The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(27)



“We’ll carry him out. Good God, he can’t weigh more than Will here.”

“To do so over this terrain could prove fatal.”

“Walking across the street on a Sunday afternoon could prove fatal, Warthrop. If Will can take my rifle and rucksack, I could carry him.”

He bent to scoop Chanler from the forest floor and was stopped by Warthrop’s hand against his chest.

“I am willing to risk the elements, Sergeant,” the doctor said stiffly.

“Well, guess what? I’m not. I don’t know what it is about you and this monstrumology business, but it’s like bear shit on your boots—follows you every step and is as hard as hell to get rid of.”

He jabbed a finger into my master’s chest.

“I’m getting the hell out of here, Doc. You’re welcome to come with me, or you can try your luck finding the way out yourself.”

For a moment neither man moved, locked in a test of wills—a test that Warthrop failed. He ran a hand through his thick hair and sighed loudly. He looked at Chanler; he looked at me. He considered the sliver of gray sky sliced off by the canopy.

“Very well,” he said, “but it is my burden.”

He slid his arms beneath the fragile form, and rose unsteadily with the wasted body. Chanler’s forehead pressed against the base of Warthrop’s neck.

“I shall carry him,” the doctor said.

TEN

“It Can Break a Man’s Mind in Half”

Our flight to Rat Portage was painfully slow. Warthrop called for many halts to check Chanler’s vital signs and to attempt getting more water into him. Slowing the pace too was Sergeant Hawk—or rather Sergeant Hawk’s finding his bearings in the fog. It thickened as the day wore on, a colorless miasma that obscured the trail and peopled the forest with looming shadows and flitting apparitions upon which the imagination seized and ascribed portents of doom. In this gray land of muffled sound and borrowed light, our very breath was snatched from our mouths and trammeled underfoot.

By four o’clock the light had all but vanished. We made camp for the night no more than seven miles from the shores of Sandy Lake and still several miles from the grave of Pierre Larose. The doctor eased his load onto the ground and collapsed against a tree. His respite lasted only a minute or two; soon he was up again fussing over Chanler, wiping his brow, raising his head to force a bit more water down his throat, calling to him in a loud voice—but Chanler would not be roused. I gathered wood for our fire before the last of the light was snuffed out. Hawk inventoried our meager supplies, reckoning we had enough to last another five days. After that, we would have to live off the land.

“I’d planned on resupplying at Sandy Lake,” he said defensively when the doctor raised an eyebrow at this bit of bad news. “You didn’t tell me there’d be a kidnapping.”

The sergeant did not seem himself. His eyes would not stay still; they shifted right and left and back again restlessly, and he could not seem to stop wetting his lips.

“How did you manage to find him?” he asked.

“Fiddler. I thought if John was alive, Fiddler might check on him, and the odds were he would not risk it while we were awake. And my guess was right. At a little after two he came out of his wigwam, and I followed him. They had put John in a wigwam on the northern edge of the village, far removed from the others, as one might expect. It is common practice among indigenous peoples to construct a ‘sick house’ to isolate infectious members from the rest of the tribe.

“After that, it was only a matter of time and preparation. No guard was posted. I merely had to wait for Fiddler to go to bed.”

“What happened, do you think?” Hawk was staring at the opening of the tent wherein Chanler lay, the white of the blanket barely visible in the firelight.

“I can only guess,” answered the doctor wearily. “Either he stumbled into their camp or someone found him and brought him there. He was probably lost, separated from Larose—the man admitted as much in his letter to Muriel—and it nearly got the better of him.”

“It will, if you don’t know what you’re about,” agreed Hawk. His eyes cut toward the doctor. “Muriel . . . is that the missus?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

The sergeant glanced my way. “Nothing,” he said.

“Clearly it was not.”

“Just clearing my throat.”

“You did not clear your throat. You said, ‘hmm,’ like that. I would like to know what you meant.”

“I didn’t mean anything. Hmm. That’s all it was, Doctor. Just hmm.”

Warthrop snorted. He threw the dregs of his tea into the shadows and ducked into the tent to be with his patient. Hawk looked at me again, a crooked smile playing on his lips.

“J’ai fait une mâtresse y a pas longtemps,” he sang softly.

“And cease that infernal singing!” the doctor shouted.

The sergeant complied with Warthrop’s brusque request, and would not sing again for the remainder of our flight back to civilization. I call it ‘flight,’ for that is what it was, torturously slow though it proved to be. We were fleeing something—and we were bringing what we fled with us.

We woke on the next morning beneath an ominous gray sky. By noon a light snow had begun to fall, carpeting the trail with dusty powder that quickly grew slick; more than once the doctor nearly went down with his precious cargo. The sergeant would offer to spell him, each time rebuffed by Warthrop. The doctor seemed jealous of his burden.

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