Dark Spirits of the Forest

by Michael Weinberger

  “Cottonwood!” Ursula shouted, “I need help over here!”

  But Cottonwood was too busy gathering the pieces of the two Bakaak and placing them in a pile, “I need to finish this or they’ll just come back again!”

  “But he’s wounded!”

  “He’ll be all right. The arrows aren’t what kill the victims. They are just meant to incapacitate.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, but the legends have been true so far. The arrows bring down the prey and then the Bakaak finish the job with a club or stone to the head.” Cottonwood ran as fast as his legs could carry him over the uneven ground until he returned with the pair of legs that had flown off the Bakaak’s body when Ursula had demolished it. “Okay, I have two piles of all I could find ready to go. Let me light them and then we’ll carry him out, all right?”

  Ursula was in a state of near panic over Jett’s condition, but she agreed.

  Cottonwood pulled out his lighter and set the kindling he had collected ablaze under the first pile of bones. There was an unusual swirling of wind as the dried bones instantly erupted in flame, almost as if they had been doused in kerosene. The first fire literally roared as it consumed the fuel of dried bone and, once satisfied the fire would go out on its own, Cottonwood quickly moved to the second collected pile. He tore a piece of his cotton undershirt away and lit the fabric as kindling for the second fire. It caught as quickly as the first, and this time a howl accompanied the swirl of wind as the bones flared into dust.

  Cottonwood didn’t waste any time admiring his work as he quickly moved to join Ursula at Jett’s side.

  “Has the bleeding stopped?”

  Ursula was hesitant to lift the compression bandage off the wound, but did so anyway and saw that the bleeding had indeed stopped. Surprised, she checked Jett’s chest and found that despite having to wipe away a fair amount of partially congealed blood, there was no longer any sign of the wound beneath.

  “I guess the wound caused by the arrow disappeared as soon as the arrow was removed?”

  Cottonwood shook his head, “No idea. Is he waking up?”

  Ursula checked, but Jett was still completely incapacitated and unresponsive.

  “No such luck.”

  “Okay,” Cottonwood sighed disappointedly, “How do you want to…”

  That frightful shrieking howl burst through the forest again, and this time it was so loud that whatever had made the sound must have been right on top of them.

  Ursula looked in the direction she thought the sound had come from and saw a blur of speed heading directly for Cottonwood. Ursula launched herself like a football lineman at the blur and felt herself impact with something very big and very solid. She and whatever she had hit crashed to the forest floor and Ursula felt clawed hands raking over her back as she tried to escape and separate herself from whatever was hurting her.

  Burning pain erupted from the claw wounds on her back, but Ursula could still sense the body of whatever she had tackled beneath her and she punched the thing with all of her considerable strength. The impact of the punch hurt her hand, as it was like punching into a stone, but the claws stopped rending at her back with her blow, so Ursula punched again and again until she felt the thing beneath her now trying to escape her attack instead of the other way around.

  Sensing an opening Ursula rolled onto her back, bringing the thing on top of her, before leveraging one foot under it in order to kick it off and away. With a great push of her legs she felt the thing fly off her body and managed to pull in a deep breath of relief before she scrambled back to her feet.

  Quickly she turned to where she believed the thing had landed and saw something hunkered on the ground before it slowly got to its feet. Ursula’s eyes tracked the thing as it rose higher and higher to its full height while Ursula stared with unhidden awe and admitted apprehension.

  It was a demon, and not just any demon, but a full-fledged, undeniable monster from the pit of hell, with strangely elongated claws growing from its fingers and a mouthful of needle teeth, like some deep ocean predator. Its skin was a whitish grey with splotches of blue and green and its eyes were an unholy glowing red, and not dissimilar to the eyes of the Bakaak. Ursula supposed that the thing could be described as humanoid, but it was unusually tall, and looked as if it had been unnaturally stretched just to achieve its length, leaving it skinny but undeniably powerful, as she could see its muscles winding in serpentine cords around its limbs. It sported no hair or fur anywhere on its naked form, and it had an aura of malevolence that Ursula had only ever felt once before.

