Hellscapes & Visions Volume II

When I was a child, I wasn’t oblivious to the stigma of being a mixed-blood native. I had had ancestors who spent their entire lives in the wilderness cut off from the encroaching modern society.

My Alqonguin relatives thought it folly to forsake the old ways. But, as the white settlers became more numerous, and their culture more ingrained into our lands, it became more and more impractical to remain an island. At some point, my parents decided it would be best for me to integrate and attend school with the other children my age.

This, was met with sharp protest from my grandfather. Though he’d been a hunter and trapper all his life, the way of the warrior clung to him as much as it had clung to his father and his father before him. He feared that modern life would drain the primal instincts out of me.

Maybe it did.

Some days I felt more in tune with the call of the wild than others.

It was a confusing childhood. I didn’t initially understand why the others gawked at my brown skin and striking facial features, among them pronounced cheekbones that set my face in a different mold from the rest. I must have been something like a fairy tale creature to them. I was technically human, but all the same, it was obvious that there were differences.

I think all children are inherently racist to a degree, but not in a malignant way. Rather, it is born of curiosity, and some trepidation. My parents had to explain to me exactly why I got stared at.

I don’t want to give the impression that I resented any of this, only that it was telling. When my peers and I at last managed to vault over the intrusive questions and poking and prodding, I managed to make a few pretty good friends. The childish taunts from some, and fearful shyness from others, gave way to fascination.

They would beg me to tell stories of my tribe and ancestors, legends of warriors and spirits and foul beasts. Most of these stories I don’t remember too well, and to be honest, a lot of them I simply made up.

It was kind of amusing, how easily the other kids ate it all up. They didn’t know the difference between a Cree and an Ojibwe, or a Cherokee and a Lakota, or any of it. What they knew from that old rhyme, One Little Two Little Three Little Indians, or however it goes, was that I was an Indian. Being obscured by the broad amalgamation of all these different cultures under a single banner gave me free reign to mix and match details of myths the world over.

I became something of a celebrity for my storytelling, as much as a toddler can be. During what should have been naptime, the kids would plead with Mrs. Phillips to let them listen to my tales. I never declined. My mother had always been a great narrator, so I guess you could say it was in the blood.

I suppose it was easier to integrate on account of my half-white father, whom grandfather had initially protested against my mother marrying. Had I been full-blooded, I sometimes imagined they would have put me in a zoo.

Nonsense, of course.

I often wondered if my father had felt out-of-place as I sometimes did. There was a dichotomy in him, of conflicting instincts from two very different worlds, a side that embraced the wilderness, and a side that feared and sought to tame it. That complex, like the silver tongue I took from my mother, was also passed down to me.

And that’s where the wendigo comes in.

Of all the stories I had ever told my peers, there was only one that I had ever been frightened to tell, and I think they must have picked up on that, because whenever I did, they would huddle up together in their blankets, and some would hide their eyes or even shriek. A few times, Mrs. Phillips had to call off our improv storytime because she was getting complaints from parents that their children were suffering nightmares.

I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t relate.

To the kids, the wendigo was a kind of boogeyman, a fearsome beast as swift as the wind and colder than ice that hid just out of sight of its victims. It toyed with them, and called out their names. Sometimes it sounded just like the wind, sometimes it sounded like a friend or a family member.

It could even mimic the voices of its past victims.

Usually, it stalked whoever strayed into its domain, often during times of famine and bitter cold, when hunters were desperate for food enough to go off the beaten trails into the unknown brush.

But sometimes, the wendigo would go looking for victims actively, standing outside their huts, shrouded under the howling winds and snows. The fragile shelters were no defense against its gleaming, iron-like claws. It would simply rip the door off, rush inside with unnatural speed, and snatch up its prey.

For obvious reasons, I never delved into the gory details, and it was always left ambiguous what became of those the demon captured. Though, maybe that was more frightening to the children, whose imaginations were left to fill in the blanks with whatever horrible fates they could conceive of.

The unknown factor should have been frightening to me, but instead, knowing full-well what the creature really was and why it sought human victims was what truly chilled me to the bone and kept me awake at night.

The wendigo was a monster, but it was also a man, a part of man kept hidden away, but one that has always been with us, maybe since the dawning of our kind.

