A Blast From the Past
“It was a large creature, as tall as a tree, with a lipless mouth and jagged teeth. Its breath was a strange hiss, its footprints full of blood, and it ate any man, woman, or child who ventured into its territory. And those were the lucky ones. Sometimes, the Wendigo chose to possess a person instead, and then the luckless individual became a Wendigo himself, hunting down those he had once loved and feasting upon their flesh.”
-(Ojibwa Legend Description)
-Two Years Prior-
Aiden Gallagher was seventeen years old when Tom Smith noticed his propensity for reading herbal and biology books. Such an innocuous thing really; not truly something to rev your engines over or shoot fireworks off in the sky about.
Except it called to the man immediately.
Tom looked at this youth of the new world and had had the thought that he was an old man. He was far, far past his prime physically, and even he, eventually, would pass into the next world someday, hopefully far sooner than young Aiden would as long as the world was good enough to let him flourish and grow.
He liked the kid a lot. Aiden was a free-thinking type, a little one-off, and smarter than most people he had wandered this cold world with over the years. Tom had eventually approached him with the singular intention of providing him an opportunity.
You see, Tom Smith was a man of the arts. Oh sure, he wasn’t some lover of Picasso and surely didn’t worship long-dead artists of the past. While he enjoyed the classics, his art was nothing so benign as that.
Tom Smith was a practitioner of what was rapidly becoming the dying art of Voodoo.
And Tom was good at what he did.
The offer had been very mild on his end. He had approached Aiden with a bright smile and a left hand extended, all while the spirits chittered around him like gnashing flies whispering that this guy here, was a good one in the world. That surely, Aiden wouldn’t come along on the journey Tom himself had taken in this life. That the kid was far too gentle to pull the kind of trigger they needed to survive in this reformed landscape of the dead, dying, and vicious.
Tom wasn’t convinced, and if nothing else, kicked those voices aside in favor of his personal desire to pass along anything at all of his craft, even if it was just the softer aspects of it.
Tradition was important, even in the apocalypse, maybe especially then, and in Tom's opinion, helped to bridge the gap between the past and the future. A future where people would otherwise forget cultural histories while yesterday inevitably became lost in the mire of time.
It rooted a man and provided a foundation upon which he could stand and understand life with the broader depth of experiences and knowledge passed along by wiser mouths. Where know-how was passed down from older hands that had touched more in life than anyone nineteen years old could have ever fathomed.
So, Tom had smiled, offered that hand, and knew he had surprised the guy when he said, “Hello, Aiden. I’ve been watching you.”
It was intentional on his end, that phrasing. Tom did nothing in his life without intention. The words he spoke had power; power to attract, power to attach, power to influence. Immediately Aiden had frowned at him, but, Tom sure as hell had his attention. Those hazel eyes had skipped over him with real paranoia, before he finally put aside his book, stood, and shook with him.
Tom had instantly, at a touch, looked into that heart and known Aiden was a good man. Knew he was very lost and drifting without a cause; knew his heart panged for his own kind, and knew that he was looking for a purpose.
“Um…that’s a little strange to say to a man.” Aiden had said to him, openly honest and without hesitation. Tom liked him at once.
“I saw you perusing those tomes there.” Tom pointed at the few books on the dirt by his bedroll and smiled kindly. “Not a lot of folks around spend time researching the body.”
Aiden had laughed a little sheepishly, relaxed, and just rubbed his neck awkwardly before waving over the stack. “Oh, that? I just think it’s kind of cool and I don’t think it’s smart to forget about that kind of stuff, you know?”
Tom had an in, felt his lips curve, his eyes brightened, and he nodded. “No, Aiden. Remembering is important.”
It had gone from there, and Tom had gotten to know his young prodigy very well.
They spoke about their past and really Tom had nothing to hide in this life. He made it clear what he was, what he was trying to do with him, and Aiden had told him flat out, that while he’d love to learn herbs and the medicinal portion of the program, he wasn’t that big of a believer in the actual spirit of it all.
Tom had nodded and forged on, teaching the boy all he knew how to do with plants and animal parts, how to make a poultice, a tincture, or salve. The differences between fats you could utilize for anything from soap to oil that would burn. He had been thrilled Aiden had had a rock-solid core, would dive in to aid women paining in childbirth, and was an eager learner with bright-eyed interests and a steel trap memory. He would tell the kid something once, and Aiden would seek him out the next day with his little notebook and pelt him with questions to elaborate on things or ask about things he had thought about while alone in the quiet night.
