Edgewise (10 page)

Lily lost her balance and her sense of direction, and she fell sideways in the snow. She struggled to stand up but she fell over yet again, onto her knees.

“Wendigo . . . hear me . . .
Wendigo
. . . listen to me . . .”

Lily cowered down and pressed her hands over her eyes. Whatever it was that Hazawin and George Iron Walker had summoned up from the woods, it would eventually have to go away, wouldn't it? But as she knelt there, she could hear that hissing noise approaching her, nearer and nearer. She didn't dare to uncover her eyes, but she could sense that the Wendigo was only a few feet away. It was darkness and bitter cold and the smell of impenetrable forest. It was hunger, and desperation, and a need to stay alive that was close to the very edge of madness. It was humanity reduced to its grimmest levels of self-preservation, or perhaps it wasn't human at all but some kind of animal that could walk on two legs and think like a human.
I will bite into your neck, I will tear with my teeth at your soft intestines, I will wrench the flesh from your thighs.

“Wendigo! screamed Hazawin, so shrilly that she barely sounded sane.
“Wendigo!”

Lily had felt mortal fear only twice before in her life. Once, of course, when the two men from FLAME had broken into her house and taken Tasha and Sammy. And once when a boyfriend had taken her home in his '74 Mustang and insisted on sex. When she had laughingly refused, he had produced a craft knife, and held it against her neck, and sworn that he would cut her throat wide open.

“Wendigo!”

Instantly, in response, the birch wood was filled with the harshest scream that Lily had ever heard, either from a human or an animal. It rose higher and higher until it set Lily's teeth on edge. Then, abruptly, it stopped. Lily felt a huge wave of pressure pass over her, as if she were being swept away by an icy-cold sea. Then she heard a slamming noise, like a massive door.

After that, the woods fell silent. Lily slowly took her hands away from her eyes and lifted her head. George and Hazawin were kneeling about ten feet away from her, close to each other. John Shooks was sitting with his back to a birch tree, brushing snow from his hair with his hand.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit.”

Lily stood up, and looked around. “So was that it? That was the Wendigo?”

“That was the Wendigo,” said Hazawin. She sniffed, and said, “You can still smell it. Like hot iron.”

Lily sniffed too, but all she could smell was trees. “So now what?” she asked.

“The Wendigo has seen you, felt you. Now it knows who you are. It knows what you want, and what you can offer in return.”

There was a very long silence between them. Snow kept on falling.

“Will it do it?” asked Lily, at last, trying to sound composed, even though she was still trembling. “Will the Wendigo go looking for Tasha and Sammy?”

“Oh, yes. I believe so, yes.”

“You're not completely sure?”

“You can never be completely sure—not with the Wendigo; not until it arrives at the place where your children first went missing and picks up their scent. When it does that, you will know for certain that it has chosen to hunt for them.”

“You mean it's going to come to my
home
?”

George came over and took hold of both of her hands. “Don't lose your nerve, Lily. The Wendigo is pretty damned frightening, I admit. But it's a Native American spirit, one of us. When it agrees to track down somebody for you, it will track them down, and it is always true to its promise. The white men betrayed us with their so-called treaties, time after time. That's how we lost our lands and our livelihood. But so long as you honor your bargain, the Wendigo will never let you down. Neither will I, or Hazawin.”

“George, for God's sake. It really scared me.”

“Of course it scared you. Don't you think it scares me, too? It is one of the most terrifying of all Native American spirits. But that's why we send it out to look for people. It's relentless. It's unstoppable.”

They stood in the woods for a while, looking around, as if they half-expected the Wendigo to make a repeat appearance. But then John Shooks said, “Screw this, I need a drink,” heaved himself on to his feet and started to trudge his way back toward the house. Hazawin followed him, her head bowed, listening to his footsteps to guide her, and then Lily and George.

“I know this is a very different world,” said George, as they descended the slope. “I know that you find it hard to understand.”

“Just answer me one question,” said Lily. “Is this a scam? If it
is
a scam, you should tell me now, and I'll go away and leave you alone and say nothing to anybody.”

