Chương 34: Chapter 33 - The Expert

We were in the drawing room. I had claimed the seat closest to the fire. It went well with my blanket and thermos of cocoa-spiked coffee. The coffee had cooled considerably since Igor had made it over an hour ago, but it was still warm enough I cuddled it to my chest. Jacob and Jan had been set up on YouTube in the library, but Anna was with us, standing in the magic circle so everyone could see her. Darius, Iset, Olivia, and Conrad were also there.

We all listened as Jacky stood at the small desk on the far side of the room and talked on his phone.

"One of my residents saw it," he said. Then: "No, you misunderstand me. She saw it, but it wasn't—Arif, does it matter? Look, do you know what the thing is or not?" There was a brief pause.

"Good. Hold on. I'm putting you on speaker." Arif didn't bother holding on. He was still talking when Jacky pressed the button so we could all hear him. Arif's voice was full of excitement.

"—surprised that you found one! These things are rare. And the last known rumor of one being down that far south is hundreds of years ago."

"Since the early sixteen-hundreds, perhaps?" Jacky said.

"Around then, sure! Oh, I wish I could see it…maybe—""Is it possible for you to see it?"

"Anyone can see it—but, you should know that. Your resident saw it."

"Under interesting circumstances which aren't relevant to this conversation. Does the creature have a name?"

"It's called a wendigo. Most of what we know about them comes from the tribes that lived around Nova Scotia. Wendigo territory is primarily north of that, but they've been known to come further south during hard winters. I'm still trying to figure out what it's doing in your neighborhood. You've had a lot of snow, but it hasn't been that bad, has it?"

"And I'm trying to figure out why I haven't heard of these creatures," Jacky said.

"Because they aren't under your jurisdiction. They're not alive."

"Ah." I had tried to capture the impression it gave me in my sketch: the gauntness of the thing, how far back its eyes had sunk into its long skull, how you could see all its bones through its ash-gray skin, and how the matted scraps of hair swayed in the wind or got tangled in its small rack of antlers. It had looked dead, so I had tried to draw it that way. Maybe I'd done too good of a job. I called out from the couch, "Look, I know my sketch made it look dead, but I promise you, it was alive.

It was moving around."

"Ah-ha! Hello, mysterious resident. I take it you're the one that saw it?"

"Yeah."

"I'm glad to meet you. I'm Arif, the local expert on all supernatural, non-humanoid creatures. By local, I mean, we're both living on this quarter of the globe, and I'd claim to be an expert on humanoid supernaturals too, but they get testy about that. Speaking of which—hey, Darius!"

"Good evening, Mr. Tremblay."

"Have you reconsidered my proposal?"

"I haven't wasted a single second reconsidering it. My answer is no."

"You can't blame a man for trying. Hey, mysterious resident, do you have a name?"

"Emerra," I said.

"Emerra, you did a fine job with that sketch. It gave me the creeps just looking at it. In their native forms, wendigos always look like they're the rotting skeleton of something that died of hunger. It's the western version of a starving ghost. You know—if insatiable greed could walk and talk. How tall was it?" I thought back. Knowing Conrad gave me a new standard to measure things by, so I felt pretty confident I knew the answer.

"Seven or eight feet."

"Wow. Big boy. Still not alive."

"But—""This is one of those annoying technicalities experts make up so we can correct people. Don't take it personally. If something's moving around of its own volition and I tell you it's not alive, it's usually because the thing doesn't have a physical body. It wasn't born, therefore it isn't alive, and it can't die."

"That thing uprooted a tree! How does it not have a body?"

"Congratulations! You've put your thumb on one of the big mysteries of our world. This won't answer your question, but it might help to think of it as being kind of like Big Jacky." I glanced at Noctis. He was sitting back in the desk chair with his elbows propped up and his finger bones interlaced. Arif continued, "It's more than a spirit, but it's less than alive. It doesn't have a body in the normal sense of the word, but the form it has is real enough it can act on physical matter."

"It can kill us, but we can't kill it?" There was a slight pause.

"Harsh and to the point. Yes." Iset said, "What do you mean by 'their native form?'""Well, the thing about not having a physical body—it means that it can possess other bodies. Can, and usually does." Jacky said, "If it can possess other bodies, then it's less real—as you would say—than I am."

"That sounds about right." Anna said, "What happens to the people it possesses?" Jacky and I both looked at her. After a second, Jacky translated. Arif said, "Things don't end well for them."