It had given them both a purpose: Tom to teach, and Aiden to learn. To be healers in this life, and spread that through a world that was in desperate need of such aid.
Finally, Tom felt that Aiden was ready for more, and had told him one night with eyes gone nearly black with his thoughts, “Aiden, there’s a whole world out there you don’t understand, boy.” Those hazel eyes had looked very curious and perplexed. Tom had swallowed his excitement, stood, and beckoned him along to his tent. Inside, was a man named Jeffry, and the man was a month from death.
Aiden had sat down and watched Tom talk with his patient about the symptoms he was experiencing, had watched his dark hands slide over the flesh of Jeffry's calf where an infection had ripened. Surely, the leg would eventually have to go, which was a death sentence out in the world or it would kill him anyway.
Perhaps in another time not so grievous, but after the Reform? If a man couldn’t run, then he couldn’t fight and he surely couldn’t hunt. It was not a good prognosis either way you sliced it.
Jeffry had been terrified, staring at Tom with eyes so pained and stricken that he had broken down and cried with relief when the man had looked at him and said he could help him.
That night, Tom had taken Aiden into a clearing, where he had a goat staked down on a lead into the earth, a large duffle on his shoulder, his make-shift alter had already been set up, and the moon had been at its zenith overhead.
The night was warm, accommodating in the Southern State, and Aiden had watched with shifty growing concern while Tom had taken out a machete, sharpened to a razor blade edge, several jars full of nothing, a jar of salt, and then a lock of Jeffry’s hair bound in red thread.
The creep factor had quadrupled for Aiden, clearly so from his wide-eyed expression and stiff stance when Tom had pulled out the cradle of a human skull, detached from its face parts long ago, flipped it up like a bowl, and looked at him with a small smile. “Are you ready, Aiden? Let me show you what the Spirits can do in this world.”
He had sparked a small fire in the center of the clearing, and Aiden had nervously looked at the empty jars. “What are those for?” He had asked thinking it was maybe to catch blood from the goat…he just didn’t know. It had frozen him up when Tom had turned to him, eyes black as pitch and nearly glowing with some inner fervor that seemed sinister in this spooky, dark theater. Tom glanced at the jars almost mischievously, and then back to those lovely eyes.
“Those are Spirits, Aiden. Each one houses a creature I’ve captured, and now invoke when needed, do you understand?” He smiled and put a long finger to his lips. “Never open those. They’ll escape and possess a man, and that, would be a very, very bad thing in this life.”
Aiden had looked at the jars and just nodded quickly, a little pale around the edges, and Tom had begun.
That night had been the night Aiden had watched and been convinced that some things in life weren’t explainable by just science alone.
It wasn’t the immediate output; it was the draw of energy in that clearing, the palpable pulse of something dark that had gathered around Tom Smith. A darkness that had taken him from an ordinary man with some odd behaviors and quirks, into something terrifyingly real and disquieting.
It had, that night, seemed as though Tom himself had vanished, replaced with a chanting, feral, wild thing in the center of that clearing, kneeling over the slain body of a goat, arms upraised to the sky while the wind had kicked up and then erupted through the fire like something had physically hit the pit. It had sent an explosion of embers and wood chunks flying and left in its wake, a static crackle and pop in the atmosphere. It had been so heavy and disturbingly potent that Aiden felt he could have reached out and run fingers through the texture of the world.
It had been choking, thick, felt evil in its suffocating intensity, and just the feeling of it like a viable thing to grab a hold of, had rocked Aiden's entire world.
The moment Tom had placed Jeffry's hair into the blood captured within his skull bowl on an altar surrounded by his four captured Spirits, Aiden had jumped when a snap of lightning split the air not even a mile off. He looked up and found the sky black overhead and the moon covered with an unexpected roiling broil of cloud cover.
Tom had looked at Aiden's terrified eyes and flashed that bright white smile, opened a spare jar, dumped the goat blood, Jeffry’s hair, and a pinch of salt into it, tightened it, and tied the same red twine that had held his hair section together around the glass lip.
“We need to bury this, somewhere it can never be found or opened. This holds Jeffry’s illness within, you see?” He had shaken it almost playfully, and Aiden had been stock still staring at him with huge eyes. “You will see, Aiden.” Tom had straightened and pointed to a shovel leaning against a tree trunk. “Get the shovel, boy. We’ll go put this far, far away.” Those eyes creased on Aiden's petrified ones, just as the first droplets of rain began to pelt the leaves of the trees around them. “You’ll see.”
