Windigo

By Michelle Hamilton

A Storm is Coming... To Will Carlson, Lily Montgomery was one of those freaks of nature - heart-shaped face, long-straight black hair and violet eyes that could see into your mind. Or your future. Known in small town Munising, Michigan as the local witch, Lily cared not at all what others thougth of her, including her brother's best friend - until Will, after a ten year absence running from ghosts of his own, returns home to open a business building log homes. Past, present and future collide as Will and Lily are thrown together in events not of their making, but in the end are ones they must overcome in order to save each other from getting singed by the fire blazing between them, as well as the one being built by others that could burn them alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312798243

Book preview

Windigo

Windigo

Michelle Hamilton

iStock_000000450606Medium

Dragonfly Media Publishing

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by Dragonfly Media Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Dragonfly Media Publishing,

www.dragonfly-publishing.com

Cover photos: iStockphoto.com

First printing: July 2008

ISBN: 978-1-312-79824-3

Printed in the United States of America

Published in Canada

ISBN:

To the Jim McIntyres:

For Munising summers,

For crazy adventures,

For being my family,

Blessed Be.

"Strange creatures dwell in the deepest, darkest forests in the world, but stranger still are the ones that live inside of man,

inner beasts more fearsome than anything else.

One such creature is the Windigo."

~Ojibwa legend



"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary;

Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

~Joseph Conrad



"By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes."

~William Shakespeare

One

The storm was one of those freaks of nature. The kind that the people living on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, sandwiched between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, would expect. The kind that turned a beautiful, warm late-April day into a raging blizzard of snow and ice.

But the residents of Superior’s south shore had no idea of the dark threat brewing over the cold expanse of Gitchigumi this day. It was finally spring. Warm, southern winds were coming up from the mid-west; the forests were alive with an almost-translucent green and with migrating songbirds; tulips and daffodils were sprouting up through the sandy soil, bright with colour. And the Lake had thawed from the slate greys of winter to the shifting greens and blues of summer.

For some, a blistering late-spring snowstorm wouldn’t be so bad. For Will Carlson, it would have meant another day ripping through the dark forests on snowmobile trails, missing school and postponing another hated English test, creating a snow fort with his best friend James and getting one more snowball battle in against the Pruitt boys next door. Maybe even his Uncle David, who lived outside of Munising closer to Au Train, would take him trapping. For Will, a boy of thirteen, dangers that such storms brought meant nothing compared to the fun of a good snowfall—if only as an excuse to get out of his house and away from his yelling parents.

But he didn’t really need a spring storm to do that—he found enough reasons on his own. Like tonight, he and James were walking up the narrow stone path to James’ front door to grab a bite to eat before they hopped on their bikes and rode down to the docks to see what the fishermen had brought in. If they were able to help out a bit, maybe they’d make enough money to swing by DQ after and split a great honkin’ ice cream sundae. Who knew? Perhaps Sissy would be there with her gaggle of girlfriends and he could sweet-talk her into the dark corner of the parking lot and finally see if those small breasts of hers felt as good as he thought they might.

His faded jean jacket flapped open in the warm evening air, ruffling the torn flannel shirt beneath and the shoulder-length, sandy hair he was trying to grow out like his idol, Axl Rose from Guns’N’Roses. He’d even managed to swipe one of the old black bandanas his father usually stuffed in his back pocket when working at the mill—when he managed to stop drinking long enough to go to work, that is. Will had tied it around his forehead in a wide swath, just like the badass rocker he emulated. But when he looked up past his scuffed sneakers as he and James bounded up the front steps and swung open the door, he conceded that even though his sandy hair was the same colour as Axl’s, the consistency James had was better—his hair was straight as an arrow.

The boys knew they’d be able to get in and out fast since James’ parents had gone off to another party tonight and it would only be the babysitter with James’ younger sister Lily. When they opened the front door, Will received the usual punch to the stomach when he saw James’ sister. His gut didn’t constrict because he thought she was beautiful—it would be wrong for him to notice something like that about his friend’s sister. Besides, she was just a baby. It was because, like the storm, Lily was one of those freaks of nature, too.

