That Which Should Not Be (5 page)

Travis’s eyes went from mine to Tom’s, and as I followed them I saw the answer to my question in both their faces. 

“No, kid,” Travis lied.  “I was just sayin’ is all.  There ain’t no wolves in these parts.  But Joe is dead either way.” 

Tom still hadn’t spoken, and I knew given how he guarded his words, he wasn’t likely to. 

Then Travis continued.  “Look, we got dry wood.  You clean off a spot,” he said to me, “and I’ll get a fire going.  I think I can round up something for us to eat.  And then we can go look for Joe.”

When I heard that I lost my words.  Travis didn’t do anything for anybody.  Now Tom did speak.  “You don’t cook,” he said.  

“Yeah, well, looks like somebody has to learn, huh?”

With that he turned and walked away.  I went to work clearing a spot for a fire, and soon we had a pretty big one going.  Before the sun had risen too far in the sky, Travis had cooked up some of the rabbit we had trapped the day before.  For a man who had no way with food, I remember thinking to myself that it wasn’t half bad.  I had never thought much of Joe’s cooking, and I reckoned what Travis had made was just as good.  I ate more than I was accustomed to.  I was hungry, and Travis, though he had cooked it himself, obviously had doubts about his ability as he ate almost none. 

“Not hungry this mornin’,” he said.  Something with his stomach. 

We ate quickly.  If Joe were still alive out there, we needed to find him and find him fast.  Tom gave us our orders. 

“Each man take a line and walk it.  Don’t wander off.  We’ll cover the forest close by as good as we can, but I don’t want nobody else gettin’ lost.  You walk straight out and then you follow your tracks and come straight back.  You got it?”

Each man nodded his assent, and we were off.  Before long, the camp was far behind me, and I could no longer see the man to either my right or left.  The forest was thick, and if Joe had climbed under a bush or a tree for cover in the storm, there would be no finding him now.  With the snow as thick as it was, I doubted I would spot him unless I damn near stepped on his chest.  I began to think back to the night before, the things I had heard, seen.  The thought of it made me stop in my tracks.  If any of it were real, even a fraction of it, then Joe would never have left his tent.  Never willingly, that is.  No man would, and especially not one as superstitious as he.  Joe was no coward; I would never claim that.  But I wouldn’t call it courage that would lead a man to have stepped into that maelstrom.  And that could mean only one thing — someone had taken him.  Someone big — Joe was a strong man.  His attacker had done it without making a sound, without knocking a single thing out of place, without leaving any evidence of his having been there. 

The forest changed.  I noticed every sound, every twig snapping and every creak of every tree.  Something, and I didn’t know what it was, was out there, and suddenly I felt the cold stare of an unknown pair of eyes on me.  I spun around, peering into the blinding white wilderness that surrounded me.  That’s when I saw Joe.

He was standing a couple hundred yards from me.  His arms and legs were spread wide, like he was trying to hold up the two trees on either side of him, or like he was trying to hug the world.  His mouth was slightly open, his head cocked to the left.  He was completely naked.  At first, I didn’t know what to do.  He had clearly lost his mind, and I knew he must be freezing.  But I started towards him anyway. He was alive, and I would do my best to save him.

But as I walked towards him he never moved, even though I knew he had to see me.  Then I began to notice something was wrong.  Joe was a big man, but he didn’t look big anymore.  He looked thin.  He looked small.  He looked . . . empty.  Then I saw the ropes, one tied around each hand and each foot.  They ran to the trees on either side, and there was another rope running to the branch above his head.  I recognized the purpose immediately and wished I could not.  I had done it a thousand times.  Each time I had stripped a raccoon and laid out its hide to tan the pelt.  At that moment I saw the blood, the pool that dripped down from the seams where Joe's skin had been ripped from his body. 

I didn’t scream.  I just turned and ran.  I ran blindly.  I smashed through branches, slashing my cheek so deeply the blood flowed down my face.  I fell no less than three times, but by some miracle I found myself back at the camp. 

Tom was the only one there, and I quickly fell at his feet.  He looked at me like I had lost my mind, and part of me wondered if I had.  He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me up.

“What’s the meaning of this, boy!” he screamed in my face.  There was fear in his eyes, and that was an emotion you didn’t often see from him. 

“It’s Joe,” I said through gulps of breath.  “I found him.”

“Then why didn’t you bring him back?” Tom asked. 

“He’s sliced up,” I remember saying.  “Skinned like an animal.”

