Wechuge Reborn

The Crash

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. And let me tell you, it would have been better for many if Alexander and Mara had never seen that beacon of false hope back in the early fall of 1967.

If they had known the legends of the Dane-zaa, perhaps they would not have dared to seek out the source of that light. Armed with the knowledge of the ages, their experiences over the previous week might have alerted them to the true nature of their situation. But then again, few take such stories seriously even when they do know them. And that itself is a lesson for you.

…Alexander had turned his DHC-3 Otter southwest to avoid a boiling cauldron of storm while en route from Calgary to Sicamous to check out some land on the shores of Shuswap Lake. He wanted to establish a survivalist program for men with equal parts cash and guts. Like many misfortunes of happenstance, this decision, innocent in itself, put his family in the way of something wholly unconsidered in Alexander’s own wilderness training. Semper Paratus!

His circumnavigation took them farther south than he thought, and his turn northwest to recover his way, brought him over an undeveloped lake, nestled by deep forest west of Upper Arrow, which he’d passed some hour or so before… unless that was Kootenay… both bodies of water looked like sister claw marks from some titanic demon.

He turned about and skimmed the forest canopy, just high enough, he thought, to avoid emergent branches. The lake seemed to promise perfect isolation for his would-be trainees.

His daughter, Alexi, fifteen and unimpressed with him, his plans, his plane, and Canada in general was impressed by the unspoiled beauty of this lake. She removed her restraint and pressed her face against the pane with giddy excitement.

Alexander’s heart swelled as Alexi’s interest rose. He reached over and took his wife’s hand, and twitched his eyebrows at her in playful surprise. She suppressed a laugh, lest Alexi suspect their interest and sink back into her recent habit of hating the universe for disappointing her.

Forgetting that she despised her father for being a total drag, Alexi began begging like a puppy, replete with big eyes and whimpering, that they might land on the lake and lunch on one of the pontoons.

Pleased to please, Alexander brought the Otter around again and came in low. Then they struck something… or, perhaps, something struck them. One of the pontoons ripped off and spun away as the plane took a deep dive from which Alexander failed to recover. They struck the water hard, nose first, rolled quickly, snapping both wings, and sank as far as the remaining pontoon would allow.

And what do you think happened to the three of them?

Yes. Alexander and his wife, Mara, who remained strapped in, survived, but poor Alexi, who removed her seatbelt, was tossed about the plane like a pair of old canvas sneakers in a clothes dryer. She died too soon to rediscover just how “not-square” her parents really were. And here, there are two lessons for you. Buckle up for safety! Dear Ones. Buckle up!

Out of respect for the dead and sympathy for the grieving, we will leave this scene private, save for this. Alexi’s body was a problem and Alexander needed to solve problems to keep himself sane, for Mara needed him, even if, for now, she merely blamed him. Neither air, nor water, soil, nor beast would be kind to Alexi as they waited for rescue. Mara refused to even consider leaving her behind to hike for safety, and Alexander would not leave Mara, no matter how much she raged and cursed him in her sorrow that afternoon.

So, Alexander triggered the emergency beacon and dragged their food and survival gear from the plane, floating it all to shore in turns on a broken piece of the Otter’s wing. He buried his little girl deep along a stretch of treeless beach, marked it, prayed, and turned to planning for his and Mara’s survival… something she grew less interested in as the days passed. His efficiency was a provocation to her grief; she hated him for that almost as much as for the accident itself.

You, however, need to pay attention to what he did next. It could save your life someday. So long as you don’t encounter what they encountered there in those ancient undisturbed woods.

Water was already plentiful, so Alexander, machete in hand, trimmed and dragged logs to make an “animal-discouraging” shelter close to the water where they could be seen by searching planes. He surrounded their little shed with sharpened spikes secured in the ground, loaded a massive pile of wood and sticks into a ready signal fire, and stocked another to use for cooking and warmth. Sunset was approaching and temperatures, already dropping, would descend well into the forties by midnight.