A primal fear of mankind is the unknown predators that lay in wait in the dark. It’s what kept our first forbearers in their caves, only daring to go outside when there was no other choice. It’s why we fear the dark, and why the hairs on our necks bristle when we hear footsteps or sudden cracks behind us.

For me, and for generations and generations of my family line, the wendigo personified this raw terror. Among the taboos of my tribe were to even speak its name. To do so could call the wendigo forth, allowing it to know where you were and come after you. This strict rule against saying the uncouth name, like countless traditions, had begun to die off as our race crawled into the modern age. There were few left who still believed in the frightful stories, much less that something so trivial as speaking a monster’s name could bring it to you, but all the same, it was still frowned upon in some circles of my homeland.

It was usually the elders who were most concerned, the ones who had grown up in the thick of it when their role models still believed in magic and spirits, and the unknown.

As a child, I had never been outright forbidden from saying its name, but I could sense the shift in the atmosphere whenever I did. I suppose the situation was equitable to white families descended from Catholic bloodlines, who, though not overtly religious, still thought it proper to keep a crucifix on the wall. Just in case, perhaps.

And it was this overarching mentality, this “just in case” attitude, that still governed our elders’ decisions.

This was a long time ago, so the details are still kind of cloudy to me, but I’ll give you a brief history as best I can on how I first came to learn about this taboo, and where the old story had come from.

I grew up in the northern United States, near the Canadian border. It was here that a number of the old tribes still made their home, along with a smattering of peoples farther up north in proper Canadian territory. My grandfather on my mother’s side still lived in the north woods, where the legend of the wendigo is thought to have originated.

Fifteen years ago, I spent a summer there at his request. Things were awkward at first. I had only ever met my grandfather a handful of times, and he always seemed like a severe, unapproachable old man, with hard lines carved into his bronze face by what seemed a lifetime of bitterness.

I suppose I should clarify something. I don’t expect you to know the distinctions between tribes anymore than I expected it of my kindergarten classmates. Properly, I belong to the Ojibwe. Algonquin is just a catch-all term for the different cultures in this area that shared certain ethnic characteristics. But one thing that a lot of us had in common was the wendigo legend. The exact details varied from tribe to tribe, but my grandfather introduced me to the story as follows.

I remember sitting on his bear skin rug, reading one of the old books of legends from his study. It was unseasonably cold, and he had set a roaring fire.

When I had read my fill, there was still a time gap before the rabbit stew was ready, and so I looked up to my grandfather in his armchair to strike up conversation.

He was rocking there, smoking his pipe and taking swigs from a flask of whiskey. His eyes were still hard and alert, and it was clear dementia would never come for him.

Just as I was about to speak, his gruff voice broke the silence.

“You’ve got your mother’s eyes - bright and curious. You learn well up at that school they have you at?”

“I guess.” I shrugged.

He grunted in approval. A puff off his pipe, and another drink, and he spoke again “If they have you mixing down there, best make the most of it.”

“Grandpa, do you hate the white folk?” I asked. I was only ten at the time, still innocent.

He sighed. “I’ve tried not to. Old grudges die hard, I suppose. Your mother never told you my story, did she?”

I shook my head no.

“I grew up on the res. My folks made sure I knew it was the white folk that done it, the settlers who took and raped our land to suit their needs. I grew up early. When I was your age, I was already considered a man. I was taught how to track and trap and fish and hunt, how to skin and prepare meat, all before I learned to read. When it was time to hit the books, I learned all about our culture, my place in it, and my place in the world. It was, and still is, a cold world. In the winter, you could scarcely put food on the table.”

I listened.

“Well, one winter came harder and faster than the rest, and we were snowed in. It was a constant blizzard. Supplies were dwindling, so it was decided to form a hunting party. We all drew straws, and mine came up short. So, I went out into the wilderness with four others. Our furs did little to keep us warm through the wind and the snow. Eventually, we got turned around. Had to hole up in a shallow cave for warmth. Two of us went to look for help, thought they could find the white town a few dozen miles away. We never saw them again.”

He paused. Another puff, another swig.

“We listened to the wind howl. Sounded like screaming. My last companion, he became delirious. Thought he heard the others calling on the wind. Then, he thought he heard a new voice, a hypnotic voice calling his name. I had to beat home down and straddle him to keep him from going out into that hell.”

There was trauma in his eyes, which had begun to glisten just so.