“You really think I would trick you?”

“You want that land at Mystery Lake, don't you?”

“Of course. But you don't have to give me that land until your children are safely home. That's our bargain, isn't it?”

“All right. But if you put me through all of this, and I find out that you've been taking advantage of my feelings for my children, I swear to God that you'll
really
find out what frightening means.”

George laid a hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. “You are a very determined person, Lily. I like determined.”

That evening, she was whipping up eggs for a cheese-and-tomato omelet when the doorbell chimed. She crossed the hallway wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. Through the spyhole in the front door she could see Special Agents Rylance and Kellogg, with snow on their shoulders, their noses red with cold. She opened up at once.

“What is it?” she asked.

Special Agent Rylance raised one leather-gloved hand to reassure her. “It's okay, Mrs. Blake. We don't have any news about Tasha and Sammy. But we may have some kind of a lead to the people who took them.”

She led them into the living room. “You look frozen. Can I get you something hot to drink?”

“No, we're fine,” said Special Agent Rylance. “We don't want to take up too much of your time.”

“Here, sit by the fire,” she said.

Special Agent Rylance unbuttoned his overcoat and sat down. “We had a report less than an hour ago that these FLAME lunatics have attacked another estranged wife—in Winona this time—and kidnapped her son.”

“That's terrible. Was the woman badly hurt?”

“That's the reason we came around to see you personally,” said Special Agent Kellogg. “The woman suffered third-degree burns and she died on the way to the hospital. We didn't want you to hear it for the first time on the TV news.”

Lily said, “Oh my God. How can anyone be so sadistic?”

“Hard to understand, isn't it? But people do all kinds of terrible things to each other, every day of the week.”

“The woman was only twenty-nine,” said Special Agent Rylance. “Her son was four.”

“Do you think it was the same men who tried to kill me?”

Special Agent Rylance nodded. “A neighbor saw them leaving the apartment. One of them was wearing a headdress like the one you described, with horns.”

“The neighbor also saw their vehicle, a black Toyota SUV.”

“We'll find them, Mrs. Blake,” said Special Agent Kellogg. “And when we do, there's every chance that we'll be able to locate your ex-husband, too.”

For a moment, Lily was tempted to tell Special Agents Rylance and Kellogg what had happened in Black Crow Valley that afternoon—the chanting, and the bone-rattling, and the dim, flickering light behind the trees. But it all seemed so unreal, and she didn't want them to know how gullible she had been. How could a Native American spirit find Tasha and Sammy when the FBI couldn't? A Wendigo? Much more likely that it was a hoax—a setup constructed from strobe lights and loudspeakers.

Special Agent Rylance said, “We'll keep you informed of any developments, Mrs. Blake. Meanwhile, as usual, if
you
hear anything . . .”

“Of course,” Lily told him.

Lily was spooning Purina Dog Chow into Sergeant's bowl when the FLAME story came on Channel 41 news that night.

Jerry Duncan, the newscaster, said, “. . . Ms. Whitney's robe was drenched in water. Then she was tied to a kitchen chair, doused in gasoline, and set alight. She died of her burns before the ambulance could reach the Community Memorial Hospital.

“Her four-year-old son, Dean, was kidnapped from his bedroom and so far his whereabouts remain unknown. Police are looking for his father, Morris Whitney, whose last address was in Good-view. Mr. Whitney was apparently involved in a series of legal wrangles with his former wife over access and alimony.”

Lily immediately stood up and walked through to the kitchen, just as a wedding picture of the Whitneys was flashed on to the TV screen. They were both laughing, Lily couldn't help thinking how ordinary they looked: Mr. and Mrs. Happy Average.

Jerry Duncan continued, “Less than an hour ago, Channel 41 News received a webcam message from a man claiming to represent the men's action group FLAME—Fathers' League Against Mothers' Evil. In recent months, FLAME has been committing increasingly violent acts against mothers who have been granted custody of their children after a divorce. In three cases they have kidnapped the children and presumably handed them over to their fathers, although all efforts by law enforcement agencies to find these children or their fathers have so far met with no success.

