by Hadena James
The word wendigo whispered through my mind again, like a breeze causing a flame to flicker. The spectral cannibal of Native American legends was said to be fierce looking. A tall, thin, featureless body cloaked in darkness; a long face with the skin stretched taut over the skull revealing its human like teeth that constantly gnash together, creating a violent chattering noise. It fulfilled the qualifications of a demon. However, I didn’t really believe in demons kidnapping little girls or teen boys, even demons like the wendigo.
The human teeth marks on the eye socket still bothered me. I could tell Xavier it could happen in a fight all I wanted, but I didn’t believe it. The wendigo theory held more water. People just didn’t bite people on the upper eye socket during a fight. They were more likely to go for a cheek or an ear, maybe the lip or nose, but not the eye. The bone around the eye was hard, biting against it was going to hurt the teeth.
“Hey,” Xavier snapped his fingers in front of my face.
“Hey yourself,” I answered.
“What were you thinking about?” He asked.
“The wendigo,” I answered. Gabriel frowned at me. I shrugged back, not voicing anything else that was running through my head.
“What’s a wendigo?” John asked.
“A myth,” Gabriel answered. “Native Americans believe it is a spirit that can possess people.” Gabriel had an interest in Native American belief systems.
“Oh,” John said.
“It turns them into cannibals,” I added. John sat one of his half eaten cheeseburgers down.
“Just once, I’d like to go through a meal with you and not hear anything about death or plague or cannibals,” John said.
“Good luck,” Xavier grinned and finished off his third slider. He’d ordered six.
“I don’t know why you’re smiling, you are just as bad. Also, you talk with food in your mouth all the time. When I’m not being grossed out by the conversation, I’m being grossed out because I can see everything you shove in your mouth.” John ranted.
“Done?” Gabriel asked.
“No,” John was fuming. “You let them do it.”
“Should I monitor them like children? Should I be holding their hands when we cross streets or scolding them for putting their elbows on the table? Death is what we do. It’s the glue that binds us together. Yes, we talk about other things, but when a case is in front of us, it’s hard to talk about anything other than that. I admit the plague obsession is unusual, but better plague than listening to her chatter about some guy or listen to Xavier brag about his latest conquest.” Gabriel proved he’d been paying attention to the conversations around us as well.
John remained silent for the rest of our time at the bar. Xavier and Gabriel finished their pitcher of beer. We paid the tab and left.
“It was good,” Gabriel said as we got into the SUV.
“It was good,” Xavier said. “I like these little hole in the wall local places and we rarely find them because we rarely know anyone from the town.”
“Now, why were you thinking about wendigos during dinner?” Gabriel turned in his seat.
“Xavier thinks he found human teeth marks on the eye socket of the skull. I keep trying to tell myself that it was the result of a fight, but even I don’t buy it. People just don’t bite people’s eyes. It isn’t exactly the easiest place to get to, unless the person is on the ground and not fighting.”
“Xavier?” Gabriel asked.
“Dr. Burnett has made arrangements for a forensic odontologist to come in tomorrow. I agree with Ace, it is an unusual injury to say the least. I think someone munched on our victim’s head. The fact that they did it at some point before or after it had been crushed by a jaguar is strange.”
“Jaguar slobber,” I cringed. “I can’t see a human doing it after a jaguar, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which the human manages to munch on the face of the victim before the jaguar kills it.”
“Not everyone is as germophobic as you,” Xavier pointed out.
“True, but to chew on a face after a jaguar has been chewing on it? Those are special germs. I have no idea what sorts of diseases jaguars carry that can be passed to humans, but I’m sure there are a few.”
“Wow, something Ace doesn’t know,” Gabriel smirked.
“Oh, I can guess,” I answered. “Rabies and bubonic plague come to mind immediately.”
“Oh boy,” John groaned from the back seat.
Confrontation
The mind was a terrible thing to waste. So was the body. At least, Patterson believed that. At eighty-six years old, he had the body of a fifty year old. Most people guessed him to be in his early sixties, but only because his face was heavily lined and he had developed a habit of walking with a fancy cane simply because he felt it was sophisticated.
Unfortunately, his mind was starting to fail him, meaningless meanderings through memories that were unrelated and useless pieces of information cluttered his thoughts. Without something directly in front of him to hold his attention, he found his waking thoughts to be scattered, jumbled, and random. He saw it as not only a weakness, but as a sign that regardless of how long his body lived, his mind was going to go before his heart.
As night fell upon the city, he was south of town, parked at the gates that led to his own personal hell. He wasn’t here to check out the house. He was here to check out the property. He didn’t think his sister was stupid enough to build a house for August back here, but stranger things had happened.
He slipped from his car and using the darkness, moved without detection towards the house he had once lived in. The property was clear of new buildings. However, his house caught his attention. There was a light on in the living room. That bothered him. In the fifty years since he had killed Lila, he expected the house to go to rot and ruin, not be lived in.
He moved closer. The outside was in good condition. The light in the living room illuminated a solitary figure. The dumpy silhouette moved around the room with purpose.
