“Lady, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
The line went quiet. For a while the memory of the conversation gave him a warm glow inside, but as the darkness gathered he began to get jumpy.
Shadows crept in the dark corner. The tarpaulin rustled and scraped, as if someone was moving around, just out of sight.
Tommy hadn’t seen any of the victims…few had besides the detectives and forensics. That hadn’t stopped speculation from spreading like wildfire down the station house. A lunatic with a spray gun of liquid ice was ahead in the guessing sweepstakes. Tommy had put himself down for a buck on that one.
But they wouldn’t put me out here on my own with a maniac on the loose.
Something shifted at the far end of the dig.
“Hello?” he shouted.
There was no reply. He took out his flashlight, switched it on, and moved forward.
“I’m a police officer. And I’m armed,” he said.
The rustling noise from the far end got louder, like someone scrunching up a large piece of paper.
As Tommy got closer he realized the noise was coming from down in the main hole of the dig.
Oh man, I don’t like this, he thought as he shone his light downwards. I REALLY should have been a bank clerk.
He stepped back slightly, unsure of what he saw.
The floor of the pit was a seething mass of semi-frozen slush, rippling out in long waves from a point at the far end. Intense cold seeped up through the ground, causing Tommy’s ankles to go numb even through his heavy duty socks. Shards of ice floated in the slush. The cracking noise came from them as they were thrown together by the action of the small waves.
Suddenly the slush lifted, pushed upwards from underneath. A pale, almost grey, head broke the surface, lanky hair frozen in a tangled mass, plastered over the skull like a surrealistic crown. Tommy’s torch beam reflected off a pair of dead, milky eyes. Frost-blackened lips raised slowly in a smile above a snow-white goatee beard.
A scream froze in Tommy’s throat. Fast as thought the slush flowed up, as if alive. It washed over his legs and Tommy instantly lost all feeling below his knees. He turned, thinking only of running, but his legs would not obey…his feet were frozen to the ground as if glued in place.
He thought of Rhona, felt a momentary burst of warmth in his heart, and then died.
The ice flowed over and around him.
In the quiet dark, where there was no one to hear, teeth crunched on icy flesh.
CHAPTER 2
From alt.dreams
I had this weird dream last night. The whole world was under a single sheet of ice. The long night had come, and any thought of summer sun was little more than a memory. Trees and grass, fish and fowl, everything lay frozen under a white blanket of snow. Violent snowstorms, like dust devils, whirled across the wasteland, freezing everything in their path. It was a scene of utter and complete desolation. Only a few people were left alive, foraging for what small heat they could find, locked in a desperate battle for survival in the cold places of the night. They were being preyed on by huge white furry things with enormous teeth and fangs, like that cave beast in the Star Wars movie. Anybody got a lightsaber I can borrow?
From ufo.net.forums
Bad news folks. My little grey buddies are getting agitated. They took me again last night. This time they dispensed with the probing and poking…something to be grateful for at least. They sat me down in a huge, empty white room and talked to me as if I was an errant child. They seemed very worried, but they wouldn’t tell me what about, only that I should seek shelter for the next few weeks. I’m telling you straight guys, something’s going down big time, and, surprise, surprise, the government is keeping a lid on it. Watch the skies, keep watching the skies.
Transcript from talk radio phone in, caller identified only as CB.
Listen, I’m telling you, this is huge. It’s going to blow the lid off all the secrets back to Roswell and beyond. Hunter’s Dock has been a weak spot in the fabric of space time for as long as man has been here. If you could only see half of the stories I have collected over the years about the place. But that’s not the biggie…I now have concrete proof going back to the seventeenth century. I haven’t read it all yet, but frozen bodies were turning up even back then, alongside freak weather conditions. Sound familiar? And I can tell you now, there’s no ‘scientific’ explanation that’s going to hold water. This is way beyond today’s scientists with their blinkered viewpoints and their patronizing belief that they know everything that needs to be known.
I know what’s been doing the freezing…or I will by the time I’ve read the whole thing. The cops are all talking about liquid ice, but there’s another place where a body could get into that condition…Do you know where that is? Outer space. Why is nobody talking about that? I think we’re looking at mass abductions and returns over a large number of years…and this journal is going to help me prove it…just see if it doesn’t.
From alt.chaos.magick.workings
I think I did something naughty.
* * *
Jackie Donnelly spent most of the day in a daze, angry at herself for having been duped.
Can’t even spot a geek at five paces, she thought scornfully. I’m losing my touch.
After leaving the diner she’d walked mile after mile, with no clear destination in mind, just letting the city remind her she was still alive. She deliberately chose not to think, letting her feet take her where they would.
She turned up at her apartment block sometime after two, surprised at where her feet had brought her. She’d half-expected to turn up back at the dock, where there would be no crowds, no policemen, just Dave Jeffers smiling at her with that coy, little boy grin of his as he showed her the night’s finds. That thought brought her back to reality. Tears came at the corners of her eyes.