He hung their sleeping bags and blankets up to dry near the fire, left a near comatose Mara to tend it, and then turned to use the remaining light to read the prints along the lake’s edge. He wanted to determine the food situation going forward and knew that the local wildlife would come there to drink. He found nothing. No bear tracks, moose tracks, wolf tracks, mountain lion, bobcat, deer. He didn’t even find evidence of raccoon, rabbit, or squirrel. Not along the shore anyway.

As he returned to their camp, Alexander gave a puzzled listen to his surroundings. There were frogs croaking as darkness fell, but the rest was silent. He’d been too distracted to take stock of it earlier, but apart from cicadas’ song even the birds had made nary a chirp. The lake, as far as he could see, boasted neither goose, duck, nor swan. The fish were jumping, so that was hopeful, but he could not imagine why such a place would not be lousy with critters of every size and habit. By the time he found out why, it was too late to change their minds about hiking out.

The Week

Have you ever heard the bellow of an elk? The roar of an enraged gorilla? The chuffing of a crocodile? They are intimidating for sure. But let me tell you, when they are circling you in the dark just outside the cast of your campfire, they are the stuff of nightmares. As the days passed, Alexander and Mara were treated to all this, in addition to the chittering of ridiculing monkeys, the hiss of cats, and the wails of children crying out from the murky woods for rescue. Alexander had to seize hold of Mara to keep her from rushing out of their camp one night as she swore the crying was the pleading of her Alexi, buried but not dead, unable to claw her way out of her ersatz grave.

Whatever was leaping through the trees, dashing across the forest floor, splashing into the lake by night, disappearing beneath the reflective water, Alexander knew it was none of these creatures. It… and it was an IT and not a THEY… left no distinguishable print of paw, claw, or hoof. It left no scat, no pungent marker.

The creature made its presence known the very first night, circling and screaming and pitching dirt at their fire and shelter. Alexander wasted far too much of his ammo that first night trying to hit what seemed little more than a darting shadow in deeper darkness. By day, the creature taunted out of sight, often hurling branches and stones from its place of concealment inside the forest edge. Soon after sunset, however, it would draw closer again to torment them ‘til the dawn.

They had packed for a two day round trip to and from Shuswap, and, per Alexi’s demands, had planned on eating as often as possible in nearby lake towns. So their food didn’t last long. Yes, Alexander should have known better, but there it is. His foolishness is your warning. Plan for the unexpected.

Unexpected was his and Mara’s anguish, her refusal to travel more than a few meters from the campfire, her terror if he did, and her reluctance to speak so much as a word to him. For Alexander, the unexpected was the absence of game at this lake. Outmatched and outmaneuvered by whatever inhabited this stretch of forest, he was hesitant to venture in away from the water’s edge to seek out more. The only thing that kept them alive was his furtive trips to fish and fill their bucket with water when, unable to stay awake any longer, Mara passed out. So, yes, unexpected was also the physical and psychological damage of sleeplessness and constant haranguing from an enemy that, unlike them, did not appear to need rest. They were growing gaunt and almost mad with exhaustion within four days.

To say that Alexander did not see the creature would not be exactly true. He saw its silhouette in the forest shadow and beheld it backlit by the glint of moonlight off the lake, usually just before it would shatter that reflection and disappear beneath the surface. Where it reemerged was anyone’s guess. Alexander watched, but never saw.

No, he did see the creature, sort of, but he refused to believe that he saw it aright. Its form was impossible, humanoid but not human, with disconcertingly long limbs boasting fingers like bendable pitchfork prongs. It was antlered, skeletal, and ashen flanked. Its feet, though appearing hoven, left no hoof prints, and Alexander had never seen a hoofed animal climb trees and leap from branch to branch with the facility of a flying squirrel.

Every day and every night had been a copy of the one before. On the sixth night, however, something changed, and Alexander knew it was the beginning of the end of whatever this game was. It had worn them down. It had shattered their nerves. It had starved them out. He figured that now, it had them right where it wanted them.

