Dead of Winter (30 page)

“Son!” Tom yanked back the covers. No one there. An icy draft blew around the room, chilling him. He rubbed his neck, staring down at an empty mattress. “What the hell just happened?” Just the insomnia, he decided, causing him to see things.

Outside, the wind careened with familiar voices calling Tom’s name. Two shadows stood at the window. A woman and boy. They put their palms against the glass.

“Beth! Chris!” Tom burst out the back door, running behind the cabin. The woman and boy were gone. There were no signs of any footprints. No trail to follow.

Am I going mad?

When he looked back at the window, Tom saw two handprints on the frosty glass. Seconds later, they faded away.

112

“It’s colder than a witch’s tit tonight,” Private Wickliff said to nobody in particular. He was alone, freezing his bollocks off. He cupped his mittens over his mouth and blew steam into them. The nightshift between midnight and dawn was the most miserable duty for the soldiers. Wickliff was always getting assigned night watch, because at age fifteen, he was the youngest. Carrying his rifle over his shoulder, he walked the perimeter inside the fort’s stockade. He didn’t need his lantern tonight. The moon was bright, stretching his shadow across the snow. Small flurries fell.

All the cabins were dark. The courtyard empty and quiet. Noble House loomed at the far end like an English manor. As he walked down the fence line, Wickliff began to smell a heavy odor. Like the Grim Reaper’s stale breath. He followed the scent across the snow-covered cemetery. Stepped between crosses and tombstones, careful to avoid tramping the graves. He was superstitious about such things. At the far corner of the cemetery, a small storage building stood off by itself.

The Dead House.

The stink constricted his throat as he approached the log structure. It stored a half dozen frozen corpses. Among them were Sakari Kennicot, Chris Hatcher, and Privates Pembrook, Wallace, and McHenry, who were killed during the beast attack at Manitou Outpost. That had been a sad day for the garrison. The dead would rest here all winter until the ground thawed and they could be given proper burials. Wickliff hated that he had been put in charge of the Dead House.

As the moonlight threw his shadow across the closed door, he made sure the padlock was still secure. The lock held. He heard scratching and banging coming from inside. The soldier placed his ear to the frost-covered door. For a moment, he imagined the corpses had unraveled their coverings like awakened mummies, climbed down from their shelves, and were walking around inside there, bumping the canoes and barrels. Then he heard squeaks and chittering and came to a more logical conclusion.
Bloody rats.

Wickliff continued his march around the fort’s perimeter. Maybe it was lunacy caused by the full moon, but he heard more scratching. The stench of death returned. He was too far upwind from the Dead House now. The odor had to be coming from somewhere else. He felt strange all of a sudden. Dizzy.

He heard the noise again, like a blade dragging against wood.

Wickliff whirled with his rifle.

The scraping came from the other side of the stockade’s wall. A shadow moved between the small cracks in the twelve-foot timbers. He remembered that the Indian cannibal, Kunetay Timberwolf, had never been found.

With a wall of thick lumber separating Wickliff from the wilderness outside, he felt bold. “Ey, is that you, Kunetay? If so, you stink like rotten shit. I heard you boiled your own squaw’s head.”

Between the slits in the wall Wickliff saw the shadow rise, higher than a man. It made a huffing sound.

Oh shit, Silvertip’s back!

It made a guttural sound.

More shadows came up to the fence, all grunting and whooping.

Shit! Shit! Shit!
Wickliff ran along the fence. The shadow-things chased him, raking claws across the logs. He turned, running away from the stockade and jumped behind the well house. His heart beat so fast he feared it might burst.

At the front gate, the giant double doors rattled as something on the other side rammed against them. The doors held.

Wickliff released a nervous laugh. “Bugger.”

He looked toward the bunkhouse where the garrison slept.
I should get Serge and the others.
As he thought this, the shadow forms backed away from the wall. Footfalls trailed off, followed by distant snapping branches.

Part Twelve

The Evil Within

113

Next morning, Tom and Pendleton climbed up the ladder to the stockade’s landing where Lt. Hysmith and his soldiers were gathered.

“These creatures came right up to the gate,” said Private Wickliff. “A whole bunch of them.”

“This is just bloody great,” Pendleton said, his face red.