“Skinned?” Tom whispered.  The anger and excitement had vanished from his voice.  He didn’t know if he should believe me, but he had no doubt he didn’t want to.  “Show me,” he commanded. 

I led him, reluctantly I might add, back down the path made by my boots in the snow.  It had seemed so far before, and now my fevered mind wanted nothing more than to never reach my destination, yet it came more quickly than seemed possible.  Then we arrived, and the thing I feared most to see met my eyes.  There was no body.  But fortunately, if you can use that word, the once pure white snow was stained a dark crimson red.  Tom stepped forward and knelt down where the red snow began.  He then looked at me. 

“So the body was here?” he asked. 

“Yes.”

“Only a few minutes before?”

“Yes.”

“Then, where is it now?”

“I don’t know.”

Tom sighed deeply and stood up. 

“Well,” he said calmly but to no one in particular, “it was definitely here before.  No doubt about that.”  He turned back to me.  “You sure it was Joe?  You sure it wasn’t just an animal?”

“He wasn’t just lying there.  He was tied up to the tree.  He was tied up liked you’d tan a hide.  He was here, Tom.  He was here, and now he’s gone, and that means somebody took him.  Ain’t no animal done this.”

“No,” Tom said decisively.  “No animal did it.  And that means we are all in danger here.  Let’s get back to the camp.  With any luck, the others will be there, too.”  He turned and took a couple steps.  Then he stopped.  “Look,” he said, “it’s good enough to tell them that Joe is dead, and someone took his body.  That’s enough.  They don’t need to know how you found him.”

I nodded my head to show him I understood, and we turned and hurried back to the camp.  Tom was in front, and I noticed that he constantly glanced from side to side as we moved along.  If whatever had taken Joe was around us, he at least wanted to see him coming.  We found Doc Stanley, Andy, and Travis huddled around the fire. 

“About damn time,” Travis grunted.  Tom ignored him. 

“Did you find anything?” Andy asked, his voice shaking.  I could only imagine how he was going to react to what he was about to hear. 

“Joe is dead,” Tom said matter-of-factly.

“Dead?” Andy stuttered. 

“Mountain lion?” Doc Travis asked nonchalantly. 

“No, he was murdered.”  Tom let his pronouncement sink in.  Doc Stanley went pale while Andy looked like he might pass out.  Only Travis kept his cool.  “And his body has been taken.”  Now Andy did fall to his knees.  No one seemed to notice. 

“Who could have done this?” Doc Stanley asked.  “There were no footprints, no signs of struggle.”

“The Wendigo,” Andy muttered as he rocked back and forth. 

“He must have heard something, saw something,” Tom answered.  “He left camp, and somebody got him.  Then, the snow covered his tracks.  It’s as simple as that.  No ghosts.  It’s a man out there, or men.”

“We should hunt ‘em down and kill ‘em,” Travis spat.  “I got no love for Joe, but he was one of ours.”

“No!” Andy wailed.  “We gotta get out of here.  No man did this, and we can’t kill what did.  Let’s go.  Let’s go now!”

Tom waved his hand as if to dismiss him.  “We ain’t going now, and we ain’t going to hunt down who did this.  The day's already burnt up.  We’re going to stay here tonight, and then at first light we start heading back to town.  I don’t want to hear nothin’ else about it.  We’ll take turns tonight keeping watch.  They won’t trick us again, and anybody who shows up won’t be walkin’ out.”

“Who’s goin’ first?” Andy moaned.

“I’ll go, I’ll take the first watch,” Doc Stanley said, casting a contemptuous glance at Andy.  “But you will damn well have to do it at some point, by God.”

“Right,” Tom said.  “Jack, can you take second watch?”

“Yah,” I muttered.  I would say I wasn’t scared, but that would be a lie.

“I’ll take next, then Travis.  And Andy, I think you can handle the last watch till sunrise.”

Andy didn’t look too confident, but he didn’t complain.  It was the best he could hope for. 

“Good,” Tom said, looking to the west.   The sun had fallen below the horizon, and soon it would be dark.  “I suggest you all get some sleep,” he continued.  “It’s going to be a long night.”

Chapter

7

As I walked to my tent, I noticed Doc Stanley pulling a crate close to our fire.  He held a rifle in his hand, the same I knew I would have to bear in only a few short hours.  I hoped I would not need to use it.  He rubbed oil along the stock, and I could tell he was trying desperately to remain calm.  I grabbed two logs and walked over to him.  As I threw them on the fire, he looked up.