It wasn’t because even at the age of ten one could tell she would be a real beauty when she grew up. She had a pale face shaped like a pixie’s surrounded by hair as straight as her brother’s. Thick and black as midnight, like the dark stones Will’s uncle told him were cooled bits of lava. It wasn’t even her eyes. Will wasn’t sure if anyone could have purple eyes, but hers were such a deep colour of blue they appeared violet. Hearing them come in, she turned those eyes on them now. And then the punch turned into a weird, goose-bumpy feeling low on his neck.

Everyone knew there was something different about Lily, something a bit strange.

Not that Will had ever mentioned it in front of James or yammered with others as they gossiped—gossiping was for girls. It was the feeling people would get being around the youngest Montgomery, sort of like she could see inside your body and know what was going on in there. Or in your mind. Or in your future.

They said she was psychic. Will didn’t believe in that stuff—that would mean he’d have to believe in ghosts and souls, too, which inevitably led to having to believe in God. And Will just couldn’t imagine a God that would allow his dad to beat up on him and his mom whenever he felt like it. But whenever Lily would look at him, he’d get that queer feeling and think that maybe, just maybe, some of what they said was true.

Adding to her surreal appearance this day, Lily wore a flowing, white veil trailing over her raven hair and matching lace hand-gloves. Her accessories were completely at odds with the pilled purple sweater sporting a line of rainbow hearts marching across the chest, worn blue jeans and Mary Janes faded from black to dark grey with straps flapping open.

Cocking her head slightly at the sight of him, Lily paused before she moved that intense stare to her brother, allowing Will surreptitiously to take a deep breath. But just as quickly, he lost it again as her too-serious eyes lit up with the sight of her brother and a heart-stopping smile stole across her young face.

Will leaned closer to his friend when he heard him mumbling and caught his last few words, …don’t even have the heart to warn her not to play with Mom’s veil again.

Jamie! Her voice tinkled with pure joy. Have you come for my birthday party?

Will cringed thinking of little kiddie parties for which he was much too old. But against his first instinct to shrink back, he took one step further into the room, his sneakers squeaking slightly on the linoleum floor, and saw this party was slightly different than the one he was imagining.

There was no one else there.

This both surprised Will and didn’t. It surprised him because he’d been around earlier in the week when Lily and her mom had signed and sealed over thirty invitations to celebrate Lily’s big one-oh birthday, a glossy picture of Strawberry Shortcake grinning saucily on the card’s front. He’d remembered it because of the slight stab of envy he’d felt looking at mother and child kneeling in joint effort on the soft carpet next to the scratched coffee table.

Will wasn’t surprised, however, because everyone in town thought of Lily as a freak. There would be no little girls joining her in her celebration.

But Lily didn’t seem to mind. Pat Benetar rocked in the background, singing about love’s dangers, and Lily had set up the room full of games and hastily wrapped presents he suspected she’d wrapped from her own toys. Her guests were a few stuffed animals, lounging in the chairs with snacks and drinks at their elbows.

With an affable grin, James walked in and squeezed his sister in a light one-armed hug.

Got yourself a party here, Lil’? I think Teddy’s getting a bit drunk on that soda, though. He nodded over at the stuffed brown bear slumping improperly on the divan. Lily giggled at his joke, her shoulders scrunching up to her ears. But James remembered why they were there and had to shake his head. Sorry, Lil’, we can’t. Will ‘n I’ve got plans.

James was standing so close he didn’t see her crushed expression, her gaze dropping to the tip of her shoes where a thin half-moon was being made by her big toe nail. Lightly, she rubbed her other foot over the shoe’s crease and shrugged her shoulder as if his answer didn’t bother her. But Will saw. He knew James’ answer was because Will had had another fight with his parents that afternoon and James had promised to go out with him so Will could let off a bit of steam. But something inside of Will shifted at Lily’s expression.

No we don’t. Remember? Those plans got trashed. Besides, I could go for some cake or something.