  “Kaylanna?” Ursula let the name of the ancient Witch-Woman slip from her lips causing the creature in front of her to regard her with what passed for a confused expression on its horror of a face.

  Cottonwood was still sitting at Jett’s side, and when the thing had risen to its full height, he quickly stood and grabbed at something hanging around his neck. Ursula could see the elder’s skin pale and his eyes go wide as they filled with fear-induced tears.

  He uttered a single word.

  “Wendigo.”

  Chapter 15

  Wendigo.

  Ursula had heard this legend. Perhaps the most feared of all the Native People’s mythological creatures. The embodiment of pure evil, it was created through the abominable act of cannibalism, then altered by dark magic that turned the perpetrator of the evil deed into a vile creature and predator with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. It was said that the Wendigo contains such immense power that there is no known way to defeat or destroy it…

  …and Ursula smiled at the thought of how she was about to kick its ass.

  The pair circled each other, the Wendigo brandishing its claws menacingly and Ursula balling her hands into fists, as they sized each other up.

  Not far away Cottonwood knelt at Jett’s side, knowing there was no way he could carry or drag Jett away.

  “I’m sorry boy,” Cottonwood said as he looked down into Jett’s face, “but I have to warn the tribe, they have no idea about the Wendigo and unlike the Bakaak, it won’t keep to the forest.”

  Jett looked up into the face of the old man and every fiber of his being tried to shout for the elder to run while Ursula had the creature distracted, but the paralysis of the Bakaak’s arrow silenced his tongue no matter how hard his efforts.

  Cottonwood looked down one last time, “I’m so sorry to leave you like this,” and then the elder stood, turned and ran as fast as his old legs could carry him along the path they had followed when entering the forest.

  Jett was relieved to see him go. He hoped the old man would make it all the way back to the cars and into town safely, but now he had to figure out a way to free himself from the effect of the Bakaak’s arrow. He concentrated and once again opened his mind to that part of the spiritual world which is unseen by anyone not gifted with a Shaman’s abilities. First, he inspected his own body and was surprised to find himself engulfed in the same purple aura that had been undulating within the core of the Bakaak. It was as if the Bakaak’s arrow had been a small piece of its own dark magic, and the creature had hurled a part of itself in the form of the “invisible arrow” that had paralyzed him. Is that why the creatures ate a piece of their victims? In order to reclaim the magic sent through the arrow? It made a certain kind of sense, but Jett would think more on the matter later. Right now he had to purge the magic from his system and help Ursula against the Wendigo, for all the good it would do them. Wendigo were supposed to be unstoppable, and it was more likely that his efforts would only delay the creature long enough for Cottonwood to warn the rest of the tribe.

  Jett was able to turn his eyes far enough to look to where the creature and Ursula were circling each other, and he could hear it when the two charged and collided into one another. He could hear the struggle as the Wendigo snarled and Ursula growled. There were sounds of impact and tearing followed by crashes against trees or heavy objects being slammed to the ground, yet Jett could
do nothing other than listen helplessly as the battle raged.

  So, he turned his focus inward, and to the dirt that he lay on. Reaching down to his core, he concentrated on the earth beneath his body and tapped into the spiritual magic of the Earth Mother herself, asking her to help heal him of the poisoning magic that held him at bay. Jett could sense the evil of the Wendigo in the earth, recognizing it as the source of the taint that he had detected in the soil earlier, but he pushed harder to get past the taint, and felt a stirring in the ground as root systems hundreds of years old curved and retracted under his guidance and power. Jett knew he had a tremendous power at his command, but unfortunately that power hadn’t come with any kind of instruction manual. He had been able to shift root systems before, as he had in his battle against Kaylanna and her brood, and so when he called to the trees now, the trees responded to his wishes by clearing a path with their roots, allowing the earth to swallow his body. Slowly Jett could feel himself descend into the ever-softening earth as it closed around him, enveloping him in cool, moist comfort as the dark magic was slowly leeched away from him. A frightening thought of quicksand entered his head, but as it surfaced Jett mentally shook the image away as he traveled further into the ground. Trusting in the earth’s care he felt himself come to a stop once his body was completely submerged and resting several feet below the surface with only the space over his face left open for air. The hole that remained could still give away his position so Jett called upon the trees to create a ceiling of roots above him, granting him the camouflage he would need. The roots fully intertwined and shut off all light from the sky, yet still allowed him to breathe.