“Thank you, Jack,” he said quietly, rubbing a thick rag back and forth along the rifle. I simply nodded and took a seat on the ground next to him.  For a moment, I just sat there.  He didn’t speak, and I didn’t know what to say.  I couldn’t know, of course, what was coming or when it would hit, but I had a feeling that whatever it was, Doc Stanley had the best chance of seeing it first.

Finally he broke the silence.  “You should go on,” he said.  “You won’t get much sleep, and there’s no telling what you might see.”

I simply nodded in reply.  But I had a question before I went. 

“Doc, I saw Joe.  I saw him today out in the woods.  Tom didn’t want me to say anything, but I saw him, and ain’t no man did that.  No animal, either.”

Doc Stanley held up his hand.  “I know,” he said simply.  “Tom told me about it.  Didn’t want you to say nothing cause of what it would have done to Andy.”

“Then, you know we ain’t dealing with nothin’ you can kill with that gun?”

He turned and looked at me then, and I saw fear in his face.  He knew all too well. 

“We survive the night, then we get out of here.  He has power in the forest, but not in the cities.  He is the lord of a lost world.  He draws his strength from the wild.”

“He?” I asked stupidly, as if I didn’t know.

“The Wendigo,” Doc Stanley replied matter-of-factly.  “No question of that now.”

“But I thought you didn’t believe in that?”

“Oh, I believe,” he said.  “Seen too many things out here not to.  You would have come to believe, too, even if this had never happened.  But now it has.  We are at the mercy of the Old One now, and there is no power we possess that can stop him.”

There was a haunting call in the distance, as if to punctuate the doctor’s words.  I saw his eyes narrow and then, “Whippoorwill,” he said.  “Bad sign.  They should be long gone by now.  But they follow death, so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Is there any way to stop it?  The Wendigo I mean?”

“You ever met anybody who has seen the Wendigo?” Doc Stanley asked. 

“Well, no,” I stammered, “but I had never even heard of it ‘til this trip.”

The doctor allowed himself a chuckle.  “Fair enough.  But I will just go ahead and tell you that I've been wandering these woods for thirty years, and I've not met a soul that saw him and came out of it alive.  So, I don’t suppose there is a way to stop him.”  Then, he paused.  “Of course, the legends do speak of a weakness.” 

Doc Stanley looked up from his work and furrowed his brow.  “They say he was the most beautiful of them all, the Old Ones.  But when he was cursed, his beauty was taken, and he was rendered hideous to behold.  And perhaps if you were to show him his own image, you might have a chance.  But, like I said, that legend has been around for as long as I can remember, too, yet I've never met a man who used it to his advantage.”

I looked out into the now darkening forest, and in my mind’s eye I saw the Wendigo in every tree, in every swaying branch, in every rustling bush.  “So, he’s really out there,” I said. 

Doc Stanley just smiled. 

“There’s nothing out there, Jack.”  I looked at him and didn’t understand.  After all this, I thought there was no question. 

“What do you mean?” I asked.  Doc Stanley looked up and off into the distance, and I saw him make a decision. 

“You should know,” he said, turning to me.  “Tom didn’t want to tell you, but you should know.  The Old Ones have passed from this Earth, at least in their physical form.  The Wendigo is a spirit, a powerful one, yes, but not strong enough to act in this world.  Not without a body, at least.”  Doc Stanley looked at me, seeing if I understood.  I did not.  “The Wendigo, my friend, is one of us.” 

I sat there a second, not believing what I had heard.  Then, I turned slowly, looking back at the tents behind me, wondering about the men who lay within. 

“But if it’s not you, and it’s not me,” I began, but Doc Stanley held up his hand to stop me. 

“We don’t know that is true.”

“What?” is all I could manage. 

“The curse of the Wendigo is upon us.  Whoever he has taken, he will soon take completely.  Only the dead are above suspicion.  The true horror of the curse is that he who has been chosen does not know it at first.  The Great Old Ones are the masters of dreams, and in those dreams they will possess you.  To he who is Wendigo, the possession will begin as nothing more than a nightmare, a horrible flash of color and pain.  But, eventually, the power of the Wendigo will overcome him, and he will live the life of the undead, locked in his own mind, seeing through his own eyes as he does unspeakable things, but having no power to control it.”

I thought back to the night Joe disappeared, to the fevered and demon-haunted dreams that filled my mind.  I shuddered at the horror that might be before me.

“So, tonight,” Doc Stanley continued, “I will be watching the others.  It is not the things of the forest I fear.  It is what lurks in our own midst.  Now, it is late.  Go sleep, if sleep will come.” 

