Primal Fear (18 page)

“Is that possible?”

“I don’t know.  But some of the things I might have called impossible a few days ago, I’m beginning to believe in today.  Think about it.  Not only did I see you in my vision at the same time that Mr. Slater’s body was attacking you, I also witnessed it from his perspective.  I saw myself entering the room; I saw you look up, directly at me.  I think I was watching you through his eyes.”

“Wait a minute.  It was a dead body, John, and you were hundreds of miles away, you said so yourself.”

“I think what happened is pretty simple.  Hard to accept maybe, but easy enough to explain.  I think Mahuk used me as a link to warn both of us at the same time.  He warned me through the vision, and he used his powers over Slater’s body to warn you.”

“Come on, John, you told me he was an old man.  You said he’s dying.  How could he—”

“If he can commune with Atae, then his powers are immense, even now, even near death.  And if Slater’s soul hasn’t crossed over yet, then it is susceptible to Atae’s will.  His body is just an empty shell.  Commanding it would have been a very simple matter at that point.”

“But from so far away?”

“Apparently distance means very little in the spirit world,” John said with a wry grin.

“Well, as it turns out, there’s even more to it than what happened to you and me.  Something happened to Laurie yesterday, just about the same time that Mahuk contacted the two of us.”

John turned to Laurie, a frown creasing his face.  “What was it?  You weren’t hurt, were you?”

“Oh no,” Laurie told him, “not at all.  I was more scared than anything, but for a while there, I felt like someone was smothering me.”

She quickly went over what had happened, her voice shaking slightly as she recounted her own feelings of helplessness and despair.  Finally, drawing to the end of the story, she got up and went into the kitchen, returning with the pages from the computer’s printer. 

“I went over it again this morning,” she said.  “It took a little while, but I was able to make out the points where the words start to repeat themselves.  There’s six sets of the same words, just over a hundred words in each set.”

“The printer wasn’t even turned on,” Harry pointed out.  “And look at all the writing.  Any of that make sense to you?”

John nodded immediately.  “Yes, I recognize this.  These are the words to one of our prayers, one of the traditional prayers of my people.  It’s a kind of plea to the spirits of the sun and sky, asking for safety, for protection.”

“Protection from what?”

“From the dark spirits.  From the demons of the earth and of the darkness, from the sea and storms.”

Laurie shivered, moved closer to Harry.  “So what does it mean?  Why did the printer spit that out?”

John shrugged, though the gesture of uncertainty wasn’t reflected in his gaze.  “I can’t be positive, but I think this means that you’re to be involved in this, too.  I don’t know when, or how, but you’re going to play some part in what’s to come.”

“What about the word in English?” Laurie asked.  “Coming.  What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Another warning, I imagine.  But beyond that, I have no idea.”

“And do you think Mahuk is responsible for that, too?”

“I wish I could say yes, because if anything else is behind what happened to you, then we have even more to worry about than I thought.”

Harry looked up.  “What do you mean by that?”

“Just that there are a great many spirits and powers in the belief systems of my people.  I’d hate to think another of those could be involved.  It’s like the attack on you.  If I’m wrong about Mahuk trying to send you a message through Mr. Slater, then we’d have to start from scratch to figure out what caused it.”  He looked at the pages Laurie had given him once more and then laid them down on the coffee table.  I don’t think I’m wrong about that, though.”

“Okay, let’s get back to that, then,” Harry said.  “Let’s say you’re right, that the old man did raise Slater’s body to warn me.  Why would he have it attack me?”

“That’s something else that’s been troubling me.  I didn’t witness the attack.  I only saw you turning around and starting to back off and then everything was cut off.  Everything went black.  But I felt something . . . terrible, just before I woke up.  It was like an uncontrollable rage.  I can’t even begin to describe how it felt.  It wasn’t natural, and it wasn’t a part of my own emotions.”

“Mahuk’s maybe?  Maybe something was going wrong.”

“I don’t think so.  I think Mahuk was beginning to lose control of Mr. Slater’s body at that point, almost like his power to influence it was taken away from him.”

“By who?”

“By the one I’ve been sent here to hunt.  That would certainly explain why the body became vicious at that point, why it attacked you.”

“Why?  To warn me off?”