Patterson couldn’t resist, he moved closer. His sister was inside with a broom. She was cleaning the house. Patterson didn’t know whether to be enraged or horrified. Through the window, he could still see the blood stains on the floors, ceilings, and walls. He knocked on the door.
Gertrude opened it, wearing a robe over some sweat pants and a long dressing gown.
“I knew you’d be back,” she smiled at her older brother.
“What are you doing?” He asked.
“Keeping the place tidy for you.”
“You’re insane.”
“This coming from the man that tried to feed my son to a hog and then butchered his wife,” Gertrude snorted. “That’s rich.”
“I didn’t try,” Patterson stuck out his chin. “I nearly succeeded in sending that abomination to Hell. If your stupid husband hadn’t rushed to the rescue, he wouldn’t be cutting up children to feed to animals. Where is he?”
“Oh and I guess you don’t feel responsible for that?” Gertrude puffed up her chest.
“Where is he?” Patterson asked.
“To hell with you,” Gertrude shoved past him. “You turned my son into a killer, you reap what you sow.”
“He was a killer before the incident, you just couldn’t see it like I could. Now where is he?”
“What? Worried he’ll get your precious granddaughter?” Gertrude spat at him. “She’s here you know, searching for him. She won’t find him either.”
“I should kill you,” Patterson said.
“But you won’t,” Gertrude cackled at him. “Familicide was always your downfall. You just couldn’t stomach killing Virgil or our parents. You even failed to kill August. You’re weak.”
“I’m not weak,” Patterson’s arm shot out and the fingers closed around Gertrude’s throat.
“Remember if I die, August is supposed to mail a package to your precious grandchildren with your location, your multitude of fake identities, proof of your war crimes, a diary our mother k
ept, and pictures of your wife, mutilated on the floor of this house and Joe is supposed to kill both of them after you’ve been caught.”
Patterson let go, he hadn’t been holding her tight enough to do any damage anyway. It was a reaction. Gertrude cackled in his face again.
“Just wait, Gertrude,” Patterson told her. “You can only avoid this for so long. I am going to kill you and I’m going to enjoy it. Until then, know that I will find August and I will feed him to his own fucking pets.”
“Don’t use empty threats against me, Patterson, it doesn’t suit you. You’re a man of action, not words. Stop trying to be rational. We could have put all this to rest if you had just killed Aislinn Clachan when she joined the Marshals.”
Patterson threw his head back and gave a full laugh at that. His body shook with it. Finally, he wiped a tear away.
“If you think killing Aislinn is that easy, you obviously haven’t paid attention to her. She’s twice as tough as August or me. I couldn’t kill her any more than I could fly to the sun with Icarus. Guess what, if she finds August, he’s going to regret it. You think I’m a big, bad son of a bitch, she’s worse. She’s smarter, faster, stronger, and meaner than you can imagine. I’ve seen what she does up close and personal, she’s the real deal.” Patterson told his sister. “She’s the perfect predator contained by a moral code created by Nyleena. The two are a formidable pair.”
“So you’ve said. I don’t see it.”
“Because you’re blind,” Patterson told her. “I have a news flash for you, sister dearest, I’m the one that told my son to make sure Nyleena was a part of Aislinn’s life. She has spent many years teaching Aislinn to be a good person, despite her mental state. I think this makes Aislinn even more dangerous.”
“You’re delusional.”
“Am I?” Patterson looked down at her. He wasn’t tall, but he had a good six inches on his fat sister. “The perfect predator taught to control herself. When she is able to unleash those violent desires, it makes her enjoy every second and inflict as much pain and horror as possible because she knows she is going to have a long wait before she gets to do it again. Aislinn is my pride and joy because she has the control that I never could manage. August is just a weak, deranged boy who likes to masturbate. If he had any backbone, he’d be doing the eating himself, not using pets to tear his victims to shreds.”
Gertrude looked like she might slap him for a second. Anger clouded her face and her hands balled into fists. She wouldn’t strike Patterson, she was afraid he’d strike back. He wouldn’t kill her, but she knew he would beat the hell out of her and enjoy it. Instead, she turned and walked away.
“I will find him!” Patterson shouted at her back. “And if I don’t, Aislinn will!”
Patterson took a breath after his sister had stormed back to her house through the tree line that separated the properties. The tree line that hid the corpses of dozens, if not hundreds, of dead farmhands, that had been butchered for food. The thought sickened him, just as it had all those years ago. Only Gertrude and Virgil had enjoyed the extra meats from of his father’s killings. As he thought back to those days, his stomach gurgled. He ran to the side of the house, away from prying eyes, and threw up. It was a reflex that he’d had for decades now.
On days his mother had prepared human flesh, the house had carried a rich, fatty, pork smell. Depending on how she cooked it depended on whether it tasted more like pork or beef. As a result, he’d become a vegetarian, eating only fish and on rare special occasions, fowl. His children had eaten lots of seafood, despite living in a landlocked state. He never discussed why they couldn’t cook beef or pork in the house, just that it made him feel ill.
