The Wendigo
(A little something to entertain while we're stuck inside. A story that would be told around a fire late at night, when we begin to fear the darkness...)
WARNING: Extremely graphic images and language.
I am the last.
I am the last person standing. The last person who the Wendigo has not taken yet.
Yet.
The white men did not believe in the Wendigo and so they could not see it. Even when the Wendigo had taken them, had filled them with the insatiable hunger for flesh, the white men did not believe in the Wendigo.
I did not truly believe either. My white blood, the modern certain blood, did not hear the stories of the Elders, of the old people because it did not believe. But the blood of my ancestors, the ancient knowing of my tribe and of my clan. It believed. It believes. And because it believes I can almost see the Wendigo out of the corner of my eye. Just glimpses of that horned antlered head, the long razor sharp talons, the bones that extrude through the withered skin.
Just glimpses.
But enough so that all of me believes in the Wendigo now.
I have seen it take possession of the others one by one, how it filled them with hunger for flesh and changed the way they walked the way they talked, their bodies bent and beastly, their faces contorted with the raging hunger and the dark cruel desires of the Wendigo.
I am the last.
When I heard the baby crying in the woods the ancient blood in me knew. The blood knew that it was an old Wendigo trick. But I said nothing as the white men rushed out into the dark cold woods and I said nothing when they came back and I saw the change in one man’s eyes. I knew the Wendigo had taken him but I said nothing because I was afraid they would not believe me and I knew that even I did not yet believe me, that even I was not ready to know that the Wendigo was real.
And now I can hear the Wendigo whispering, always whispering and I glimpse it out of the corner of my eye but each time when I turn it moves too fast for me to see the thing fully. Always just glimpses. I know the Wendigo is there in the woods, in the darkness, in the cold. Waiting. Whispering. Looking for a way in. Whispering about my hunger and how good the flesh would taste. Just a bite. Just a little bite.
And I am so hungry.
It is so cold and I am so hungry and so tired and it would be so easy to just give in, just accept the Wendigo as inevitable and unavoidable, that it will take me one way or the other and I will turn into the beast that the others turned into, I will devour the flesh of my fellow man.
The whispering.
I believe.
I know now that the Wendigo is real and that the stories were true.
The story of Fast Runner. How he was possessed by the Wendigo and he killed and ate the men he was hired to guide and no one believed him when he said it was the Wendigo and not him who took his knife to his fellow men and tore into them with his teeth and finger nails blood dripping from his chin, that was the Wendigo not Fast Runner but no one believed him.
I did not believe his story.
I believe him now.
I believe the Elders now. Oh, I believe. I know that the stories were more than stories and the Wendigo, who waits for me in the trees and whispers to me, tempts me with the hunger for human flesh, the Wendigo is real.
I have tried to cover my ears and chant what old songs I know so that I cannot hear the Wendigo but its whispers reach inside of my head through all other sound and it lurks in the trees, circling, always circling and it is only a matter of time before the Wendigo takes me because I did not listen when the Elders talked about how to defend against the Wendigo, I do not have my Medicine Bag and I do not know how to find the sacred herbs because I did not listen, why oh why did I not listen, why did I not bring my Medicine Bag, why did I just hang it from my door and forget about it, why did I not listen when they taught the sacred songs, the sacred prayers.
They probably would not have stopped the Wendigo, but at least they would have given some comfort.
Have I gone mad?
Has my mind convinced me of the impossible and have I gone mad and did these white men go mad, was it a collective madness that made them kill each other and devour the flesh of their friends and is it only the illusion that has taken hold and not the thing itself, not the Wendigo itself?
No.
No.
These white men knew nothing of the Wendigo and they did not become ravenous for human flesh for no reason at all and the voice in my head and the thing I see at the corner of my eye is as real and as terrible as anything could be and the Elders warned and the stories warned that there are things that lurk that we cannot see or even fully imagine and the Wendigo the Wendigo is real and soon it will take me and soon I will become ravenous and have blood and flesh in my teeth and underneath my finger nails and if I live, if I somehow survive then no one will believe me in the same way that they did not believe Fast Runner, that I did not believe Fast Runner or anyone else, that I was sure that I knew what there is to know and had seen what there is to see, that things that lurk just out of reach of the eye are not real, cannot be real.
But the Wendigo is real.
I can hear it.
I can almost see it.
Oh, what I would give to have believed the Elders, to have believed the stories, more than I did, to have listened and to have known that there are things, there are things that lurk just beyond what we can fully see, to have believed what my ancestors’ blood told me was true even if the modern man in me did not believe it to be true because it could not be measured or counted or inspected or proved by mere human beings, to know that the old people knew things and they told the stories because the stories were true.
The stories were true.
I am so hungry.
I am so tired.
I am so cold and afraid and so very alone.
Except for the Wendigo.
I am alone except for the Wendigo.
I cling to my rifle as if it would do me any good, as if it did the white men any good at all to have guns and knives except to kill each other.
The Wendigo cannot be killed by guns or knives.
The Wendigo is not that kind of real.
The Wendigo is not bound by our laws or our reason. The Wendigo cannot be confined or killed in the ways that we know and understand. The Wendigo lurks beyond what we believe and what we can grasp, just beyond what we can see and what we can fully comprehend.
The Wendigo lurks and waits for me.
I stand surrounded by carnage, surrounded by the grizzly remains of those I led out into these woods, the snow is bloody with flesh and body parts and shreds of clothing and hair.
I should have told them.
I should have warned them.
When the first began killing and eating the flesh I knew that the Wendigo was inside them and that as each one died the Wendigo would move to the next and then the next until all were dead.
When I heard the baby crying I knew.
I knew deep down inside of me but I did not speak.
And now they are all dead and there is only me and the Wendigo, because part of me believed I can see it out of the corner of my eye and somehow I am the last.
I am the very last.
Surrounded by its whispers and its lightning flashes of movement I stand here in the midst of blood and carnage and I know.
I know the Wendigo is real.
I know the stories are true.
And I know that the Wendigo will take me.
The Wendigo will take me and it will feed and if I survive I will be nothing more than a husk that no one believes like Fast Runner I will be left empty and alone.
I know that the Wendigo will surely take me. Even if I put a bullet in my brain it will still take me. It will consume my spirit and my flesh.
I know.
I know now.
And it will do me no good to know.
It will do me no good to know.
It will do me no good to believe.
The Wendigo will take me.
The Wendigo will consume me.
And the Wendigo is real.
The Wendigo is real.
The Wendigo exists.
And soon I will not.
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