Chapter 40
The next morning just before dawn, they hitched the trailer to Caleb's truck, loaded the snowmobiles and drove to the start of their search.
Keoman's jeep was gone. A light layer of snow already covered the landscape scars, except for the deep splinter on the tree. That would either eventually heal or kill the age-old birch. Caleb halted his pickup and the trailer beside the road, then shut off the engine.
"Are you sure this is where we need to start?" he asked Kymbria.
She shrugged. "It's as good a place as any. It's the last place anyone saw the windigo. And despite the convoluted roads we had to travel, it's not that far from the lake, where it also appeared."
She retrieved the area map from the console beside them and started to spread it out on the dashboard, then paused and asked Caleb, "How sure are you the cross you wired to Scarlet's collar will protect her? I'm still really uneasy about leaving her at the cabin alone."
"I'm as positive as I can be. Remember, it's as much faith in the powers of the protections we use as it is the materials they're made up of. The consecrations and blessings we call down from our various higher powers are additions to our faith in them and our own abilities."
"I should have taken Scarlet to a friend's to stay." Then she sighed. "But we've wasted enough time looking for Nodinens. She's frail. Elderly. How long can she last out here? How long...how long will this thing keep her alive before it kills her?"
"She's elderly," Caleb agreed. "But frail isn't a word I'd use for that spunky lady. If anyone can fight this thing for at least a while, I'd lay my money on Nodinens. You're right about us needing to find her soon, though."
Kymbria traced her finger over various landmarks on the map. "See? Here's the lake, and here we are. As the crow flies, we're only about a half-mile from the lake, although to get to it in any vehicle besides a snowmobile would take a good hour."
"And the lake is important because...?"
"Lakes are always important in tribal history. Our early lives and travels revolved around the seasons, as well as what various bodies of water provided for us. Fish, of course. Some shallower lakes where we harvested wild rice. Lakes draw animals, too, and make the hunting prosperous. More importantly, these lakes were left behind when the glaciers withdrew. That withdrawal did a lot of damage to the area, carved up the land. Formed caves in some places. The windigo needs a lair. Has a lair...somewhere around here."
"I think Nodinens and I were on the wrong path. We should have been tracing tribal history as to the legends and lore, not genealogy. Maybe we should contact your mother again. See if she can add any more information to her story about how this beast came into being. Where it all happened."
The last thing Kymbria wanted right now was Caleb talking to Niona. She still hadn't forced herself to tell him about her and Niona being blood descendants of the windigo. Niona might let that slip before Kymbria could tell him. And if they had any chance of a relationship at all, Caleb would have to overcome any repugnance he might have over that. She wouldn't know if that were possible unless she watched his body language as she told him.
"First, let's call Hjak," she said. "Let him know what we're up to...where we are. I don't want to be stupid enough to get in trouble out here and no one have any idea where to look for us."
"Definitely," Caleb conceded. He dug his phone out of his jacket pocket and punched in the number.
"Hjak," was the curt answer after only one ring.
"It's Caleb," he said. "Look, Kymbria and I have at least a half-baked idea about where we should look for this windigo. We're out here where Keoman wrecked, and we've got two snowmobiles with us. We're going to do some exploring."
"Well, you better not explore too long," Hjak said. "Have you listened to the weather reports lately?"
No, he'd been doing something a lot more enjoyable than worrying about the weather. He glanced at Kymbria, but she was intent on the map. "What's happening weather-wise?"
"We've only got a few hours," the sheriff responded. "Maybe more or less. Definitely before nightfall. Canada's gonna stomp us with another Arctic front. A blizzard will dump a foot or two of new snow."
"How long is it supposed to last?" Caleb asked, his thoughts on Nodinens.
"A day, maybe two."
"Jesus," Caleb breathed, and Kymbria looked up when she caught his tone. "Where are the other search parties?"
"All over," Hjak replied. "But not one of them has reported any hint of a trail or a place that could possibly be this thing's lair. If we don't find anything before this blizzard hits, Gagewin's planning a ceremony. Tonight, at the tribal building."
Caleb scanned the tree-and-underbrush glutted landscape around him, mentally interspersing this mass of wilderness on the map laid on the dash. It was nearly enough to make a person give up hope before they even began.
