Hunter

Back to Balton Cabin

There was a strange feeling in the air as people started to walk into the building Monday morning. There was a sense of dread just hanging there. No one could really figure out what it was. Everyone seemed to have come to terms with The Puppeteer coming back. They either got transferred, a pay raise, or were fine as they were. The building just seemed to be full of doom and gloom. The reasoning came shortly after noon.

Hanson called Adam and Juliet to the conference room for an emergency meeting. Hunter was already there sitting in the back with his face covered. Hanson started the presentation with a deep sigh, "Glad you could make it. Here is what we are dealing with." The projector flipped on showing an aerial view of a serene building mixed within the surrounding woods. It looked rather peaceful with the snow on the ground. According to the timestamp, it was around early spring before it fully melted away. What was going on?

Hanson flipped to the next slide with a newspaper article. The blaring headline brought the room back to the reality of the situation. "Nearly a Dozen Killed at Balton Cabin Vacation". There was no need to continue reading on. They all knew what this was about. Hanson shuffled on the spot reading the faces in the room, "We... have been assigned to this contract. It was reported that we were present the weekend of this incident so we would have insight into the issue at hand. How they found out who we were, we are still uncertain but we will be burning those aliases."

The first time around was bad enough. It was a well-intentioned trip that turned into a nightmare. The nightmare turned into hell for those who stayed behind that weekend. There was nothing they could have done at the time to convince them to leave. Hunter tried but for some, accepting that monsters are a real thing is just beyond their ability. But growing up thinking that they are just myths and fairytales, it's hard to change that thinking. And they paid for it.

Adam tried not to fidget in his chair at the thought of going back. He managed to avoid the worst of it. Juliet felt horrid. She was the instigator of their experience there. She had no idea that her snowy vacation for the team would turn into a cannibalistic nightmare yet here they were.

Hanson had to start going over the worst of the presentation. They were lucky enough to skip over the phone call from the guide calling for help. They got to listen to that when it was released to the public. Now they had to go over the history of this contract. Hunter was familiar with the early attempts at it. His interest waned when the price kept going up with no report of any success. But Hanson has the pleasure of doing the mortality report. There had been a dozen groups that had made the attempt. Very few had walked away. A few were lucky and encountered nothing after a week-long investigation. They had nothing to report and didn't think there was an issue at the cabin.

The group already knew better. It was nearing the end of summer going into fall. The cabin wanted to do their winter tours and getaways again but with this stigma about the place they wouldn't be able to. The option of "just let it go" didn't fly well with them. It also didn't help that the word of a ravenous monster on the mountain had made its way into their world. It was a monster, and what do they have to do to monsters?

Put them down.

Being the person that he is, Hunter gives Juliet and Adam the chance to pass on this job. He explained that Juliet's ability to "hunt" and search would be valuable with the dense forest area around the cabin and Adam's technical abilities would be greatly appreciated with surveillance and monitoring. This was not going to be an easy job. There was no way to really look at it as anything else. This was going to be an elimination mission. And even then it may not be enough.

Hanson started going over the mythos that is the Wendigo, "It's a spirit of native folklore that hungers. Its appetite is insatiable and cannot be quelled. It will eat the wildlife but hungers for humans first. In this case, we know that this spirit took the body of a little boy. We know now that he is no longer that little boy," Hanson flipped the slide to a photo that someone had managed to take. Or looked like a photo. It's possible that it was from a recording moments before that person's recording went missing. The image was blurry but there were a few details that were distinct.