John shook his head.  “What we’re dealing with here isn’t the kind of presence that warns people off, Harry.  It wanted you dead.  The intent of that attack was to kill you.  You’re more fortunate than you know.”

“So what stopped it?  Are you saying I fought off an evil spirit with a piece of broken glass?”

“I don’t think that had much effect on the spirit, at least not directly.  But I think it served to break Mahuk’s influence over the body, and once that was done, it was no longer open to anyone’s manipulation. We’re not fighting something that’s afraid of broken glass.  We’re not fighting something that’s going to be afraid of guns or bullets or anything else that could physically harm a man of flesh and blood.  Right now it’s still weak, it’s still in a state of preparation, and I have a feeling it fed off of Mahuk’s power more than its own to take over Mr. Slater’s body.  But if that hadn’t been the case, if it had sent that body to destroy you of its own will and under its own power, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you right now.”

“No?”

“No.  You’d be a dead man already.”

Chapter Sixteen

Harry swallowed, suddenly wishing he could be anywhere else, that the discussion with John could be wiped from his memory.  But he also felt like he was on the verge of finally learning the truth, and with that in mind, he pushed on.         

“Let’s get right to the meat of this,” he said.  He leaned forward and looked straight at John.  “This morning you asked me if I’d ever heard of some certain legend.  That’s what all of this is about, isn’t it?”

John nodded, returning to the couch.  “That’s exactly what it’s about.  The legend I asked you about was the legend of Wyh-heah Qui Waq.  It’s a story that has been passed from generation to generation among my people.  Nobody really knows how far back it goes.  In my studies, I’ve found references going back over three hundred and fifty years.  There’s even a possibility it predates Columbus’s discovery of America, but no one has any conclusive evidence to support that yet.”

“How come I’ve never heard of it?”

“It’s not something that was openly discussed or documented, even among my ancestors.  In fact, it was only the shaman from any given village that possessed the entire knowledge of the legend.  The villagers themselves would only be told bits and pieces, enough to warn them, or to prepare them if the legend was ever to come to pass.  It took me years to put all the pieces together, years of studying and cross-references, but, truthfully, many of our old beliefs are like that.  It wasn’t as though I made this particular myth my specialty.  It’s just that it was hidden much more effectively than any of the others I’ve ever had to research.

“The first reference to it I found was in an old library book called ‘Treasures of the Northlands’, and it featured the artistic creativity of several Indian and Eskimo tribes.  There was a small picture on one of the pages, I remember it vividly because it was so striking.  It was a wooden mask, carved about three hundred years ago by an Aleut Eskimo man who had become separated from his village and had spent two and a half weeks lost in the wilderness.  The text didn’t mention the legend by name, but it referred to the man’s belief that he’d encountered the demon of the wind and that he’d carved the mask to warn others of the spirit’s existence.”

“What did it look like?”

“It was hideous.  A long, narrow face, a mouth filled with fangs, empty holes for eyes.  Barely human, that’s what was so frightening about it.  I can still picture it exactly the way I saw it that first day. 

“After that, it was another six months before I came across anything else to do with the legend.  But then I found another reference to the same Aleut’s story, the one who’d carved the mask in the first place.  This one made a correlation between his tale of the demon of the wind and the legend of Wyh-heah Qui Waq.  It went on to suggest that it was the man’s own sense of isolation and his delirious frame of mind at the time of his disappearance that caused him to hallucinate the entire episode.  It claimed that his own upbringing—his own belief in the spirits—was to blame.  But when he returned with his tale, and then carved the wooden mask as testimony to it, he contributed to the legend itself.  From that point in time, references to Wyh-heah Qui Waq became much more frequent, and some historians believe it was this man’s story that started it all.”

“So what is this legend?” Laurie asked.  “What is Wyh-heah Qui Waq?”

John chewed his lip.  “According to the beliefs of my people, there is a spirit for anything one might encounter in nature.  The spirit of the sun brings warmth and light; the spirit of the moon guards over the earth in the darkness; the spirit of the land provides both food and shelter for all the earth’s children.  It’s a very common mythology, actually.  I can site you two dozen examples in Native American and Middle Eastern history alone.”