The night was not going well. He’d lost control. Gertrude knew he was in town and looking for her son. Aislinn still wasn’t responding to his notes. She had never welcomed his help in the past, but she had never ignored it either. At his age, he didn’t really have time to waste. He considered driving to St. Charles. He was fairly certain he had seen the sniper at the Adams County Fair. He was also fairly certain that the burly black man had not seen him. He’d followed him back to his house in St. Charles, Missouri. He could drive to St. Charles and kill the sniper that had nearly taken out Aislinn or he could stay here and deal with family issues.
Looking through the trees made the decision for him. He would stay. Nina might need his protection. Aislinn might need his help, although she had been ignoring him up to this point.
Fifteen
Being in my hometown had stirred up ghosts. Not physical ghosts, but memories that I hadn’t thought about in ages. Alone in my room, with nothing to really think about except jaguars, cannibals, and Nazi war criminals living in Argentina, I found myself thinking about these ghosts instead.
One would assume that my lack of emotion would also mean a lack of emotional memories. This was not the case. I did have memories with emotional baggage attached.
After my encounter with Callow, my father would have locked me in a tower and thrown away the key, if he could have. Fortunately for me, that kind of stuff was only legal in fairy tales. Instead, I’d been watched like a hawk. When my parents or siblings weren’t around to keep an eye on me, it was my great-uncle.
My great-uncle had been elderly even when I was young and spry. He walked with a stoop and carried a cane. I couldn’t remember his face, but I could remember his pants being just a little too short and showing his ankles and black socks. His brown loafers were scuffed and well worn, one heel had broken down more than the other creating a fake limp that I wasn’t sure he had ever noticed. He was bald, completely, not a single strand of hair was visible on his scalp. His shirts were always loud, Hawaiian print with bright colors and strange floral designs.
However, all of these details paled in comparison to the sensory memory attached to him. He smoked a pipe. Instead of the stale odor of tobacco, he smelled like cherries. After he died, I learned that his pipe was always filled with cherry tobacco. It was this scent now that filled not just my memory, but my nose. It was as if the old man was sitting in the room with me, enjoying a pipe and telling me stories.
For the first time, I realized I had never known his first name, just his nickname: Chub. The origin of his nickname was just as unknown as his first name to me. However, I had liked him. I had liked spending time with him. I spent hours sitting on the floor or on his couch, listening to him go on and on about life experiences.
My father and Uncle Chub had made some kind of arrangement after my kidnapping. The old man had sold his house and bought a house just a few doors down from us. He walked me to school every morning and home in the afternoons. If my parents and siblings were out, he waited with me for one of them to come home. He was the only person my father had ever allowed to smoke in the house.
Uncle Chub had died just a year before my father. I distinctly remember being more upset at his funeral, than I had been at my father’s or my sister’s. He had made a dent in my hard exterior where the others hadn’t. It seemed strange that I couldn’t remember his face considering how important he had been to me as a child. I didn’t consider it odd that I couldn’t remember what my father or sister looked like, they had been emotional blips in my life.
Surprisingly, the worst part of being a sociopath, was the lack of memory about people. I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually thought about my sister. She hadn’t been mean to me, there was no sibling rivalry between us. From what I could remember, we’d had a decent relationship. There were no major memories, she had never called the school and told them I was sick so that she could take me to a water park. We’d gone to a few movies together, but I couldn’t remember what we had seen. She’d never skipped school to hang out with me when I was sick.
Those things had been done by Nyleena. I had gotten measles once, I was sicker than a dog. Nyleena had been in college at Stanford at the time. She’d ditched class for a week, flying home to help my mom take care of me. My memory of my bout
with measles is limited, because of the illness, but I did remember rolling over in my bed one day and throwing up. Nyleena had been there, holding my hair and soothing me. My mom had rushed in a few seconds later with a cool rag to place on my forehead after I stopped tossing my cookies. I remember Nyleena being on Spring Break one year and calling my school to tell them I was sick. It was late May and very hot. She and Uncle Chub made arrangements to meet at my house before school. The old man had given me pocket money I hadn’t needed and sent me off with my cousin. We’d gone to World’s of Fun in Kansas City.
My father had been furious when we returned late that evening. My mother had just smiled and shook her head. It was Uncle Chub that eventually smoothed things over and got the three of us out of trouble. I believe my mother might have been in on the spur of the moment day trip.
My sister had been named Isabelle. She and Eric had been closer in age and more emotionally connected than I had been with either of them. Even before Callow, I had been closer to Nyleena than my own siblings.
Perhaps it was because she was an only child and I wasn’t a rowdy, mouthy child, but a reserved, mature child who was much older than my age would suggest. But she had taken me to movies and bookstores long before I had become a survivor. She had taken me to see Nine Inch Nails when I was only ten. She had spirited me off to New York to see a play on Broadway and take me to the Museum of Natural History when I was eleven.
Surprisingly, after the incident with World’s of Fun, my father never complained again about Nyleena taking me anywhere. She was about the only person allowed to take me places other than my parents.
I never questioned it, any of it. I had never noticed the twelve year age difference between us, even when I was a child. As an adult, I usually felt like the older of the two of us. I didn’t know why she had become my friend and not just my cousin. I didn’t know why she stayed my friend with my sociopathic tendencies and magnet for dangerous people.