Chapter 16
Caleb and Hjak re-entered the cabin, but Kymbria didn't bother to look up from her cooling cup of chocolate. She heard Caleb remove the fire screen and add a couple logs to the fire while Hjak slowly walked into the kitchen where she waited. From the corner of her eye, she noticed the sheriff glance at the two shotguns she'd carried in and placed on the table. They lay beside the hot chocolate cups she'd re-warmed for the men. Though fearful of what Hjak had to tell her, given the man's obvious reluctance to speak, she managed to maintain a measure of self-control. She would be out of here in a few hours. She could cope for that long.
"Do you know who it is?" she quietly asked Hjak as he removed his gloves and washed his hands at the kitchen sink.
"Yeah." He dried his hands on a towel hanging beneath the window. "I'll take the guns in by the fire, if you'll carry my cocoa."
She rose with a nod. Leaving her cold, congealed cup on the table, she joined Caleb, who was closing the fire screen. Scarlet followed close behind her, settling on the floor in front of Kymbria as she and Caleb sat on the sofa. Kymbria handed Caleb one cup and set the other one on the coffee table for Hjak.
The sheriff propped the shotguns against the coffee table, but didn't reach for his cup. "The windigo didn't kill him," he said without preamble. "Someone shot him first."
Caleb flinched, an expression of both puzzlement and interest on his face.
"Who is he?" Kymbria asked again.
Caleb moved closer to her and slipped an arm around her shoulders as dread edged up her throat. "It's someone I know, isn't it?" she asked when Hjak remained silent.
Caleb tightened his grip, and when she glanced at him, he said, "It's Len. The missing man Keoman called about."
Sorrow filled her at the loss of a man her parents had befriended as much as counted on. She allowed the emotion only so far, though. She'd come to terms with a few things while she waited for Caleb and Hjak to return. This beast was not only scaring her, but Scarlet as well, and it was starting to piss her off. She'd latched onto the anger, determined to ride it rather than the pathetic fear.
Despite Caleb and Hjak's concern, her mental clarity was focused now, and she reminded herself that she'd seen death up close and personal before. She wasn't going to let this monster continue to terrorize her. And it damned sure wasn't going to get away with controlling her mind.
Then she frowned. "But...." She stared at Hjak. "Keoman said Len's been missing for three days. And..." She paused as she recalled the tribal custom of not speaking the name of the dead until they were sure the soul had crossed into the world where ancestors dwelled. Then she firmed her voice. "A while ago, Caleb said the man had been...eaten. The windigo's only been on the hunt for a day."
"For a day that we know of," Hjak said as he reached for his cocoa. "Things aren't fitting into this scenario." He scooped a glob of marshmallows to his mouth.
"Don't you need to call some more people in?" Caleb asked.
Recalling Caleb's caution that they would soon be talking to a number of people, Kymbria started to explain why that might not happen. She was cut short when Scarlet suddenly rose with a growl, her gaze toward the lake. But instead of rushing for the window, she lunged onto the sofa beside Kymbria. A cold chill of goose bumps feathered up Kymbria's spine as she grabbed Scarlet close.
"It's back!" she snarled, her anger rising again to defeat the fear.
Caleb already had one of the shotguns in his hand. He thrust the other one at her, and he and Hjak raced to the front windows. Kymbria steeled herself for another mind intrusion, but the atmosphere around her and Scarlet only darkened for a brief instant, then it was like nothing at all was wrong.
"It's gone again," she called to the men.
"Damn!" Caleb spat. "What the hell's it doing?"
"Bring that damn gun and come with me," Hjak ordered. "Leave the other one here for Kymbria."
He and Caleb rushed out the door and, shotgun poised for use, Kymbria led Scarlet over to the windows in time to get a glimpse of the men disappearing down the steps to the lake. They were only gone for a minute or so before both trod back into sight.
Once they were inside, shivering, since neither had grabbed a coat in their rush, Hjak joined Kymbria at the window.
"It took the body back," the sheriff gritted. "It's gone. There's just a circle of crime scene tape on the lake, nothing inside it."
"Why?" she asked. "And how could it? That fast, I mean? It was here for barely ten seconds."
Caleb answered, "It could. And did. I told you, windigos can move so fast it's hard to see them. It's fed and its powers are on the rise after forty years of hibernation. It can easily be in and out of here before we notice."
"I noticed." Even her anger couldn't halt the slight shiver that crawled over her. "I felt it."
Hjak motioned for them to join him back at the fire. "We need to talk."
"Shouldn't you get something going?" Caleb asked. "Call in the feds? Don't they handle things like this on reservations?"
"On some reservations," Hjak replied. "Not this one. It's complicated sometimes."
"Didn't your research include our brand of governing for this tribe?" Kymbria asked.
