In the north. In the night. A remote cabin. Quiet. Empty. Or so we thought.
Imagine a writer, alone and isolated in a secluded cabin in the north, in the blue-dark of night, struggling with this story. Or—imagine yourself here, instead. Cold and alone in the near-dark. Because despite our best efforts at keeping the fireplace going, layering our clothes, and sipping hot cider, the stinging cold numbness of the north never quite completely abates. Nor does the impenetrable darkness. Nor the ceaseless hunger. There is little we can do about the cold, except to keep to our feeble ministrations. There is nothing we can do about the rolling dark. Especially this time of year when it is grey and dark all the time. And in the heart of this northern night the darkness churns, alive and otherworldly. Each time we look out at that night sky—a whorl of stars and dark matter like a great judging eye—we become dizzy with possibilities.
So, it could be you in the far north. Or it could be me. Or both of us. Perhaps we’re taking a holiday. Perhaps we’re trying to work without distractions. After all, we have a book to finish writing. Or perhaps we’re hiding. Just getting away from it all. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we’re alone in the deep dark of a northern wood, in a remote rustic cabin or chalet or cottage. Picture it—small, quaint, tranquil. Smoke curling from a chimney. One room. Two if you count the tiny bathroom. Three if you count the root cellar under the bolted trapdoor in one dim corner. Bed in another corner. Recliner in another, beside the fireplace. Along another wall a small counter with a sink and woodstove. The opposite wall has a bookcase, varnished to a dark gloss, bearing dusty leather-bound tomes with gold foil stamping or tattered dust jackets. Perhaps you’ve stayed in just such a place or have always wanted to.
The north called to us. The night called to us. Silence and solitude. We would read. We would write. We would wonder at the star-speckled nights.
On this northern night the sky bleeds blue-black. It is a wavering curtain of darkness, stabbed through with pinpricks of cold hard light.
We sit in a wooden chair at the old wooden table, scarred and pitted, one table leg shorter than the others so that the table rocks and taps—tap, tap—on the equally worn wood floor, its surface scored and rutted with deep gouges.
In the orange glow from our lamp and our dwindling fire, pen and paper at hand, we’re writing a new story; about a silver train, heavy snow, colonial greed, selfishness, and possession. Or we’re trying to. But it’s useless. Our expectation of silence is shattered as strange, lonesome howls emanate from the dark. The wind, we think, and its relentless roar. It batters the old cabin. It batters our psyche. The table wobbles—tap, tap—and the cabin door knocks in its warped frame as the brutish wind whistles through the gaps, like something trying to get in. Wendigo. Why did we think that? No, just the wind.
There are other sounds, too. Ones we try to ignore. A low growl. A faint moan.
It snowed for days. Perhaps weeks. Our sense of time is as scattered as the snowy flurries caught in the teeth of the incessant wind. Stinging pellets plummeted from an ashen sky to clot the world. The snow breached the bottom of the window, three or four feet. Impassable. In the creamy grey of dawn we saw it stretching to the far horizon so seamlessly that sky and snow become indistinguishable, suffocating the world. Somewhere out there was our snowmobile. And there is that endless gut-clenching hunger, as well. Moreso now that we’ve had to ration our supplies.
We. Yes, we. You and me. Remember? We’re on this adventure together. Or will be when you read this. A shared act between author and reader. We do not know each other, but we now have a connection. I do not exist without you. You do not exist without me. It’s rather intimate, isn’t it? A love story, in fact. We will have a bond that endures and survives beyond time. Even beyond death. You will read this clumsy story. Years later, perhaps after my demise, another curious reader will read these very same words, and I will live on. At least briefly. Until they turn the page and begin another love affair.
But I’ve been a terrible host, haven’t I? Why don’t I stop my work for the evening and pull up a chair to join you by the fire? And since we are here together, hypothetically, you and me, enjoying our little party, warming by the fire, perhaps I should entertain you with a story. I’m a teller of tales and what teller of tales does not crave an audience? Would I exist without you? You without me? Doubtful. So let me tell you a story:
It was noon when the train left Cochrane, clunking along the rusty rails, bound for Moosonee. You couldn’t drive there. All travellers arrived by train or plane.
