Rebecca Sarazin sat cross-legged in the snow, hands on her knees, palms up, eyes closed. She listened to the whistle of the wind through the tree branches and the burble of running water. The crackle of small animals moving through the brush.

In all these things, she heard the voices of the Aadizookaanag, whispering their promises to her, their teachings and warnings. Gaa-biboonikaan’s breath tickled her goose-pimpled flesh. Jiibayaabooz gathered her dream fragments and showed her the secrets of them.

And then-

Teeth. A forest of ivory, slamming together in a thunderous cresendo. The stink of sour meat and old blood, washing over her. An animal stench, unhealthy and old. A sensation, like claws around her heart-

Her eyes flashed open. “What?” she said, softly. “What is it?” The whispers of the manidoo became more frantic. A deer bounded through the clearing. It paused at the river’s edge, white froth dripping from its lips, red-rimmed eyes held wide in alarm. It gave a low moan and the branches rattled in sympathy. Then it was gone. More animals followed, streaming past the astonished eyes of Rebecca. Rabbits, deer, wolves, bears. Lumbering, loping, sprinting, flying, hopping, crawling, all as fast and as far as they could go.

Rebecca rose stiffly to her feet. Indistinct faces formed in the fog of her breath, shouting silent warnings. The Northern Gods screamed in her mind, their voices muted and dull, echoing down from the farthest northern reaches.

She clutched her head as trills of ice stabbed her mind, her soul. She fell to her knees, crying out in agony. Her skin felt clammy and swollen and there was a sound like some great abomination being shat from its mother-womb, to land bloody and steaming on the surface of the world.

“No. Oh no. No, no, no. Please,” she said, her voice high and shrill. Her fists pounded the snow as she tried to control her heaving stomach.

“Please. Not them.”

HUNGRY GODS

By Josh Reynolds

The woman was perfect. Her skin was alabaster, her eyes as pink as the snow under the morning sun, her belly swollen with child.

The knife too was perfect. Stone, smoothed and shaped by time and use, it plunged down.

Blood erupted from marble flesh, and the woman’s scream echoed out over the wastes and coiled between the trees and the great standing stones that sprouted from the earth like boils.

Dull eyes watched as the woman thrashed her last on the flat stone table, and the gathered men and women breathed as one, feeling what might have been relief as she died.

They had come here, as their fathers and forefathers had done, bringing the requisite offering to the Lord of the Snows. A bride of flesh and blood for a thing of altogether different substance. Never before had their sacrifice done anything but die.

This time, however the wind picked up, and a flurry of snow spun into a crystalline vortex, spinning up and around as a dim shadow formed in the deep reaches of the northern sky. There was a rumble, way back deep down under the earth as something walked down out of the spaces between the stars.

“Kolomaq,” the watchers moaned as one. “Kolomaq, Kolomaq, Kolomaq, KOLOMAQ-”

“WEN-DI-GO,” something snarled.

The shaggy form melted out of the shadows of the tree line, the moonlight making the white pelt almost glow. It stood ten feet high, this beast, with a long, sinuous tail that flexed and coiled around its ever so slightly bent legs.

Talon-tipped fingers curled and uncurled repeatedly at the ends of long arms. The wide, flat nose quivered amidst the protruding apish face as the night wind brought a plethora of scents. Fang studded jaws opened slowly as a smell was caught, as the hunger stirred in its empty belly. A belly that had been empty for quite some time.

“WEN-DI-GO,” the beast howled as it sprang into motion, its bestial thoughts aflame with savage lusts. But as it battered its way through the snow-covered trees, all thought of subtlety lost in the fog of the blood craving, the creature dubbed Wendigo did not notice as the smell changed minutely, imperceptibly to any normal beast. It merely followed the scent of spilt blood, hunger overriding caution and cunning.

After mere minutes, its muscular legs moving effortlessly through the snow with inhuman speed, the Wendigo’s glittering eyes caught the flickering of fire-light. The scent of blood grew stronger, pulling it forward towards the light.

