, louder and more desperately. “I want my mommy! I want my mommy!”

  Lily had reached the logging road now, and she jammed her foot right down to the floor. She had seven miles of dead straight driving ahead of her, and she prayed that it would be enough to burn up the Wendigo. The Rainier’s speedometer needle gradually wavered up through forty—fifty—sixty—until she managed to get it up to seventy-five.

  After only a mile, though, she was jolted so hard that she nearly hit the windshield, and the SUV slowed down to fifty-five. She looked in her mirror and saw that the net appeared to be much closer to the rear of the vehicle than it had been before. The Wendigo must have managed to get a grip on the lines that fastened the net to the tow-hook, and it was gradually pulling itself nearer and nearer.

  Oh Jesus, she thought. What if it pulls itself right up to the rear of the SUV, so that it can untie the net, and get itself out?

  There was another jolt, even harder this time, and the Rainier swerved from one side of the road to the other, so that pine branches rattled against the windows. William was sobbing so hysterically now that he was almost choking, but there was nothing that Lily could do to help him.

  Two miles . . . three miles. The Wendigo pulled at the SUV again and again, and Lily had to struggle to keep it on the road. The pine trees seemed to be crowding her on both sides, as if they were deliberately trying to catch hold of her bumper grille and snatch at her side mirrors and slow her down. Maybe they were. After all, the Wendigo was the spirit of the forest. The Wendigo was the forest.

  Four miles. Four and a half miles. In spite of the Wendigo’s constant jolting, and the branches flailing and clattering against the SUV’s sides, she was managing to keep her speed between fifty-five and sixty, and when she looked in her mirror again she thought she saw smoke. Just a brief blurt of it to start with, but as she passed the fifth mile, it started to pour out more and more thickly—brown smoke, tinged red from her taillights.

  “Come on, you bastard,” she whispered to herself. “Burn!”

  She sped through the forest, with the Wendigo tumbling behind her in its net, a kaleidoscope of lights, with smoke billowing out of it. Even before she reached the sixth mile she saw flames. The Wendigo was ablaze now, leaving a long trail of fire behind it, and setting alight the branches of the trees on either side of the road.

  But, even though it was burning, the Wendigo kept on
jolting her. It couldn’t be dead yet. And inch by inch it still seemed to be hauling itself closer to the back of her SUV. Almost all she could see in the rear window now was fire, and in the fire she could briefly see antlers and claws—all burning, but still inching toward her.

  She didn’t know what to do, except to keep going as fast as she could. John Shooks had told her that Wendigos eventually burned into nothing but ash, but how long did that take?

  She was approaching the end of the logging road now. Only a half-mile to go before she hit the main highway. She kept her foot down, but she could feel the Wendigo dragging itself right up to her back bumper.

  She glanced around, to make sure that William wasn’t choking. As she did so, she became aware that something was running alongside her. At first she thought it was just a shadow, or the reflection of her sleeve in the window. But when she looked again she realized that it was an animal—a great brindled wolf—and it was running so fast that it was keeping up with her.

  She turned to the other window. Another wolf was running on the right-hand side of her, a lean gray wolf with eyes that were shining yellow. And in the darkness of the pine trees more wolves were running, most of them on all fours, but some of them upright.

  She slewed the Rainier to the left and then to the right. The brindled wolf leapt up at her. She saw its eyes blazing yellow and its teeth bared, and its claws scrabbled against her door. The gray wolf leapt up too, on the other side, and its body thumped against the paintwork.

  Now the whole vehicle shook and she heard squeaking, grating noises. The Wendigo had reached the rear bumper and was pulling itself up on to the tailgate. It was hissing like a steam boiler that was just about to explode, and she could hear the flames roaring, too, as they were fanned by the wind.

  The Wendigo might be burning, but if it could still crush this SUV, the way that it had crushed Agnes and Ned’s Explorer; then she and little William would not only be mangled but incinerated too. Lily began to hyperventilate again—each breath whining as if she were suffering an asthma attack.

  The Rainier shook again, so that its suspension bucked and its tires howled on the blacktop. The Wendigo had clawed its way up the tailgate now, and she could see its fiery pincers trying to get a grip on the roof rails. On either side the wolves were running in closer, and still keeping up with her. She couldn’t see how many, but there must have been scores of them. Wolves, or witches.

  She passed the seven-mile mark and she could see lights up ahead. Maybe the wolves wouldn’t chase her along the highway. She kept her foot hard down and screamed, “Come on! Come on!” And William started to scream too.

  Almost too late she realized that the lights weren’t highway lights at all. A huge Winnebago was blocking the entire road ahead of her, with its emergency lights flashing. She blasted her horn but she knew that it wasn’t going to get out of her way. She saw a startled man kneeling in the road, changing a tire. She saw a woman lifting her hand up to shield her eyes.

  She jammed her foot on the parking brake and spun the wheel all the way round. The Rainier slewed around 180 degrees, its tires all screaming in hysterical chorus. Lily heard a sickening, tumbling noise above her. The blazing Wendigo had fallen from the roof and dropped back on to the road. But almost at once, she felt it tugging at the net again.

  She didn’t hesitate. She slammed the gearshift into reverse, gunned the engine, and backed up at high speed, with the transmission whinnying like a disobedient horse. She hit the Wendigo with a sharp crunch and pushed it along the road, its fiery claws flailing and its body sliding noisily on the asphalt, until she collided at nearly twenty m.p.h. with the rear end of the Winnebago.

