“No.” I told her. ‘You will some day, she said, when you hear the whistlin’ you’ll know. The
wanisid manitous,
evil spirit things is around. Somebody’s gonna die.’ ”
Prunie lay beside her husband. She felt a chill in spite of the warmth of the heavy quilts and blankets. Memories of old legends; stories of the hairy men; the
wendigo
; wild men of the woods, the
ganibod
; the dead people who walk; the under-the-lake-people; the old tales invaded her brain like misty ghosts that wouldn’t take clear shape or form. The fear of something ancient, something terrible and deadly, some- thing she knew existed but had never seen nor heard grew within her. She shuddered and Martin, feeling her tremble, asked if she was cold.
“Yes,” she said and snuggled against him. She slept fitfully, awakening suddenly in the late night. She was jolted upright in the bed still feeling the tugging, clawed hands of some nightmare creatures, imagined dream horrors.
The camp came alive with morning activity. Supplies were pushed into backpacks. Freddie and Ephraim carried gear to the lakeshore. Prunie and Sophia helped Nettie pour water on the campfires while they waited for Martin, Peter, and Nikolas to come up the lake with the canoes borrowed from the villagers. Auntie Rose paced back and forth at the far end of the spit of land and muttered her prayers.
Shouts announced Martin’s and the boys’ arrival with three smaller canoes. Uncle Alex supervised the placement of packs and people in them. He took his Elder’s place in the first canoe before they moved towards the north bank several kilometers away.
Before the second night in the new camp, brush lean-to shelters had been fashioned to face a central fire pit where the women prepared the meals. Smaller “bear-fires” burned in outlying pits.
The third night in camp, a despondent group sat around the fire. Two days without moose sign had passed. Nikolas and his dog brought in rabbits and a goose to provide the camp with fresh meat but the moose remained elusive.
The weather stayed warm. The bushes close to camp were heavy with Manitoba
mashkigimin
—high-bush cranberries—and a few late fruiting
pikwadjish
—wild mushrooms—were found on the forest floor. With a supply of walleyes and pike from the lake, the women prepared daily meals. The hunters grumbled as they ate, and complained every night that the moose must have moved farther northwest from Rabbit Lake.
When Auntie Rose heard this, she developed another bout of sulky silence. The women hoped her moody spell would soon end. Such behavior disturbed the harmony of the camp.
Each night, campfires provided a sense of safety, holding the thick darkness of the wilderness at bay. For Rose, the shadowy trees concealed
matchi manadad
—very evil things, the dead who live—watching, waiting to steal forward if the fires died.
The nights in this part of Manitoba were cold, silent, and, to Rose, threatening. She listened for whispering voices or the whistling calls, but heard nothing. Rose pulled her blanket tighter and recited songs of protection for herself and the group. Her repeated chants lasted until the first gray streaks of false dawn.
On the fifth morning, a damp haze of fog hung over the forest and camp blurring the outlines of everything it touched. The men sat huddled around the central fire.
Martin spoke to Peter and Uncle Alex. “Ain’t no moose for three-day’s walk. I say we go up past Rabbit Lake. What you think?”
Old Alex rubbed his hands together and held them palms outward to the campfire. “Good idea,” he said. “That lake has a big bog at the north end. There’s a big sinkhole in the middle of the bog you gotta watch out for, but it’s a safe enough place to camp and hunt.”
Peter said, “I heard nobody goes up there.”
“That sinkhole has a bad name, that’s why some hunters don’t go there,” Uncle Alex said. “It’s called the ‘death hole.’ Been there before. It’s a strange place.”
Auntie Rose stared at Alex and shook her head vigorously in negation. Martin saw the old uncle telegraph a quick message with his eyes.
Auntie Rose slammed her hand down on the earth and shouted, “No! Never—you can’t go there. Something bad will happen!”
Prunie was surprised when her auntie spoke out with such emphatic anger. When Rose disagreed with anything or anyone, she usually turned silent and never shouted.
Alex turned to Rose. “Not the time to speak of visions and deaths.” To the other men he said, “It is nothing. Get ready to leave.”
Uncle Alex acted as if the harsh exchange had not taken place and said, “We will leave when the sun stands directly over us and camp out by Rabbit Lake.”