"McCoy?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm still here. Look, we just wanted to make sure someone knew where we were. We'll report in now and then, and we'll be out of the woods long before dark."
"Do that," Hjak said, then hung up.
"What?" Kymbria asked.
"We don't want to waste time calling your mother," he informed her. "We've got a blizzard on the way. We've only got a few hours before we need to get out of the woods and find shelter."
"A blizzard," Kymbria mused "At about the same time of year that all this started so many years ago. Are there more storms forecast behind this one?"
"Hjak didn't say."
She stared through the windshield toward the sky. "I'll bet there are."
"Forces coming together to reenact previous history? The blizzards that started all this."
"Yeah."
After a moment's contemplation, Caleb said, "Hjak also said that if no one finds Nodinens before dark, Gagewin's doing some sort of ceremony at the tribal building tonight."
"Not a ceremony. A...well, you whites would call it a séance. It will be an attempt to contact Nodinens, if she's passed on. Or maybe the windigo. It might be successful, too, if all the patterns and elements line up just so." She stared at him. "Do you want to go?"
Caleb replied in a grim voice, "My ventures into this other world stuff, and my experiences, have had more to do with how the ghosts and entities are effecting the now and what we can do about it. What sort of countermeasures we can take if they're causing havoc. I've never delved into how circumstances can come full circle and explode. For good, or for bad. Which sounds like what your tribe is looking for with this ceremony."
"Yes, it is, because that's exactly what can happen. Good...or bad. And to understand how to handle things, we draw on the past. How the past has effected the present in other various situations."
Caleb reached for his door handle. "We don't have a whole lot of time - "
"Wait." He turned to her, but she had her hand on her spirit bundle, her gaze on the map. "Patterns," she murmured. "It's very possible that the same weather pattern is forming, but I don't think that's the most important part of all this. I think the most important part is...."
When she fell silent, Caleb reached over and took her chin. Gently yet firmly, he turned her to face him.
"You," he whispered. "The most important part of the pattern is that you are here in the Northwood during this thing's current hunting season. He...it...wants something from you." He let loose of her chin and gripped both her shoulders. "You listen to me, Kymbria James. You are not going to sacrifice yourself or any part of your sanity to appease this beast. Do you understand?"
"It might not be my choice, Caleb."
"Bull shit!" He squeezed her shoulders until she winced and he dropped his hold. "Bull shit and fuck this. We'll just get the hell out of here and let the tribe hunt for this thing on its own." He reached for the keys in the ignition and started the engine.
"What about Nodinens?" she asked in a quiet voice. "Can we just abandon her?"
Caleb laid his forehead on the steering wheel, then turned off the engine. Without raising his head, he said, "A couple hours. We'll search for a couple hours, then we get the hell out of here."
"All right," she agreed, and when he looked up at her, he caught the end of her slight shiver of fear. Fear lay in the depths of her eyes, also, her grip on her spirit bundle white-knuckled.
"Are you sure you can handle even an hour?" he had to ask her.
"No. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to try."
Five minutes later, they had the snowmobiles unloaded. Rather than take the time to retrieve Caleb's machine from his rented cabin, they'd taken the two from Kymbria's garage. Both engines rumbled in the stillness, and Kymbria sat quietly on hers as Caleb once again checked the gas in both tanks. They were full, as Kymbria knew. She also realized that he was procrastinating, partly from fear for her physical - and emotional - safety.
Overhead, a few clouds drifted into view from the north, black and pregnant with snow that would soon inundate the wilderness. The cold crept in even beneath the knitted mask she wore, though the rest of her body was comfortable under her suit, heavy gloves and boots.
The chill she fought didn't come from the plunging temperatures. Pieces of her past crowded for dominance in her mind. The depths of despair she'd fallen into as a teenager. The emotional trauma brought on in a land of sand and heat on the opposite side of the world, a direct reverse of this frigid woods but with pockets of isolation just as daunting to exploration.
The tentative beginnings of stability she'd found when she first arrived home to the place where she'd overcome her long-ago torment. Was the draw to the Northwood, the peace she felt building at first, merely a ploy of fate? Something that drew her back to take her own place in the design for future events? A future now playing out? A design that might possibly cost her more than anything she'd experienced in the past?
