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Mood Wendigo
by Thomas A Easton
When did this story begin? It's hard for anyone here in town to say. It looped back on itself and tied its bit of time in a knot. No one is really sure just what happened, though we do know we lost a good boy.
Did it start when Lydia Seltzer told her high school biology class about the wendigo? She was talking about the world's mystery beasts, the Abominable Snowman, the Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster and its cousins in other lakes around the world- She told them about all the expeditions, the lack of results, the questions-are the searchers simply crackpots? Or do elusive things still exist in the hidden comers of the world? And then she mentioned the wendigo, a thing that had never been more than a story, a superstition, something no one had ever believed in enough to check it out. Its name was Indian, and it was known across the Northeast, from Maine to Ontario. It screamed in the night, and anyone who sought the screamer disappeared without a trace. If they ever returned, they were mad, too blown of mind even to say what had happened to them. There were no descriptions of the wendigo.
Or did it start the day our town acquired a second Lydia?
Mad she was, and raving, but she was the same Lydia we had all known for a decade. The same wide mouth, the nose a little larger than she liked, the black hair worn short and curled over her collar. Neither was any beauty, but neither were they ugly, and it seemed surprising that she had never married. Or perhaps it was no surprise after all. She was tough-minded as only a woman can be, and she showed it at an unusually young age. Most women wait till their forties and later to show their steel. But not Lydia. She brooked no nonsense, in class or out, and for as long as we had known her she had been given to severely tailored pantsuits, wool for work, denim for evenings and weekends.
When did it start? Who can say? The best I can do is tell you where I came into it. That was some time after the wendigo class I was at home, sitting at the kitchen table, going over the town budget for the fourth time. Sarah, my wife, was in the living room, watching something inane on TV. We didn't talk much anymore, not about her job at the bank, not about mine. We had no kids.
When the buzzer sounded, I heard her chair creak as she rose to answer the door. There was a murmur of voices, steps in the hall, and "Harry? Miss Seltzer wants to see you."
There was a glare with the words. I ignored it, raised my head from the papers and said, "Duty calls, then. Have a seat, Lydia. Coffee, a drink?"
"Do you have any tea?" As Lydia pulled the other chair out from the table, Sarah disappeared. A moment later, the sound of the TV rose, as if to drown out anything that might give my wife's fantasies the lie. But my attention was for Lydia. She seemed more serious than usual, if possible, and there was a folded paper jutting from her bag. I wondered what was on her mind as 1 filled the kettle. I found out soon enough.
She sat still, watching me as I moved about the room, saying nothing until our tea was before us and I had sat down again. Then she said, "Mayor, 1 need a leave of absence. A short one."
She stirred her cup, squeezed the bag. and dumped it in the ashtray half full of my pipe ashes. "Of course," I said. "But shouldn't you be asking the superintendent about this?" I was puzzled. It wasn't my chore to handle the teachers, thank goodness. I was the town's unpaid mayor, and there were professionals, paid ones, to handle day-to-day affairs.
"I will," she replied. She looked at me, her brown eyes unblinking. I remember thinking that for all her ma
"But what do you need help with?"
She shrugged and look the paper from her bag. She unfolded it and handed it to me. "Look at this," she said. "It's French-Canadian, a rhyme, collected back in the thirties by the WPA people. I found it in the university library, buried in the folklore files."
The paper was covered with a pencilled scrawl, a copy of a poem that must have been set down by someone who wished to capture the flavor of a speech pattern;
Ze Wendigo,
Zat crazy beast, 'E never eats,
But loves t'go.
In darkest night, 'E runs and screams
And stirs ze dreams
Of second sight.
But when you go
To join ze run, 'E stays unknown,
Ze Wendigo.
I packed and lit my pipe, studying the rhyme, before I spoke. "Interesting," I said. I sent a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling- "But what does it have to do with a leave of absence?"
Her fingers tensed around her teacup. She had come to me, but she seemed unwilling to reveal her problem- Could it be so rare or odd or shameful? Suppose it was, I told myself, and then I guessed me answer.