It was obvious that old Rose did not like this plan at all. She went silent in her sulky manner. This time her silence seemed to convey something more than just disapproval.
Prunie saw a different expression on her auntie’s face—a look of fear. It flashed quickly like a burst of flame from bear fat dropped in a campfire. The old woman’s expression filled Prunie with a sense of dread.
At noon, the men packed their gear into three small canoes. When the hunters started paddling away, Martin shouted to Rose who stood apart from the others.
“Keep prayin’ for us and we’re all gonna come back.” Martin could not hear the words the old woman whispered to the wind.
The hunters arrived at Rabbit Lake before nightfall. Peter built a large fire. The bright blaze illuminated the shelters made from tarps and branches. They ate smoked fish and talked.
Nikolas sat close to the fire ring, squatting on his haunches, his arm draped about his dog. He stared north in the direction of the bog. “Uncle Alex, you said people didn’t come up here. Is there something you didn’t tell us about this place?”
Alex swallowed the bite of smoked pike before he spoke. “Your Auntie Rose is a superstitious old woman,” Alex said.
“There was a flat space where the bog is now, a burial site for murdered Cree and Ojibwe people. Generations ago the Dene people from up north fought our people over that flat place—good hunting land. The Dene pretended to leave but came back before dawn and slaughtered all the men in the camp. Old ones say they left the bodies unburied and put a Dene curse on the corpses. The spirits of the dead were unhappy.”
“What did our people do?” Martin asked Alex.
“Stories say our people came up here and buried all they could find and built spirit houses over the graves. Maybe it was too late to calm the spirits of those dead men. I don’t know. But no one from our tribes ever came back here much after that.”
“But that happened years ago,” Nikolas said.
“Yes,” Alex said. “Right after the bodies were buried, a big fire came through and burned all the trees and brush as well as the grave houses. The rains and heavy snows created high run-off and filled the creeks to overflowing. Creeks changed course and turned the burial ground into a lake for a few years until most of it dried up. Now it’s nothing but a bog with that deep sinkhole in the middle.”
Uncle Alex knocked tobacco ash from his pipe. “Now it’s grown back. Where there’s willows and water, you got moose. We’ll have good luck tomorrow.”
Martin heard gravel crunch and saw Nikolas and his dog leave the fire and walk to the edge of Rabbit Lake. A swift gust of wind grew the fire’s embers into flame. In the sudden fire-flare, Martin saw the man and the dog clearly. What Martin saw on Nikolas’s face was terror. Nikolas returned and knelt beside his dog and stared into the fire.
“What’s the matter?” Martin waited for an answer. None came. “You think maybe bad things live up in that bog?” Nikolas still did not answer. The dog crouched at his side whined and shifted his ears.
Peter put his arm around Nikolas and said, “You’re not afraid of an old tale about some things that died there a long time ago, are you?”
Again Nikolas did not answer. He pushed Peter’s arm from his shoulder and stood up abruptly. Nikolas stepped out of the ring of firelight; his dog followed at his heels, whimpering. They faced the forest and the bog, watching and listening.
“I need some sleep,” Martin yawned. “I’m shootin’ moose tomorrow.” Martin, Peter, and Alex went to the spruce bough shelters.
Freddie stood beside Nikolas. “Don’t be payin’ any heed to long ago stories. There ain’t no such things around today.”
“What makes you so sure, Freddie?” Nikolas muttered.
“Because nobody’s seen anything for almost a hundred years, that’s why I’m sure.”
“Maybe they weren’t lookin’ in the right places, Freddie.”
“You’re actin’ crazy, Nikolas. I’m goin’ to bed. Don’t let the spooks and
matchi
men get you.” Freddie laughed and walked away.
Nikolas stood alone staring into the darkness. The dog growled low in his throat, lifted his ears and pointed his muzzle into the air, sniffing. Nikolas moved back towards the fire. Some innate memory struggled to access ancient warnings. His senses became acute. He heard sounds. They came out of the black night, swirling to his ears on the mists rising from the sinkhole in the bog. The sounds were high-pitched whistles, dropping in tone and fading away to nothingness.
With shaking hands, Nikolas tore open his pouch of sacred tobacco and cedar and offered the contents to the coals. He chanted his prayer so quietly his ears did not hear the words. He prayed, because he now knew the old tales were true. The creatures lived. Dead souls walked the brush forests of Rabbit Lake; the hunting party had invaded their homeland.