Joe the doorman gave her his usual smile. Normally they indulged in some gentle flirting that they both knew would never lead anywhere, but today she was too far out of things to even respond. His smile turned quickly to concern.
“Miss Donnelly? Are you all right?” he asked, but she brushed past, barely registering his presence.
She was almost surprised to find her handbag was still slung over her shoulder, her keys snuggling at the bottom of it. The door shut with a loud click behind her, echoing emptily in the long hall that ran up the spine of her apartment. It took her a second to register that the red light was flashing, showing there was a message on her answer-phone.
Don’t answer it. It’ll just be more bad news.
But her fingers had already betrayed her and hit the button to recall the message.
“Ms Donnelly. I hope I have the right number…you’re the only J Donnelly in the book. It’s Cole Barter here…from the diner?”
He sounded hesitant, worried.
“Listen. I didn’t mean to mislead you…I just…”
She deleted the message without listening to any more and walked into her living room.
She stared towards the window.
Yellow curtains.
Yellow, like the plastic sheet at the dock, the sheet she tried hard not to think about.
Tears threatened to come, but she pushed them away. She tore the curtains violently from their fittings. Plastic curtain rings fell around her and danced on the hardwood floor. She bunched the curtains into a rough ball and stuffed them away out of sight behind the sofa, feeling marginally better.
The apartment felt cold, empty, and far too quiet. Turning on the radio didn’t help. First she got the news, and a breathless female reporter talking about “A night of violence on Hunter’s Dock.” After that she got Roberta Flack singing “Killing Me Softly.” She turned it off when more tears rolled down her cheeks and she found it hard to breathe.
She sat on the sofa for a while, staring at the window, not seeing the view beyond. The quiet, broken only by the solemn ticking of the wall clock, ate into her brain until she felt ready to scream. She
thought about the vodka bottle she knew was waiting, unopened in the kitchen. Then she thought about it again.
Get on the move girl. Booze won’t help. A wash and a coffee…start the day again from scratch. Maybe it will improve.
A slow shower made her feel slightly more human, but more coffee only reminded her of Cole Barter and the diner again. That brought back the anger. She needed something to keep her brain busy, something that might quieten the screams that lay just beneath the surface.
She phoned in to the department. It was answered on the second ring.
“Professor North’s office. How can I help you?”
“Angela? It’s Jackie. Is Dick there?”
The woman at the other end of the line sounded nervy, as if she’d been crying.
“No. He hasn’t been seen all day. And, excuse my French, but everything has turned to shit. I take it you’ve heard?”
“Yes. I was down at the dig earlier. Is anybody at all in the lab?”
“The police were here earlier, but they’ve gone now. Apart from myself, there’s only Jon, the placement student. If you’re up to it, I think he could do with a hand. There’s still some of yesterday’s finds to process. He says they’re deteriorating too fast for him to keep up. And there’s nobody here…”
The other woman stopped, a sob in her voice. There was just a hint of the same hysteria that Jackie herself felt.
“I’m on my way,” Jackie said. “Keep the fires burning.”
“Only if you’re sure…”
“I need to work, Angela. It’s either that or the vodka bottle.”
“I hear you,” Angela said. “There’s a quart of rye with my name on it at home waiting for me. I’m counting the minutes. I’ll be well along the road to oblivion before you even get to the campus.”
“Have one for me,” Jackie said.
“Hell, darling,” Angela said with a sob just before she hung up. “I’ll be having one for everybody.”
* * *
Dusk was falling as Jackie drove over to the campus.
Where did the day go?
She remembered the detective at the dig. She also remembered the geek prick who’d tried to pump her for information, but the rest of the time was just one long blur, her and her memories trapped in a series of loops; Dave Jeffers drunkenly trying to pick her up at the Xmas party, Rachel’s bra failing as she bent over a find, Dick North chewing peyote “Just to share an experience with our finds.”
And even now if she closed her eyes, she could still hear them, still see them, standing on the dockside, laughing and excited as they prepared to go down to the site for the first time. That was only two weeks ago.
Now I’ll never see any of them again.
Hot tears ran down her cheeks.
A horn honked behind her. Jackie jerked to attention…she’d been drifting, her car half over into the adjoining lane.
She corrected her steering and tried to focus.
She tuned in to the news on the radio.
“In the latest development in the sensational Hunter’s Dock slayings, we ask, ‘Is there a sexual motive?’ We’ll be talking to members of the faculty who’ll suggest that all was not just old bones and dusty books in the halls of antiquity.”
She turned the radio off.
They’re only asking the same questions that everyone will.
She realized that people would come looking for her…more police, possibly reporters. Then she’d be forced to think…think about what lay under that yellow sheet for one thing.
The thinking, the why and how, could wait. First she had to come to terms with the bald fact that her best friends had all died. She set the radio to a country station. She sang along with Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers as loud as she was able.
By the time she pulled into the department’s parking space she felt slightly better. The sight of Dick North’s battered SUV in its usual place cheered her further. Maybe he’d be able to help her make sense of what was going on. And at the very least he’d be someone to talk to, someone who would understand.