Cost her the life she hoped to have with her daughter?
But what sort of life would that be, if she took the coward's way out? She had cowardly refused to admit the problems between her and Rick and look at what that had gotten her.
Caleb slammed his pickup door, and Kymbria realized she hadn't noticed him return to his truck. He carried the shotgun upright against his shoulder as he climbed on the snowmobile.
"We forgot to bring your dad's shotgun," he said as he laid his across his knees. "But I put mine back in my truck."
"I should have remembered," she apologized.
"No help for it. Which way? As reluctant as I am to let you take the lead, I guess you should. But you stay close to me, hear?"
"I hear. Where did you see the windigo?"
Caleb nodded towards the split birch. "About six feet in front of where Keoman's jeep hit that tree."
"What did he look like?"
"It isn't a he," Caleb denied. "It's an it. An entity, a horrible mishmash of a sasquatch and an ape. A being that's not supposed to exist, but does."
She stared at him silently until after a resigned sigh he continued, "Physically, it was about eight...maybe nine feet tall. It was covered with fur, strings and clumps of it, all over its body, including its face. Its eyes were dark pits with burning, bright red veins surrounding the irises. Filling the entire eye sockets. Its face was flat, no nose to speak of, mouth wide, lips drawn back to expose teeth that can only be described as like saw teeth. More than one row of them. Two, maybe three. There were arms, but if it had hands, they were overshadowed by the claws knifing out from the ends of the arms. Feet...its feet had claws, too. But..."
Breathing in jerky gasps, he stopped speaking, obviously fighting his own memories. How horrible it must have been for him to face the same type entity that had taken his wife and son. She steeled herself against reaching out to comfort him. They couldn't waste the precious time available to them.
"Go on," she insisted, attempting with every bit of positive energy she could glean to hide her growing terror. The picture of the beast that had been trying to contact her - a picture she had tried to keep from imagining - firmed in her mind.
"The worst wasn't the physical makeup of the thing," Caleb said. "There was evil emanating from it. Wicked, foul malevolence. It didn't come just from the eyes, although they weren't something you wanted to spend much time peering into. It was like peering into the depths of hell itself. It came from its entire being. Surrounded it. Poured out from it toward you. If not for my consecrated cross, I felt sure it could have gotten to me. And...I might have been entirely insane before it even touched me."
"Is it possible you were able to sense the depth of evil in it because of your previous experience in dealing with paranormal entities? That maybe you are able - ?"
"No!" he spat. "No way in hell will I try to make contact with this thing's diseased mind. It would win. I have no doubt about that."
"It's evil mind has tried to penetrate mine," she reminded him. "Maybe your...." She took a deep breath, steeled herself and continued, "...your fear of it is what's blocking you from being reasonable about how we can track it. Kill it. Or I suppose it's possible the windigo could have mind-control abilities. Be able to diffuse people's thoughts so it could escape."
"No one's ever reported anything like that...although we've never interviewed anyone who's made contact other than Jimmy. We didn't hang around the bar long enough to talk to those men."
He shook his head. "Even Keoman was aware of the need to protect humans from this beast's supernatural capacities." He glared at her, his face set in firm admonition. "And if I even get an inkling that you're allowing this entity to communicate completely with you, I'll shut down this attempt to find its lair so fast you won't know what hit you."
"You have to agree that it's trying to manipulate us into something different than on its previous hunts."
"And it's using a lot of pressure," Caleb said as though reexamining the situation. He gazed at the split birch. "We haven't taken time - haven't had time - to pool our knowledge."
"You're right," she agreed. "All of us seem to know bits and pieces about its existence, but none of us know the whole story behind its powers. My mother, and probably one or two of our Elders, know portions of the story. Nodinens probably has more to add. You studied this thing before you came here, researched what others of its ilk have done, so you have somewhat of a general knowledge of the windigo as a supernatural entity."
Caleb started to speak again, but Kymbria glanced at the sky and said, "Tell me what you know as we ride."
"I don't think that's a good idea. We don't want to be distracted while we chase it."
"We don't have a choice. Our time is limited."
He set his mouth in a grim line, but nodded.