"Do they die?" Jacky asked.

"Not all the time, but none of them recover." I translated what Arif had said for Anna. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. For a moment, she looked sad, but then she reached into some pile of inner fortitude I was pretty sure I lacked, and her face cleared.

"Why do the people they possess all limp?" Darius asked.

"Ah! Did you see any footprints?"

"Yes."

"From its natural form, or from a possessed person?"

"Both, we think." Arif laughed. It was the mad laugh of an obsessed and delighted mind.

"Do you have pictures? Can you send them to me?"

"That depends on whether or not we ever get through this conversation, Mr. Tremblay."

"Right. The footprints are another mystery. We know the feet of the people they possess change somehow, but we aren't sure at what level or how they're changing. There's one theory—it has a few problems—but there's one theory that says that the wendigo still travels as fast as possible, even when it's possessing a body, and the friction from the speed rips the feet off, leaving nothing but red-hot stumps." Arif couldn't see how most of us recoiled. He blathered on, ignorant.

"I think that theory ignores too much of the transmutation evidence—""Arif," Darius said, "how does it travel that fast?"

"It runs on the wind. They have some kind of a relationship with it. To a limited degree, they can control it, and it lets them run incredibly fast."

"When you say 'it runs on the wind—'" Iset said.

"I mean on it. There are accounts where they've been seen running across the treetops, then they mount into the sky higher than any tree could grow."

"How fast are we talking here?" Darius asked.

"You want more specific than 'fast enough it can rip off limbs?'""You said that was only a theory."

"Good point. We don't know exactly how fast, and it appears to vary. A good estimate would be to take a very fast-moving animal—like a reindeer or a horse—then add the speed of the wind on top of that, but it does move slower when it's possessing someone."

"How do we get rid of it?" There was silence over the line.

"You've got a man-eater, don't you?" Arif said.

"Is that unusual?" Jacky asked. The expert sighed.

"No. About half the reports involve them eating people. I'm sorry, Darius, but there's no way to kill it. If it's possessing someone, you can kill the host, but that won't stop it. It'll just leave and go find another host—probably after killing and eating you."

"Then how did other people deal with it?"

"They didn't. They died a lot. Some people tried to coax it north—the idea was that once it returned to its native territory, it wouldn't wander south again."

"Coax it how?"

"Not sure. My guess would be with food. Wendigos are always hungry, so that'd be the easiest way to get their attention. But they'll eat almost anything, so I don't know how people thought they could force it to focus on them—and before you get excited, I should warn you, there's no confirmation this worked. Most people had to wait until it went away."

"But it can be sealed," Olivia said suddenly.

"It's a spirit, so it can be sealed."

"Well…yes…theoretically."

"No one tried it?"

"The Algonquin mages didn't have sealing magic, and the European settlers weren't exactly friendly to witches and sorcerers." Everyone fell silent as they considered this. Jacky asked, "Arif, is there anything else we should know?"

"Not that I can think of. Not much is known about them, and you got all the general information. If you want, I could send you some of the more detailed accounts and the papers that have been written about them."

"Send them to me please, Mr. Tremblay," Darius said.

"If you send me those footprint photos."

"Done."

"I'll email those papers to you as soon as we get off the phone."

"Which will be now," Jacky added.

"Thank you for your help, Arif, but we have a lot to discuss."

"I hope you'll call me later. I'll need an account of what's been—""Goodbye, Arif." Jacky pressed the button to end the call. We all sat in silence, until Anna quietly called my name.

"Oh!" I said.

"Right. Sorry." I filled her in. The rest of the room listened without interruption. Then I said, "Anna, we could be here for a long time. Do you want to stay, or do you want to go play with Jacob and Jan?"

"Do you want me to go?" she asked. I was forced into a little honesty.

"I want you to look after the boys. Please." After a second, she nodded and left. I wondered if anyone was going to say anything to me, but it seemed like we were all a part of the conspiracy. When she was gone, Darius spoke first.

"At least now we know what we're dealing with and roughly what we can do."

"Darius," I said, "do you know most of the people in town?"

"If I don't, Mrs. Park certainly does. We can ask her when she arrives tomorrow."

"There was a woman at the Historical Museum. Her name was Sky." He sat forward in his armchair.

"Sky Johnson."

"You know her?"

"I know of her. Why do you ask?"

"Because she said her boss—or the guy who used to be her boss, he fired her—she said he was acting strange and limping. She said she would have sworn it wasn't him."