She strode into the lab shouting his name, but the place was empty.
Yesterday’s finds lay on the long gun-metal trestle that dominated the centre of the room.
“Dick?” she called again.
Her voice echoed back at her.
“Jon?…Anybody?”
There was still no reply. Jon’s camera lay beside his notebook. She went over and, using the digital display, checked the time of the last photo; five thirty-two, less than five minutes ago. Knowing the youth, he’d probably slipped out for a smoke.
She considered joining him; she’d given up herself, nearly two years ago, but if ever there was a day to get her going again, this was it. To take her mind off it, she walked down the trestle examining the finds.
They’d thought they’d hit the jackpot last week when they found the Captain’s chest, his journals still intact inside layers of oilskin. But the bodies they’d brought up yesterday surpassed even that.
There were two of them, caught in a clinch, like lovers. At some point they’d been burnt in an intense fire, but when you looked closely you could make out, at the chest where they were clasped together, that large fragments of their clothing remained.
At least it had when she’d last looked. Jackie gasped, horrified, when she saw that the bodies had been roughly pulled apart, bones and cloth strewn haphazardly across the trestle. Something small, dried and crinkled caught her eye. She bent for a closer look…just as a cold hand fell on her shoulder.
She jumped, letting out a stifled yell before turning.
“Jon! Shit, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
The lanky youth’s usual friendly grin turned so quickly to damp-eyed sorrow that she couldn’t help but forgive him.
She patted his arm.
“It’s all right. It was just…coming across the finds in this state…”
“I know,” he replied. “I tried to find the Prof to tell him, but he’s not around. Who would mess up the bones like that?”
“Not an archaeologist, that’s for sure. And that’s not the worst of it. Look here.”
She pointed at the small dried lump in front of her.
“What is it?”
“It’s a heart. A human heart from one of these bodies. And in the past twenty-four hours, somebody has taken a bite out of it.”
* * *
Cole Barter could hardly contain his excitement. The notebook he’d taken from the university had promised much, but delivered way beyond anything he’d expected. Just that first fragment he’d read earlier had whetted his appetite, but what followed had his heart pounding…To him it looked like a first hand account of an abduction and return. When he’d first furtively browsed over it on the subway, he’d quickly caught its gist. When he’d got home, he just had to phone the story in to the radio show.
When he got off the phone he felt like the geek that Jackie Connelly accused him of being, but he was way too excited to care. For years he’d been researching and writing, a magnum opus that would provide a single unifying theory for all the diverse kinds of UFO activity seen over the centuries.
And now I have it. The proof I need. A seventeenth century multiple abduction and return. They won’t be able to explain this one away as government conspiracy.
He was desperate to read more. There might be even more he could use.
Hell, there might be a whole book just from the material in this journal alone.
His daydream of the large publishing deal was an old one; book signings, television appearances and big bags of cash featured large.
But this time, it might be more than just a dream.
He went to the fridge, moved a three-day-old plate of leftovers aside, and got a cold beer. Taking it and the journal, he settled down in his favorite armchair and read. Soon he was lost to all else but the rhythm of the words talking to him across the centuries.
* * *
Taken fr
om the personal journal of John Fraser, Captain of the Havenhome, a cargo vessel. Entry date 17th October, 1605. Transcribed and annotated by Dick North, 16th March.
That which we have feared most these last few days has come among us. Hope is lost. Faith is lost.
My darling, it is likely that we will ne’er meet again. Nevermore will I see the rolling hills of home; nevermore will I hear your sweet voice call out to me from the dock.
We are dead men. It is only that we have not learned to accept the fact yet that keeps us still warm. I have seen things, terrible things, beyond anything that mortal man should endure on this earth. Yet I am still alive. Surely the Good Lord has spared me for a purpose, but if that is so, I have no thought as to what it might be, save to narrate our tale, so that others may read it and tremble.
After two days and nights I had begun to believe that the worst was over. We had interred most of the dead. I had even prevailed on the strongest of the men to clean out the tavern on the promise of free ale and grog.
Most of the men have spent the nights on the Havenhome, preferring the comfort of the known to the silent, eerie darkness of the dead town. I have been setting watches, but I suspect the men spend the bulk of their time staring seaward to avoid looking at that which has them so afraid. I do not blame them a jot.
After the burials were finally complete our pastor called for a service of remembrance, but I knew the mood of the crew better. I had the cook break open our cargo and prepare a feast while I myself ensured that the tavern was made ready. The men had made a fair pass at clearing up the stench and gore of the carnage that had been wrought there. I was able to hide the last stains of blood with the judicious application of straw and wood chippings. What I couldn’t mask was the memory; of the sightless eyes and the strewn limbs that had so recently laid scattered on the floor. I could only hope that a flagon of grog and the hearty company of my shipmates would dispel the chill that had fallen on my heart.
Night of the Wendigo Page 5