The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(21)

“Very well, sir,” I said.

“Why do you lie, Will Henry? Have you never heard that a person who will lie about the smallest of things will have no compunction when it comes to the largest?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“‘Yes, sir.’ Again with the ‘yes, sir.’ What have I told you about that?”

“Yes . . .” I hesitated, but now I was somewhat committed. “. . . sir.”

“Come, I’ve found a suitable spot.”

A suitable spot for what? I followed him a few yards into the trees, where I found a shallow trench; the camp shovel lay abandoned beside it.

“Finish up and be quick about it, Will Henry. You may break your fast afterward. If Sergeant Hawk is correct and not indulging in some wishful thinking, we may reach Sandy Lake before sundown.”

“We’re going to bury him?”

“We can’t very well bring him with us, and it wouldn’t do to leave him here exposed to the elements.” He sighed. His steamy breath roiled in the cold air. “I had hoped the morning light would reveal more clues as to what happened to him, but there’s little else I can do without the proper equipment.”

“What did happen to him, sir?”

“It appears from the evidence that someone impaled him upon the broken trunk of a hemlock tree, Will Henry,” he said dryly. “Snap to now! Remember, he that would have fruit must climb the tree.”

And many hands make light work, I thought as I snapped to with the shovel. The handle was half the length of a proper shovel’s, the ground was rocky and unyielding, and blisters soon formed on my hands and a dull ache set in between my shoulders. From the campsite I heard my companions arguing—Hawk must have gotten up—their disembodied voices sounding ethereal and tinny in the labyrinthine halls of the arboreal cathedral.

Presently I spied them stumbling along the crooked path toward me, bearing between them the body of poor Larose, the sergeant holding the upper half, Warthrop the legs. Hawk, who was forced by the narrowness of the passage to walk backward with the load, lost his balance on the dew-slick ground and fell, pulling the body sideways and down as the doctor remained upright. The gash inflicted by Warthrop the night before split wide with a sickening crunch, and the corpse broke completely in two. The top half came to rest in Hawk’s lap, the head with its shock of red hair nestled in the crook of Hawk’s neck, the open mouth pressed under the sergeant’s jaw in an obscene mockery of a kiss. Hawk dropped the torso, scrambled to his feet, and cursed Warthrop roundly for his failure to “go down” with him.

As the possessor of the sole shovel, the honors of the dead guide’s internment fell to me. Hawk grew impatient; he seemed nearly mad with the desire to quit this part of the forest. He fell to his knees beside the grave, dragging handfuls of earth into the hole, all the while muttering obscenities under his breath. Then he collapsed against a tree trunk, his gasps all out of proportion to the difficulty of his efforts.

“Someone should say something,” he said. “Do we have anything to say?”

Apparently we did not. The doctor absently wiped bits and pieces of tacky viscera from his duster. I twirled the tip of the shovel in the dirt.

Wearily, with words that struck me as hollowed out of all import, Hawk recited the Hail Mary prayer:

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. . . .”

Something stirred in the bush. A large crow, its ebony body as shiny as obsidian, its black eyes brightly inquisitive, was watching us.

“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb. . . .”

Another crow hopped out from the shadows. Then another. And another. They stood, motionless, balanced upon their skeletal legs, four pairs of depthless black and soulless eyes, watching us. More appeared from the tangle of vine and scrub; I counted a baker’s dozen of crows, a mute congregation, a deputation of the desolation, come to pay their respects.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Overcome, Hawk began to weep. The monstrumologist—and the crows—did not. The birds commandeered the rite when we left. I looked back and saw them hopping about the makeshift grave, pecking at the offal Warthrop had flicked from his coat.

After a hurried breakfast of dried biscuit and bitter coffee, we broke camp. Though both men were anxious to finish the final leg to Sandy Lake, they recognized the necessity of exploring the clearing and its environs in the daylight, and so for an hour we tramped the grounds, looking for any evidence that might help solve the riddle of our macabre discovery the night before. We found nothing—no tracks, no scrap of clothing, no personal belongings or trace of anything human. It was as if Pierre Larose had dropped from the sky to land in an extremely infelicitous spot.

“It’s not possible,” mused our guide, standing before the broken spine of the hemlock tree.

“It happened, so it must be possible,” replied the monstrumologist.

“But how? How did he heft the body eight feet off the ground like that—unless he stood on something—and if he did, where is it? I’d say there were at least two, maybe more. Hard to imagine a single author to this story. But the more bothersome is not how it was done but why was it done? If I were to murder a man, I would not go to all the trouble of skinning him and heaving him onto a pike. What is the point of that?”