  When the process was over Jett could feel the rapid rise and fall of his chest and sense the exhaustion that the exertion of so much magic had caused. Listening to the only sound available to him, his heartbeat, as more and more of the Bakaak’s magic trickled away, Jett rested as patiently as he could manage, knowing that Ursula was fighting for her life a mere few feet above him.

  ***

  A clawed hand was raking down her left arm sending a noxious burning feeling up to her shoulder. Ursula responded to the injury by twisting the Wendigo’s other arm until its bones snapped with a sickening explosion of sound. Together she and the evil beast wailed in both pain and triumph at the injuries they inflicted and received. Ursula kicked and felt its ribs shattering beneath the sole of her boot, making the Wendigo fall back and away.

  Ursula did not wait for the beast to right itself, but instead leapt the entire distance to land on the Wendigo, straddling it on the forest floor and raining down blow after blow to the vile thing’s head and face. Bones crumbled, flesh was pulverized and blood erupted as Ursula’s fists came down again and again until the horror that was the Wendigo’s face was no longer recognizable and, in its place, was a caved in skull and bloody, pulped flesh. Ursula was breathing heavily as the beast finally lay still, and she shakily rose off the Wendigo’s chest, but her eyes never left the creature as she stood up, her fists still clenched as she waited for any lingering signs of life, but nothing showed.

  Ursula finally let out a relieved breath before turning to search for Jett when, without warning, one arm of the Wendigo blurred up from where it had rested on the ground, backhanding Ursula and sending her into an aerial spin, before she crashed back to the ground.

  Quickly Ursula looked up and forced her aching body to get up as she saw the Wendigo start to rise while the features of its face shifted and melded back into its original form as if it had never been damaged at all. Wet crunching sounds came from the arm that Ursula had ruined as the beast used its good arm to wrench the broken and dislocated limb back into alignment. The extremity seemed to instantly heal once it was returned to its anatomical position and the Wendigo flexed and extended it while a demonic smile stretched across its healed hideous face.

  Ursula rolled her eyes, feigning a display of impatience and annoyance to hide the fear and hopelessness she was now beginning to feel.

  “C’mon asshole,” Ursula growled, “lots more where that came from.”

  In response the Wendigo shrieked at her with an awful explosive sound as it moved with incredible speed toward her. Ursula spun with the beast, albeit not as fast, and barely raised her arms up in time to block the mouthful of needle teeth intent on her throat. She caught the beast, spun with its weight and momentum, and drove its spine down hard on a large exposed root.

  The Wendigo screamed in pain, but rebounded off the ground, using that bit of momentum to shoot its head forward and latch its jaws around Ursula’s already injured shoulder. Ursula let out a wailing moan of pain as the Wendigo ground its needle teeth deeper into her flesh and secured its hold on her. Ursula found herself unable to pull away as the Wendigo’s claws shot into her side and worried at the fabric and flesh covering her ribs. An emotion of desperation very unfamiliar to Ursula filled her. She knew that she had to get free of the teeth, or she wouldn’t survive the damage the claws were causing.

  Ursula tried to get some distance to gain better leverage, but the Wendigo wrapped its unnaturally long legs around her and prevented her from achieving any space. Ursula punched at the side of the creature’s head but the creature ignored each blow despite the solid strikes she was landing.

  The creature let out a snort that might have been a laugh, and Ursula gasped as she felt one of the Wendigo’s claws worm its way in between a pair of her ribs and probe the musculature and viscera beneath, mere inches from her lung.