Men and women turned as the beast sprinted into view, tail lashing. Holy chants became screams of horror as the Wendigo hurtled into the gathered group with a bellow, its broad shoulders shattering the bodies of several trees, scattering wooden shrapnel in all directions.

The worshippers scattered before the snow creature’s fury, leaving open a path to the oddly shaped stones they had only moments before clustered around. There were a number of the stones-tall and almost cylindrical, covered in outlandish symbols and runes. They towered even above the Wendigo. But the Wendigo’s attention was drawn to the stone table where the woman’s steaming corpse lay, life’s blood not yet done pumping. It bounded up onto the table with a triumphant shriek.

The Wendigo grunted contentedly as the rapidly cooling flesh slid down its throat in sloppy chunks. It preferred live flesh, but needs must be met regardless. Crouched upon the altar stone, the Wendigo, licked noisily at its great fingers, sopping up the sticky blood with a rough tongue.

Angry chattering drew its attentions once more to the robed figures moving willy-nilly about the clearing. Growling loudly, annoyed, the Wendigo leapt among them, the hunger already returning as spade sized paws crushed bone and ripped flesh, throwing bodies into the air all around.

Fanaticism aside, the cultists knew a losing battle, and their lack of real weaponry beyond the odd hunting rifle or handgun aided many of them in reaching the same conclusion as so many others in times past. Humans, even those with god (any god) on their side are little match for a being who has repeatedly tangled with the Hulk and other assorted do-gooders. So the smarter ones ran, hoping their more dull witted compatriots might distract the snow beast long enough for them to escape.

But as the Wendigo hacked his way through the screaming fanatics, the ground still trembled with the sound of a giant’s footsteps, growing steadily stronger. Eventually, the sound reached such a pitch as to distract the creature, and the Wendigo turned, fur stained red.

Snow dropped from the tops of the standing stones as the shape in the sky grew ever more distinct. Ever more real. Something had come, in response to the call of its people.

Kolomaq.

It stalked down, riding cosmic winds, drawn by blood sacrifice. But now that sacrifice was gone now, sitting in the belly of the beast.

“Hnn?” the Wendigo grunted, as the tips of its fur stood on end. The stones seemed to groan, once, briefly as the great shape in the sky settled its phantom weight upon them.

Kolomaq, for such the thing was called, needed the flesh of a bride not for eating, but for wearing. Blind to the lower earth, it could not see what had happened. It relied on its worshippers to summon it, to maneuver it into its new skin with the sound of their voices, the hum of their song. The song the Wendigo had interrupted.

But Kolomaq didn’t see that. Didn’t see the dead, or the Wendigo, or anything except the beacon of blood that had pulled it down and away from its nightmare home.

And so, it reached down, nebulous fingers stretching towards the the Wendigo. The Wendigo, for its part, jerked backwards, startled as Kolomaq’s massive, ghostly fingers wrapped around it.

The shaggy creature screamed as strange energies rolled over its form, slipping in through orifices and pores, invading its altered body. The Wendigo crumpled to its knees, fur steaming. It hissed in puzzlement then it toppled forward face first into the crimson snow, unmoving.

“Uhhkgk. Where th-?” Phillip Costas grunted as he rolled over and sat up. Bleary eyes widened suddenly as realization set in.

“No moon. But I’m human. How?” he asked aloud, getting to his feet. He got no answer. Running a trembling hand through his blood matted hair, Costas took in the devastation around him. He fell quickly back to his knees, bile rising in his throat. “Oh Jesus.”

Phillip Costas was an adventurer. Or at least he had been. A gun for hire. A mercenary and an explorer. Until he came to Canada. Until the night that a wealthy client had smuggled Costas and eleven other professionals over the border, all of them armed to the teeth with the latest hardware. Their destination had been Buffalo Woods National Park.

Earlier in the year, the client had ‘found’ the last living specimen of a nightmare species. The locals had named it The Hunter in Darkness. It had escaped during some kind of fight between the local super freaks when the client had decided to dangle the creature in a steel cage over Times Square in New York.