Harry grinned.  “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Anyway, it is believed that these spirits—gods, if you will—exist in a constant state of balance;  for every god there is a demon, for every spirit of good, there is a spirit of evil.  They are in eternal combat, these good and evil forces, and everything that happens can be attributed to a victory or a defeat on either side.  A particularly savage winter, for example, one in which many villagers are lost to starvation or to the elements, would be blamed on a victory of one of the evil spirits that roam the land and command the forces of nature.”

“So this Wyh-heah Qui Waq is an evil spirit?”

“Something like that, but not exactly,” John said slowly.  “There’s another legend I have to tell you about first.  It’ll help you to understand.  It’s more commonly known among the many different Eskimo tribes and villages.  These days, most of my people consider it to be little more than a superstition, but I’ve met others, mostly among the elderly, who still believe in it.  And I’ve heard stories . . .”

He broke off, as if suddenly aware that he was beginning to stray from the point.  He took a moment to reel his thoughts back in before going on, squaring his shoulders before picking up the trail of the story once again.

“Have you ever heard of a tupilaq?”

Harry shook his head.

“That doesn’t surprise me, actually.  I wouldn’t have expected any outsider to know that one.  A tupilaq is a sort of small carving, a figurine.  The village shaman would fashion it by hand, usually out of wood or rock, sometimes even out of bone.  When the carving was complete, he would then perform a ritual of summoning upon it, and attempt to bring it to life.”

“What for?”

“Once in a while to frighten an enemy, but usually for revenge.  Sometimes even to kill a man.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.  What is it, some kind of curse?”

“Not a curse, no.  It’s the tupilaq itself that would carry out the instructions of the shaman.  You see, once the ritual of summoning was over, at least as the story goes, the shaman would instill within the tupilaq the soul of a dead man, stolen from the spirit world before it could pass on to the other side.  The spirit would remain trapped, imprisoned inside of the tupilaq, until its duties were carried out.  When its purpose was served, the soul would be rewarded, returned to the spirit world in a state of perfection.  That would allow it to cross over forever to the other side.”

Laurie seemed appalled by this.  “Even after committing an act of revenge?  Or murder?”

“Apparently, in service to the shaman, it was the tupilaq itself that would absorb the burden of sin, not the soul used to animate it.  When the tupilaq was given life, it was said to grow to the size of a man, to become a living being, but one retaining the characteristics of the shaman’s original carving.  Most of them were intentionally hideous, carved to instill fear into the heart of the shaman’s enemy.”

John stood and crossed the room to his duffel bag.  He returned with a thick text book and began to leaf through it as he lowered himself back onto the couch.  A small, self-conscious frown spread over his face as he flipped through the pages; he seemed painfully aware of how ridiculous some of the legends and beliefs of his people must seem in the light of today’s modern technology.

Harry hid his skepticism, hoping to ease some of John’s anxiety.  He tried to remember that John had grown up with these beliefs; they were a part of his character, and a part of his heritage. 

“Here it is,” John said.  He laid the open book on the table between them and turned it towards Harry.  “Look at these two pictures.  They’re photographs of actual Eskimo carvings, made by an unknown shaman almost three hundred years ago.  Take a good look at the amount of detail.”

Harry examined the pictures, each depicting the image of a small wooden figure.

“Are these in a museum somewhere?” he asked.

John nodded.  “They’re both part of an exhibit of Aleut Eskimo artifacts at the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.”

The carving in the first photograph had been fashioned into what was basically the shape of a man, although some of the proportions had been greatly miscalculated.  Its head was twice the size of any normal man’s, and its face was horribly disfigured, clearly illustrating its creator’s intentions.  Its eyes were slanted, peering out from under heavy, angry brows, and two pairs of jagged fangs forced its mouth into a perpetual snarl.  Its features had certainly been created to inspire fear, and Harry tried to imagine how horrible a full-size, animated version of the carving would be.

The second figure was even more disturbing, bearing little resemblance to anything even remotely human.  It was tall and slender, its emaciated form hunched over into a deformed stoop, the way a dying animal might look standing on its hind legs.  The figure had been given four long arms, each ending in a hand with three claw-like fingers.  Its face was twisted into an expression of terrible fury, eyes open and mouth agape, a maw that was impossibly wide, covering the entire lower half of the head.