Will ignored James’ confused glance and grabbed one of the plastic glasses of cola Lily’s mom had evidently left out for the guests before she’d left. Their parents had never caught on to the animosity the locals felt toward Lily. They were too busy attending charity functions over at Marquette or down in Saginaw to even get a whiff of the coldness others felt around their younger child. Maybe because they were so blinded by the overwhelming acceptance the townspeople felt toward James. How could they not? He was a straight-A student, ruled at any sport he played and had a winning openness that drew everyone to him. Although Will had never made a point of saying it, he suspected it was because of James’ general acceptance in Munising that the animosity toward Lily was reduced to a general ignoring.

James smiled at his friend then took another look at the room as if realizing something for the first time.

Lil’, where’s Carley?

Carley was Lily’s babysitter, the only teenage girl who wasn’t afraid of actually taking care of Lily. That was only part of the reason James had a small crush on the older girl. The other was that she had pillowy breasts the size of small dodgeballs.

But Lily barely heard him as she rushed back into the kitchen to get her brother and his friend set up for her party.

She couldn’t make it before mom and dad left. Ricky came back early from school and she wanted to see him. She should be here soon.

Since her head had just poked into the fridge, she didn’t see James’ grimace, partly from imagining Carley with her boyfriend and partly that it meant his sister was all alone.

Shoulda called me, Lil’. You know that.

This wasn’t the first time Lily had ended up alone. Although Carley agreed to take care of her, it didn’t mean she was reliable about it and James didn’t want his sister to be left alone. Ever.

But Lily didn’t hear him. She was racing around the kitchen, grabbing sandwiches, snacks and loot bags for her guests then skipping back into the living room where James and Will had settled, nudging Raggedy-Ann and a few Smurfs out of the way to make some room. Will reached over and propped Teddy up to a more decorous position then hastily withdrew his hand when Lily rushed back into the room.

She’d been on edge all day. It was always like this before it began. She’d get tense as if all the strings inside her body were being tightened like the steel strings on James’ guitar. Tuning up, up, up until the exact harmonic was reached. And then it would start. She hated it. Hated that it made her different than everyone around her. Hated that she was spending her tenth birthday without any friends, only her brother and his pitying friend.

Embarrassment flooded her cheeks as she passed the sandwiches and goodies over to Will, who she’d had a crush on for as long as she could remember. But her energy was racing, so she almost dumped the loot bag on his lap before she ran over to James. When she saw his gently chastising expression, she finally remembered his last words and smiled, trying to distract him.

Oh, I knew I wouldn’t need to. I knew you were coming back.

But they’d never told her that.

Realizing her slip, Lily made to dart over to her chair, her gauzy veil floating behind her, when James lightly grabbed her wrist.

Lil’… His voice was low in warning. Not menacing, but worried. James wasn’t blind to how people saw Lily. He was the one who spent all his efforts shielding her from them. He’d urged her over and over again to keep her special skills—as he called them—to herself, to pretend around others that they didn’t exist. But Lily would forget, or she’d be so caught by it that she couldn’t see how she appeared to others until it was all over. And then she’d be sorry she had embarrassed her brother once again. She was starting to not even care what others thought of her. It was as though she had a physical deformation she could no longer hide or even have the will to do so. But, she would do anything for her brother. And if that meant trying to conceal who she was because he was afraid for her, she would try.

But not tonight; it was too strong. Like a power chord that had already been struck, Lily could no more stop the resulting vibration than she could the premonition. Something was about to happen.

She turned back to her brother while her violet eyes started their dreamy dance.

It’s okay, Jamie. I knew you’d come back because you need to be here when the end of the world comes.

The rock from the mixed tape floated in the background, but a stillness entered the room that made the hair on the boys’ arms and necks stand at attention. With those few chilling words, James knew it was too late for him to stop this one. After giving her a light squeeze, he dropped his hand and looked out the window.

Will observed the small interchange between brother and sister and averted his eyes. He knew how much it bothered James that others saw Lily as different, how angry he’d get when he’d hear the whispers as she walked by. Freak, some would murmur, scorn and a healthy dose of fear filling their eyes. For that reason alone, James would start many a fight and Will would happily join in, walloping their enemies until they learned to keep their whispers to themselves and make damn sure James or Will wouldn’t hear them. Will was pretty indifferent to what people thought of Lily, but he fought them because James was his friend. Also because fighting was all he knew.