"I did some research on that. I wanted to know if there'd be a bunch of law enforcement types here if...when that thing started hunting again. At that time, of course, I thought it would be January before we'd have to worry about that. Still, I didn't take time to separate the specific tribes and how they worked as far as law enforcement."
"Some of the reservations still depend on the feds for support," Hjak explained. "Some have their own tribal police departments. Up here, we're pretty isolated, and it's sparsely populated, especially as to the Native American population. Kymbria's tribe never set up a tribal police force. They depend on me and my county deputies. Maybe they will organize their own law enforcement someday, with the casino income growing, but for now, we're it."
"They can do that?" Caleb asked. "Not allow the feds, or BIA, or whoever, any part in their law enforcement?"
"To a point." Hjak leaned forward, wrists on his knees. "They can't refuse those offices access, though, if they should decide it's something they need to be in on. We've also got the option of calling in whoever we want for help - state troopers or the feds. But right now, we'd be laughed at. We don't have a body. What are we gonna tell them? We need someone from X-Files here?" He shook his head. "It was probably the same thing forty years ago. From talking to the Elders, I found out that they'd never had a body to confirm the kills. All they had were some missing people, no proof of what happened to them, if anything. Only a legend, and that's not proof."
"But they knew," Caleb said.
"They knew," Hjak confirmed.
"So we're on our own?"
Kymbria said, "You've got Keoman and the Elders. I'm still out of here come morning."
"Good idea," Hjak said. "Why don't you start getting your things together? Then maybe you can catch a few hours sleep. If it's all right with you, Caleb and I will stay here for the rest of the night. Maybe even try to contact Keoman and get him here."
Kymbria rose and called Scarlet with her. "I'll be in the bedroom. If I shut my door, that means I'm trying to get some sleep."
She left the door open at first. The room she had chosen was her old room, off the living room and in line with the fireplace. Numerous questions crowded her mind, and the only reason she didn't voice them and demand answers was that she frankly did not want to become involved any deeper in this situation. However, she found herself working as quietly as she could while she packed a suitcase with the things she'd so recently removed from it, her attention on the low-voiced conversation between the men.
"Where the hell do we start?" Caleb asked. "Call Keoman?"
"Yeah, do that," Hjak said as he unsnapped one of the multitude of equipment pouches on his heavy leather belt and pulled out a small radio. "I'm going to report in to the office by radio because...well, I just don't want them to know exactly where I am right now. I'll let them know I didn't go home, though, and that they can call me on the radio if they need me."
"You don't want word of this getting out yet," Caleb said in a flat tone.
The sheriff didn't answer.
As Kymbria folded blue jeans into her suitcase, Caleb murmured something indiscernible. Probably talking to Keoman on the phone. A moment later, as she added the last of her underwear to the suitcase, Caleb called to Hjak, "I got his damn voice mail again. All I said was to get back to me as soon as he could. That we had news about the windigo."
"If he's with the Elders," Hjak said, "that might be a while."
Kymbria closed her suitcase and glanced out the bedroom door. Caleb and Hjak again sat in front of the fire, but neither of them spoke. She took a step toward the men, then shook her head and turned back. She walked around the room to see if there was anything she'd missed. She gathered her personal items from the bathroom. A few minutes later, she had her suitcase, laptop and small toiletries case sitting by the bedroom door. She'd left out only a change of clothing and her nightgown and robe.
"I'm going to take a shower before I turn in," she called out. Caleb responded with a wave of his hand as he and Hjak stared into the fire.
First, though, she needed to take care of a splinter in her finger, which she'd noticed after handling the shotgun's ragged stock. She retrieved a set of tweezers from the bathroom and sat on the bed. The tiny sliver had worked its way deep, and she couldn't reach the end of it. The heck with it. Maybe the shower water would soften the skin and make digging it out easier.
She had her nightgown in her hand to carry into the bathroom before she stopped resisting the urge. Tossing the gown on the bed, she strode back to the men and propped her hands on her hips as she stared at Hjak. "Windigos don't shoot people."
She could actually feel Caleb's gaze on her, but the sheriff only leaned back in his chair and looped his thumbs in his black equipment belt.
"He was shot in the back of the head. Execution style."
"But how did the windigo end up with him? It wasn't hunting three days ago when he disappeared!"
"Like I said earlier, we aren't sure of that. If it's true, though, then that's one of the things that doesn't fit what we know has happened before."
Kymbria backed up until her legs hit the sofa behind her, then sat. "The windigo left his head so we'd know it didn't kill him."
Caleb snorted and leaned toward her. "You're giving this thing a brain. A human brain, one that can think. It doesn't have that sort of ability."