Tom peered over the wall. The gate’s double doors were scratched all to hell. On the ground below, tracks of every size dotted the snowy hillside. He scanned the perimeter. The forest surrounding the fort was a labyrinth of pines, spruce, and oak. This morning, fog sifted between the trees, cutting visibility down to only a few feet past the tree line.

“Did you get a look at them?” Tom asked Wickliff.

“No, sir. I was walking the grounds. Only saw their shadows. One was tall as a bear, roared like one, too.”

Pendleton said, “Why wasn’t anyone manning the watchtowers?”

Lt. Hysmith said, “We just have one night guard on duty.”

Pendleton said, “Well, I want three men on tower duty for every shift. And tie up some kind of animal out there for bait. If anything comes out of the woods, shoot it.”

114

Tom entered the makeshift research lab with Pendleton. The cabin smelled of formaldehyde combined with the stink of things that decompose in morgues. They found Dr. Coombs stooped over a microscope.

“Did you learn anything from the autopsies?” Tom asked.

Dr. Coombs’ looked up. “Indeed I did, gentlemen. Found something quite peculiar.”

“Then let’s have a look,” Pendleton said.

Tom followed the physician into a back bedroom. The flame from his oil lamp illuminated a table with scalpels and bone saws and jars of floating organs. On the dissecting tables lay two carved-open bodies. The nearest was Private Wallace, the soldier who had been killed when a beast attacked Manitou Outpost. Wallace’s cadaver lay twisted like a broken puppet.

“I found no signs of virus in the male specimen,” Dr. Coombs said. “He died from a broken spine.”

“He was attacked by a crazed man who turned cannibal,” Tom said. “I believe it might have been one of the trappers from Manitou Outpost.”

“That’s certainly one theory,” Dr. Coombs said. “Although I have another theory, gentlemen, that might raise your eyebrows.” They gathered around the table that displayed the butchered upper torso of Sakari McCabe. She looked much worse than the day Tom pulled her out of the frozen stream. Her head now lay face-up, mouth wide open, frozen in a primal scream. One eye was as white as a poached fish.

“Does she have the virus?” Pendleton asked.

“Difficult to tell. Too much time has passed since her death.” Dr. Coombs walked over to a microscope. “I did find some microbes that might be considered viral, but, like their host, they are also dead.”

Tom peered into the microscope. All he saw was a still pattern of gray circles clumped together. “So what can we derive from this?”

Dr. Coombs shrugged. “Not much really, since I’m not even sure if this woman has the strain that infected Zoé Lamothe and Doc Riley. Unfortunately you burned their bodies.”

“It was a necessary precaution,” Tom said.

Dr. Coombs adjusted his spectacles. “Well, if I’m going to fight this virus, then I need to draw blood from an infected person who is still living.”

Pendleton said, “Let’s hope we’ve seen the last of the outbreak.”

“You said you found something peculiar,” Tom said.

Dr. Coombs’ eyes lit up. “Yes, yes.” He returned to the table where Sakari Kennicot lay. “What’s fascinating about this cadaver are her wounds.”

One of the Cree woman’s eyes was missing, scraped out of the socket by claws that had ripped the flesh off half her face. Her attacker had taken a vicious bite out of her throat, tearing out the larynx. The arm that was still attached had bloated and turned a purplish-blue. Dr. Coombs had made incisions in her chest in a Y-pattern, pulling back flaps of skin. Gray organs were exposed.

The doctor grabbed a scalpel and leaned over the carcass. “See these lacerations here?” He pointed to a five-line slash that had sliced across her breasts and torn through skin and muscle. “The claws snapped her breast bone and completely severed her spine.”

Sakari’s death had perplexed Tom the most, because she looked as if her attacker had been a wild animal. “Would you say a large bear did this?”

“As a doctor, my first inclination would be to say a grizzly attacked this woman and be done with it. But it being the middle of winter, that is highly unlikely. Aside from being a physician, I also have a passion for zoology, and in particular, the study of strange and often unexplained species. Someday I intend to write a book on all the amazing creatures that have been discovered throughout the world.”

Tom leaned over the body. “What can you tell us about the beast that killed her?”