I left him then, and something inside of me knew two things:  I would not sleep that night, and I would never see Doc Stanley again. 

*   *   *

I didn’t sleep.  My fevered mind raced from dark thought to darker.  It seemed to me there could be only two choices.  Either I was the Wendigo or I would die at his hands.  That one fate was more horrible than the next offered no comfort.  And that death was the preferable choice . . .  These were the thoughts that filled my mind, and my troubled soul found no respite.

After several hours, I decided there was no point, and I arose to relieve Doc Stanley.  The fire still burned, but Stanley was gone.  He had not disappeared without a trace; in the flickering firelight, I could see blood dripping from the box on which he had sat.  The area around it was stained crimson with the same blood.  The rifle lay in the snow.  I could see something else was beside it, something that shimmered tan against the red blood beneath it.  But I ignored whatever it was.  I needed the rifle.  That was my primary concern. 

I ran to where it lay and offered a glance to the thing that sat beside it.  And then I fell backwards.  It was Doc Stanley’s face — just his face — as if it had been ripped clean from his skull.  Empty black holes stared up at me where his eyes should have been.  

I reached down and grabbed up the gun.  It was sticky with dried blood.  Then I heard quick footsteps behind me.  I spun around and shouldered the rifle, but it was only the others.  It was then that I realized I had been screaming the whole time. 

“What happened here?” Tom yelled.

“I don’t know.  I just found him like this.”

Tom stepped forward and saw the face that still sat upon the ground.  He stumbled backwards and looked at me.  It was then that the wind picked up, and in that wind was a voice — that of Doc Stanley. 

“Help me!” it cried, begged.  Oh, it was a horrible voice, a moaning shriek that rent the air and my soul.  We all heard it, each man.  We turned about ourselves trying desperately to place it.  But it was to our left and, then, our right.  It was in front and then behind.  Finally it was everywhere, all around, all at once. 

“Tell us what happened,” Tom commanded above the voice in the wind.

“I’ve told you.  I got up and found this.”

“You didn’t hear anything?  You didn’t see anything?”

“No!” I screamed.  “Nothing!”

“How is that possible, Jack?” Tom stated more than asked. 

“How is any of this possible?” I screamed. 

“Give me the gun, Jack,” Tom commanded.  His voice was too calm, too under control.  He was struggling to keep it that way.  Then suddenly I realized — he thought it was me.  We stood there in silence for a second as Doc Stanley’s wale echoed around us, sometimes louder, sometimes not. 

“No!” I shouted, as firmly as my feeble heart could manage. 

“That’s an order, son,” Tom said calmly. 

“I think we’re beyond orders now, Captain,” I replied. 

“Enough of this foolishness!” Travis growled, taking a step forward.  “Give me the gun!”

I shouldered the rifle and leveled it at Travis’s heart.

“I’ll shoot any man who tries to take it from me.”

“You can’t kill us all,” Travis spat, taking another step.

“But I can damn sure kill you, Travis Walker.  Damn sure.  It was you who brought this down on us.  Two men are already dead for what you done.  And, if I am going to die tonight, you sure as Hell are going with me.”

“Look, Jack,” Tom said, “it’s one of us.  You know that.  It could be you.  Can you live with it if it is?”

“It could be you, too, Tom.  You don’t know any better than me.”

“It was you who found Joe,” Travis said.  “And you who found the Doc, or what’s left of him, at least.  You think that was a coincidence?”

I turned back to Travis.  “And what about you?” I said.  “Never cooked a day in your life, and then Joe dies, and all of the sudden you can?  I noticed you didn’t eat any of it either.  Was it ‘cause you couldn’t?”

“Now, wait one minute,” Travis said, backing up and putting a hand out to Tom who was now eying him suspiciously.  “I was sick, you know that,” he said, pointing at Tom.

“I don’t know anything, Travis.  All I know is the boy is right.”

“And where were you when we found Joe’s body?  Huh?” Andy stammered. “We came back to the camp, and you were still gone.  It had to be you that took it.”

Travis turned to me.  His face contorted into a snarl.  He took a step toward me.  I raised my rifle back at him and started to pull the trigger.  But before I could, there was a thud as Tom smashed a piece of firewood against the crown of Travis's skull.  His eyes rolled back in his head, and Travis collapsed to the ground. 

“Tie him up!” Tom commanded. 

We pulled Travis up to the wagon and lashed his hands and feet to its side.  It was no easy task.  He was all dead weight, and Andy was little help.  Eventually he was tied fast.  We waited for him to awaken.  Only then would we find some answers.