"You're wrong, Caleb. There's no other explanation. And you're forgetting that windigos were once human."
"Humans have a conscience," he spat. "They don't kill without feeling."
"Not all of them," Hjak put in. "Sociopaths missed out on the conscience gene when they were conceived. They're born without one."
"So we've got a sociopath monster?" Caleb asked.
"Hell if I know," Hjak admitted. "We never found a body before, so we can't say it's a fact that none of them were shot before they were...eaten."
Caleb glared between Kymbria and Hjak, then settled on the sheriff. "Let's cut to the chase. You've got no idea how this thing works. No idea how it eats its prey. Consumes it. Maybe it leaves the head until last. Maybe it wants to savor the terror in its dead victims' eyes a while."
"Oh, Caleb." Kymbria sat beside him, though she hesitated to touch him, given the fierceness of his tone and the look on his face. "Caleb, don't put yourself through this."
"Through what?" he snarled.
"Reliving what might have happened to your wife and son," she whispered.
He crumbled in on himself, his ferocity replaced by agony. "How can I not? I came here for revenge, but...I didn't stop to think what it would be like when I started comparing what happens here with....especially when I saw Len down there on the lake."
"Maybe you should come back to Duluth with me for a few days. Let Keoman and the Elders do whatever they can to help the sheriff."
"That might be a good idea," Hjak said. Then the radio on his belt crackled to life, and he stood, pulled it out and walked into the kitchen to listen to the transmission.
Kymbria moved closer, gauging Caleb's mood and steadiness. It flickered across her thoughts that this was similar to what Caleb had offered her earlier - a way to unburden herself to someone who might understand.
"You're welcome to come back with me. Mom's house has a guest room, even with my daughter having her own room."
He appeared to actually consider the invitation, then shook his head. "I can't leave. I might not be able to help, but again, maybe I can. I can't give up yet."
"I understand." And she did. Guilt ate at him for not being there when his wife and son were taken. Guilt did so much damage to the psyche, even unmerited guilt. For someone like Caleb, who had a personal interest in the situation, it could conceivably be worse.
She made another quick decision. Hjak had foregone his radio to use the kitchen phone now, but Kymbria still kept her voice low. "You were right, you know."
"About what?"
"Well, maybe I misspoke," she backtracked. "I'm not sure, really, I'm not. But maybe this...thing is trying to talk to me." Caleb sat up straight and stared, but she held up a detaining hand before he could start questioning her. "If so, I want you to think about something. If it can communicate, it might try that with others besides me."
His puzzlement lasted a brief second, then understanding dawned. "No way. That thing doesn't even know I'm here. You're thinking he brought that body here to show me what can happen to people who try to interfere with its hunting season?"
She shrugged. "I'm not about to try to analyze a supernatural entity. I'm just saying that we probably need to keep open minds about it. You said yourself that no one's ever been able to figure out a way to kill it. To my way of thinking, that could mean that no one's ever understood it. Understood its reasons, its goals."
"It doesn't have reasons and goals. It doesn't have a mind!"
"Are you sure about that? I don't know that much about the supernatural world, but I do understand people."
"It's not a person...." His voice trailed off.
Kymbria realized she was still clutching the tweezers in her fingers, working the tips back and forth nervously.
"Were you plucking your eyebrows amid all this?" Caleb asked.
She caught onto his comment as an attempt to shift subjects, a shift she also welcomed as a chance to ease out of this discussion for the moment.
"I was trying to get a splinter out. Dad's shotgun has some ragged spots on the stock."
"Let me see."
She held her hand out to him, along with the tweezers.
"You know," Caleb said as he worked, "once all this is over with, we owe ourselves a night out at some high-priced restaurant."
His words sent a fissure of pleasure up her arm, despite the slight pain from the pressure of the tweezers. Was he flirting with her? She tried to see his expression, but he kept his head bent over her hand. He had nice hair. Thick, soft, a wave here and there. He could have used a haircut, but the shagginess complemented him rather than detracted from his masculinity.
"You won't find anything like that up here," she finally replied. "There's good food available, but no candlelight atmosphere. No waiters at your beck and call, and you might have to get up and refill your own coffee cup."
"We won't be here forever. Isn't there a nice restaurant or two in Duluth?"
"There's a nice one up on the North Shore - "
"There." Caleb held the tweezers up, the small splinter captured in them. "Better put some alcohol on the wound, though."
Hell. Had he only been trying to divert her attention from the splinter? She pulled her hand free of his grasp and stood rather abruptly. "I will after I get my shower."
Scarlet followed her this time, passing her to leap onto the bed as Kymbria paused at the door and turned. Had Caleb been flirting? She couldn't tell from his expression, since he squatted at the fireplace now, his back to her, as he tossed a fresh log on the fire.