As flurries raked across a leaden sky, Kerry had driven to Cochrane from Toronto the night before. Eight hours north. First through drab concrete cities, modern and utilitarian; then across a rough two-lane highway cutting through old, thorny black forest; then, at night, along a small silky ribbon of road—made silver by the moonlight and falling snow—as dense dark rock formations older than the forests loomed on both sides.
The train station had an inn. Kerry stayed overnight in a suitably rustic room, reading a book about Canadian myths and folklore.
In the morning he tried writing. But a strange anxiety held him. He worried that even the solitude of the cabin wouldn’t help his current stasis.
The train was all but empty. He’d counted less than a dozen passengers, all bundled in furred coats. He sat alone in the overheated car and watched the snow squalls blot out the hard winter sun. The wheels clacked rhythmically over the rails. Kerry leaned his head against the glassy chill of the window to cool down, and soon found himself drifting and dreaming.
He dreamed of a silver train travelling north, slashing through a snowstorm, stopping at tiny hamlets along the way to let on tall, cloaked strangers, eyes luminous under hoods from which protruded bony ebony antlers.
The train shuddered to a stop and Kerry jerked awake, and the dream about a train while on a train left him in a peculiar hazy torpor. He wondered if the writerly retreat at the cabin would provoke such further reveries. Perhaps he’d have a breakthrough.
They’d arrived at Fraserdale, the first stop, to let on more passengers. Kerry looked up to see someone in a puffy parka and woolly toque coming down the aisle. With any seat in the car to choose from, the new passenger sat directly across the aisle from Kerry. They shrugged off their coat and hat and nodded to Kerry, their face rough and furrowed like tree bark. Kerry turned away.
The man produced a small black notebook, then a fountain pen, and began to write. Kerry could hear the scratchings on the paper.
It inspired Kerry to pull a book from his satchel. Canadian Myth, Legend, and Folklore. He’d taken it from the room. Last night he’d read about the Adlet, half-man and half-dog, that devoured the Inuit; Ogopogo, the monster in Lake Okanagan; Le Loup Garou, the werewolf; and the Wendigo, legendary cannibalistic demon of greed.
“You come for the creature?”
Kerry glanced up to see the man indicating his book.
“The creature?” Kerry said.
“Wendigo,” the man said. “The people on this train, they come for two things—the polar bears, or the Wendigo. You’re no tourist. I can tell.”
Kerry chuckled. The man stared at him with his brown-bark face.
“What is your name?” the man asked.
“Kerry.”
“It’s a trickster, Kerry,” the man said. “It hungers. The Wendigo will consume you. It will become you. Transformation.” The man exhaled, looked out the frost-blurred window, continued. “Just as the Indigenous and First Nations Peoples were forced to change and adapt.”
“I’m a writer,” Kerry said. “And I’m . . . just . . . getting away. To write.”
“Stories,” the stranger said. “We turn the page. We want to know what happens. How it will end.”
“You’re also a writer?” Kerry asked.
“Sometimes,” the man said. “Though I am many things.”
The man’s eyes gleamed a milky dark, beneath which whole galaxies swirled. Kerry felt dizzy.
The train rocked and swayed. Kerry looked out the window. Fat snow fell from the ashen sky in lazy whirls. A world in white and grey stretching away to distant pines. Time stretching. The train moving hypnotically along the tracks. He blinked. His breathing slowed. His heart slowed. Thump . . . thump. The ceaseless train. Thump . . . thump. A droning voice, talking . . .
“Do you believe? In the Wendigo? The Wendigo’s existence is still widely accepted among the Indigenous and First Nations Peoples. Do you believe? I believe. We caught one. Trapped it like we would any other animal. Locked it away.