“Jesus,” Harry said, pushing the book back across the table.  “Have you ever seen evidence to support these stories?”

“No.  Just the stories themselves.  But I’ve heard dozens of them, from several different sources.  It seems like there’s not an Eskimo tribe in the entire North American continent that doesn’t have similar references in their mythology.  Most of them have different names for it, but when you get right down to it, they’re all referring to the same thing: the tupilaq.”

Harry took a moment to process the sudden flood of information.  “Okay,” he said at last, “so the shaman carves the tupilaq, brings it to life with a dead man’s soul, and sends it out to kill.  His very own killing machine.  But how is all this related to your story?”

“More than two hundred years ago, in what is now called New Brunswick, a war broke out between the Abenaki Indians and a group of several different Eskimo villages that had come together and settled there.  The winter that year was devastating, and the Eskimo villages had joined together as an act of survival.  They settled in the Tesmacha Forest, a kind of natural notch that provided shelter from the extreme conditions.  There was food there as well, and they came to rely on the forest to survive.

“The Abenaki took great offense to this.  They’d also claimed the forest as their own and wouldn’t tolerate the intrusion of the Eskimos upon their land.  They went to war.  The attacks went on for weeks, always in the dead of night, always when the Eskimos were least prepared to defend themselves.  Finally it seemed clear that the Eskimos couldn’t survive much longer; the chances were good that the Abenaki would completely destroy them with their next attack.”

John paused, lowered his voice.  “So . . . desperate times breed desperate measures.  This became a war for survival, nothing more.  And so the shamans from each village joined together and raised a tupilaq of their own to set loose against their enemy.  They carved it from wood and bone, and gave it features that the legend says could freeze a man’s blood in his veins.  When it came time to bring the tupilaq to life, to summon a soul from the spirit world to instill within it, the most powerful of the shaman, Jha-Laman, decided a single man’s soul would not be powerful enough to animate their tupilaq.  Their creation was meant to be without mercy, and must destroy their enemy completely.  The six of them discussed it, and then began a ritual which, to their teachings, was considered a forbidden act.

“They called upon a demon, the evil spirit of the wind, to possess their tupilaq, and the legend says that they were successful.  They brought the tupilaq to life through the power of the demon of the wind, Wyh-heah Qui Waq, and then sent it after the Indians that had become their enemy.”

A knot of wood popped in the fireplace, and Harry couldn’t keep his head from jerking to the side.  John’s story was beginning to get under his skin, and he felt oddly nervous, as if something might reach out of the darkness and touch him at any moment. 

“You tell a great ghost story, John,” Laurie said, only half-smiling.  “I’ll bet you were popular in the Cub Scouts.”

John smiled, but it faded quickly as his story continued.

“The stories say that the tupilaq swept into the Indian encampments that same night, and attacked them without remorse.  But the legend also becomes a little murky here.  It doesn’t go into a lot of detail; it only says that the tupilaq’s vengeance upon the Indians was insanely violent, and that it left no survivors.  Not one.”

“My God,” Laurie whispered.

“Anthropologists who have studied that area tell of a huge burial pit uncovered there in 1961, a pit filled with bones that date back to the time of the Indian/Eskimo wars.  There were so many bones in the pit, and they were in such a state of dismemberment that an exact determination of how many bodies had been buried there was virtually impossible.  There were hundreds of them, and later examinations of the bones revealed that a major percentage of them bore marks indicating violent death.  It was concluded that most of the bodies in the pit had been torn limb from limb, many of them while they were still alive.  But there was also evidence to suggest that some of them had been torn apart later, after they’d already been murdered.”

John rose to his feet.  He appeared to be gathering his resolve, trying to conquer the fear his own story had brought to life inside of him.  He paced to the fireplace and crouched there, staring into the flames as he went on.

“The group of village shaman . . . once they witnessed the total devastation that the tupilaq had caused—that
they
had caused—showed great remorse for what they had done.  It was they, I believe, that went about burying all those bodies, out of pity, out of guilt . . . I don’t know.  Maybe out of some strange sense of duty.  But they decided that to raise a demon against anyone, no matter how terrible an enemy, was a crime beyond redemption.  A crime against humanity, against nature itself.  In time, they called the tupilaq back to the village and began a ritual to exorcise the demon from its body.”