The dubbed tape had reversed in the tape deck and now George Michael throbbed through the air. They each sat in their chairs amid toys and scattered munchies like points of a triangle. James alternately watching his wrist watch and the view from the front window for the AWOL babysitter, Will slouching much like the bear was earlier, pretending he didn’t care that his Thursday night was wasting away, and Lily, her feet swinging freely as she sipped Kool-aid through a straw. They sat and waited, each for his own purpose, none of them knowing what the end was that apparently was coming. Will took comfort from Lily’s calm smile that the thing for which they waited was something good and not bad. Although ‘the end of the world’ sounded pretty bad to him. Still, he didn’t really believe in this stuff, he reminded himself, so it was only a small doubt that wiggled in his mind like a night crawler headed for a fisherman’s hook.

Half an hour passed and then an hour as the sun set in the forested hills to the west. The twilight that seemed to last forever in the northern forest was cut brutally short by a dark mass coming in off of the Lake, its only warning a whistling wind kicking at the shutters and bending the tulips almost in half. With it came, first one snowflake, then a few, then a blizzard of snow.

Damn it, I’m calling Carley, James grumbled as he stalked from the room to the kitchen to dig up the address book. As soon as James left the room, Lily’s stiff little shoulders slumped forward and Will realized her casual attitude was a pretence for her brother. Something was wrong.

The tape ended and a pregnant silence hung in the air between Lily and Will—Will shifting uncomfortably. Unable to stand it a second longer, Will stood and crossed over to the tape deck. Rifling through the plastic cases covered with stickers, Will found James’ Guns’N’Roses tape and popped it in. He cued it forward until he reached the song he wanted, then hit play. Axl’s distinctive wail shot out of the speakers, building the character sketch of Sweet Child of Mine. Will turned from the tape deck and faced Lily who’d gone from miserable to confused.

It was her tenth birthday, for Christ’s sake, Will thought. To his mind she deserved a bit of happiness. So, Will strode up to her as he would any girl at a teen dance and gallantly offered his hand.

Will you dance with me, Lily?

Again, Will was struck almost to his knees by the same blinding grin she’d given her brother earlier. She pushed out of her chair and took Will’s hand.

Okay. She was too happy to be shy. This was the best birthday present she could have received. Will had asked her to dance. Although everyone thought she was otherworldly, she was very much a part of the one around her. She saw, maybe more than most, what happened in Munising’s small social sphere. She knew Will was one of the most popular kids at school, that girls loved him—his lanky stature, wiry teenage muscles, angular cheekbones and jaw and his smoky green eyes. The same eyes that now gazed down at her in a friendly crinkle.

She tried not to be moonstruck but it was hard. Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that she was ten now, much too grown up for acting like a baby. So, she only let one giggle out before she tucked her giddy joy deep into her heart and started the nameless swaying kids do when they don’t know any other steps.

Having found Carley’s number, James started back to the living room where the phone sat on a side table. But the picture of Will—his tough, badass friend—dancing with his little sister was enough to stop him dead in his tracks. The familiar brotherly overprotection didn’t assault him as it normally would if anyone else touched Lily. He trusted Will and knew he thought of Lily as a sister. It was the happiness he saw momentarily glowing in Lily’s face that stopped him. His mother’s white veil floated around them as they danced, a swath of white as pure as his sister’s heart.

You need to be here when the end of the world comes. Why did these images plague his baby sister? If he could, he’d carry them for her so she could be normal, could know what it’s like to be normal. As normal as she must feel right now.

For Lily, this was heaven. Will’s wide hands gripped her sides and Lily hummed along with the chorus of the song. She allowed herself to close her eyes and cherish the moment. But that was a mistake. With her eyes closed, the sudden knowledge hit her. The looming blackness struck and she fell to her knees just as the song was about to end. Although she’d whipped open her eyes, she was blind to Will’s look of shock as he tried but was unable to catch her before she fell.

She never heard James’ anxious footfalls as he ran into the room, even the sounds of the sirens far off in the distance. Or maybe those were miles away and no one but she could hear them. Her realities were blurring, even over the edges of herself.