“In the beginning, a communal spirit of sharing and survival created it. But greed corrupted it. The greed of the ‘settlers’ taking our land, our resources. Our livelihood. You take our land, and you take our myths. Our history. What is left for us?”
The train slowed. Kerry turned from the darkening window. The man was watching him, and he had the feeling he’d missed something.
“Pardon?” Kerry said.
“I hope you enjoy your visit with us,” the stranger said.
Then the train stopped. They’d arrived in Moosonee, and somehow Kerry couldn’t recall much of the 5-hour journey. But it was nearly 5 p.m. and getting winter dark. He disembarked.
Icy sleet stabbed down from the sky in ever quickening thrusts. The last light leaked from the day like a runny watercolour. Kerry’s face stung. He rubbed ice crystals from his eyes, trying to see.
The train platform was almost empty. A single other passenger lumbered away in the dark. Kerry scurried after them.
“Wait!” Kerry said, skidding to a slushy halt as the passenger turned.
“Ah, you, the writer,” said the stranger from the train.
Kerry huffed. “How do I get anywhere? I don’t see any taxis.”
“Not in the winter,” said the stranger. “This isn’t Toronto. It’s not even Cochrane.”
“I’m trying to get to—”
“—the retreat. Yes, I know,” said the stranger.
Kerry affected a pleading look. “Could you . . . ?”
“Help?” the stranger asked. “You want me to help you?”
“I can pay,” Kerry said.
The stranger grinned or grimaced. It was hard to tell in the dark.
“It’s always the answer, isn’t it?” said the stranger.
Kerry gaped, unable to gauge the stranger’s response.
“Of course you’ll pay,” the stranger said. “Come.” He turned and headed for the parking lot.
They reached a pick-up truck with a trailer carrying a snowmobile, and climbed into the cab as snow poured in.
Kerry pulled out his phone but couldn’t get a signal. “I should have printed the directions,” he said.
“I know the way,” said the man.
They drove in silence, high beams knifing the night, hard snow forming on the narrow icy road, until they hit a dead end.
Kerry glanced around. “Where are we?”
“End of the road,” said the man.
A queer dread filled Kerry. He gulped. “What now?”
The man cut the engine, turned to Kerry. “Snowmobile. We ride in from here. Grab your bag.”
The man reached past Kerry, undid the glovebox, and pulled out a small flashlight. They hopped out of the cab. Driving snow lashed them. The man lowered the trailer gate and got the vehicle onto the ground.
Kerry held tight as the snowmobile bounced over the frozen terrain. The single headlight did little to dispel the dark. The wind howled and struck like a wounded thing. Time was elastic. When they pulled up in front of a wooden cabin, Kerry couldn’t tell if it had been minutes or hours.
“The retreat,” said the stranger, climbing off the snowmobile. He squinted into the dark snow-filled night. “Looks like I’ll be staying for a while.”
Then the stranger produced the flashlight and shone it towards the cabin. He walked over, opened the door, ushered Kerry in, then pushed the door closed. He held the flashlight under his chin, illuminating his face so that it appeared disembodied in the dark of the cabin. The stranger’s eyes flashed like stars in a dark cosmos, a celestial tide that eddied ceaselessly. Kerry grew faint.
“Welcome,” said the stranger.
Then he bolted the door.
So that’s my story. But like all good stories it needs an ending.
We were strangers once, me and you. We’ve changed. Transformed. Or one of us has. One becomes the other. But you didn’t even ask me my name, did you? No matter. I have many names. And I can be you. I will be Kerry. And I will write one of your stories.
Oh, can you hear that? The faint moans? The low growls? The occasional rap on the floorboards? I can tell by the look on your face that you do. It’s why we keep the root cellar bolted.
It’s not just me, after all. There are others. Did I mention we trapped one? Locked it away? Starved it so it would hunger. What did you expect? I did say you would pay.
For now, why don’t you try and settle in. Grab a book from the case. Go ahead. Pick one up. Turn the page.
I want to see how it ends.
Originally published in Supernatural Tales, Issue 57, Winter 2024.
