Read Online The Curse of the Wendigo by Rick Yancey - Free Book Online

have some way of producing the next generation, Sergeant. Every schoolboy knows that. So tell me, how does the Wendigo make little Wendigos? Being a hominid, it is a higher order of mammal—putting aside the issue of how a heart made of ice can pump blood—so it is not asexual. What can you tell me about its courtship rituals? Do Wendigos date? Do they fall in love? Are they monogamous, or do they take multiple mates?”
    Our guide laughed in spite of himself. The absurdity of the thing had become too much for him.
    “Maybe they do fall in love, Doctor. It’s nice to think we’re not the only ones who can.”
    “One must be careful not to anthropomorphize nature, Sergeant. Though, we must leave room for love in the lower orders—I am not inside Mr. Beaver’s head; perhaps he loves Mrs. Beaver with all his heart. But to return to my question about the Wendigo: Are they immortal—unlike every otherorganism on earth—and therefore have no need to reproduce?”
    “They take us and turn us into them.”
    “But I thought you said they
ate
us.”
    “Well, I can’t say exactly how it happens. Stories come out of the bush, a hunter or trapper or, more often, an Indian ‘goes Wendigo.’”
    “Ah, so it’s like the vampire or werewolf. We are its food as well as its progeny.” The doctor was nodding with mock gravity. “The case is nearly unassailable, isn’t it? Much more likely than the alternative, that the Wendigo is a metaphor for famine and the taboo of cannibalism in times of starvation, or a boogeyman to frighten children into obeying their parents.”
    Neither spoke for a few minutes. The fire crackled and popped; shadows danced and whirled about our little camp; the lake shimmered in the moonlight, its waves sensually licking the shore; and the woods reverberated with the song of crickets and the occasional snap of a twig underfoot of some woodland creature.
    “Well, Dr. Warthrop, I’m almost sorry I asked about monstrumology,” said Hawk wistfully. “You’ve darn near taken all the fun out of it.”
    The men flipped a coin to see who would take the first watch. Though we were but a day’s hike from civilization, we were already well within wolf and bear country, and someonewould need to keep the fire going throughout the night. Warthrop lost—he would have to be the last to sleep—but seemed pleased with the outcome. It would give him, he said, time to think, a statement that struck me as rich with irony. It was my impression he did little else with his time.
    The burly Sergeant Hawk crawled into the tent and threw himself onto the ground next to me; so small were our quarters that his shoulder rubbed against mine.
    “Sort of a queer fellow your boss is, Will,” he said quietly, lest Warthrop hear him. I could see the doctor’s silhouette through the open flap, hunched before the orange glow of the fire, the Winchester propped against his thigh. “Polite but not very friendly. Kind of coldlike. But he must have a good heart to come all this way after his friend.”
    “I’m not sure if all of it’s about his friend,” I said.
    “No?”
    “He thinks Dr. Chanler is dead.”
    “Well, that’s my thought too, and why we called off the search. But it’s like this Wendigo. Odds are your boss ain’t going to find him—and that won’t prove he is or isn’t dead.”
    “I’m not sure it’s even about finding him,” I confessed.
    “Then, what the devil
is
it about?”
    “I think it’s mostly about her.”
    “Who?”
    “Mrs. Chanler.”
    “Mrs. Chanler!” Sergeant Hawk whispered. “What do you—Oh. Oh! Is that what—Well, you don’t say!” He chuckled sleepily. “Not so coldlike after all, eh?”
    He rolled onto his side, and within a few seconds the sides of the tent began to vibrate from the potency of his snores. I lay sleepless for a long time, not kept awake by his snoring so much as by the disorienting lightness of being, the sense of being very small in a vast, empty