"She worked with Jane McNabb," Darius muttered.

"The missing housekeeper?" Iset asked.

"Yes. So we also have a reasonable guess who the wendigo might be possessing."

"Can we seal it?" I asked.

"Iset can do sealing magic," Olivia said. As I looked over at the mummy, Darius added, "And ancient Egyptian sealing magic is the most powerful sealing magic there is."

"I thought you weren't a witch," I said.

"I'm not," Iset explained.

"It's a religious rite. All I need is a suitable container, but before that, there's a problem we have to deal with—I can only seal a spirit."

"The expert said it was a spirit."

"It's inhabiting a physical body. We'll have to remove it." There was a moment of silence.

"You mean kill the host?" Conrad asked.

"No," Jacky and Darius said at the same time. Jacky elaborated: "Mr. Bhaird is an innocent man, however unpleasant he may be."

"And we can't go around killing innocent people," Darius said.

"That creature is killing a person each night," Olivia pointed out.

"It needs to be stopped. Arif said the hosts never recover—""That does not change the fact he's innocent," Jacky said.

"Tell me, Olivia, how many innocent people are you willing to kill to stop the wendigo?" Olivia shut her mouth so tight that I could see her jaw clench. She turned and stared at the floor.

"Can you help, Jacky?" Iset asked.

"I won't kill him either."

"That's not what I meant. If the wendigo has the same kind of body you do, could you touch it?"

"I'm afraid not. Our forms are too different for us to interact."

"It killed and ate a person while in its native form," Darius said.

"And if I strangled you, you would die. Simply because we can both act on the same physical matter does not mean that we can act on each other. I can't touch the children any more than you can." Still gazing at the chalked-up floor, Olivia said, "There might be something I can do." Everyone stared. She turned to Iset.

"If we can lure it into a magic circle, I might be able to draw it out." Iset didn't respond, but Jacky did.

"You're talking about an exorcism. That magic isn't normally associated with witchcraft."

"An exorcism banishes a spirit," Olivia said.

"I'm talking about drawing it to myself." I said, "Now hold on—" But I could only start my objection before Olivia interrupted.

"Not all the way! But if I'm drawing it to me, that'll pull it out from the body."

"Have you ever tried to manipulate a spiritual form before?" Jacky asked.

"Once it's in the circle, I can change the rules of the space. I think I can do it."

"But that means we'd have to lure it," Conrad said. We all fell silent. Conrad didn't often speak when we were gathered together, but when he did, everyone listened. He stretched out in his chair.

"Considering how dangerous it is, and the fact that we're talking about using experimental magic, we won't be able to do this anywhere near town. We'll have to lure it for several miles. We don't know how to do that."

"You're saying you don't think we can do it?" Olivia said.

"I'm saying that until we figure out a reliable way to get its attention, we won't even be able to try."

"Conrad's right," Darius said.

"We'll have to make researching that a priority." He stood up.

"Since the matter is urgent, I think we should divide our efforts. Olivia, you research the magic. Iset can find a container. Conrad, Emerra, can I ask for your help going through Arif's papers? I have no doubt they're already clogging my inbox." Conrad immediately agreed, but my response started with a very promising, "Uhhhhhhh."

"No?" Darius said.

"I have to start some laundry, but I can come after that."

"We'll be in the sitting room." We all stood up to go to our various tasks. Since Olivia was already standing, she should have been the first out the door, but she hung back, letting the others leave before her. I had to untangle myself from my blanket, throw it over my arm, and fetch my thermos before I was ready to go. I wandered toward the door, my head full of the advice I'd looked up about how to get ground-in mud out of clothing, but then Olivia called my name. I turned to her. She seemed agitated.

"I thought a patroonship would be religious," she said.

"It was," I said.

"The whole town was pretty religious. Krusen paid for Dominie to come over from the Netherlands."

"In your dreams, did you hear about any witches?"

"Yes. The four sisters."

"Are you sure they were witches?" I paused for a second. When I answered, I kept my voice quiet.

"I only heard it from Anna, but considering everything, I tend to think she was right." Olivia's eyes flew up to meet mine. After a silent consultation, she looked away.

"I have to go study."

"Olivia." When she turned back to me, I said, "Thank you for helping."

"I'm not helping you. I'm helping those kids."

"I know. Thank you." She dismissed my gratitude with a quick "of course," then left.