“A monstrous shadow passed over us, and my voice hushed to a whisper. But my companion, he kept calling, ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ I finally had to lay him out, because something was outside the cave, breathing low, and shaking the ground. It was rumbly, but quiet all at once. ‘I’m burning up!’ he said, and he stripped down buck naked. He didn’t stay down long, you see. Finally, he ran out into the snow. Scared though I was, I ran out there and tackled him. Something was stalking us from the trees. I happened a glance and I saw-”

He paused.

“Saw what, grandpa?” I asked, wide-eyed.

His mouth worked, but no noise came out.

“I don’t know what I saw. Probably a bear.”

He said this, but his eyes didn’t look like they believed it. He looked at the clock. “We have to get up early. Tomorrow, I’m taking you hunting.”

And so he did.

He showed me how to track, how to ready the bow, and, when the time came, how to let it fly. We brought back a deer, and he showed me how to skin it. The venison that night was delicious, more so for it having been hard won. Still, I was bothered by the look that had been in the buck’s eyes when the arrow pierced its neck.

It was the look of being cornered by a predator infinitely more powerful and more resourceful than you. It was the look that was in my grandfather’s eyes that night he told me the story.

I think Grandpa and I bonded just fine, despite my reservations. But he was withholding from me. Naturally, I was curious how the story ended, and what was really stalking him. The night before I got my answer, I had strayed from a trail through the forest to an opening where a pristine, pure blue lake sat.

The lake was deathly quiet, as if no animals dared approach it. The clouds rolled by on the wind, contorted into strange shapes that confounded me. There was something as unnatural about this place as it was beautiful. All the trees in the area were marked with long gouges that tore off the bark. I nearly stumbled into the mouth of a shallow cavern, concealed by foliage, when my foot caught an exposed root.

Face-down in the mulch, I peered into the depths of that cave. It was too dark to make much out, but I thought I saw glistening white.

A rough hand seized me by the scruff of the neck and yanked me out.

“Don’t you ever wander out here! Do you understand me?” Grandpa shouted in what I assumed was fury.

I didn’t understand.

“Get on back to the lodge now, and be glad I don’t whip your hide raw!”

I had been warned not to stray off the trails he had shone me, at least, not without his presence. What I at first assumed to be anger, I soon realized, had actually been fear.

When we got back to the lodge, I had to ask him. The question was haunting me.

“Grandfather, what is the wendigo?”

He looked at me as if slapped.

I felt as if I had just said something awful, and a twisting pit formed in my stomach.

“That name brings bad things, especially around these parts. You shouldn’t say it. Not with it so close.” he warned.

“Tell me how the story ends.” I said, forgetting my place. “It wasn’t a bear you saw, it was the wendigo!”

My grandfather winced. “Alright, I’ll tell you.”

And so he did.

“Whatever I saw, it was gone, just like that. Then, there was a break in the snow. The two of us, by a minor miracle, found our way back home. We followed a deer that had come up out of the brush along the way, and we bagged it.”

I listened.

So, a miracle had come.

“We scarcely had the strength to lug it back. When we returned though, there was a great commotion. I’ll never forget it. One of our neighbors, he… he butchered his entire family and devoured them. We burned him at the stake that night.”

He trembled.

“When relief finally came through a break in the snow, from the white town, my friend, he ran up to the convoy and he screamed ‘You! You did this to us!’ Then he dropped dead, just like that… Anyway, that’s when I left the res. And I never looked back.”

It’s been ten years since then. My grandfather hanged himself just before last winter under unknown circumstances. In those last few months, he’d been paranoid, saying that “it” had finally come for him.

I went back to that cave in the winter, the one by the lake. The gleaming white I had seen… had been a pile of human bones, picked clean. When I saw something lurking in there, I turned and ran.

I burned my grandfather’s cabin to the ground and left that place forever.

I understand now, of course. That the wendigo was more than a monster. That it was, is, a madness, a parasitic, hungering madness that lurks in the cold. It comes on the wind in times of starvation, gets inside people when they’re weak.

It’s primal, and hateful, and its hunger can never be satisfied.

The memory of it haunted my grandfather until he couldn’t bear it any longer. Somehow, he had kept it at bay all those years.

But now he’s gone. The wendigo let him live, and now I know why. No matter how far I flee, it still comes to me in my dreams.

I see it, lurking around every corner, and I hear my name being called on the wind.