“The FLAME representative—who said that his name was ‘Victor Quinn'—claimed that FLAME was responsible for burning Ms. Whitney alive, and that more mothers would face a similar fate unless they were prepared to be far more reasonable about custody, access, and maintenance payments.”

The silhouette of a man appeared—a man wearing a headdress that looked like a pair of devil's horns. Behind him was a solid orange background, with the word
FLAME
painted on it in letters that were supposed to look like fire.

The man said, in a flat, dry, Minnesota accent, “Today, we executed another witch.”

Lily started to tremble. She had had so many nightmares about this man, but she had never believed that she would ever see him again or hear his voice. But here he was, right in front of her. She was so shaken that she had to pull out a chair and sit down.

“Witchcraft is no longer a crime punishable by death,” the man continued. “It used to be, in the thirteen original colonies, and some people think that it still should be. Women may not work spells any longer, or consort with Satan, but they are still regularly using trickery and deceit to destroy the happiness of decent and hardworking men, and to deprive them of their right to fatherhood. If that isn't witchery, we don't know what is.”

My God,
thought Lily. She knew that her own behavior had been far from saintly while she and Jeff were breaking up. At times she had been unforgivably spiteful and awkward, and she had never made it easy for Jeff to keep up his relationship with Tasha and Sammy. But no matter how mean-minded she might have been, no woman deserved to be burned alive for it.

The phone rang. She was trembling so much that when she picked it up, she nearly dropped it.

“Mrs. Blake? This is Special Agent Kellogg. Are you watching the TV news?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“You can see this man ‘Victor Quinn?' Is he the man who broke into your home and kidnapped Tasha and Sammy?”

“Yes. I'm sure of it. I'd know his voice anywhere.”

“Are you okay? This hasn't disturbed you too much, has it?”

“I'm shaking like a leaf, to tell you the truth.”

“Would you feel better if I came around?”

“No, that's okay. I'll be fine. It was a shock, that's all.”

“Okay, Mrs. Blake. I'll probably call you again tomorrow. Thanks for the ID. I believe it could help us a lot.”

“Just find him,” said Lily. “Just find him, and find my children.”

She went to bed early that night. It had stopped snowing for a while, but the roof was thickly covered and the whole house creaked like a ship at sea. She picked up
Minnesota Monthly
and tried to finish off the cryptic crossword she had started yesterday, but none of the clues seemed to make any sense at all. “
Brushes with insects help crones to become airborne.
” What the hell did that mean?

She closed her eyes. Her head fell back against the pillows. She began to breathe deeper and deeper, and her fingers opened so that her ballpen rolled out of her hand and dropped onto the floor.

She dreamed that she was walking through the birch woods. She wasn't alone. She could hear footsteps all around her, and people whispering, but she couldn't see anybody. She realized that she was lost, and that she had no idea where she was going, or how she was going to get out of the birch woods before it grew dark.

On either side of her, behind the trees, she saw pale-gray shapes running through the undergrowth.
Wolves,
she thought. But maybe they weren't wolves. Maybe they were witches.

Oh God, I'm frightened. Oh God, I'm frightened.
The branches scratched her face and caught in her hair, as if the birch trees themselves were trying to stop her from escaping.

Her heart beat faster and harder, and she started to run. Up ahead of her, she thought she could see a light flickering—a dim, silvery light, like a figure from a black-and-white movie.

The light flickered again, and again. As she came nearer to it, she saw that it was making its way between the trees on two legs, yet it was strangely hunched, and it had an odd, jerky gait, as if it were a four-legged animal that had been trained to walk like a man. It was then that she realized what it was, and she stopped, her chest constricted so tightly that she could hardly breathe.
It was the Wendigo,
It was turning around and around, in some kind of slow, spasmodic dance. When it turned to face her, she could dimly see it. But when it turned edgewise, it vanished altogether—
dissolved
, as if it simply wasn't there.