"You want to go wendigo hunting." I laughed.
Her lips tightened, and I was immediately sorry for the laughter. That was just the reaction she had feared. Of course.
No one wants to be thought a nut, a crackpot, even if their ideas are a bit off the beaten track. "But go on," I said, trying to save the situation. "Maybe I can help. At least, I'm game to try."
She relaxed as if that was all she had wanted. I caught a faint whiff of perfume or cologne. And she began to talk. She told me of the wendigo class, of her own interest in the strange, of her sense of fairness that led her to the library, of her conviction that all the legends must reflect some grain of truth, of her wish to seek that truth. She had come to me for suggestions on where to seek, a guess at the chances of success, perhaps even a partner in the strange quest.
Why me? Well, I do have a reputation for imagination.
Last year's ad program for my oil business certainly stirred folks up enough. And men there were the gimmicks I had come up with to get more tourists into the area. And men, too, there had been a few incidents now and again to co
But what could I do? I wouldn't know a wendigo if I saw one- Or heard one, rather. She was silent while I relit my pipe and thought. She didn't fidget much, only turning her empty cup back and forth between her hands. Finally, 1 said,
"There's at least one fellow in this town who could help. If you'll come to the town hall tomorrow after school, I'll ask him to meet us there."
She nodded and sighed. Her breath whistled as if she had been holding it. So I would help, after all. Her voice was softer when she spoke. "Do you really mink we can…?"
"How can we know?" 1 grimaced, sympathetically, I hoped.
"We've no idea what it looks like or where to look. But we can try."
The fellow I wanted to talk to was Howie Wyman. Grizzled, always overalled and booted, he had been doing odd jobs as long as anyone cared to recall. He knew all the stories, too, though he didn't talk much. He seemed to prefer the woods and streams to human company, even his wife, but he was in town at the time. painting a house over on Water Street.
I sent a secretary to ask him to come by a little after three. I was still alone when he showed up, a motley collection of paint spatters, whiskers, and faded cloth completely alien to any civilized conception of a government office. My secretary showed him in, though, as if he were clad in a threepiece suit and fresh from the barber, which tells you something about our town. It's informal. Partly because it's small and partly because its people waste little energy on nonessemial appearances. They dress up mostly for church and they try to keep their drinking private.
I said, "Thank you. Bo
He took it, looked for my wastebasket, and got rid of his wad of chewing tobacco. "You wanted me. Mayor."
"Ayuh," I said. "Lydia Seltzer dragged me in on a project of hers. I thought you might be able to tell us something helpful."
"Like what?" He looked doubtful. He knew Lydia was the science teacher, and he knew nothing about science. I doubted he'd ever gotten past the sixth grade. I was starting to tell him about the problem when Lydia walked in. Bo
I introduced Howie to Lydia. "This is the fellow I was talking about. I was just going to tell him the problem."
She took the other chair. "Shall I go on, then?" When I nodded, she produced that paper again and then handed it to Howie. While he read, she said what she wanted, flatly and directly. The nervousness 1 had seen last night was gone.
When she finished, Howie set the paper on the corner of my desk and said simply, "Pork Hill." I raised my eyebrows, and he went on. "My dad was up there once. Ayuh, huntin' deer in the dark of the moon. He heard that screamDidn't see nothin', though."
"Where's Pork Hill?"
"North by west, 'bout ten miles."
And that was all he had for us.
We now had a place to look, and the next dark of the moon was just two weeks away, in case that mattered. Lydia could hardly wait. She insited on borrowing a tent, sleeping bags, a Coleman stove, all the gear anyone could want for a night camping on a lonely hilltop. She got most of it from two members of the school board. She got their sons, too. Keith Hutchison and Ro
I wish I had been right. Keith was a lanky boy, tall, a forward on the school basketball team. Ro
They didn't, of course. I didn't believe in any danger myself, so I didn't try to talk them out of it, and Lydia made it sound like a lark. All the way up there, the four of us and the gear crowded into my old station wagon, she waved her camera and ran on about the splash a picture of a real, live wendigo would make.