On the sixth night the creature found new and frightening ways to test their ability to defend themselves. The first sign of change came when Alexander had drifted off in front of the campfire while leaning against a log he’d rolled over their first grievous afternoon on the lake. Rather than sprinting in at him screaming with some new animal imitation and circling just outside the firelight, it came in silent… at least Alexander never heard it coming. It didn’t stop and circle, either, but came right up to the fire pit and kicked the blaze right into Alexander’s drooped face. Alexander came to with the air full of ash and sparks. Burning wood littered the ground, and hot embers forced him to leap up and swoosh them from his shirt and lap as both began to smolder.

It must have used Alexander’s shock and disorientation to its advantage because he hadn’t set eyes upon the thing either coming or going. But Mara had. As Alexander took up his shotgun, loaded with his last two shells, and spun this way and that to discern its escape, Mara broke her days long silence, saying, “It was at least a foot taller than you. It had antlers above that!”

No sooner had six foot three Alexander done the math on its height, than a thin rotted log exploded across his back as the thing came through the camp in a near silent blur. Rank pulp filled the air as he dropped the shotgun into the remaining embers of the campfire and sprawled forward. He landed hard across another large log he’d rolled over to the fire that first day, and knocked the wind out of himself. Alexander was fast. In the Army, his speed had been legendary. Some of his records still stood. But whatever this was made Alexander look like he was moving with sand bags tied to his feet.

Before Alexander could even catch his breath, both shotgun shells fired simultaneously, hurtling the weapon into Mara’s face as she perched, frozen in horror, just inside the shelter’s opening. She was gone for the night, and Alexander found himself in a fight for his life, or so he thought. Their tormentor came in sprints, knocking Alexander down, smashing their shelter, knocking Alexander down, smashing more of their shelter, knocking Alexander down, destroying their signal-fire-in-waiting. Finally, it struck Alexander in the back of the head so hard that he didn’t awaken again until late the next day just a few hours before sunset.

The Candle

Alexander fluttered his eyes, head ringing, and discovered Mara’s own, inches above him. Both were black and blue from the shotgun stock… her nose obviously broken. She said, “Thank God, you’re awake.”

Two things struck Alex at once. First, Mara was speaking to him without even a hint of contempt. Second, the lake was silent, devoid of screeching torments. He jolted up, but… hand to head, he muttered a long slow, “Ooooow!” as he eased himself back down. He winced, “Too fast… too fast… Give me a second.” Mara worried over him, which he hoped was the beginning of forgiveness, so he stroked her arm saying, “I’ll be fine… the quiet’s nice.”

“It’s been like this all day,” Mara said glancing towards the tree line, “I think it’s gone.” Then, after a long pause, she waved her hand across the wreckage that was their campsite, saying, “Everything’s gone. It took… literally… everything.”

He twisted his head as much as he could from where he lay to take in the ruin. “It’s playing some sort of game,” He said.

“What do we do?” Mara asked. “I looked around. All our stuff is gone. Vanished. I even looked in the water… no sign of anything except the plane. You didn’t tell me it sank.”

Alexander corrected, “It’s submerged not sunk. It’s just below the surface.” Mara rolled her eyes. Alexander was pleased to see a glimmer of old Mara in it.

She went on, “We have no food. No means of getting food. And it doesn’t appear that anyone’s going to be finding us out here, wherever here is, whether the plane is submerged or sunk.”

They sat for some time, trying to decide what to do, enjoying the peace in spite of themselves. Dusk came on, and with it, the glimmer of a light in the woods they had never seen before. Alexander pitched an idea. “If that is a cabin or camp, then there might be help there… maybe a working CB or walkie-talkie or something… but it means going out there where IT is.”

Mara, knowing there was nothing else to do, agreed to Alexander’s plan. What she didn’t want to say, but both of them knew anyway, was that they had to go for help to that light, whatever it was, or DIE trying. They crept away warily, watching and listening for movement around them.

The farther they went into the trees toward that beacon, the darker it got, and the more stark was the light. In the quiet of those woods, however, their own footsteps, slight and slow as they were, sounded like firecrackers going off. They didn’t know what waited for them there, but surprise might be their only advantage, and, without a discernible trail, their woodsy cacophony would most certainly give them away. Even so, they had to go on.