“You may not believe me when I tell you.” The bearded man opened a cabinet and pulled out a tray of various animal talons and sharp teeth. They were each stored in a separate square marked by name and species—bobcat, cougar, wolverine, as well as numerous bear claws. Dr. Coombs picked up a claw the size of a small blade. “This was from a giant grizzly, the largest known bear ever shot in the world. It stood twelve feet tall, weighed over fourteen hundred pounds, and had paws larger than your head. As predators go, the grizzly is the king of the Canadian wilderness.”

Tom held the claw to the light. “So you think we have a giant grizzly roaming the area?”

“Not quite, Inspector. The damage that the creature did to this woman and the depth and power of its claws suggest a larger beast, perhaps fifteen feet tall.”

“What out here could be larger than a bear?” Pendleton asked.

“My theory is we have a new species on our hands. A monstrous thing that weighs over two thousand pounds.”

Tom said, “Now you sound as crazy as Anika.”

“She may not be as crazy as you think, Inspector. The folklore of the Canadian tribes all speak of legendary creatures that roam the wilderness. In northern Wisconsin, Dakota Indians speak of a bipedal creature named
Chiye-tanka.
And on the Pacific Northwest coast, the Athabaskan tribes have their
Wechuge,
and both Indians and Whites have reported seeing a hairy beast called Sasquatch
or
Bigfoot. These ape-like creatures are like the Abominable Snowmen of the Himalayas.”

Tom said, “It all sounds interesting, Doc, but we’re looking for real leads, not Indian superstitions.”

“Just hear me out. Now as a scientist I’m not one to pay heed to superstitions, but when there’s evidence to back it up, I am willing to stretch my mind. Many years back, I had the privilege of voyaging around South America on a surveying ship called the
Beagle
. I apprenticed with a pioneer scientist by the name of Charles Darwin. We collected hundreds of specimens. I’ve seen new forms of species we never dreamed existed. From plants to animals to microbes to dinosaur fossils. New discoveries are being made every day. The physical world is a fascinating place that is constantly changing, evolving. Darwin shared some interesting theories of how animals evolve through a series of natural selection he calls, ‘survival of the fittest.’”

Pendleton asked, “Dr. Coombs, are you proposing our beast is a bear that has evolved into some kind of monster?”

“I’ve been to the Himalayas in Tibet and witnessed with my own eyes part of a large skull that was believed to come from a Yeti, also known as the Abominable Snowman.”

Tom couldn’t help but chuckle.

Dr. Coombs remained serious. “Great beasts do exist. Whether we’re dealing with another species of bear or a bipedal anomaly, I don’t know, but I’d love to have a sample of the claw that could snap a woman in two.”

115

Andre, bundled in his gray winter coat and scarf, paced outside an open work shed, partly to keep warm and partly to shake the anxiety he’d been feeling all morning. He couldn’t get Willow out of his head. The warmth of her embrace, the softness of her lips were phantom feelings that still haunted his skin.

Andre prayed over and over in his mind,
Forgive me, Jesus, for I have sinned… Forgive me, Jesus, for my fall from Grace… Release me from the temptations of the flesh…
Andre’s inner thighs felt bruised from the beating he’d given himself last night. A brisk wind blew against his back, running cold fingers through his long hair, caressing his neck. When Andre pulled up his collar, the angry gale stirred up drifts of snow and clinked metal tools and a chain of horseshoes that hung from the shed’s ceiling.

Father Xavier stood inside the shed, giving instructions to the fort’s blacksmith. “We need four large crosses made of iron.” The priest gave measurements.

“I’ll have them for ye by tomorrow.” The soot-faced blacksmith picked up a metal rod and went to work, stoking the fire of his kiln.

Father Xavier, who wore his Russian mink hat over his bald head, stepped out of the shed. “Come with me, Andre. We have much work to do.”

As the Jesuits walked together, Andre asked, “What are the crosses for?”

“We’re going to use them to exorcise the entire fort. We have to be prepared that anyone in the village could be under the demon’s spell. We can only trust each other.”

The Jesuits strolled silently along the courtyard as they passed a group of laborers pulling a sled covered in barrels. Villagers were out working, chopping wood, mending canoes. Soldiers patrolled the platforms that linked the watchtowers. Fort Pendleton seemed as if it were returning to normal. But Andre felt a change coming on. As if the peacefulness of the morning were all a façade, and the colonists were wearing masks. Or maybe it was him who was hiding behind a mask.