There had been no indication that it had gone home. The client knew this. He simply decided to cover all the bases. Costas and the others knew that it was a wild goose chase.

Then came Wendigo. It had moved in on the Hunter’s abandoned territory, evidently tempted by all the tasty campers. They killed it. Then killed it again. And again.

It tracked them, harried them. Drove them deeper and deeper into the woods. These twelve professionals, driven like sheep before a wolf. Pushed into the high ranges, cut off by geography, by weather, by Wendigo.

Their numbers had been whittled to five at the last. The last of the ammunition and the last missile had taken the Wendigo, flinging it off of the mountain in several different directions. But it was too late.

The blizzard was worse than Wendigo. The supplies hadn’t been meant to last for so long and the radio was gone. Three froze. The fourth had attacked Costas, driven mad by his experiences. Costas killed him. It was an easy decision, once all the prying eyes were gone. The path to survival lay in only one direction. Costas took it.

Good God, let’s eat. Simple as that.

Then, he knew how the Wendigo came to be. Once a year, on a night of the full moon, Costas returned to his own form, to sanity. He was made to remember his crime. Then he became Wendigo again. Only now, he was human, and no moon in sight. At least not a full one. But this was a puzzle that could wait for later. He had to get away from here. Away from the wilds.

“But first-clothes,” Costas muttered, shivering uncontrollably in the freezing night air. He bent over one of his-no-the Wendigo’s victims, and quickly and efficiently stripped the man, ignoring the gore and blood.

He’d gotten good at that, in his previous life. Now, the stink of ruptured intestines and raw, red meat only made his belly gurgle in the memory of hunger.

Dressed, he began to backtrack the jumbled footprints of that led away from the area. He hoped that the survivors had left at least one vehicle of some kind behind in their mad flight.

They had. Costas plunged on, away from the dark of the woods, away from the range of the Wendigo, following the rutted tire tracks to a truck that had fishtailed into a tree. Whoever had been driving had gotten out to run, instead of simply reversing the truck away from the tree and back up onto the trail.

He climbed in, grinning wildly as he caught sight of the keys still in the ignition. “Ha!” The engine groaned in protest as he twisted the key, and he pumped the gas, trying to shift the vehicle. Even as he got the truck rolling backwards, a light snow began to fall.

Costas turned on the lights and put the truck into gear, heading away from the blood and the bodies as fast as possible.

He didn’t wonder what was behind his sudden transformation. Who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth? Rule one, don’t question your own luck. Don’t question-

Costas gave a bark as a sudden pain rippled through him. He gritted his teeth as it boiled in his guts, causing his stomach to lurch and his vision to swim. He turned up the truck’s radio. The sound of Dolly Parton’s sharp, sweet voice filled the cluttered cab of the vehicle. His thoughts burned with urges not quite his own-

HUNGER. He shook his head, driving the images from his brain. A low growl caught in his throat. His joints ached and his vision blurred as his flesh broke out in sweat. What was going on? He’d thought he was free, but-

HUNGER. EAT. In the distance, lights gleamed. “No,” he moaned. “So close.” EAT. NOW. HUNGER. EAT. NOW. EAT. MUST. HUNGER. HUNGER. HUNGER.

Costas’ hands clenched spastically on the sweat-slicked wheel and he threw back his head violently. “ NO!” In desperation, the pain overwhelming every portion of his system, he threw the wheel, sending the truck into a skid.

The vehicle slowly toppled off of the dirt road, rolling once, twice, before coming to a smoking halt. Gasoline dribbled across the churned snow. A loose spark caught and flames suddenly tore at the wind, rapidly engulfing the truck.

The driver’s door, facing the sky, the truck lying upon its side as it was, suddenly exploded outwards. A burning form crouched upon the crumpled cab. It took no notice of the pain. Nor of the flames. Only its hunger. It raised fiery fists to the sky.

“WEN-DI-GO!”

Next issue: Phillip Costas is the Wendigo, but why is the Wendigo Phillip Costas? Only Rebecca Sarazin might hold the answer, but who will get to her first-Costas? Or the Wendigo?