Ephraim tended the fires circling the camp while the women talked story by the big campfire. Rose was over her pouting spells. She told stories of family foibles and escapades, which made everyone laugh out loud. The laughter echoed back from the ringing, low hills. The echoes brought a sudden quiet to the gathering of women.
“I think I’d better get to bed before I laugh myself to death,” Nettie said.
“Nobody ever dies laughin’,” Auntie Rose grumbled. “Death ain’t funny at all.”
Young Nettie stopped giggling abruptly. “That was a dumb thing to say, Sister Rose.” She hurried away.
Prunie put her arm around Rose. “We all say dumb things sometimes.”
“You think I’m just a foolish old lady when I tell you what the bones show me. Huh?” Rose sniffed.
“No Auntie. I don’t think that.”
“You don’t believe what I tell you?” Rose followed a spark’s skyward flight from the fire with her eyes.
“I didn’t say that. It’s just that—”
“It’s because you’re one of these modern Indians hanging around Wekusko or Flin Flon, listening to what white people say. You believe their stories more than our old stories? Our stories kept Ojibwe people protected more than a hundred generations.”
“Auntie Rose, it’s a different time.”
“Don’t I know that? Four generations separate you and me.” The young girl touched the weathered hand of her old auntie. “But I do listen, Auntie.”
“But do you believe? What I’m gonna tell you now, about things in the bog, you gotta believe. They are real livin’ creatures out there that are waitin’ to kill someone. I had visions. They are dead things but still alive and eatin’ living flesh.”
Prunie stiffened at the thought.
She paused and formed her words carefully so as not to anger the old woman. “Auntie, those bog things that could kill our men . . . What are they?”
“Like a man, but not a man. They are all
nibo,
dead—for long, long time, but still alive somehow. Got hands like ours, but with claws. They are
mask,
ugly
gi-mask,
disfigured.”
“Now you’re trying to scare me with those old stories about the
wendigo
boogeymen of the woods,” Prunie said.
“I’m not tryin’ to scare you, child!” Rose pulled away. “I just want you to know there are dead things that walk.”
Prunie whispered, “Auntie, don’t you think if something like that
did
exist, we would have seen them?”
“They been seen, but those who saw them never lived to tell about them. The dead men live in the cursed bog by Rabbit Lake.”
“Well, every one of the men has a rifle. If they see any of them up there, they can shoot them and kill them.”
“There are some things that can’t be killed—by guns, anyway. It’ll take more than bullets to kill them bog creatures.”
“Why do they live in a bog?”
Rose leaned towards Prunie. “They den in the bogs like beavers and muskrats.”
“How could they do that?”
“They go down under the water and dig dens into earth banks at the edge of deep water.”
“How do they get out in the winter when the ice freezes thick on the bog?” Prunie asked. “Wouldn’t they be trapped with nothing to eat?”
“Them creatures take moose and anything else that wanders into their bog, then stores the meat up for winter. Just like a beaver does with green poplar branches.
“They got holes and tunnels dug up into the woods. They sneak out and roam around whenever they want. Don’t make no nevermind if the bog is frozen over or not.”
“I see,” Prunie said. She smiled at her eighty-eight-year-old auntie and leaned over and kissed her on both cheeks and smoothed the old woman’s straggles of coarse white hair back under her floral-printed babushka. “I love you, Auntie Rose.”
“I love you too, Prunie. I wish you would send Ephraim to talk the men into comin’ away from that bog.”
“They’d laugh at us for worrying. The men plan to get winter meat and think that’s the place to do it.” Prunie stood. “I’m going to get us each a mug of hot coffee. It’s getting chilly. Aren’t you cold, Auntie?”
The old one shook her head. “I will have a cup anyway.” Rose reached for the spruce root basket of divining bones.
She shook the basket vigorously before she dumped the bones on the blanket folded into a square.
“Waugh!” the old woman cried out. “Again it is two who will die!”
At daybreak, Martin found Nikolas curled up in a ball, next to his dog, his special hat pulled down over his ears, sleeping by the embers of the fire.
When the group woke him, he seemed to be surprised that he was still in the encampment and said, “Waugh! I am still alive!”