A voice—James—was speaking to her, crooning as though to a baby, urging her to come back. But she couldn’t. She was caught in the nightmare. She saw a darkened, snow-covered highway, darker than it should have been with a black cloud full of evil swirling malevolently above it. Suddenly, the air was white, pulsing with lights. They were wavering, swaying uncontrollably. Then came the sensations. Pain. Blood. Death. A scream as shrill as the tearing wind outside cut through the forested road, sounding on and on. In the end, the scream covered all the other sounds, the smells of burning flesh, the sight of bloodied bodies. It was her scream that carried her into the silent darkness that awaited her.

Two

It was a night Will would never forget. Even now, seventeen years later as he drove the empty stretch of highway where they had found the broken bodies of James’ and Lily’s parents Will clearly remembered the unearthly scream that had emanated from Lily and then the almost blessed feint into which she’d collapsed. He remembered the pain on James’ face as he first watched his sister’s convulsions and then later was forced to leave her side to answer the knock at the front door. Carley had finally come but at seeing Lily lying prone on the floor the babysitter had run in the other direction. When the bell had sounded again, James had yanked open the door a second time only, instead of finding a frightened babysitter as he’d expected, two police officers stood there, informing him that his parents had died in a car crash on Highway M-28, just east of Munising. Word spread that Lily had foreseen the death of her parents.

Will again relived the horror he’d felt throughout that night. Lily had been right; it had been the end of the world. At least it had been for James and Lily.

The three of them never spoke again about that night, but it had always been alive between them, a bond that tied them more securely than vows or blood. But it was also a night they desperately wanted to forget, even though those around them never would.

It was strange, Will thought as he flipped down his visor and then slipped his wire-rimmed black sunglasses over his startlingly green eyes, that a place that had seen so much pain and death could look so normal. It had been ten years since Will had been back to Munising and yet this stretch of highway looked as beautiful as when he’d left. Except for a few spinning tire tracks, it had never showed the ugliness of death. Unlike the rundown house where he’d grown up. That was a place that had finally lived up to its decrepit appearance, when five years ago his dad had finally beat his mom to death then shot himself with a .243 in a drunken stupor. The murder-suicide had generated a lot gossip in Munising—but not a lot of surprise. Nor was it a surprise when Will didn’t show up for the funerals.

Whereas the incident of his parents’ deaths had left scars on Will’s soul, the scars from the Montgomery’s accident were still visible. Will knew the exact location where their car had lost control in the sudden snowstorm, the precise spot where it slammed into an on-coming semi. Like fossilized serpents, the black lines from the tires had been etched on the road for years.

Out of respect, he turned down the Delta blues blaring through his radio. Nothing but the faded skid marks now told him this was the place where the Montgomery’s had died horribly. He flew past the spot, his gaze catching the grassy knoll between the road and the tracks in his rear-view mirror before he looked ahead once again.

He was coming home. Although devastating memories, the death of his parents and the Montgomerys, faded into the back of his consciousness as he passed other, more pleasant landmarks: the jagged dirt road that led back through the bush to Stutts Creek, where he’d fished for brookies with his uncle; the mini-golf course where he’d taken Kristi on his first date; the road that led to the geological wonder that is Miner’s Castle and the painted rocks where he and his friends had many a wild bush bash.

Then M-28 tilted and dove down to the Lake from the rocky escarpment that stretches straight from Wisconsin’s Door County east to Ontario’s Bruce Peninsula, and he entered the fringes of Munising. But even the edges of town were wild: the Anna River wandered along the road before finding her way into the Lake; grassy fields supported a grand, wood-carved signed bedecked with white and red flotation devices and thick fisherman’s rope and netting which welcomed visitors to Michigan’s northern-most fishing town; scattered shops such as Jim’s garage, Horseshoe Falls Gift Shop and Glenn’s grocery store.