As they drew closer, the moon broke through the cloud cover and illuminated a disheveled cabin about twenty meters ahead of them in a small clearing. It gave every sign of being uninhabitable with a damaged roof that drooped in from the sides, and enough moss coating the exterior to make it invisible to the naked eye under most circumstances.

That was when the slight wind rustling the trees shifted and brought a wretched stench there way. When Alexander’s father had died, they discovered that his meat freezer in the basement had broken undiscovered over a year previous. The meat had thawed, spoiled, rotted, and become an instrument of procreation for unspeakable things. This smell was not dissimilar to that. Were the sun up, they would, no doubt, hear the fly swarms that such a culinary tragedy breeds.

As they moved closer still, they saw what looked like an open mass grave filled with the half eaten carcasses of creatures big and small. Alexander’s foot struck something on the edge of the pit; he picked it up. It was damaged by the elements, but still recognizable before the moon—a park ranger’s hat. He dropped it and backed away from the scene. The scarcity of wildlife in the area made a lot of sense now.

As they moved on, the light proved to be a candle set inside the cabin on a window ledge. They avoided looking in that window, lest their faces catch the light and give them away. Another window, however, whose rotting frame seemed to teeter in place, did provide the insight they sought.

The cabin was a single large room sporting sparse furniture: A small table with a couple chairs, a bunk, and two rocking chairs. The detritus of a hundred kills were piled both on the bunk and around the bunk: Backpacks, duffle bags, suitcases, and every kind of camping gear one could imagine. Some of the items looked antique. There were lanterns, cook stoves, rifles, flashlights, knives, and there on top of one section, their very own machete.

They could just make out a large buck skull on the table, sprouting what Alexander judged to be an eight point rack. And to their horror, something humanoid draped in one of those rocking chairs, naked save for a ratty loin cloth. It was, most certainly, the thing that attacked them, what Alexander now, despite all previous evidence, assumed to be a man. Its freakishly long limbs drooped over the armrests, leaving his claw like nails extending from its elongated fingers almost scraping the floorboards. Its freakishly long legs were shot straight out before it, its feet bagged and tied in animal skin. The rocker moved ever so slowly, back and forth, back and forth. Its head, sprouting a massive but patchy drift of gray hair, had fallen forward onto its bare chest. If the chair weren’t moving, they would have sworn he was already dead.

Alexander motioned to get Mara’s attention, pointed toward the pile of bags and gear, and mouthed, “ma-chet-e.” He then mimed tiptoeing with his fingers across his open palm. He gave her to understand that she should stay outside and run if things went south on him.

He crept to the cabin’s door and, with a feather’s touch, tested the latch. The door opened, but it squealed, so Alexander froze. The creature did not react in any way. Perhaps, Alexander wondered to himself, it was just as tired as they. A week of ceaseless motion and noise could not have been easy.

He pushed the door a little farther, and after a short squeak, the hinges fell silent and allowed him to open it fully. He did not want anything to impede a hasty retreat if he needed to make one. Every step across the floor Creeeeeeeeeeeeeaked, as Alexander tried to make his way toward the pile. Still there was no reaction from the thing, the man. Now that he was closer, Alexander could hear a wheezing inhale and a rasping exhale matching the rhythm of the rocker.

Mara watched through the crusted glass as Alexander navigated the room, side-stepping the thing’s legs which seemed long enough to divide the room in halves. She sighed with relief when, arriving at the pile upon which their machete lay unsheathed, he took it in hand. As he did, however, the head of the thing in the rocking chair lifted with the easy calm of a stalking crocodile.

Even before turning around, Alexander heard the creature’s breathing quiet, then the rhythmic sound of rocking stopped. He heard the floorboards groan as the creature stood. Just then, Mara’s window crashed into the room, frame and all, as she struck the glass with her palm to alert Alexander to his danger. Taking advantage of the distraction, Alexander spun, bringing the machete around in a wide arc. The mannish thing, blocked Alexander’s swing easily, sending the machete sailing toward the open door, and then seized him by the neck with his other hand. It pulled him close and lifted him from the floor.