  She heard the man and the woman shouting at her, but she didn’t care. She shifted into drive and sped forward again—but only thirty or forty yards. Then she jerked to a halt, changed into reverse, and backed up again, smashing the Wendigo into the back of the Winnebago for a second time.

  She drove forward, and twisted around in her seat, and now she could see that there were pieces of burning Wendigo all across the road, and underneath the Winnebago, too.

  The man was screaming, “What the fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck did I ever do to you, lady?”

  Then the wolves started to gather around the Rainier and jump up on either side, and Lily saw the man and the woman turn and run into the darkness.

  The wolves jumped up again and again, and some of them remained standing on their hind legs, stalking around the SUV with a strange, ungainly gait. The large brindled wolf came right up to Lily’s window and bared its teeth at her, fogging up the glass. Then she heard their claws tugging at the doorhandles, and she knew that she had to get away from them, fast.

  She put her foot on the gas and the Rainier sped back the way she had come, back toward Mystery Lake. Without the Wendigo trailing behind her she could drive much faster, and when she looked from one side of the vehicle to the other, she could see that the wolves were having trouble keeping pace with her. After two or three miles, only the brindled wolf was still running beside her, and then even he dropped back. For about a half-mile she could still see his yellow eyes shining in her rearview mirror, and then he was swallowed by the darkness.

  She drove another mile or so, but little William was sobbing so pitifully that she drew over to the side of the road and pulled up. She lifted him over from the backseat and held him tight, shushing him. She could feel that he had wet his romper suit and he was shaking with distress.

  “There, there,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay now. Everything’s going to be fine. You can come live with me now, and we’ll all be happy ever after. How would you like to live with your Aunt Lily, and Tasha, and Sammy? That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  She felt exhausted, and bruised, but at least she knew that she had succeeded in saving her family from the Wendigo. It was probably nothing but ashes now, and those poor people with the Winnebago would never understand what hit them, or why.

  After a while, William began to settle down, and she buckled him up in the lap-belt next to her. She tried to call Special Agent Kellogg on her cell, but there was no signal. She needed to drive back to Mystery Lake to find out what had happened to him. She prayed to God that George Iron Walker hadn’t hurt him. He might have had a .50-caliber Desert Eagle, but Hazawin had all the powers of the forest, and the spirits that lived in it.

  She started the engine again. “Come on, little William. Let’s go find Nathan, shall we?”

  But as soon as she pulled away, she saw a black shape rushing at her out of the darkness. With a hideous bang, and a flurry of scratching noises, the huge brindled wolf leapt on to the Rainier’s sloping hood.

  Lily swung the Rainier from one side of the road to the other, trying to shake the wolf off. If it had been a real wolf, it couldn’t have clung on. But it was gripping the lip of the hood with human hands, and it had found itself a foothold on the bull bars on the front of the Rainier with human feet, and when it stared at Lily through the windshield with an expression of utter fury, she saw that it had a human face: George Iron Walker, his black oilskin flapping in the Rainier’s slipstream like a vampire.

  Lily kept on swinging the SUV from side to side, but George Iron Walker was determined not to be shaken loose. He beat on the windshield with his fist, so that his heavy silver rings made a cracking noise on the glass, and he was roaring at her, although she couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  She swerved wildly for mile after mile. Still George Iron Walker held on, and still he kept beating at the windshield. She tried jamming her brakes on, and then speeding up again, but she couldn’t shake him loose.

  “—kill you!” she heard him shouting at her.

  She kept on driving, but she knew that when she reached Mystery Lake, that was the end of the road, and there would be no place left for her to go.

  But as the trees began to thin out on either side of the road, she saw two white lights up ahead of her. It was
another vehicle, coming toward her. It had to be Nathan.

  She switched off her own headlights. She didn’t know if George Iron Walker realized what she was planning to do, but he reached inside his coat and took out a large knife with a heavy handle. He began to smash at the windshield again and again, in a frenzy. The safety glass cracked all the way across, and then he smashed it yet again and it shattered and frosted over, and Lily was left blind. All she could see now was George Iron Walker’s dark silhouette, and the rapidly brightening headlights of Nathan’s Jeep.

  “God help us, little William,” she said, and drove straight toward them.

  It seemed like forever, but it was probably no more than ten seconds before they collided. Her windshield was filled with dazzling white light and then her airbag burst out in front of her face. She didn’t hear anything, and even afterward she didn’t remember hearing anything. All she could remember was being thrown violently backward and forward, the way that Jeff used to shake her when he was drunk and angry.

  Then there was silence, except for the tick-tick-ticking, of gradually cooling metal. She turned to little William and said, “William? Are you OK?”

  He looked up at her, wide-eyed, and nodded. For the first time that evening, he had been shocked into silence.

  Lily was still sitting behind the wheel when her door was wrenched open with a loud creak. She lifted her arm, ready to defend herself, but it was Special Agent Kellogg.

  “Lily? You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “My nose, that’s all.”

  “How about junior?”

  “He’s okay.”

  “Here”—he held out his hand to her—“let me help you guys out. It worked then—with the Wendigo?”

  “It was touch and go for a while, but yes. It worked. Damn thing was all burned up.”

  “The net held?”

  “The net held. I think I did some damage to some poor guy’s RV. But the net held.”