But most distinctive to Will as he drove north into town was the change in the air—a wall of damp, cool air coming in off of the Lake wafted through his open window and blanketed the land against the warm May afternoon sunshine. The wave of fog was as much a homecoming to Will as the smells wafting through his open window. Nostalgia tipped up the corners of his lips as he watched two boys run down a side street, pavement cracked, century hardwoods canopying the neighborhood like sheltering arms. Here were the old wartime mill houses, packed together on their neat postage stamp yards, waving flags pitched like a ship’s colours flapping soundlessly in the fog. The boys’ screams of delight carried through the mist like muffled cries from a B movie and mixed with the other sounds of lumbering pickups, gulls and tinny country music coming from the outdoor stereo system at the DogPatch Restaurant.

Like a starving man cruising through a grocery store, Will’s gaze hungrily sought out all his favourite places as he drove by—Hartigan’s Hardware, the A & W, Hubbs, which was now a drycleaners—as though their continued existence were the rocks on which his life’s foundation was built. Life pumped through this town of twenty-six hundred residents, revving up for the summer tourist season that would triple the population and was now as important to this once-resource town as was the pulp and paper mill and fishery. The activities he took such joy in as a child—fishing, trapping, snowmobiling, piloting the cold Superior waters for wrecks—were now a draw to the restless Americans who’d lost their own wild spaces.

Hitting the T in the road at the water’s edge—Grand Island floating in Munising Bay straight ahead—Will turned west along Munising Avenue, the Lake looming on his right. He could hear her gentle waves lapping through the fog. Again, landmarks popped out of the mist: the park and pier stretched between the road and the Lake, DQ, the old and then the new high school standing a spitting distance from each other, the poorer 60s development Brown’s Addition and Flora’s Takeout where you could find the best pasties this side of Lake Michigan. It was all interspersed with the old homes settled on the shore like overweight matrons at a church function, dressed in their Victorian gear and waiting with dignified reserve for their end while they slowly faded away. He’d always loved those houses. But he, like most of Munising’s residents, was from one of the mill houses he’d passed driving in. Although he was tempted, he almost turned down Elm Street and into the neat grid of Munising’s side streets to drive past his old house, school and playground. Instead he continued on. He had somewhere else to be tonight.

Due to the burgeoning tourism industry, there were a few new shops along the way that he peered at with curiosity. But then the road rose up in a gentle curve toward the cliffs and the little town was behind him. The fog thinned as his car climbed upward then crested the cliff. He was disappointed that the fog didn’t clear enough for him to see the Lake. Not yet, he thought, then frowned when he noticed the Forest Inn. His pub of choice as a budding man, was now a burned out shell, waiting to be bulldozed to make way for a ritzy new Holiday Inn. Ah well, change comes to all things, he thought. That was part of why he was here, after all.

Now M-28 followed the swells and troughs of the Michigan hills, layered with a thick coat of dense forest and mists, back down to the water’s edge and then up again past the town of Christmas. Finally, just before Au Train bay, Will slowed his Jeep Cherokee and turned right onto Pavel Road, a dirt track no one would guess led to the prettiest piece of land on Earth.

The afternoon’s light was fading quickly, especially now that he was clipping along the thinning dirt road with looming hemlocks and maples along its sides. To a Sunday driver, this road would appear to cut straight through Hicksville—he passed a rusted-out metal trailer with a sign stating Rifles Sold Here, little bungalows with propane tanks propping up their sides, and dog houses with beagles watching the rare car pass—one with ‘Buttercup’ painted in white lettering across the front.

Rounding a curve, Will saw the small fork in the road. One gravel finger curved left then petered off after a few more feet. But the right finger speared into the deep dark of the hemlock forest. Will slowed then stopped his car in front of the bright orange metal gate stretching across the right path, childhood memories of swinging it open for his uncle were whisking through his mind. He was too tall now to hang his body over the metal rung as it swung wide, once lifting his feet off the road, but he smiled as he realized a small part of him still wanted to try.

Fishing in his front jeans’ pocket, Will found the ring of keys his uncle had left for him and he unlocked the sturdy Masterlock and unwrapped the thick chain link. With a slow push, Will swung the gate open, the dirt road stretching before him.

The excitement he felt as a child coming to his uncle’s property, ‘The Point’, was still there. But it was different now. Mixed with