Even from here, Alexander was not sure whether or not he was face to face with man or beast. The eyes peering from behind a salt and pepper curtain, were yellow rimmed in red. Their lids drooped, exposing the inside tissue, which seeped blood. The skin they’d imagined ashen was, in point of fact, painted with some type of clay, but even this did not conceal the quarter-sized, pussing pock marks that decorated much of what Alexander could see as he dangled, grabbing the thing’s forearm to keep from being hanged. Its breath, puffing through rotted teeth, stank, but the overall smell of the thing was not mouth rot, it was the smell of late stage cancer, gangrene, nearing death.

The creature stared into Alexander’s eyes, as he kicked instinctively, knowing all the while that there was no purchase to be found. Then, grabbing him by the waist with its free arm, the man-thing twisted it grasping hand to force Alexander’s mouth open.

Its own jaw, already jutting more than a human mandible should, seemed to dislocate and expand, creating a dark chasm above him. As it suctioned onto Alexander’s own prepared mouth, the thing’s head jolted away with a roar. It dropped Alexander and took two steps backward. Alexander looked up. The machete protruded from the middle of its diseased chest. The man-creature, shocked at this turn, stood, looking at it’s body’s intruder until blood began spilling down its sagging jaw. Mara had run it through from behind.

Seconds later, dead already, it listed sideways and crashed between Alexander and Mara. As the body tumbled, however, something else remained behind. Standing stalwart in its place was something much like what had been there before, a translucent visage, long-limbed and over seven feet tall, with an elongated and antlered skull for a head. It needed no animal mask to work the trick. It was naked but a-sexual… muscular with perfect skin, and youthful in the way ancient mountains seem youthful. It turned the coals burning inside the skull’s sockets from Alexander to Mara and back again several times before finally fixing its attention on Mara. It took one step in her direction and vanished.

Mara ran to Alexander as he stood up, leapt into his arms, and squeezed him tight.

The Rescue Team

The SAR team out of Shuswap was the first to reach the crash site after Alexander’s DHC-3 Otter was spotted submerged in the lake, and the remnants of a campsite on the eastern shore.

Evening was coming on, but they had vital supplies, and no interest in leaving that poor family out in the woods unaided for even one more night. Of course, they might be dead, it had been more than three weeks since the family disappeared, but this team never allowed that possibility to be part of their decision making. They would quit when they had every single body, and, until then, there still remained in their minds a living and suffering soul that needed them.

The six-man team came across the grave first. At least that is what the marker promised for it. Someone had used a piece of the plane as a marker and carved a short message into the paint. It read, simply, “My beloved Alexi.” The grave was now just a pit, some animal having gotten at it. The prints around the site were indecipherable, but they figured the morning light would bring clarity for their report. They moved on along the lake’s edge and found the abandoned campsite… a fire pit caked with black mud, sharpened sticks, trimmed logs, all a scattered mess. But there was no sign of Alexander or Mara. They had just begun to call out when one of the men saw a small light spring up in the woods.

Making for it, they found the open grave of rotting carcasses, but breathed a sigh of relief when they realized that the light they’d been seeking had come from a candle set in the window of a decrepit cabin. They announced themselves as they dropped their backpacks, but got no response. They wrapped on the door, but got no response. Two of them entered calling out, but got no response. The smell hit them immediately, more pungent even than the pit.

Two men lay on the floor of the cabin, long dead. One of the men was a spindly giant with long patchy gray hair. He appeared to be stark naked save for some type of bags tied around his feet. He was laying on his side and had a gaping wound through his back, severing his spine. The other man was normal sized, lying supine. His throat had been ripped out and his torso hollowed.

Needing to photo the scene before bagging the bodies, they turned back toward the door, planning to retrieve their equipment from their packs. As they did, the beam of their flashlights revealed someone sitting against the wall behind the door. They focused both of their flashlights full upon the figure. It was a naked woman, sitting on the floor pitched onto her bent-up knees. Her disheveled hair cascaded over her unusually long arms. As they stared, her hand crept beside her, and took hold of a large antlered animal skull. She lifted her face to them, and fastened the skull over her own.