  Desperately Ursula felt along the forest floor for a weapon, anything that could help her free herself from the jaws of the Wendigo, but all her fingers could find were dead leaves, dirt and pine needles.

  The Wendigo shook its head violently from side to side and a new level of pain erupted from Ursula’s shoulder that she had never felt before. It was so intense that she couldn’t remain on her feet and, as she fell to one side, the invading claw was dislodged but the Wendigo still managed to retain the lock of its teeth on her shoulder.

  Tears began to flow from Ursula’s eyes at the immensity of the pain, and the realization there was possibly no escape from this horrible creature’s jaws. She might have been the stronger combatant initially, and in the early stages of the battle she had repeatedly beaten the beast to the ground, but the Wendigo could heal itself faster than she could break it and never seemed to tire. She, on the other hand, accumulated more and more damage as the fight progressed, which would drain her energy to the point when she would be too weak to stop it from killing her.

  Ursula’s head lolled to the side and her eyes fell to the spot where she had seen Jett fall motionless on the ground. Perhaps it was the surprise or shock when she saw empty earth where Jett had been that gave her newfound energy... or maybe it was the hope that dawned inside her mind as one hand landed on the rock… the beautiful, wonderful, grapefruit-sized rock that seemed to almost push itself up from the earth and into the palm of her hand. Ursula used every last bit of strength in her arm to swing her hand and strike the Wendigo with the rock on the side of its head where the joint of its jaw was hinged.

  She felt the teeth in her shoulder vibrate from the blow, then loosen as she struck again. The second blow resulted in a crack of bone on impact and the pressure on her shoulder waned. Clearly in pain, the Wendigo released her shoulder, but then Ursula grabbed one of the creature’s ears before it could pull its head out of her reach and struck one last blow into the Wendigo’s head at what should have been its temporal mandibular joint. The impact completely wrecked the musculoskeletal connection and tore the left side of the jaw off of its face, leaving it free to hang uselessly in a lopsided gape as the Wendigo bellowed in agony.

  Ursula kicked the wailing creature off of her and rolled to her knees. Understanding she had no chance against the Wendigo once it healed itself again, Ursula crawled toward the creature with a vengeance. The beast hurriedly tried to push its jaw back together as she wrapped her good arm around the Wendigo’s ankl
es. Quickly rising to her feet Ursula pulled the legs out from under the Wendigo and sent it crashing down on its back, and then stepped forward grabbing the beast by its throat. With one arm, and the last of her strength, she lifted the Wendigo from the ground and twisted the skinny, muscular neck of the beast as far as she could until she felt the hard end range of motion as its neck vertebrae strained against one another. Ursula screamed and every muscle fiber in her body fired simultaneously as she wrenched the Wendigo’s neck past that hard end range, shattering the vertebrae with a sickening crack.

  Instead of falling limp in death, as any normal creature might from such an injury, the Wendigo’s body began to undulate wildly as its nerves fired in a seizure-like manner and jolted with a ferocity strong enough to cause Ursula to lose her grip on the creature to be thrown back and away from its body. Slowly she got to her feet, but immediately understood that the creature wasn’t going to be down for long.

  “What do I have to do to kill you?!?”

  Ursula screamed at the Wendigo as its thrashings began to ease. She was too tired and too hurt to fight anymore, so after taking one last look to the forest floor where Jett had been, she knew the only way she was going to survive now was to run. Every step hurt, but Ursula started moving down the same path that Cottonwood had used when he had run from the fight earlier. Maybe, if she were lucky, she could catch up with him and they could escape together in the truck before the Wendigo could heal enough to follow. It was her best chance to survive and she took it with the hope that Jett, wherever he might be, was safe.

  Chapter 16

  Jett started to breathe easier as he sensed Ursula’s retreat from the area. He could sense the Wendigo as it struggled to knit its spine back together. Jett fought to retain his consciousness, but he felt himself slipping further and further into the effects of the Bakaak’s poison even as the Earth leeched the noxious magic from his body.